The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s8: VIII

The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s8

Language: English

VIII

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*Pāla and Sena Dynasties of Bihār and Bengal*

Harsha, when at the height of his power, exercised a certain amount of control as suzerain over the whole of Bengal, even as far east as the distant kingdom of Kāmarupa, or Assam, and seems to have possessed full sovereign authority over western and central Bengal. After his death, the local Rājas no doubt asserted their independence; but, except for the strange story of Arjuna and Wang-Hiuen-tse, related in the thirteenth chapter, no particulars are known concerning the history of Bengal for nearly a century. Bengālī tradition traces the origin of many notable families to five Brahmans and five Kāyasths imported from Kanauj by a king named Ādisūra in order to revive orthodox Hindu customs, which had fallen into disuse during the time when Buddhism was predominant. But no authentic record of this monarch has been discovered. There is, however, no reason to doubt the actual existence of Ādisūra, who belonged to a local dynasty of Rājas ruling Gaur and the neighbourhood. He may be dated approximately in A. D. 700, perhaps a little earlier, or possibly later.¹

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¹ 'Up to date no authentic account of Ādisūra has been obtained. The oldest writers on Brahmanical genealogy whose writings have come down to us—I refer particularly to Hari Miśra and Ēru Miśra—place Ādisūra shortly before the Pālas; and they state that shortly after the arrival of the five Brāhmaṇas from Kanauj, the kingdom of Gauṛ became subject to the Pālas' (U. C. Batavyal in *J. A. S. B.*, part i, vol. lxiii (1894), p. 41). 'Raṇaśūra of southern Rāḍha [*scil.* the Burdwan Division] seems to have belonged to the Śūra dynasty of Bengal who are said to have brought the five Brāhmaṇas from Kanauj. That they were dispossessed of the greater part of their dominions by the Pālas is also asserted by the Bengal genealogists.' Raṇaśūra was one of the chiefs who helped Mahīpāla to repel the invasion of Rājendra Chola, king of Kānchī, about A. D. 1023 (H. P. Sastri, *Mem. A. S. B.*, vol. iii, No. 1 (1910), p. 10). H. P. Sastri places Ādisūra in the eighth century, and declares that the story about the importation of Brahmans is neither foolish nor imaginary. It was rather part of the Brahmanical movement set on foot by Kumārila a generation earlier (*J. & Proc. A. S. B.*, 1912, p. 348). On the other hand, the tradition is discredited by Radha Govinda Basak, who thinks that he can prove the existence of learned Brahmans in Bengal from 'time immemorial', or at any rate from the fifth century (*Ep. Ind.*, xiii (1916), p. 288). The site of the palace of Ādisūra is pointed out at the northern end of the ruins of Gaur, outside the walls of Lakhnauti (*E. India*, iii, 72).

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Early in the eighth century (*c.* A. D. 730–40) a chieftain named Gopāla was elected king of Bengal, which had been suffering from anarchy. Towards the close of his life he extended his power westwards over Magadha or South Bihār, and is said to have reigned forty-five years. He suffered defeat at the hands of Vatsarāja, the Gurjara king of Rājputāna.¹ He was a pious Buddhist, and founded a great monastery at Uddandapura, or Otantapuri, the existing town of Bihār, which seems to have been at times the capital of the later Pāla kings. Inasmuch as the word *pāla* was an element in the personal names of the founder of the family and his successors, the dynasty is commonly and conveniently designated as that of the 'Pāla kings of Bengal'.

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¹ Rāshtrakūta grants (*Ind. Ant.*, xi, 136, 160; xii, 164; *Ep. Ind.*, vi, 240). Mr. R. D. Banerji places the accession of Gopāla forty or fifty years later, but I am not satisfied that he is right.

