Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c10.s3.t2.16

c10.s3.t2.16

Beginning in the last two centuries B.C., the practice of recording dates by the day as well as year gradually came into use. The earliest examples, mostly in inscriptions of Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian kings, usually give a (regnal) year, month, and day of the month.³⁴ The Shinkoṭ reliquary inscriptions of the time of Menander and Vijayamitra (SI I.105, l. 2), for example, contain the date *vaṣaye paṁcamaye 4 1 veśrakhasa masasa divasa paṁcaviśraye*, "In the fifth (5) [regnal] year [of Vijayamitra], twenty-fifth day of the month Vaiśākha." Several inscriptions from this period use Macedonian rather than Indian months; the Sui Vihār inscription of the eleventh year of Kaniṣka, for example (SI I.139, l. 1), is dated on the twenty-eighth day of *daïsiṁka masa*, that is, of Daisios.³⁵