Vol. IX, No. 7.] Laksmanasena. 285 
[V.8.] 
pilgrimage. This disturbance must have taken place before 
the fall of Kanauj, as the whole of Northern India was in a 
very disturbed state during the last decade of the twelfth 
followed each other on the throne of Bengal. Consequently 
when Muhammad-i-Bakhtiyar began his raids in Bihar, the 
Buddhist king was too weak and insignificant to repel him and 
the Hindu king too much occupied with his own troubles to 
attend to the peace of his Western border. His governors 
most probably were not strong enough to check these depreda- 
tions. Emboldened by his success, Muhammad-i-Bakhtiyar 
advanced up to Manér, near the junction of the Sone with the 
Ganges. Even the Sone was crossed and in one of his expedi- 
tions he stormed the monastery of Bihar. It was hardly a 
glorious exploit for the invader. What he imagined to be a 
fort was merely a strongly built monastery on a scalable hill- 
top which to a foreigner looked like a fort from a distance. 
The postern was carried by an assault, as the garrison must 
consisted of simple rustics hastily gathered together to 
author visited Bengal forty-two years after the conquest,® and 
his account of the invasion of Bengal seems to be based on the 
Narratives of old soldiers. Later Muhammadan historians 
| J.A.S.B., 1876, pt. I, pp. 331-32. 
2 Ibid. 1875, pt. I, p. 276. On this point compare Babu Monmohon 
Chuckerbutty, J. & P. A.S.B., Vol. V. p. 51. oe 
8 Raverty’s Translation of the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, p. 663. 
+ Ibid., p. 552. 
