The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s8.3

c31.s8.3

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).