Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay

“ The Western and Afghanistan varieties were developed from the old Western variety, while the Central and Eastern varieties were evolved out of the old Eastern. The Eastern variety lost ground and its Western boundary gradually receded eastwards. The development, of the Eastern alphabet only, has been followed in these pages. It has become possible to show, that proto-Bengali forms were evolved in the North-East, long before the invasion of Northern India, by the Nāgarī alphabet of the South-West, and that Nāgarī has had very little influence upon the development of the Bengali script. ”

“ Most probably this invasion from Assam closely followed upon the heels of that from Kanauj, or we may one day be surprised to learn that both armies invaded Bengal jointly. Harṣadeva must have held Bengal for a sufficiently long time, so as to enable him to pass through that country and conquer Oḍra (Orissa) , Kaliṇga (Northern Sarkars) , and Kośala (Orissa Hill Tracts) . The Gauḍa-vaho and the Rājataraṇginī has familiarized us with the story of the banished king, Jayāpīḍa, who came to Bengal, married the daughter of the king, and freed him from the subjection of his liege-lord. ”

“ This is not to be wondered at as it is now certain that Magadha formed an integral part of the dominions of Mahīpāla's father Mahendrapāla. During this war Gopāla II of Bengal may have taken the opportunity of recovering some of the traditional possessions of his family and pushed the Western frontier as far as the eastern banks of the Sone. This re-occupation of the Magadha may have been temporary, and Mahīpāla may have recovered the possession of his Eastern Provinces, with the help of the Candella Yaśovarmman. ”

“ The vast fabric of the Gurjjara-Pratīhāra Empire, imperfectly welded together, was rapidly falling to pieces. Family discord, fanned into flame by neighbouring monarchs, rushed the decay of the Gurjjaras of Kanauj. In the far East the ancient Empire of the Pālas was fast crumbling away. ”

“ The events of Dharmmapāla's reign.The most important event in the reign of Dharmmapāla is his conquest of Northern India. The Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Dhruva had driven Gurjara invaders back into the desert and the Rāṣṭrakūṭa occupation of the country most probably did not last long, otherwise there would not have been any necessity of a fresh invasion under Govinda III. The whole of Northern India most probably relapsed into that restless state which necessitated the election of a strong ruler in Bengal. On his accession, an able man like Dharmmapāla practically found the whole country at his mercy. ”

“ No inscription, which can safely be assigned to the 1st century B. C. or A. D., has been found anywhere in North-Eastern India, except at Sārnāth. The records which can be assigned to the 1st century B. C. are very few in number:
(i) Inscription on the upper side of the lower horizontal bar of the stone-railing surrounding the old stūpa in the south chapel of the main shrine [17] . The second half of the inscription only, is of earlier date, the first half belonging to the second century A. D. (not the 3rd or 4th as Messrs. Konow and Marshall imagine) . ”

“ The occupation of Gauḍa by a barbarian tribe, at a time when the whole of Magadha was in the possession of the Gurjaras, shows that the kings of the Pāla dynasty between Nārāyaṇapāla and Vigrahapāla II and Mahīpāla I were kings in name only. Most probably they ruled over an insignficant kingdom surrounded by a large number of petty monarchies. The Tirumalai inscription of Rajendra Coḷa I shows that the ancient Gauḍa and Vaṅga had become divided into a large number of small kingdoms. ”

“ Devapāla's successor was Vigrahapāla I or Śūrapāla I, whose father Jayapāla had led the expedition against the king of Utkala or Orissa at the request of his cousin and conquered Prāgjyotiṣa for him. [8] Vigrahapāla I is no doubt the same as the Śūrapāla mentioned in the Badal Vigrahapāla I or Śūrapāla Ipillar inscription because it is the only name mentioned between Devapāla and Nārāyaṇapāla, and again in the Bhagalpur grant, Vigrahapāla's name is the only one mentioned between Devapāla and Nārāyaṇapāla. ”

