In addition to the above chronology, compiled from coins and dated inscriptions, Major Watson has recently supplied a most important item to their history from written records existing in Gujerat.

From this we learn that Chandra Gupta II. reigned twenty-three years after the conquest of Saurastra by his son; that Kumara Pal Gupta reigned twenty years; and that Skanda Gupta succeeded him, but lost Saurastra by the rebellion of his Senapati Bhatarka, the founder of the Ballabhi family. Two years after this event Skanda Gupta died, and, as we are informed, “at this time the Gupta race were dethroned by foreign invaders.”[689]

The era from which these dates are taken never appeared to me doubtful; and this confirms more and more the conviction that it was from the era that bears their name, A.D. 319. It could not be from the Saka era, as has generally been assumed, from the fact that Albiruni asserts that the era that bears their name, was “apparently” that of their destruction,[690] because in that case Skanda Gupta must have lived and reigned for ninety-four years in addition to the sixteen we already know, from inscriptions, he occupied the throne. A reign of 110 years seems impossible; and, if it is not so, it seems certain, for the reasons stated in my previous paper, that the Gupta era, 319, is that from which their coins and inscriptions are dated.

Besides this, there is an inscription on the rock at Junaghar, engraved by the same Skanda, the last of the great Guptas. This was not translated by Prinsep, though a copy of it was in his hands before his last illness.[691] Had he lived to translate it, my impression is that the controversy as to the age of the Guptas never would have arisen—its evidence seems so absolute. Be this as it may, it never appeared, so far as I know, in a complete form and translated, till this was accomplished by the late Bhau Daji in the sixth volume of the Bombay Journal of 1862. In it we have three dates—the Sadarsana lake is said to have burst its banks in 130, to have been repaired in 137, and a temple to Vishnu built in 138, and twice it is repeated “counting from the era of the Guptas” (Guptasya Kala). The stone is worn where the middle date occurs, but there is just space enough for these words. The same king, on the Kuhaon pillar, dates his inscription in 141,[692] but without mentioning the era, which seems to have been so usual in Bengal as not to require being specified.

Besides this, the 146[693] years from 319, which we know from their dated inscriptions that they reigned, is just the interval that is required to fill up the gap between the Ballabhis and their era which they adopted on usurping the inheritance of the Guptas, two years before Skanda Gupta’s death.[694]

One other point of considerable importance to Indian history which arises from the fixation of this date (A.D. 465-70) for the destruction of the Guptas is, that it was almost certainly the White Huns who were the “foreign invaders” that struck the blow that stopped their career. At least, we learn from Cosmas Indicopleustes, writing seventy years after this time, that the Huns were a powerful nation in the north of India in his day, and we may infer, from what he says of them, had been settled there some time.[695]

On the Bhitari Lât, Bhau Daji reads—somewhat doubtfully, it must be confessed—the fact that Skanda Gupta had fought, apparently with success, against the Hunas.[696] But the great point is that it was just about this time that the White Huns broke loose and extended their incursions east and west, so that there is not only no improbability of their being the “foreign invaders” alluded to, but every likelihood they were so. No one, indeed, can, I believe, with the knowledge we now possess, read De Guignes’ chapter on the White Huns,[697] without perceiving that it contains the key to the solution of many mysterious passages in Indian history. It is true India is not mentioned there; but from the time of Bahram Gaur in 420, till the defeat of Feroze in 475, the Persians were waging an internecine war with these Huns, and nothing can be more likely than that the varying fortunes of that struggle should force them to seek the alliance of the then powerful Guptas, to assist them against their common foe.

Precisely the same impression is conveyed by what is said by Ferishta and the Persian historians[698] of the history of that time. Nothing can now, however, be more easily intelligible than the visit of Bahram Gaur to India when first attacked by the White Huns. His marriage with an Indian (? Gupta) princess of Canouge; the tribute or assistance claimed by Feroze and his successors on the Persian throne, are all easily explicable, on the assumption that the two nations were at that time engaged in a struggle against a common enemy. This, too, explains the mention of the Shah in Shahi on Samudra Gupta’s Allahabad inscription.[699] Hence, too, the decided Persian influence on the gold coinage of the Canouge Guptas,[700] and the innumerable Sassanian coins of that period found in all parts of the north of India.[701] In all this the Sassanians seem inseparably mixed with the Guptas. The Persians, however, came eventually victorious out of the war. The great Guptas were struck down at some date between 465-70, or very shortly afterwards. The struggle, however, was apparently continued for some time longer by a subordinate branch of their successors; inasmuch as we learn from an inscription found at Aphsar in Behar,[702] that the fourth of that dynasty, Damodara Gupta, “successfully encountered, at the battle of Maushari, the fierce army of the Western Huns.” This event may have stopped the career of the Huns in India, in which case it could not well have taken place before the year 535, when Cosmas Indicopleustes is supposed to have written his ‘Topographia Christiana;’ but it is by no means clear that he was not describing events that took place when he was himself in India some time previously. But be this as it may, it brings us to the time when the battles of Korûr—of which more hereafter—and Maushari freed India from the Sakas and Hunas, who had long held her in hated subjection. As I shall presently attempt to show, it appears to me hardly doubtful that these two battles were fought between 524 and 544; and they thus fix one of the most important epochs in mediæval Indian history. Indeed, so near each other are these two events in date, that I sometimes feel almost inclined to fancy they may be only different names for the same battle. At all events, they almost certainly represent parts of the same campaign which freed India in that age from the Yavanas; and that it was to commemorate the glories of these struggles that the Vicramaditya Samvat was instituted. This expulsion of the Yavanas was, too, the first serious blow that was struck at Buddhist supremacy, and from the effects of which it never afterwards completely recovered.

Ballabhi Dynasty.

Dates on Inscriptions.A.D.
Bhatarka Senapati—465 or 470
Dharasena ”——
Dronasinha——
Dhruvasena Maharaja—} Cotem. Vicramaditya
Dharapatta—} Dynasty
Grihasena—} of Ujjain,
Sridhara Sena—} 470 to 550.
Siladitya I.——
Charagriha I.——
Sridhara Sena II.272591
Dhruvasena II.—Cotem. Hiouen Thsang
Sridharasena III.——
Siladitya II.356675
Charagriha II.——
Siladitya III.——
Siladitya Musalli400718