Indian Epigraphy c15.t5.51

c15.t5.51

Some scholars point to the absence of inscriptions dated in the third century of the Scytho-Parthian era and suggest that the same era was used by the Kaniṣka group of the Kuṣāṇa kings with the omission of the symbol for 200.⁴ The absence of inscriptions dated in the third century of the older era is unimportant as we have a few records dated in the fourth century of the same era,⁵ and these point to the continued use of the era since it is difficult to believe that people reverted to the old practice of mentioning the hundred after the lapse of a century. We do not believe in theories based on the omission of hundreds because the whole range of Indian epigraphy offers only a few instances of omitted hundreds excepting of course the popularity of such omission in the calculation of the years of the Laukika era in the Kashmir region since the early medieval period. Records dated in regnal reckoning such as the Abottabad inscription¹ of Kadambeśvaradāsa (c. 3rd century A.D.) and the Kabul inscription of Ṣāhi Khiṅgāla (c. 6th century A.D.)² suggest that the use of both the Scytho-Perthian and Kaniṣka eras was no longer very popular in North-Western Bhāratavarṣa. This fact may be compared with the total disappearance of the Gupta era from Bihar and U.P. with the fall of the Guptas. While in Bengal it was not used after the middle of the 6th century A.D. and in Orissa after the beginning of the 7th, we have a solitary instance of its use in a record of 829 A.D. from Assam³ (which probably did never from an integral part of the Gupta empire) and, in Kathiawar, it was in popular use for several countries after the fall of the Guptas. This was because their erstwhile feudatories, the Maitrakas, continued its use. The continued use of the Gupta era by the Maitrakas seems to be specially comparable with that of the Kaniṣka era by the Śakas of Western India.