“ His eldest son, Rājyapāla, was an able man, and assisted his father in gaining the throne, in the wars in Vārendrī, and finally in administering the kingdom in his father's old age. He seems to have died during the lifetime of his father, as we find that Kumārapāla succeeded after Rāmapāla's death. His third son, Madanapāla, ascended the throne after the death or dethronement of his brother Kumārapāla's son Gopāla III. We know nothing about the other relations of Rāmapāla except his maternal uncles, Mathanadeva or Mahaṇadeva and Suvarṇadeva and their sons Kāhṇuradeva and Śivarājadeva. ”

“ New actors were appearing in the political arena. The invasion of the Great Coḷa Conqueror left a deep impression on north eastern India. It gave Bengal a new dynasty of kings and indirectly hastened the ruin of the Pãla Empire. After the Badal pillar inscription of Narāyaṇapāla, there is no other inscription which can throw Hght on the history of Northern Bengal for three generations, i.e. till the time of Mahīpāla I. About this time some Mongolian tribes occupied the whole of the Northern Bengal and either massacred the old inhabitants or gradually forced them back southwards. ”

“ According to the genealogy given in the inscription, the Varmans were descended from the race of Yadu. In that race were a lines of princes, who ruled at Siṁhapura, which was in the Punjab, as we know from the Lakkha-mandal-praśasti of the Princess Īśvarā. Vajravarman of that dynasty was the founder of a kingdom in Eastern Bengal. His son, Jātavarman man, was, as we have seen, the contemporary of Vigrahapāla III, who defeated the Cedī King Karṇṇa in Aṅga, and obtained the hand of his daughter Vīra-Śrī, conquered Kāmarūpa and Govarddhana, and acquired paramount power. ”

“ At the time of the Coḷa invasion a king named Raṇaśūra was ruling Southern Rāḍhā. In Bengal there is a tradition that a dynasty of kings with the affix Śūra ruled in Bengal before the Pālas. We have no reliable evidence for this. But three kings of this family, at least with the word Śūra affixed to their names, have been mentioned in epigraphs. These are: Raṇaśūra, of the Tirumalai inscription; Lakṣmīśūra, a king of a division of Bengal named Apara-Mandāra, a contemporary of Rāmapāla, who was the headman of all feudatories of Forest lands (samastāṭavika-sāmanta-cakra-cuḍāmaṇiḥ) ”

“ The reason of this sudden enterprise is not far to seek. During the long reign of Amoghavarṣa I, whose certain dates extend from 817 to 877 A.D., there was no war between the Gurjaras and the Rāṣṭrakūṭas. [35] In fact the only war between Bhoja I and the Rāṣṭrakūṭas was his war with the Rāṣṭrakūṭas Dhruvarāja II of Gujarat some time before 867 A.D., in which Bhoja I himself was worsted. [36] After Bhoja I, Mahendrapāla succeeded to an empire which had reached its greatest extent at that time, from Punjab to the borders of Bengal, and from the foot of the Himalayas to Saurāṣṭra. ”

“ Magadha seems to have continued in the possession of the king for a long time. In the eleventh year of the king an image of Buddha was dedicated in or near the temple of the Mahābodhi at Bodh-Gaya, and in the same year the great temple at Nālanda was restored, as it had been burnt down in a fire. After the conquest of Magadha, Mahīpāla seems to have attacked Tīrabhukti or Mithilā which continued in the possession of the king at least till his 48th year. ”

“ Vaṅga, Aṅga and Magadha, must refer to one and the same kingdom as we know from inscriptions that Vaṅga, Aṅga and Magadha were under Devapāla, viz. the Monghyr grant and the Ghosrawan inscription. The Rāṣṭrakūṭa invasion was most probably over within a very short time, like those under the predecessors of Amoghavarṣa I, and at its close, in spite of the reverses, Devapāla was left master of Northern India. The war with the Gurjaras was either followed by the invasion of Amoghavarṣa I, or itself followed that. ”

