History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s4.t1.20

c14.s4.t1.20

and a figure of the peacock which is the ‘vāhana’ of the god Virasena or Mahāsena. It is the earliest coin of the series of the Padmāvatī Nāgas [§ 27]. All these coins go back to the Hindu system, both in weight and shape and in the matter of symbolic language. In other words, Virasena’s inscription. sena discarded the Kushan coinage. We have also an inscription of this king discovered by Sir Richard Burn thirty-six years¹ back, at a village called Jānkhaṭ in the Tirwa tahsil of the district of Farukhabad. It is now published in the *Epigraphia Indica*, Vol. XI, p. 85, edited by Mr. Pargiter. There are a number of broken sculptures and carved pieces, and this inscription is on the head and mouth of a sculptured animal.² It bears the same royal symbols as the coin reproduced by Prof. Rapson. There is a rough representation of a tree, which on the analogy of the coins is to be taken as a palm tree. The side decorations are the conventional marks denoting the same thing as on the coin, but the significance of which is yet undisclosed. I regard the record as one of a royal foundation on account of the royal symbols. The inscription is dated in the thirteenth year of the reign of ‘Svāmin Virasena’ (*Svāmisa Virasenasa saṃvatsare* 10, 3). The other portion of it is too fragmentary to give the object of the record. It is dated in the fourth fortnight of the summer season on the eighth day . . . . . . . . . . The letters are identical with the letters on the Ahi-chhatra coin. Further, they agree in all their characteristics with the inscriptions of Huvishka and Vāsudeva, found at Mathurā, published in vols. I and II of the *Epigraphia Indica* by Dr. Bühler. For instance, compare the inscription of the 90th year of the Kushan era given in the plate opposite page 205 in vol. II, where the heads of the perpendicular lines in ‘s’ and ‘k’ and ‘n’ are thicker. The ‘y’ in the Jānkhaṭ inscription is older in shape, but very near the shape in the record of the 90th year. Compare also the slanting vowel-marks in this inscription with the same forms in the Mathurā inscription no. 11 of the 4th year of the Kushan era in line 3, words ‘saha’ and ‘dāsena’ and in ‘dānam’, line 3 of the inscription no. 13 dated in the 18th Kushan year, also those in ‘gaṇato’ and the other ‘to’s in line 2, and in the inscription of the 98th year (kṣuṇe gaṇato). Most of the characteristics of the Jānkhat writing being earlier than the inscriptions of the time of Vāsudeva and a few being contemporary, we have to assign the record to a period not later than the time of Vāsudeva Kushan.¹