BOOK IV. Bengal. This dynasty ended in A.D. 436, and is succeeded in the Puránas by a confused assemblage of dynasties seemingly not Hindús; from which, and the interruption at all attempts at historical order, we may infer a foreign invasion, followed by a long period of disorder. At the end of several centuries, a gleam of light breaks in, and discovers Magada subject to the Gupta kings of Canouj. From this period it is no longer distinctly mentioned. The fame of Magada has been preserved, from its being the birthplace of Budha, and from its language (Magadi or Pali) being now employed in the sacred writings of his most extensively diffused religion, as well as in those of the Jáins. A king of what we now call Bengal is mentioned among the allies of the king of Magada in the war of the "Mahá Bhárat." From him, the "A'yeni Akberi" continues the succession, through five dynasties, till the Mahometan conquest. These lists, being only known to us by the translations of Abulfazl, might be looked on with more suspicion than the Hindú ones already noticed. But that one of them, at least (the fourth), is founded in truth, is proved by inscriptions; and from them, a series of princes, with names ending in Pála, may be made out, who probably reigned from the ninth to the latter part of the eleventh century.* * See Mr. Colebrooke, Asiatic Researches, vol. ix. p. 442., and the various inscriptions in the preceding volumes there mentioned. 1. The inscriptions relating to this family were CHAP. found at distant places, and in circumstances that leave no room to question their authenticity: yet they advance statements which are surprising in themselves, and difficult to reconcile to what we know, from other sources, of the history of India. They represent the kings of Bengal as ruling over the whole of India; from Hémaláya to Cape Comorin, and from the Baramputr to the Indus. They even assert that the same kings subdued Tibet on the east, and Cambója (which some suppose to be beyond the Indus) on the west. * * The earliest, a copper tablet containing a grant of land, and found at Mongír, appears to be written in the ninth century, (See Asiatic Researches, vol. ix. p. 446., above quoted.) It says, in explicit terms, that the reigning rája, Déb Pál Déb (or Déva Pála Déva), possessed the whole of India from the source of the Ganges to Adam's Bridge (reaching to Ceylon), and from the river Megna, or Baramputr, to the western sea. It specifies the inhabitants of Bengal, the Carnatic, and Tibet among his subjects, and alludes to his army marching through Cambója,— a country generally supposed to be beyond the Indus; and, if not so, certainly in the extreme west of India. The next inscription is on a broken column in the district of Sáran, north of the Ganges. It was erected by a prince who professes himself tributary to Gour or Bengal, yet claims for his immediate territory the tract from Rewa Jhanak (not exactly known) to the Hémalaya mountains, and from the eastern to the western sea. It states the rája of Bengal (probably the son of the Déb Pál of the last inscription) to have conquered Orissa, a tribe or people called Húns (also mentioned in the former inscription), the southern part of the coast of Coromandel, and Guzerát. The third merely records that a magnificent monument in honour of Budha, near Benares, was erected in 1026 by a rája of Bengal of the same family as the above, who, from the earlier inscriptions, also appear to have been Budhists. BOOK IV. Málwa. ditya, These conquests are rendered impossible to any thing like their full extent, by the simultaneous existence of independent governments in Canouj, Delhi, Ajmir, Mewár, and Guzerát, if not in other places; but they could scarcely have been claimed in contemporary inscriptions, if the princes to whom they are ascribed had not affected some supremacy over the other states, and had not sent expeditions far into the west of India, and even into the heart of the Deckan. On the whole, this dynasty seems to have at least as good a claim as any other in the Hindú times to the dignity of general dominion, and affords a fresh reason for distrusting all such pretensions. The dynasty of Pála was succeeded by one whose names ended in Séna; and this last was subverted by the Mahometans about A. D. 1203. Though the kingdom of Málwa does not pretend to equal in antiquity those already mentioned, it is Vierama- of it that we possess the first authentic date. The æra still current through all the countries north of the Nerbadda is that of Vicramaditya, who reigned at Ujein at the date of its commencement, which was fifty-six years before Christ. Vicramaditya is the Hárún al Rashíd of Hindú tales; and by drawing freely from such sources, Colonel Wilford collected such a mass of transactions as required the supposition of no less than eight Vicramadityas, to reconcile the dates of them; but all that is now admitted is, that Vicramaditya was a powerful monarch, ruled a civilised and pro sperous country, and was a distinguished patron of CHAP. letters. I. The next epoch is that of Rája Bhója, whose Bhója. name is one of the most renowned in India, but of whose exploits no record has been preserved. His long reign terminated about the end of the eleventh century. The intermediate six centuries are filled up by lists of kings in the "A’yeni Akberi," and in the Hindú books: among them is one named Chandrapála, who is said to have conquered all Hindostan; but the information is too vague to be made much use of. The princes of Málwa certainly extended their authority over a large portion of the centre and west of India; and it is of Vicramaditya that the traditions of universal empire are most common in India. The grandson of Bhója was taken prisoner, and his country conquered, by the rája of Guzerát; but Málwa appears soon to have recovered its independence under a new dynasty; and was finally subdued by the Mahometans A. D. 1231.* The residence of Crishna, and other events of Guzerát, those times, impress us with the belief of an early principality in Guzerát; and the whole is spoken of as under one dominion, by a Greek writer of the second century.† The Rájpút traditions, * Colonel Tod, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i. p. 201., and Mr. Colebrooke, p. 230. of the same volume. See also Gladwin's Ayeen Akbery, vol. ii. p. 48. † Vincent's Periplus, p. 111. (note on Mambarus). IV. BOOK quoted by Colonel Tod*, inform us of another principality, founded at Ballabi, in the peninsula of Guzerát, in the middle of the second century of our æra, by Kanak Sena, an emigrant of the solar race, which reigned in Oud. They were driven out of their capital in 524, by an army of barbarians, who, Colonel Tod thinks, were Parthians. The princes of that family emigrated again from Guzerát, and at length founded the kingdom of Méwár, which still subsists. Grants of land, inscribed on copper tablets, which have been translated by Mr. Wathent, fully confirm the fact that a race whose names often ended in Séna reigned at Ballabi from A. D. 144 to A. D. 524. The barbarians, whom Colonel Tod thinks Parthians, Mr. Wathen suggests may have been Indo-Bactrians. They are certainly too late to be Parthians; but it is not impossible they may have been Persians of the next race (Sassanians). Noushírwán reigned from A. D. 531 to A. D. 579. Various Persian authors quoted by Sir John Malcolm ‡, assert that this monarch carried his arms into Ferghána on the north, and India on the east; and as they are supported in the first assertion by Chinese records §, there seems no reason to distrust them in the second. Sir Henry Pottinger (though without stating his authority) gives a minute and probable account of Noushírwán's march along the sea coast * Vol. i. pp. 83. 215. + Journal of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, vol. iv. p. 480, &c. Persia, vol. i. p. 141. § De Guignes, vol. ii. p. 469. |