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The second king, Dharmapāla, who is credited with a reign of sixty-four years, is known to have reigned for at least thirty-two years. The Tibetan historian Tāranāth expressly states that his rule extended from the Bay of Bengal to Delhi and Jālandhar in the north and to the valleys of the Vindhyan range in the south. This ascription of wide dominion is supported by the certain fact that Dharmapāla dethroned Indrāyudha, or Indrarāja, king of Panchāla, whose capital was Kanauj, and installed in his stead Chakrāyudha, with the assent of the neighbouring northern powers, enumerated as the Bhoja, Matsya, Madra, Kuru, Yadu, Yavana, Avanti, Gandhāra, and Kīra kings. This event took place soon after A. D. 800, and prior to the thirty-second year of Dharmapāla's reign, as recorded in two grants.² It is noticeable that the grant of four villages in the province of Paundravardhana was issued from the royal head-quarters at Pātaliputra.¹ When Hiuen Tsang visited the ancient imperial city in the seventh century he had found the buildings of Asoka in ruins, and the inhabitants limited to about a thousand persons occupying a small walled town on the bank of the Ganges in the northern portion of the site.² Apparently the city had recovered to some extent when Dharmapāla held his court there about a. d. 810. The famous monastery of Vikramasīla, which is said to have included 107 temples and six colleges, was founded by Dharmapāla. It stood on a hill overlooking the right bank of the Ganges, but its position has not been conclusively determined.³

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² Bhāgalpur copperplate (*Ind. Ant.*, xv, 304; xx, 308); Khālimpur copperplate (*Ep. Ind.*, iv, 252).

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¹ The term *jayaskandhāvāra* does not necessarily mean a camp only (D. R. Bhandarkar).

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² Watters, ii, 87, 88; Beal, ii, 82, 86.

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³ The site may be at Patharghāṭa in the Bhāgalpur District (*J. & Proc. A. S. B.*, 1909, pp. 1–13).

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Devapāla, the third sovereign of the dynasty, is regarded by the oldest writers on Brahman genealogy in Bengal as having been the most powerful of the Pālas.⁴ His general, Lāusena or Lavasena, is said to have conquered Assam and Kalinga. A grant dated in the thirty-third year of his reign was issued from the court at Mudgagiri, or Monghyr.⁵ Like all the other kings of his house, he was zealous in the cause of Buddhism, and is reputed to have waged war with the unbelievers, destroying forty of their strongholds. He is said to have reigned for forty-eight years.⁶

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⁴ *J. A. S. B.*, vol. lxiii, part i (1894), p. 41.

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⁵ *Ind. Ant.*, xxi, 254.

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⁶ Schiefner, *Tāranāth*, pp. 208–14. Tāranāth adds that Devapāla subdued Varendra, i. e. the Mālda District, &c., which is hard to understand, for that province, apparently, must have been under Pāla rule earlier.

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During the latter part of the tenth century the rule of the Pāla kings was interrupted by the intrusion of hillmen, known as Kāmbojas, who set up one of their chiefs as king. His rule is commemorated by an inscribed pillar at Dinājpur, erected apparently in a. d. 966.⁷

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⁷ 'Dinājpur Pillar Inscription' (*J. & Proc. A. S. B.*, 1911, p. 615). The date is 888, which, if referred to the Saka era, is equivalent to a. d. 966.

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The Kāmbojas were expelled by Mahīpāla I, the ninth sovereign of the Pāla line, who is known to have been reigning in a. d. 1026, and may be assumed to have won back his ancestral throne about A. D. 978 or 980. He is credited with a long reign of 52 years, a statement which cannot be far wrong, as there is epigraphic evidence that his rule endured for 48 years.¹ Of all the Pāla kings he is the best remembered, and songs in his honour, which used to be sung in many parts of Bengal until recent times, are still to be heard in remote corners of Orissa and Kūch Bihār. He was attacked by Rājendra, the Chola king of Kānchī, about A. D. 1023. His reign is marked by the revival of Buddhism in Tibet, which had been weakened by the persecution of Langdarma a century earlier. Pundit Dharmapāla and other holy men from Magadha accepted an invitation to Tibet in A. D. 1013, and did much to restore the religion of Gautama to honour in that country. A subsequent mission dispatched in 1038, during the reign of Mahīpāla’s successor, Nayapāla, and headed by Atīsa, from the Vikramasīla monastery in Magadha, continued the work and firmly re-established Tibetan Buddhism.²

