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The Chronology of the Sena Kings of Bengal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
Since the beginning of the present century students of Indian history have been making strenuous efforts to collect such materials as would help them to reconstruct the early history of Bengal. But so far they have not succeeded in ascertaining definitely even the dates of those kings of the Sena Dynasty who governed dominions of large extent and took rank among the great powers. The discovery of the era with which is associated the name of Laksmana Sena Deva induced several well-known archaeologists to bring its initial date to bear on the history of Bengal. From the scanty data which were then available the late Professor Kielhorn after much laborious calculation definitely settled that the Lakṣmaṇa Samvat or La-Sam began in A.D. 1119–20. According to him the La-Sam was an ordinary Southern (Kārttikādi) year with Amānta scheme of lunar fortnights; and the first date of the era was October 7, A.D. 1119. As this date has not been made use of in reconstructing the chronology of the Sena kings, it may be accepted for the present; and time will show whether the conclusion of the learned doctor is right or wrong. But the assertion of the historians that the initial date of the Lakṣmaṇa Sena era synchronizes with the commencement of Lakṣmaṇa Sena's reign is quite untenable and can never be accepted as true. In Indian history there is no era which does not commemorate some epoch-making event which affected the people of the country in general. And ordinary succession to the throne in its normal course, as was the case with Lakṣmaṇa Sena Deva, does not justify the inauguration of an era in place of the usual regnal years to which the people in those days were accustomed.
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References
page 1 note 1 Vide, Archæological Survey of India, Reports, vol. xv, pp. 157–9Google Scholar.
page 1 note 2 Vide, Indian Antiquary, vol. xix (1890), p. 6Google Scholar; Epigraphia Indica, vol. i, p. 306, n. 6.
page 2 note 1 Extracts from three MSS. are available: DrMitra's, Rājendra LālaNotices of Sanskrit MSS., i, p. 151Google Scholar; Eggeling's, Catalogue of India Office MSS., p. 545Google Scholar; and Śāstrī's, M. M. HaraprasādNotices, vol. i, p. 170Google Scholar.
page 3 note 1 Vide SirBhandarkar's, R. G.Report on the Search for Sanskrit MSS. in the Bombay Presidency, 1897, pp. 83–5Google Scholar.
page 3 note 2 Besides the MSS. mentioned above there are three more, one (incomplete) in the possession of the writer of this article, and two others which have been secured by the Manuscript Committee of the Dacca University. Their report on the latter manuscript is as follows:—
“Jyotish.—The most valued additions to this section are two manuscripts of Adbhuta-sāgara by Ballāla Sena Deva, one (incomplete) from Nadia District and the other (complete) in Devanagari script from Ahar in Bulandshahr District in the U.P. The latter is a particularly valuable MS., dated Saka 1658 and thus about 200 years old. Both of them give the year in which the work was begun. Hailing from widely distant places, they should help to set at rest all controversy regarding the dates of Ballāla Sena Deva and Lakṣmaṇa Sena Deva.”
page 5 note 1 Vide, Baṅgīya Sāhitya Patrikā, pt. xvii, pp. 237–8Google Scholar; and Epigraphia Indica, vol. xiv, pp. 156–63, as quoted in MrBanerji's, R. D.History of Bengal, pt. i, p. 322Google Scholar.
Note.—The grant was made by Ballāla Sena on behalf of his mother, Vilāsa-Devī, when she performed the Mahā-śva-dāna ceremony on the occasion of a solar eclipse. This may have been an occasion for Ballāla Sena also to make the various grants referred to in the verse quoted above.
page 6 note 1 Adbhuta-sāgara, Dhruvādy-adbhutāvarta.
page 6 note 2 Vide the appendix to the notes by B. Monmohan Chakravarti, M.A., M.R.A.S., on the Pavana-dūta by Dhōyī Kaviraja, one of the court poets of Lakṣmaṇa Sena Deva.
page 6 note 3 Vide, Epigraphia Indica, vol. i, p. 309Google Scholar, ślokas 20 and 21.
page 6 note 4 Ibid., vol. xv, p. 278, and the monthly Bengali magazine, Sāhitya, pt. xxxi, pp. 81–97, as quoted by MrBanerji, R. D. in his History of Bengal, i, p. 319Google Scholar, footnote.
page 7 note 1 This is the date which the historians have put down as the commencement of Lakṣmaṇa Sena's reign.
page 7 note 2 Minhāj was informed that the name of the king whom Muhammad, Jon of Bakhtiār, surprised in Nadiyā, was Rai Lakhminya and that he had been on the throne for then eighty years.
page 7 note 3 Smith's, Vide VincentEarly History of India, p. 432Google Scholar, para. 2, ed. by S. M. Edwardes.