The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s11.71

c8.s11.71

¹ This is one of the saṃvatsaras or years of the twelve-year cycle of the planet Jupiter. For an exposition of the cycle by Mr. Shankar Balkrishna Dikshit, see my Gupta Inscriptions, Introduction, p. 161, Appendix III., and Ind. Ant. Vol. XVII. pp. 1, 312.—In the dates in the Gupta inscriptions, the years are determined by the heliacal risings of the planet and the nakshatra in which he is at each such rising; and the names of them always have the prefix mahâ (=mahat), ‘great;’ thus, Mahâ-Aśvayuja, Mahâ-Chaitra, Mahâ-Mâgha, and Mahâ-Vaiśâkha. From the absence of this prefix in the grants of Mrigêśavarman, I am inclined to consider that the reference here is to another system of the cycle, for which the years are determined by the passage of Jupiter among the signs of the zodiac, and the month-name is taken, according to his position, as the name of the year. If so, the present records give the earliest epigraphic instances, as yet obtained, of the use of the twelve-year cycle according to either the mean-sign or the apparent-sign system.—It would appear (see an article by Prof. Kielhorn in the Ind. Ant. Vol. XXII. p. 83) that the grammarian Hêmachandra would interpret such terms as Pausha saṃvatsara, Vaiśâkha saṃvatsara, &c., as denoting ordinary luni-solar years in which Jupiter happens to rise in the nakshatras Pushya, Viśâkhâ, &c. But this does not seem appropriate and admissible, in the face of the unquestionable use of Jovian years not coinciding with the luni-solar years.