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¹ Sārnāth inscription of 1083 (v. E.) in *Ind. Ant.*, xiv, 140. Two groups of bronze figures found in the Muzaffarpur District of Tirhūt or North Bihār bear inscriptions dated in the forty-eighth year of Mahīpāla (Hoernle in *Ind. Ant.*, xiv (1885), p. 165, note 17. The readings in *Proc. A. S. B.*, 1881, p. 98, are imaginary. Cunningham quoted the date correctly in *A. S. Rep.*, xv, 153). Mahīpāla I seems to have used Samataṭa as his base. The Bāghaura inscription of his regnal year 3, found at Bāghaura in Samataṭa in the Comilla Subdivision of the Tipperah District, indicates that, and also shows that Comilla was included in Samataṭa. The town of Comilla (Kumillā) is on the main road from Dacca to Chittagong. See *J. & Proc. A. S. B.*, 1915, p. 17. The subject is further elucidated by N. K. Bhattasali in ‘A Forgotten Kingdom of Eastern Bengal’ (*ibid.*, 1914, pp. 85–91). Good reason from inscriptions is shown for holding that Karmanta is the modern Kamta, 12 miles west of Comilla town, where numerous ruins and Buddhist images exist. That was the capital of the Samataṭa kingdom, which seems to have included the Districts of Tipperah, Noakhali, Barisal, Faridpur, and the eastern half of the Dacca District. In the tenth century the country probably was under the overlordship of the Chandra kings of Arakan.

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² Sarat Chandra Dās (*J.A.S.B.*, vol. i, part i, pp. 236, 237). Tāranāth says that the date of Mahīpāla’s death coincided approximately with that of the Tibetan king, Khriral, whom I cannot trace in the lists (Schiefner, p. 225). For the chronology, see *J. A. S. B.*, vol. lxix, part i (1900), p. 192.

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The son of Nayapāla, king Vigrahapāla III, who defeated Karna, king of Chedi, and died about A. D. 1080, left three sons, namely Mahīpāla II, Sūrapāla II, and Rāmapāla.

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When Mahīpāla succeeded to the throne he imprisoned his brothers and misgoverned the realm. His evil deeds provoked a rebellion, headed by Divya or Divyoka, chief of the Chāsi-Kaivarta tribe or Māhishya caste, which at that time was powerful in Northern Bengal. Mahīpāla II was killed by the rebels, who took possession of the country. Divyoka's place was taken by his nephew Bhīma, who became king of Varendra. Prince Rāmapāla, having escaped from confinement, travelled over a large part of India in order to obtain help in the recovery of his kingdom. After much effort he collected a strong force, including contingents from the Rāshtrakūtas, to whom he was related by marriage, and many other princes. Bhīma was defeated and killed, and Rāmapāla regained the throne of his fathers.¹

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¹ The killing of Bhīma and the conquest of Mithilā are recorded in the Kamauli grant of Vaidyadeva (*Ep. Ind.*, ii, 355). The details are supplied by the contemporary historical poem entitled *Rāmacharita*, by Sandhyākara Nandi, discovered in Nepāl and published in *A. S. B. Memoirs*, vol. iii, No. 1 (1910).

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Rāmapāla is described by Tāranāth as possessing a vigorous understanding and widely extended power. After defeating the Kaivarta usurper, he conquered Mithilā or North Bihār, the modern Champāran and Darbhanga Districts, and it is clear that his dominions also included Kāmarūpa or Assam, because his son Kumārapāla conferred the government of that country, with kingly powers, upon a valiant minister named Vaidyadeva. Buddhism, although then declining in Hindustan, flourished in the Pāla dominions during the reign of Rāmapāla, the monasteries of Magadha being crowded with thousands of residents. Tāranāth and certain Bengal authors treat Rāmapāla as the last of his dynasty, or at any rate, the last who exercised considerable power, but the inscriptions prove that he was followed by five kings of his family.²

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² The chief authority for the period is R. D. Banerji's elaborate article, 'The Pālas of Bengal', in *Mem. A. S. B.*, vol. v, pp. 43–113, 1915, with a separate fasciculus of plates. See also M. Haraprasad Sastri's 'Literary History of the Pāla Period' in *J. B. & O. Res. Soc.*, vol. v, part ii, pp. 171 ff.; and Benoy Kumar Sarkar, *The Folk-element in Hindu Culture* (Longmans, 1917). The latter lays stress on the power and importance of the Pālas and Cholas, long after Harsha's death, and suggests that India became really the school of Asia by supplying faith, literature, arts, and material necessities to Nepāl, Tibet, China, Japan, Java, Burma, and other lands beyond the seas.

