Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c18.s3.82

c18.s3.82

(*d*) Sten Konow has also shown that the inscriptions of the Kanishka era and those of the Śaka era are not dated in the same fashion. (But the same scholar also shows that all the inscriptions of the Kanishka era are also not dated in the same fashion. In the *Kharoshṭhī* inscriptions, Kanishka and his successors recorded the dates in the same way as their Śaka-Pahlava predecessors, giving the name of the month and the day within the month. On the other hand, in their *Brāhmī* records Kanishka and his successors usually adopted the Ancient Indian way of dating.¹ Are we to conclude from this that the *Kharoshṭhī* dates of Kanishka's inscriptions are not to be referred to the same era to which the dates of the *Brāhmī* records are to be ascribed? If Kanishka adopted two different ways of dating, we fail to understand why he could not have adopted a third method to suit the local conditions in Western India. Sten Konow himself points out that in the Śaka dates we have the name of the month as in the *Kharoshṭhī* records with addition of the *Paksha*. "The Śaka era which (the Western Kshatrapas) used was a direct imitation of the reckoning used by their cousins in the north-west, the additional mentioning of the 'paksha' being perhaps a concession to the custom in the part of the country where they ruled." It is not improbable that just as Kanishka in the borderland used the old Śaka-Pahlava method, and in Hindusthān Proper used the ancient Indian way of dating prevalent there, so in Western India his officer added the 'paksha' to suit the custom in that part of the country.)²