The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s3.146

c8.s3.146

The next question we have to consider is as regards the dates of these princes. In my paper on the Nâsik 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 Pâṭaliputra, and 664 years to have elapsed between him and Gotamîputra, since the periods assigned in the Purâṇas to that dynasty and the subsequent ones, and the durations of the reigns of the Andhrabhritya princes who preceded Gotamîputra according to the Mâtsya when added, give 664. The "race of Khagârâta," which Gotamîputra is, as observed before, represented in one of the Nâsik inscriptions to have exterminated, I identified with the dynasty of the Kshatrapas whose coins are found in Kâṭhiâvâḍ, 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 Śaka era, or 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 Chashtana 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 Śâtakarṇi, ‘lord of Dakshinapatha’, 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 recently discovered are said to be 300 and 304³ which referred to the Śaka are 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 Purânic 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 Gotamîputra 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.