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King Govindapāla is known to have been on the throne in A. D. 1175; and, according to tradition, the ruler of Magadha at the time of the Muhammadan conquest, in A. D. 1197, was Indradyumna[-pāla]. Forts attributed to him are still pointed out in the Mungir (Monghyr) District.¹

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¹ Buchanan, *Eastern India*, ii, 23; Cunningham, *Rep.*, iii, 135, 159, 162. See also J. N. Samaddar’s ‘*Raja* Indradyumna’ in *J. B. & O. Res. Soc.*, vol. v, part ii, pp. 295–7. The author suggests that, after his defeat by the Muhammadans, the king fled to Orissa and there rebuilt the temple of Jagannāth in 1198.

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The Pāla dynasty deserves remembrance as one of the most remarkable of Indian dynasties. No other royal line in an important kingdom, save that of the Āndhras, endured so long, for four and a half centuries. Dharmapāla and Devapāla succeeded in making Bengal one of the great powers of India, and, although later kings had not the control of realms so wide or possessed influence so extensive, their dominion was far from being contemptible. The Pāla authority was considerably shaken by the Kāmboja usurpation in the latter part of the tenth century, and again by the Chāsi-Kaivarta or Māhishya revolt in the eleventh century, which prepared the way for the encroachments made by the Sena kings. The Pālas seem to have held Magadha or South Bihār, and Mungir in North Bihār, almost throughout to the end, with little interruption, but during the last century of their rule they lost nearly the whole of Bengal to the Senas.² The details of the local history need to be worked out.

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² Mahendrapāla Gurjara-Pratihāra of Kanauj (*c.* A. D. 850) seems to have annexed Magadha for a few years.

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The reigns of Dharmapāla and Devapāla, extending over more than a century, from about A. D. 780 to 892, were a period of marked intellectual and artistic activity. Two artists of that time, Dhīmān and his son Bitpālo (Vitapāla), acquired the highest fame for their skill as painters, sculptors, and bronze-founders. Some works of their school are believed to be extant.³ No building of Pāla age appears to survive, but the numerous great tanks in the central districts of their territory, especially in Dinājpur, testify to the interest taken by the kings in the execution of undertakings intended for the public benefit.

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³ *History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon*, pp. 305–7. The Varendra Research Society at Rājshāhi has devoted special study to the schools of Dhīmān and Bitpālo.

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All the Pāla kings without exception were zealous Buddhists, ready to bestow liberal patronage on learned teachers and the numerous monastic communities. Dharmapāla, clearly a man of exceptional capacity, is credited with the merit of having been an ardent reformer of religion. His successors in the eleventh century, who were devoted to Tantric forms of Buddhism, enjoyed the services of many pious men, among whom Atīsa, already mentioned as a missionary in Tibet, was the most eminent.¹

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¹ See the learned Introduction by Mahā. Haraprasad Shastri to Mr. N. N. Vasu's work on *Modern Buddhism and its Followers in Orissa*, Calcutta, 1911, which is in part a reprint from the *Archaeological Survey of Mayūrabhanja*, vol. i, and the same author's article on the Literary History of the Pāla Period in *J. B. & O. Res. Soc.*, vol. v, part ii, pp. 171 ff. According to him Atīsa was the Tibetan name of Dīpānkara Srījñāna, who was the son of the Rāja of Vikramanipura, east of Magadha.

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The Sena dynasty was founded by a chief named Sāmantadeva, who came from the Deccan. About the middle of the eleventh century he, or his son Hemantasena, founded a principality at Kāsīpurī, which has been identified with the modern Kasiārī in the Mayūrabhanja State. Neither of those chiefs seems to have acquired extensive power.

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But Sāmantasena's grandson, Vijayasena, certainly raised himself to the rank of an independent sovereign in the latter part of the eleventh or early in the twelfth century, and wrested a large part of the Bengal province from the Pālas, thus firmly establishing the Sena dynasty. He also carried on successful wars with other powers, and enjoyed a long reign of about forty years, more or less. He kept on terms of friendship with Choraganga of Kalinga, who ruled that kingdom for the extraordinary term of seventy-one years, and who about the time of the Chāsi-Kaivarta rebellion (*c.* A. D. 1080) extended his conquests to the extreme north of Orissa.

