________________
300
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[OCTOBER, 1875.
tongue; and as the language he uses is Maithila Hindi, the conclusion is that he was a native of Mithila. I may here add to the writer's argument that Maithila closely approximates to Bengali, as in the la of the preterite, the characteristic ba of the future, the interchange of 1 and n, the nominal affixes ke and ra, and other points.
He next notices the allusions made by the poet to his patrons Raja Sib Singha (Śiva Sinha) and Rupanarayana; his patron's wife, Lachhima Debî; his friends Bijayanarayana and Baidyanâtha; and concludes that the poet was attached to the court of Sib Singh.
By a happy inspiration he appears to have thought of consulting some learned men of the province of Mithild, which was nearly co-extensive with the modern district of Tirhut, oocupying the country between the Ganges and the Himalayas, and extending on the west as far as the Gandak river, and on the east quite up to, if not beyond, the old bed of the Küsi river in Purâniya (Purneah).
As the result of his researches he found that Bid ya pati is still well known in Tirhut, and has left some lyrics which are still sung by the people and are in Maithila. On this point, however, I would observe that these songs may have been modernized : indeed they look very much as if they had, -such words as kia, garua, dharayaku, look suspicious. But the most important discovery is tiat of a Pánji or chronicle of the kings of Mithila. It is to be wished that the author had told us where this book is to be found. He merely tells us that it is in Mith:lâ, and begins in Saka 1248, in the reign of Hari Singha Deva. The date and the king's name agree in a singular way with that Hari Singha Deva whose capital was at Simraon (Sansk. Samaragráma), and who was conquered by Tughlak Shah in A.D.
322, and fled to the mountains, where he found ed the kingdom of Nepal, with its capital, Kathmândo, or the wooden palace.' Simraon is in the extreme north-west corner of Tirhut, and its ruins are very extensive.
In the Pánji mention is made of a king of Tirhut, Siva Sirha, and at his court it is re- corded that there was one Bid yâ pati, son of Ganapati, son of Jaya Datta, son of Dhires.
wara, son of Devâditya, son of Dharmaditya. This is our poet, and it is strange that there should be two circumstantial traditions about the same man. The Maithilas claim him as their own, and the Bengalis, as mentioned (Ind. Ant. vol. II. p. 37), make him out to be a Jessore man
"Orbis de patriâ certat, Homere, tua." Raja Sib Singha is said to have lived at Sugaona, a village still extant. A curious legend is told of his being delivered from prison at Delhi-into which he had been cast by the Emperor-through the instrumentality of our poet, who showed himself to be possessed of miraculous powers. The Padshah gave him the village of Bipasi, in Tirhut; and Sib Singha, apparently to save his own claims as zamindar, also made him a grant of the same. The deed of gift is said to be still extant in the possession of the poet's descendants, who still own the village.
Certain expressions in this grant raise a question of date which is somewhat difficult to settle.
The document recites that the grant was made in the two hundred and ninety-third year of the era of Lakshman Sen. The Sen Rajas of Bengal must then have exercised some sort of over-lordship iu Mithila. The writer tells us that the era of Lakshman Sen is still current among the pandits of Mithila, and that thi year 1874 A.D. = 767 of Lakshman, or the L. S. era as it is called. The era therefore begins in A.D. 1107 or Saka 1030, and L. S. 293 = Saka 1323 and A.D. 1400. The Bengali tradition as to the poet's date gives him from A.D. 14331481, which is a little later than the date now given.
But there is another difficulty. The Pánji states that Sib Singha's reign did not begin till Saka 1369 = A.D. 1446, so that the grant was made 46 years before he ascended the throne. The Muithila pandits get out of this by saying that the grant was made when Sib Singh was acting as Jubardjá or regent for his father, and they add that his father, Raja Deba Singh, reigned 91 years, so that he must have been old and infirm for a long period before his death. Still that he should have been obliged to resign all active participation in the govern
• Vide the article in Ind. Ant. vol. II. quoted above.
