The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s8.18

c31.s8.18

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.