History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c34.s6.33

Language: English

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The initial history of the Senas is given clearly in the Deopara stone inscription published in E. I. I (p. 300). The inscription states that a chief from the Deccan (a Dākshiṇātya) named Sāmantasena who was a feudatory under a Karṇāṭa king and who had fought with and killed there those who had come to plunder Karṇāṭa territory retired in old age to the banks of the Ganges and founded a small kingdom at Kāshipur in Eastern Bengal.* His son Hemantasena was a powerful king and from him and queen Yaśodevī was born Vijayasena the first powerful king of the dynasty. He is said in the inscription to have conquered the king of Gauda who had troubled the king of Kāmarūpa and also conquered the king of Kalinga. Gauda king here means the Pāla king of Monghyr in western Bengal and he and the king of Kalinga or Orissa were the really powerful kings opposed to the Senas. Vijayasena was an orthodox Hindu, while the Pāla kings were Buddhists and this establishment of Sena power may be looked upon as an assertion of Hinduism, a revival of Hindu orthodoxy in Bengal. Indeed the Deopara inscription relates that Vijayasena performed many sacrifices. Sir Vincent Smith rightly observes that Vijayasena was the first independent king of this line and that he wrested much territory from Pāla kings. But it may be said that Sir V. Smith may not be right in assigning 1119 A. D. as the date of his independence. It may have been earlier than this. 1119 A. D.

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is the initial date of the Lakshmaṇasena era, as Kielhorn has proved from several inscription dates given in that era and the Śaka era; and as Abul Fazal gives the starting year of the Sena era as 1041 Śaka. Kielhorn believes that the people of Tirhut are wrong in treating the Sena era as starting from 1028 Śaka (I. A. XIX p. 7). But though this point may be taken as settled, the question who started this era and when is one on which a great divergence of opinion prevails. Smith proposed the following dates for the commencement of the reigns of the three kings, Sâmanta 1080, Hemanta 1100 and Vijaya 1119 (E. H. I. 3rd Edn. p. 419) which means that he looks upon the Lakhshmaṇasena era as founded by him commencing from Vijayasena his grand-father's reign. Gaurishanker Ojha, however, states that the era was founded by his son Ballālasena on hearing of the birth of his son Lakshmaṇa when he had just conquered the Mithila country (Prachina lipimālā p. 42-45 and Hindi Tod p. 536). Mr. D. R. Bannerji in publishing in E. I. XIV (p. 159) a new grant found of Ballālasena thinks that the era was founded to commemorate the beginning of the reign of Lakshmaṇasena. The last opinion would seem to be the natural and proper interpretation of the starting of the era, and indeed Mahomedan evidence, almost contemporaneous, states (Tabakat-i-Nasiri) that Ballālasena died leaving his queen pregnant and Lakshmaṇasena was crowned even in the womb of his mother.

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This may be an absurdity like the other absurdities recorded by the Tabakat; but it is at least historically correct to say that Lakshmaṇasena was born in 1119 A. D. after the death of his father. And it is natural that he should have dated the era founded by him from his birth which was also the date of his coming to the throne. But a doubt arises when one takes into consideration the fact that Lakshmaṇasena makes a grant in the 7th year of his reign in which he calls himself Parama Vaiṣṇava (J. R. A. S. Bengal XLIV part. 1 p. 7). It may easily be supposed that as he reigned from birth, he might make a grant when a child of seven through his regent. But it cannot be explained how he could then be a Parama Vaiṣṇava as his father and grandfather appear to be Śaivas. The whole question must, we fear, remain unsolved owing to the absence of any Vikrama or Śaka date in the grants of almost all the Sena kings, as indeed of the Pāla kings, and the grants only give regnal year figures for the donor kings. The chronology of these kings can, therefore, be given only conjecturally in a double set and we give two series of dates as proposed by Sir V. Smith and by Mr. R. D. Bannerji. Some also have suggested that there were two Lakshmaṇasenas. But following the Mahomedan tradition we will take it that there was only one Lakshmaṇasena and that he died in 1199 A. D. when he was 80 years old.