JOURNAL 



ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. I. 1862. 



Vestiges of Three 'Royal Lines of Kanyalcubja, or Kanauj ; with 

 Indications of its Literature. — By Fitz-Edwabd Hall, Esquire, 

 D. C. L. Oxon. 



By no means alone among Indian cities of old renown, Kanauj has 

 shrunk from the once proud position of a metropolis into a town whose 

 extent and importance are now most inconsiderable. If the entire 

 site of its ruins was ever peopled simultaneously, its habitancy may at 

 one time have competed with that of London ; and yet our knowledge 

 of its political vicissitudes, and even of its rulers and of its men of 

 letters, is scarcely more than a dreary blank. It is my purpose, in 

 the present brief paper, to collect, and, as far as possible, to connect, 

 the detached facts, bearing on a portion of its mediaeval history, 

 which recent research has rendered available. These facts, in no 

 small share, are of my own discovering. . 



From the Harsh a-charita* of Bana, likewise author of the Kadam- 

 oari, and of the Chandi-s' ataka,f we learn, that, in his time, which is 



* For a page or two, here, I do little more than copy from ray preface to the 

 Vdsavadattd ; a publication not likely to meet the' eyes of many readers of this 

 Journal, or to be consulted for matters of historical fact. 



f For a stoi'y about this poem, see my preface to the Vdsavadattd, p. 8. Whe- 

 ther the Chandi-s' 'atalca was written in rivalry of Mayura's tSurya-s'atalca, or 

 whether the latter was prompted by the former, each of the compositions reminds 

 one vividly of the other. I have seen but a single copy of the Chandi-s' ataka ; and 

 that was very incorrect. It contains one hundred and one stanzas, and is at- 

 tributed, in the epigraph, to Bana Bhatta. The beginning and end are sub- 

 joined, without amendment : 