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The dominions acquired by Vijayasena were transmitted (*c.* A. D. 1108) to his son Vallālasena, famous in Bengal tradition as Ballāl Sen, who is credited with having reorganized the caste system and introduced the practice of 'Kulinism' among Brahmans, Baidyas, and Kāyasths. Some accounts allege that he founded Gaur or Lakhnautī, but there is reason to believe that the city was in existence at an earlier date. The site of a palace attributed to him is pointed out at Rāmpāl near Bikrampur in the Dacca District.¹ All the Sena kings were Brahmanical Hindus, and so had a special reason for hostility to the Buddhist Pālas, and a keen interest in the maintenance of caste. The Hinduism of Ballāl Sen was of the Tantric kind. The Brahman genealogists assert that he sent numerous missionaries, all Brahmans, to Magadha, Bhotan, Chittagong, Arakan, Orissa, and Nepāl.²

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¹ *J. A. S. B.*, part i, vol. xlvii (1878), p. 400; *Imp. Gaz.*, s. v. Rāmpāl. According to Mahā. Haraprasad Shastri, Ballāl Sen 'conquered Northern Bengal with the help of the Kaivartas, and tried his best to make a clean caste of them' (Introd. p. 15 to N. N. Vasu, *Modern Buddhism and its Followers in Orissa*). The Māhishyas or Chāsi-Kaivartas deny this and claim that they were a clean caste from time immemorial. They declare themselves to be quite distinct in origin from the Kewats (Jaliya-Kaivartas, &c.), and state that the Pāla kings belonged to their caste. They are hostile to the memory of Ballāl Sen. See also the same writer in *Proc. A. S. B.*, 1902, pp. 2–7.

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² *Arch. S. Mayūrabhanja*, vol. i, p. lxiv, note.

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Ballāl Sen was succeeded in A. D. 1119 by his son Lakshmaṇasena.

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In Bihār and Bengal both Pālas and Senas were swept away by the torrent of Muhammadan invasion at the end of the twelfth century, when Kutb-ud-dīn's general, Muhammad the son of Bakhtyār, stormed Bihār in or about A. D. 1197, and surprised Nūdīah (*vulgo* Nuddea) a year or two later. The Musalman general, who had already made his name a terror by repeated plundering expeditions in Bihār, seized the capital by a daring stroke. The almost contemporary historian met one of the survivors of the attacking party in A. D. 1243, and learned from him that the fort of Bihār was seized by a party of only two hundred horsemen, who boldly rushed the postern gate and gained possession of the place. Great quantities of plunder were obtained, and the slaughter of the 'shaven-headed Brahmans', that is to say the Buddhist monks, was so thoroughly completed, that when the victor sought for some one capable of explaining the contents of the books in the libraries of the monasteries, not a living man could be found who was able to read them. 'It was discovered', we are told, 'that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindī tongue they call a college Bihār.'¹

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¹ Raverty, transl. *Ṭabaḳāt-i-Nāṣirī*, p. 552.

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This crushing blow, followed up, of course, by similar acts of violence, destroyed the vitality of Buddhism in its ancient home. No doubt, a few devout, though disheartened, adherents of the system lingered round the desecrated shrines for a few years longer; and even to this day traces of the religion once so proudly dominant may be discerned in the practices of obscure sects; but Buddhism as an organized religion in Bihār, its last abode in Upper India south of the Himalaya, was destroyed once and for all by the sword of a single Musalman adventurer.² Many monks who escaped death fled to Tibet, Nepāl, and Southern India. Their advent produced an important effect upon the Hindu revival in Southern India. In Tibet the arrival of the learned refugees enabled Buton, the Grand Lama appointed by Kublai Khan, to enrich the Tibetan language by translations from Sanskrit sources, which were included in the *Tangyur* encyclopaedia at the close of the thirteenth century. The preservation of the fruits of the joint labours of the Indian Pundits and the Tibetan Lamas was secured by the practice of the art of block-printing, which had been introduced into Tibet from China in the seventh century.³

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² See papers by H. P. Çāstri, 'Buddhism in Bengal since the Muhammadan Conquest'; 'Çrī-dharma maṅgala; a distant echo of the *Lalitavistara*' (*J. A. S. B.*, vol. lxiv, part i, 1895, pp. 55-68); and N. N. Vasu's work, *Modern Buddhism and its Followers in Orissa*, already cited.

