Indian Epigraphy c15.t8.10

c15.t8.10

The names of the years according to Jupiter's 60-year Cycle are only occasionally met with in the records of North India. But they are very popular in the South even today. It was formerly believed that the earliest epigraph mentioning such a name is the Mahākūṭa pillar inscription of Cālukya Maṅgaleśa (597-610 A.D.) of Bādāmi, dated in the year Siddhārtha (Siddhārthin).¹ But recently the name of the cyclic year Vijaya has been traced in two Nagarjunikonda inscriptions, one of the time of the Ikṣvāku king Vīrapuruṣadatta (second half of the 3rd century A.D.) and another of his son Ehuvula Śāntamūla (close of the 3rd and the early part of the 4th century).² Vijaya was originally the first year of the Cycle.