1875.] E. V. "Westmacott — A Copperplate grant by Lakshmcm Sen. 3 



pdii, after which different names of places and different boundaries are 

 given. After identifying the land, the grant goes on, as mine does, with 

 the words samdfabistah sajalastlialah sag, where the page containing the 

 remainder of the grant is missing. 



Besides this, I hear that Mr. Beveridge has recently found a fourth 

 copperplate of the Sen dynasty in the district of Bacprganj, but I regret 

 not having seen it. 



The grant which I am now discussing opens with an invocation to 

 Narayana, with which should be compared the epithet paramabaishnava, 

 afterwards applied to the King making the grant. 



The first stanza is an allusion to Siva, under the name of Sambhu, 

 the various attributes of a fertilising cloud being compared with those of 

 that deity, as depicted in the drawing of Ishwara, given on page 249, Vol. i, 

 Asiatic Researches, namely, his matted hair, in which Basaki, the king 

 of Serpents, is entwined, and from which Ganges flows, the crescent moon 

 on his brow, the necklace of human skulls, and the humour of abstraction. 

 I am bound to say that Babu Mohesh Chandra Chakravarti, to whose 

 assistance I am indebted for the translation, refuses to accept my reading 

 of " necklace of white skulls" for sivetasiromald, saying that the expres- 

 sion must refer to a white garland on the head. 



The second stanza is in honour of the moon, from which, in the Chan- 

 dra-vangslia, the Sens evidently claim descent. 



In the third, the poison of hostile kings is neutralised by the juice of 

 some twining plant, to which the feet of the kings of the Chandra-vangsha 

 are compared, a plant watered with the light of the gems on the coronets 

 of prostrate kings. 



The fourth stanza compares the effect produced upon their enemies by 

 the Sen kings, with the influence of the season called Semanta, the months 

 of Karttik and Agralidyan. Babu Mohesh Chandra Chakravarti thinks 

 Hemanta the name of an ancestor of the Sens. If so, he is not mentioned 

 in Keshab Sen's plate. If he is a person, both he and Bijay Sen are spoken 

 of as concpaerors, but I can trace no reference by which to identify the 

 dynasty supplanted, and to say whether it was or not that of the Pal kings 

 of Graur, one of whom, Vigraha Pal Deb, in the Amgachhi plate, speaks of 

 his dominions or a province thereof as P a u n d r a-V a r d d h a n a, the 

 name used by both Lakshman Sen and his son Keshab. 



The first of the Sen kings mentioned by Abul-Fazl is Su Sen, whom 

 he makes the immediate predecessor of Ballal Sen. I do not consider Abul- 

 Fazl's authority worth much as regards the pre-Muhammadan dynasties of 

 Bengal, and unhesitatingly accept the testimony of the copper plates, as to 

 the name of Bijay Sen. 



Negatively the plates support the theory that Ballal Sen was not, as 



