Indian Epigraphy c15.t11.27

c15.t11.27

As to the confusion regarding the starting point of the Lakṣmaṇasena-saṃvat in Mithilā between 1108 and 1119 A.D., Majumdar says, “......instead of counting from the end of the reign [of Lakṣmaṇasena about 1200 A.D.] people of the later age counted from his birth [about 1120 A.D.].........The artificial character of the era, set up at a later time with reference to a past event perhaps explains the great discrepancy in the initial years of that era as calculated from the different instances of its use.”¹ But the era was not ‘an artificial reckoning associated with an event of remote past’ as Majumdar puts it,² since, as a matter of fact, it was essentially the continuation of Lakṣmaṇasena’s regnal reckoning just as the Śaka era seems to have been the continuation of the regnal reckoning of Kaniṣka I. Since moreover the earliest known date in the era is found to be the year 51,³ its origin could not have been of a remote past at least to its early users.