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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTOBER, 1915
accession to the throne of Bengal and the initial year of his era which after his death came to be designated as his atitarájya era.
There seems to be no difference whatever between the expressions Lakshmana-saivat (i. e., Lakshmanasena's era) and Lakshmana-senasyátítardjya era. The púrvanipata of the word atita in the compound atitarajya is rather significant. The word atita is treated in this compound ag unimportant, if not altogether meaningless, and has no syntactical relation with what follows the compound. The attention is generally arrested by the word rajya. We cannot interpret atitarajya as meaning rajye atite sati. What would be apparent to one who is acquainted with Sanskrit is that it refers to the beginning of a regnal period which has already come to an end.
In course of time, as Prof. Kielhorn rightly observes, such phrases as atitorajya are apt to become meaningless, and probably it was already so, in the case of Lakshmanasenasyâtitardjya, when the inscriptions in question were incised. Instances are not rare of the use of such meaningless and redundant phrases. In Bendall's Catalogue of Sanskrit Buddhist Manuscripts, p. 70, a manuscript is dated Srimad-Vikramaditya-devapad anam-atita-rajye sai 1503. One acquainted with the materials hitherto collected for a history of the Pala dominion in Bengal would be reminded of such atita-rajya samats used in inscriptions and colophons of manuscripts executed during the period.
Mr. Chanda refers to Dúnasagara as the landmark in the Sena chronology, and bases his theory on the date of composition of this work. He has brought forward also other literary evidences for substantiating the theory advocated by him. They include among others the Adbhutasigara, which is said to have been written by Vallâlasena.
The manuscripts quoted above have already been examined in detail in the J. A.S.B., 1913, pp. 274-276. The manuscripts quoted in support of the theory are only modern copies. We are of opinion that the Danasagara and the Adbhutasdgara, probably never formed parts of the original works of Vallalasena. Instances are not rare of works pomposed by unknown scholars and attributed to some luminaries in spheres other than literary. In the case of these works, perhaps the name of a king no longer alive, who figured not altogether unworthily in the contemporary political history of the land, was perhaps put down as their author in order to ensure their popularity. These manuscripts cannot also be supposed to have escaped clever and ingenious interpolation by shrewd and unscrupulous Brahmans. Vallâlasena could not have spoken about himself as Nikhila-chakra-tilaka, or as Gaudendrakuñiar-Ilana-stambha-váhur-mahipatih. In attributing these works to Vallalasena, probably the authors either out of carelessness did not antedate their works so as to make them synchronous with the regnal period of Vallâlasena, or had no exact idea of the Saka year which would come within the lifetime of the sovereign. Any way, their composition was certainly undertaken long after Vallalasena's death, and at a period when people would not care much for the exact synchronism of events or the historicity of the achievements of an idealised sovereign, when a popular idol had already been removed from the real matter-of-fact world and historical accounts about him had been giving way to legends. To return to our arguments, evidence based on modern copies of manuscripts only cannot be matched against the testimony of contemporary epigraphic records, and in the present oase, this piece of literary evidence is not based on any reliable authority.
In the light of such facts as enumerated above, Prof. Ki worn was probably right in not changing the dates of the Gayâ inscriptions of Asokavalla (sic) in his List of dated Inscriptions of Northern India. The conclusion drawn by Mr. Chanda that the era of Lakshmana
