Vol. VI, No. 3.] King Gopichandra of Bangpur. 133 



[N.S.] 



the king adopted the prudent though somewhat drastic course 

 of removing her from his capital to a place called Fe rush an agar 

 where she took to working at the wheel and spinning thread. 

 The remains of the surroundings of her residence — the earthen 

 rampart which has defied ages and the moat below, which, though 

 mostly dried up, is still able to bear testimony to its past 

 glory— do not certainly indicate that their owner had to subsist 

 on manual labour. The story told in the recent ballad that 

 Tilakchand reigned at Ferushanagar is entirely opposed to the 

 spirit of the old song and the probabilities of things. The old 

 ballad abounds in references to Buddhistic doctrines and prac- 

 tices, and the discovery of Buddhistic images in the neighbour- 

 hood even quite recently shows unmistakably that the faith 

 proclaimed by the followers of Sakyamuni— albeit in a corrupt 

 form — had its sway over the tract in days gone by. Yet it was 

 not the universal — possibly not even the dominant — faith. 

 The efforts of Mayanamati to win her husband over to her own 

 way of looking at things and her struggles against the Brahma- 

 nical prejudices of her son show rather that Brahmanism, even 

 though of exotic growth on the non-Brahmanical tribes of the 

 north, had more than its fair share of hold on the popular 



mind. 



I do not think the title of Gopichandra to be called the 



king of Bengal (as he has been called here and there in the 



o ^* -*^~"fe 



songs) rests on a solid basis, nor am I prepared to identify 

 Govindachandra of the rock-inscription of the Terumalaya 

 with the Rangpur king who exchanged the sceptre and the 

 crown for an ascetic's garb under the instructions of his mother 

 and wandered in the forest with his great spiritual guide Ha- 

 Disiddha. Still less am I prepared to claim kinship of Gopichan- 

 dra with king Vartrihari of Malwa. Not only do the old songs 

 give other account of his near relations, but their very spirit 

 indicates that the temporal authority and the social surround- 

 ings of the king could not have been very extensive. While I 

 am unable to agree with Dr. Grierson that Manikchandra 

 "reigned over half-dozen square miles of territory which con- 

 stituted him a Rajadhiraj,' ' I am also unable to hold that the 

 extent of his dominions was greater than perhaps that of a 

 modern Bengal district. Songs relating to Gopichandra are. 

 however, still sung in distant parts of India, — in the United 

 Provinces, the Punjab, Central India, the Western Presidency, 

 etc., — and testify to the far-reaching fame which the self-abnega- 

 tion of the young prince enabled the followers of Gorakhnath to 



secure for him. 



Every circumstance points to the probability that Gopi- 

 chandra and Dharmapal belonged to two rival dynasties. 



Which 



tensi ve 



and contains 



village in the vicinity of Patklpiri still bears his name 

 tains the remains of his fortifications referred to ab<»ve« 



