Book of Indian Eras, with Tables for Calculating Indian Dates (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 edition. Excerpt: ...June A.D. 441. If the figure for 80 was injured below, as the figure for 400 certainly was, then the decimal figure read as 80, might have been 90 and the Samvat year might, perhaps, be 497. In the Jain books also there is very early mention of the Vikrama Samvat. Thus the Satrunjaya Mahatmya professes to have been written 477 years after Vikrama, or in A.D. 420, when " Siladitya, king of Vallabhi, expelled the Buddhists from Saurashtra, recovered Satrunjaya and other places of pilgrimage from them, and erected many Jain temples." The era of Vikrama also is said to have been established by Vikramarka Raja 470 years after Mahavira, or in 527--470 = 57 B.C. From the way in which he is spoken of as " honouring the advice of Siddha Sena Suri as the words of Jaina," it would appear that Vikramarka was a Jaina, which would account for the use of his era in the Jaina books, as well as for the non-mention of it in early Brahmanical inscriptions. Most of our early writers, as Colebrooke, Wilford, Tod, and Jervis, have vitiated their chronology by placing the initial point of the Vikramaditya era in 56 B.C., instead of in 57 B.C., as shown by Prinsep.f The following examples from Colebrooke and Tod show how necessary it is to be strictly exact in dealing with dates: 1. In one of " Three grants of land found at Ujjayini," the recorded date is an eclipse of the moon in Srayana of 1200 Samvat. Using the erroneous equation of 56, Colebrooke identifies this eclipse with that of the 16th July 1144 A.D.j But the true date was 1200--57 = 1143 A.D., in which year there was an eclipse of the moon on 28th July, which day was also the full moon of Sravana. Dr. Bhau Daji, in Bombay Asiatic Society's Journal, Vol. VI, 29-30. f See...