Early History of the Dekkan down to the Mahomedan Conquest c13.2

c13.2

THE next question we have to consider is as regards the dates of these princes In my paper on the Nâsık cave inscriptions¹, I have accepted A D 319 as the date of Gotamîputra's accession, arrived at by, taking B C 315 as the year in which Chandragupta founded the dynasty of the Mauryas at Pâṭalıputra, and 664 years to have elapsed between hım and Gotamîputra, since the periods assigned in the Purânas to that dynasty and the subsequent ones, and the durations of the reigns of the Andhrabhṛıtya princes who proceeded Gotamîputra according to the Mâtsya when added, give 664 The "race of Khagârâta," which Gotamîputra is, as observed before, represented in one of the Nâsık inscriptions to have exterminated, I identified with the dynasty of the Kshatrapas whose coins are found in Kâṭhıâvâḍ, as well as a few inscriptions, since Kshaharâta or Khagârâta was also a Kshatrapa and had been placed at the head of the dynasty by previous writers The latest date on the coins of those princes then known was 250, which referred to the Saka era, is A D 328 This comes so close to Gotamîputra's A D 319, that the two seemed to corroborate each other But there are several objections to this view, some of which occurred to me even then (1)—The inscriptions and coins of the Kshatrapa dynasty concur in carrying the genealogy backward to Chashṭana and no further, and as yet nothing has turned up to show that any connection existed between him and Nahapâna (2)—If the Kshatrapa or Satrap dynasty held sway over Mahârâshṭra for about three hundred years as it did over Kâṭhiâvâḍ, we might reasonably expect to find in that country inscriptions or coins of most of the princes, but a few coins of the later ones only have been discovered in a village near Karâḍh² and no inscription whatever (3)—Rudradâman in his Junâgaḍ inscription calls a Sâtakarṇi, ‘lord of Dakshiṇapatha’, which he would not have done if he had been the ruler of even a part of the Dekkan (4)—And the dates occurring on some Satrap coins recenty discovered are said to be 300 and 304³ which referred to the Śaka era A D 378 and 382, that is, the Satraps were in power even long after A D 340, which is the date of Gotamîputra’s death according to the Purâṇic accounts For these reasons it would appear that the “race” of Khagârâta or Nahapâna which Gotamîputra put an end to and which ruled over this country before him, could not have been the dynasty of the Satraps (5)—Besides, according to my former view, the interval between Nahapâna and Gotamiputra is about 200 years, but the difference in form between the characters in Ushavadâta’s and Gotamîputra’s inscriptions is not great enough for that period Hence the two princes must be brought closer together