The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.34

v2.c16.s2.34

Again, according to the *Vāyu* and the *Matsya Purāṇas*,²⁴ the first of the nine Nandas who bore the second name of Mahāpadmapati reigned eighty years, and the other eight, twelve years. The period of eighty-eight years appears extraordinarily long for a single reign, and I am disposed to reduce it by at least five and twenty years. The second Nanda was called Sumālya, the last Dhana Nanda. We do not know the specific names of the other six. One of these probably was simply Nanda without any prefix, and if we accept him from that circumstance to be the prince meant in the inscription, the era of Aira will range between 325 and 340 B.C. It should be borne in mind, however, that all the nine [29] princess of Magadha were commonly known under the name of Nanda, and we are not at all in a position to say whether the writer of the inscription used the name in a generic, or a specific, sense. It is to be presumed that in giving a proper name he gave it in full, and did not strike off a syllable from it in a prose composition where a syllable more or less is of no consequence, and that consequently Aira lived at or a little before the time of Alexander's invasion in 327 B.C.; but at any rate this much may be taken for certain that he lived within the hundred years preceding the accession of Chandragupta to the throne of Magadha in 316 B.C.