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³ *J. & Proc. A. S. B.*, Feb. 1911, *Address*, p. xliii.

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The overthrow of the Sena dynasty was accomplished with equal or even greater ease. The ruler of eastern Bengal in those days was Lakshmanasena, described by the Muhammadan writer as an aged man and reputed, though erroneously, to have occupied the throne for eighty years. The portents which were said to have attended his birth had been justified by the monarch's exceptional personal qualities. His family, we are told, was respected by all the Rāis or chiefs of Hindustan, and he was considered to hold the rank of hereditary Khalīf (Caliph), or spiritual head of the country. Trustworthy persons affirmed that no one, great or small, ever suffered injustice at his hands, and his generosity was proverbial.

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This much-revered sovereign held his court at Nūdīah, situated in the upper delta of the Ganges, on the Bhāgīrathī river, about 60 miles north of the site of Calcutta. The town still gives its name to a British district (Nuddea, Nadiā), and is renowned as the seat of a Hindu college organized after the ancient manner.

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Probably in A. D. 1199, not long after his facile conquest of Bihār, Muhammad the son of Bakhtyār equipped an army for the subjugation of Bengal. Riding in advance of the main body of his troops, he suddenly appeared before Nūdīah with a slender following of eighteen horsemen, and boldly entered the city, the people supposing him to be a horsedealer. But when he reached the gate of the Rāi's palace, he drew his sword and attacked the unsuspecting household. The Rāi, who was at his dinner, was completely taken by surprise,

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'and fled barefooted by the rear of the palace; and his whole treasure, and all his wives, maidservants, attendants, and women fell into the hands of the invader. Numerous elephants were taken, and such booty was obtained by the Muhammadans as is beyond all compute. When his (Muhammad's) army arrived, the whole city was brought under subjection, and he fixed his head-quarters there.'

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Rāi Lakhmaniya, as the author calls him, fled to Bikrampur in the Dacca district,¹ where he died; and the conqueror presently destroyed the city of Nūdīah, establishing the seat of his government at the ancient Hindu city of Lakhnautī, or Gaur. Mosques, colleges, and Muhammadan monasteries were endowed by him and his officers in all parts of the kingdom, and a great portion of the spoil was judiciously sent to his distant chief, Kutb-ud-dīn.

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¹ Raverty, transl. *Tabakāt-i-Nāṣirī*, p. 557: Elliot, *Hist. of India*, ii, 309.

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Such was the dishonoured end of the last Hindu kingdoms of Bengal and Bihār, which would have made a better fight for life if they had deserved to exist.¹ The administration must have been hopelessly inefficient to permit a foreign army to march unobserved across Bengal, and to allow of the surprise of the palace by an insignificant party of eighteen horsemen.

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¹ The Senas continued to exist as a local dynasty in Eastern Bengal subordinate to the Muhammadans for four generations after the capture of Nūdīah. Their eastern capital is believed to have been Rāmpāl in the Dacca District (*Ep. Ind.*, xii, 136). It is in the Bikrampur *pargana*, and Ballāl Sen is said to have held his court there (*I. G.* s. v. Dacca Dist.). See also *ibid.* s. v. Rāmpāl. The authorities for the history of the dynasty are discussed in App. O, but the chronology is not yet finally settled. The chief difficulty lies in the determination of the duration of Ballāl Sen's reign. For minor dynasties not noticed in this work, see Duff, *The Chronology of India*, Constable, 1899.

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The reign of the earlier king Lakshmanasena was remarkable for considerable literary activity and for his liberal patronage of Sanskrit literature. An imitation of Kālidāsa's *Meghadūta* by Dhoyi, or Dhoyīka, court-poet of Lakshmanasena, has been published. Jayadeva, the famous author of the *Gītagovinda*, seems to have lived in the reign of Lakshmanasena, who wrote verses himself. His father, Ballāl Sen, also was an author.

Linked texts (1)

Rāmacarita — Gauḍa Abhinanda, Sanskrit