“ Kakka seems to have accompanied Bhoja in his expedition against Bengal. As his son Bauka was alive in 861 A.D., [18] Bhoja I and Kakka must have invaded Bengal a few years earlier, and this invasion must have taken place during the earlier years of Nārāyaṇapāla.
The statements of the Gwalior inscription of Bhoja I and the Mandor inscription of the Pratīhāra Kakkuka lead one to believe that there was a great war between the first Pratīhāra Emperor Bhoja I and the Pāla Emperor Vigrahapāla I or Nārāyaṇapāla of Gauḍa and Vaṇga. ”

“ Most probably Anantavarmman Coḍagaṅga led another raid into Western Bengal, but was repulsed by Vijayasena. Vijayasena's dominions comprised of Eastern Bengal, Western Bengal and Northern Bengal. An unpublished copper-plate grant of this King was issued from the victorious camp at His Kingdom.Vikramapura, and so it must be admitted that Eastern Bengal formed a part of his kingdom, and also that the Varmman Dynasty had ceased to reign. The kingdom was bounded on the East by that of Nānyadeva in Mithila and that of Madanapāla in Magadha. ”

“ The conquest of Northern Bengal must have taken place some years earlier. In his ninth year Mahīpāla granted the village of Kuraṭapallikā, with the exception of Cuṭapallikā, in the Gokalikā maṇḍala, Koṭivarṣa viṣaya of the Pauṇḍravarddhana bhukti to a Brāhmaṇa named Kṛṣṇādityaśarmaṇ. It has been proved by another inscription, the Maṇahali grant of Madanapāla, that the Koṭivarṣa viṣaya was situated in Northern Bengal, as both inscriptions have been discovered- in the Dinājpur district. ”

“ One particular incident in the life of Rāmapāla has been totally left out by his biographer, which is his enmity and wars with Devarakṣita of Pīṭhī. In the commentary of the 8th verse of the second chapter of his work Sandhyākaranandī hints that Mahaṇa, the maternal uncle of Rāmapāla, recovered the kingdom, as the Boar incarnation had recovered the earth in former days. There is no reference to the enmity which Devarakṣita, the Lord of Pīṭhī and of Sindhu, bore towards Rāmapāla, which has become known to us from the Sārnāth inscription of Kumāradevī discovered by Messrs. ”

“ The images discovered at Imādpur in the Muzaffarpur district of Bengal in 1881 were most probably dedicated in the 48th year of Mahīpāla I, [28] as Mahīpāla II had a very short reign. The 48th year of Mahīpāla I must have fallen before 1020 A.D., as in that year the Cedī Emperor Gāṅgeyadeva was in possession of Tīrabhukti or Tirhut. The last inscription of Mahīpāla is the Sarnath inscription of the Vikrama year 1083. This inscription was either posthumous, or incised when the city of Benares had passed from the hands of the Pālas to those of the Cedīs. ”

“ Bengal most probably enjoyed about fifty years' respite from foreign invasions before Dharmmapāla came to the throne. Though Indrāyudha, the contemporary of Dhruva and Vatsarāja, was dispossessed of his throne by Dharmmapāla, yet it appears that both of these kings died before Dharmmapāla's accession, as their sons, Nāgabhaṭa II and Govinda III, are mentioned in the inscriptions as his contemporaries. The first act of Dharmmapāla Conquest of Kanauj and displacement of Indrāyudha.after his accession seems to have been the invasion of Kanauj. ”

“ The exact cause of this invasion has not been revealed to us by any of the records discovered up to date. Most probably the existence of the weak kingdom on his western frontier tempted him to lead an invasion into the heart of the middle country. The result of this invasion is already well known. Indrāyudha, the old king,—old he must have been as he was to some extent the contemporary of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa Dhruva and the Gurjara Vatsarāja,—was deposed. ”