26 Annual Beport. [Feb. 



found at the same time in an interesting literary work, tlie di'scovery 

 of wliioh is due to MiUiamahopadliyaya Haraprasad Shastti. This 

 Avoik is pall<^d Raniacaiitam and is a poem of double mesinintr, eacli 

 A'erse being ajiplicable botli to the history of the mythical liero Rama 

 and also to the historical kings Ram;ipala :iiid his piedecessors. Its 

 value lies in this that it is the first historical poem found in Eastern 

 India, being of the same class as the biography of Harsa of Kanauj 

 by Bana, the history of the Paramara king Navasahasahka of Malwa, 

 and the poem -written by Bilhana, a Kashmiri pandit, in honour of 

 the Calukya king Vikramaditya, all of which come from the "West It 

 is hoped that the learned discoverer will soon find leisure to publish this 

 most valuable find of his. 



The copper-plate of Madanapala wliioli has just been referred to is 

 interesting also fi-om a sociological point of view. "We know that all the 

 Pala Kings were followers of the Buddhist, religion and that it was 

 during their reign that Buddhism flourished for the last time in India, 

 Now, the grant recorded in the plate was made by Madanapala to a 

 Brahman as a daksliiiici or honorarium for having read the Mahabhaiata 

 to the queens of the king's harem. This is one moie fact, in addition 

 to others previously known, showing the intimate connexion that existed 

 in the time of those Buddhist kings between Buddhism and Hinduism, 

 a connexion that resulted in the foimier losing more and more its 

 ground against the latter, and that thus prepared the way for the final 

 destruction of Buddhism by the Muhammadan invaders. 



During the last decades of the reigns of the Pala kinirs, there rose 

 to power in Bengal another family of Hindu princes who came from 

 the South and were Ksatrijas of the Lunar race, the Sena kings. 

 Of them Laksmanasena, the great friend of poets, still lives in the 

 memory of the people. Of him, too, a new copper-plate inscriptiim 

 was published in the Journal of last year by 13abu Aksliay Kumar 

 Maitra. It is interesting as a document coming from this famous 

 kin"', but does not add much new information to what we alr«;ady 

 know with regard to his period and history. The third inscription 

 belongs to a king Jayaditya who lived in the 9tli century A.U. 

 Its discovery is due to Dr. Hocy ; and it has been published by Dr. 

 Bloch in an Appendix to a paper by Dr. Hoey, which is referred to 

 below. The plate was found in the Gorakhj)ur District, and to the 

 north of this district we have to look for the dominion of this king, as 

 in an inscription of his father — tlie only other document of this dynasty 

 known to us — his capital, Vijayanagara, is described as situated on the 

 slopes of the Himalayas. As with other dynasties of Indian kings, 

 scarcely more than the names of the kings of this dynasty are known to 



