Indian Antiquary Vol 51

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 163

AUGUST, 1922)
DATE OF LAKSHMANASENA AND HIS PREDECESSORS
155
interpretation accepted among others by Mesars. H. P. Sastri, Chanda and N. N. Vasa. Mr. Banerjea himself has drawn very strange conclusions from the date-wordings in Ms. colophons. A wholly unjustifiable difference has been drawn between the words gata, atita and vinasta, which are, for all we know, synonymous. Even if they were not so, it is unthinkable that atitardjya can ever mean, as Mr. Banerjea holds, a kingdom which is lost somewhere but flourishing (pravardhamana) elsewhere. According to Mr. Banerjea, more over, atitardjya indicates that the king was still alive and the "special" word vinasta shows that he was dead. But by no stretch of grammatical construction can the words atita and vinasta, used clearly as qualifying adjectives of rajya, determine the life and death of the king himself 26. The word atitarajya (or its synonyms gatarajya, etc.), wherever it occurs must mean everywhere the same thing that the kingdom was at an end (no question whether the king was alive or not, as a king has no civil existence without the kingdom) and the year is reckoned either (1) from the date of the accession of the king to the throne; or (2) from the date of the loss of the kingdom. Two objections have been raised against the 2nd interpretation : firstly, it is grammatically wrong, for we do not get a samasa अतीतराज्ये in the sense of राज्ये अतीते सति and we would expect the ablative and not the locative in the sense of since. This is wholly beside the mark, as the locative can be justified equally in pravardhamdnaivijayarajye and attardjya as a t it. Aitardjya would exactly mean-" of the time during which the kingdom was lost," i.e., remained unrecovered by a lineal successor 27. The second objection that no era is known to start from a mrityu-samvat (except that of Buddha) is not of much consequence as the origin of many of the eras is yet unknown. It appears that the epithet atitarajya has been used with full significance only with the names of Govindapâla and Lakshmanasena and it is a significant fact that they witnessed the destruction of the Påla and Sena kingdoms respectively. The devoted subjects of each only expressed their hatred for the usurpers by referring their dates to an imaginary "reign of anarchy." Thus the destruction of the Pâla dynasty (which was Buddhist by religion) after a glorious reign of full four centuries was ill digested by the Buddhist subjects, who monopolised the use of the attardjya Samvat of Govinda pâla. We can easily see that the second interpretation fits in better with the literary and historical bearings of Lakshmanasena and should therefore be preferred in the inscriptions under discussion. That the atta-rajya Samvat of Lakshmanasena has nothing to do with the Lakshmana Samvat is prima facie evident from the fact that among the innumerable Ms. colophons with dates in La-sam, there is not a single one which connects the word alitarajya therewith, though that misleading epithet is attached even to the Vikrama Era in Mss. of the same locality, as cited by Mr. Mazumdar himself. In connection with Govindapâla also, the epithet gatarajya (of the Gaya ins. of 1175 A.D.) bears the second
35 Ramacharita : Itrod., p. 16, Gaudardjamdla, p. 55, etc.
26 The colophons numbered 4, 5 and 6 in Mr. Banerjea's monograph (pp. 110-111) are of Mss. belonging to the same collection and written by the same man, who could never have used the word vinduta in a special sense in the midst of two other Mss., one dated in the previous year (No. 4.) and another in the following year (No. 6).
37 How the epithet atitardjya used in the Sonpur plates of Somekváradeva (Ep. Ind., Vol. XII, p. 240) certainly supports the first interpretation we do not at all see. The use of the opithet may very well be justibed by asuming that the coronation had not yet taken place of the successor of Abhimanyudova in the first year of his reign, when the inscription is dated. This is supported by the fact that there is no mention of samoat after aftardjya, the end (and not the beginning) of the last reign having, just taken place.