One of the acts of Pravarasena was to invade Siladitya, the first Ballabhi king of that name ruling in Gujerat. We have not, it is true, any dated coins or inscriptions belonging to him, but we have of his next successor but one, Sri Dharasena II., 593 (ante, p. 730), so that any date between 550 and 570 would answer perfectly well for this war, and the fact of its being so is in itself almost sufficient to establish the correctness of the chronology we are now trying to explain.
Since I wrote last on the subject, a passage has been pointed out to me[745] in Rémusat’s ‘Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques’ (vol. i. p. 197), which enables us to fix the chronology of the Naga dynasty within a year or two for extreme deviation. It seems that the third king, Chandrapira, applied to the Chinese Emperor for assistance against the Arabs in 713, and that the Emperor conferred the title of King on him in or about 720. As he was on the throne only eight years and eight months, there is no room for deviation in this date, and it carries with it those of his predecessors and followers. It thus becomes clear that Durlabha I. was the king who was on the throne when Hiouen Thsang resided in the valley, 631-633, and also when he passed near it on his return home in 643, all which is perfectly consonant with what we find in his text; and it also fixes the date of Lalitaditya, one of the most important kings in the list, with almost absolute certainty, as 725-762.[746]
Without placing implicit reliance on all that is said in the ‘Raja Tarangini,’ with regard to the exploits of this king, or of his having overrun and conquered all India, from beyond the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, still a sufficient residuum of fact must remain to enable us to see that the troubles which had begun in 650, on the death of Siladitya of Canouge, had laid India prostrate at the feet of any daring adventurer.
From whatever side we approach it, we can hardly fail to perceive that a great revolution took place in India about the year 750. All the old dynasties are then swept away, and for 200 years we have nothing but darkness, and when light again dawns, about two centuries afterwards, the map is re-arranged, and new dynasties and new religions have taken the place of the old.
This reign, too, forms a most appropriate termination to the principal division of our architectural history. The coins of his rival, Yasoverman of Canouge, found in the great Tope at Manikyala, prove the completion of that great Buddhist monument, just 1000 years after the style had been inaugurated by the great Asoka, and in that thousand years all that is important in Buddhist architecture is included. The fact, too, of his being the builder of the great Naga temple at Marttand, the earliest, so far as I know, in Kashmir, marks the commencement of a new architectural era, the fruits of which we see when the curtain again rises. The Jaina religion, with its new style of temples, had entirely replaced Buddhist forms over the greater part of India, and the Vaishnava and Saiva religions reigned supreme everywhere else, in the forms in which we now find them, after the lapse of nearly another 1000 years’ duration. As, however, there are no chronological difficulties with regard to these later dynasties, the discussion of the dates of the kings’ reigns who built them has evidently no place in this Appendix.[747]
Era of Vicramaditya.
Before concluding this Appendix, I would like to be allowed to explain an hypothesis which, if it can be sustained, not only clears up what has hitherto been a great mystery, but gets rid of a quantity of rubbish which obscures the chronology of the period. It does not, however, alter any date, nor affect them further than, if true, it confirms some, which, if it prove groundless, are deprived of its support.
No one has yet been able to point to the name of Vicramaditya as belonging to any king in the first century B.C., or to any event likely to give rise to an era being dated from it.[748] What, then, was the origin of the era dating from 56 B.C., and how did it arise and obtain its name?
My belief is that the solution of the mystery will be found in a passage in Albiruni, the meaning of which he did not profess to understand, combined with two or three passages in the ‘Raja Tarangini.’
The passage in Albiruni is to the following effect:—“L’ère de Saca, nommée par les Indiens Sacakala, est postérieure à celle de Vicramaditya de 135 ans. Saca est le nom d’un prince qui a régné sur les contrées situées entre l’Indus et la mer (le Golfe du Bengale). Sa résidence était placée au centre de l’Empire (Muttra?), dans la contrée nommée Aryavartha. Les Indiens le font naître dans une classe autre que celle des (Kchatrias?): quelques-uns prétendent qu’il était Soudra et originaire de la ville de Mansoura. Il y en a même qui disent qu’il n’était pas de race indienne, et qu’il tirait son origine des régions occidentales. Les peuples eurent beaucoup à souffrir de son despotisme, jusqu’à ce qu’il leur vînt du secours de l’Orient. Vicramaditya marcha contre lui, mit son armée en déroute, et le tua sur le territoire de Korour, situé entre Moultan et le Château de Louny. Cette époque devint célèbre, à cause de la joie que les peuples ressentirent de la mort de Saca, et on la choisit pour ère, principalement chez les astronomes.”[749]