It seems impossible to apply this narrative to any events happening in the first century B.C., not to mention the inherent absurdity of Vicramaditya establishing an era 56 B.C., and then 135 years afterwards defeating the Saka king on the banks of the Indus. If it meant anything, it might point to the origin of the Saka era, not that of Vicramaditya.
Turning from this to the ‘Raja Tarangini,’ we find the following passages in Troyer’s translation:—
“Ayant fait venir ensuite, d’un autre pays, Pratapaditya, parent du roi Vicramaditya, ils le sacrèrent souverain de l’Empire.
“D’autres induits en erreur ont écrit que ce Vicramaditya fut le même qui combattit les Çakas; mais cette version est rejetée.”[750]
A little further on we have: “Dans le même temps—the death of Hiranya—l’heureux Vicramaditya, appelé d’un autre nom Harcha, réunit comme empereur à Udjdjayini l’Empire de l’Inde sous un seul parasol....
“Employant la fortune comme moyen d’utilité, il fit fleurir les talents: c’est ainsi qu’encore aujourd’hui les hommes de talent se trouvent la tête haute au milieu des riches.
“Ayant d’abord détruit les Çakas, il rendit léger le fardeau de l’œuvre de Hari, qui doit descendre sur la terre pour exterminer les Mletchhas.”[751]
Before going further, it may be as well to point out what appears to be a fair inference from the above. That the first Vicramaditya, the friend of Pratapaditya, was so near in date to the second—he, in fact, appears to have been his grandfather—as to be confounded with him, and to have the name of Sakari applied to him, which in fact belonged to his grandson, the real destroyer of the Sakas.
My conviction is, that these paragraphs refer to one and the same event; and, assuming that the battle of Korûr was fought 544—the year before Vicramaditya sent Matrigupta to be his viceroy in Kashmir—what I believe happened was this: Some time after 750, when the Hindus were remodelling their history and their institutions, so as to mark their victory over the Buddhists, they determined on establishing two eras, which should be older than that of the Buddhists, A.D. 79, and for this purpose instituted one, ten cycles of sixty years each, before the battle of Korûr, and called it by the name of the hero of that battle, the most illustrious of their history; the other ten centuries, or 1000 years before the same date, and called it by the name of his father, Sri Harsha—a title he himself often bore in conjunction with his own name—the first consequently dated for 56 B.C., the second from 456. It need hardly be added that no Sri Harsha existed in the fifth century B.C., any more than a Vicramaditya in the first.
The co-existence of these eras may be gathered from the following passage in Albiruni:—