Indian Palaeography c15.s3.t1.19

c15.s3.t1.19

The inscriptions of Nepal were originally published by Bhagwanlal Indraji.¹ To these Bendall added others,² and later Sylvain Lévi³ republished the inscriptions. Finally, in 1956 Gnoli brought out a well-illustrated monograph on *Nepalese Inscriptions in Gupta Characters*. Most of these inscriptions are dated. One of the eras easily recognizable, and generally accepted, is that which is associated with the name of Harsha. There has been great controversy regarding the other era used in them. Fleet in his *Corpus*⁴ argued for the Gupta era, but Lévi proposed a new Nepali era starting in A.D. 110. The root of the controversy lay in Bendall’s inscription no. 1, in which the date was read as 316 or 318. This inscription mentions the name of Śivadeva I, who is known to have been a contemporary of Aṁśuvarman. The latter’s inscriptions are dated in the Harsha era (starting from A.D. 606) and range between 34 and 48. Quite naturally Bendall’s date was referred to the Gupta era (beginning *c.* A.D. 318–19). This reference upset the date of other Nepalese kings such as Mānadeva, whose inscriptions are dated from the year 386 onward. Fleet referred all these dates to the Gupta era. But this is impossible on palaeographical grounds as the details given below will show. Hence Lévi proposed a new era for the Mānadeva group of kings. But such an assumption is not now necessary. Gnoli has corrected Bendall’s reading of the date from 316/18 to 517, thus we have inscriptions regularly following a set era and later passing on to the Harsha era. There is no break in the palaeography, of which the gradual evolution is clear. The palaeography favours the attribution of the earlier years to the Śaka era (starting in A.D. 78). As no known historical events are against this attribution, the following palaeographical study is made by grouping the inscriptions in the sequence as we see them.