The Age of the Imperial Guptas c7.2.3

c7.2.3

The earliest of them, discovered at Dhanaidaha in the Rajshahi district, is very fragmentary, but is dated G.E. 113. The references to Brāhmaṇas leave no doubt about the fact that the object of the record was some contract between Hindus.¹ The first and second Damodarpur plates of G.E. 124 and 129 are distinctly Hindu or Brahmanical as they refer to *Agnihotras* and *Mahāyajñas*. The great Junagaḍh rock inscription of Skandagupta is distinctly Vaiṣṇava as it opens with an invocation to the god Viṣṇu. The second part of this inscription records the erection of a temple of Viṣṇu by Cakrapālita, son of the Viceroy Parṇadatta. The inscription on the stone pillar at Kahāum in the Deoriya Tahsil of the Gorakhpur district is the second Jain record of the Gupta period. It records the erection by a man named Madra of a pillar with five images of the *Ādikartṛs* or *Tīrthaṅkaras* in G.E. 141. The last inscription of the time of Skandagupta is Hindu. In the copper plate discovered at Indor Khera in the Bulandshahr district, a Brāhmaṇa, named Devaviṣṇu, records the gift of some money for the maintenance of a lamp in a temple of Sūrya in G.E. 146.