1865.] On the Sena Bdjds of Bengal. 131 



his son Ballala. " This prince," to quote the words of an able writer 

 in the Calcutta Review, " was held in such high estimation all over 

 Bengal, that the most extravagant fancies have been indulged and the 

 wildest tales invented in order to connect his memory with the mar- 

 vellous and the sublime." The same writer continues ; " Poets have 

 invested him with the dignity of a divine original and described 

 his infantile precocity in the most glowing colours. He has been 

 represented as the son of the fluvial god Brahmaputra, who had 

 deceived his mother by assuming the form of her own hus- 

 band. His nativity is said to have taken place in the solitude of a 

 thick forest, where his mother had been banished a few months before 

 her parturition through the jealousy and treachery of his father's two 

 other wives. In these sylvan shades and under the especial protection 

 of heaven he passed his infantile daj^s, undisturbed by the noise and 

 distractions of towns and cities, and uncontaminated by the pleasures 

 and irregularities of riotous society. His divine parent, " the uxorious 

 Amnis," as Horace would perhaps call him, instructed him in the 

 different branches of a Hindu's education, and in the tactics of war 

 and diplomatic policy. While yet a boy he is said to have exhibited 

 extraordinary proofs of heroism and strength. He had discomfited 

 unassisted and alone a whole host of disciplined troops commanded by 

 princes and veteran captains, and armed with all the weapons of native 

 warfare." The whole of this statement, however, is founded upon vague 

 traditions or modern records of doubtful authority. We may dismiss 

 it, therefore, without a remark. The Bakerganj inscription of Ballala's 

 grandson does not allude to the facts noted in it with sufficient circum- 

 stantiality to give them any prominence. From what it says, we may take 

 for granted, however, that he was a great patron of learning and himself 

 an author of some pretension. — Vedartha smriti sangrahadi purusha. 

 The treatise on gifts alluded to above shews that his reading was 

 extensive and his knowledge of the s'astras respectable.* He is 



* The prominent mention made in the work of the author's tutor, Anirudha, 

 would waken a suspicion that, like many other crowned heads in India and Europe, 

 BallAla had assumed to himself a credit which rightly belonged to another. How- 

 ever that be, the authenticity of the work is undoubted. It has been quoted by the 

 author of the Scimaya Prakdsd who lived several hundred years ago, and Raghu- 

 nandana who flourished at the end of the 15th century, alludes to it in two places 

 in #his Suddhitattva : "^R ^T^T^?f^Tr^rJ7rW^!'5prqiiTJftf?r i^FTOTTOC: 

 Serampore edition, p. 194. Again : ^cfi^ «fT^lf^,fif *m*3fT^*raTOTf^?lfr- 



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