1840.] Ancient Land Grants in Assam. 779 



been applied to them from the circumstance of their having first poured 

 down upon the plains of Assam from the passes of the Pal mountains. 

 Certain it is, that they were a branch of the great Shan tribe which 

 under various modifications occupies the whole tract of country between 

 Munipore and Yunon, extending down to Siam." 



There is, I think, little doubt but that the so-called Induvansa dynasty 

 were the Ahom conquerors, (though not a. d. 1230) of Assam ; but they 

 cannot be identical with the Pals, because we have before us evidence 

 of Dhurmpal's being a Hindoo Raja, and we know that neither were the 

 Ahoms in fact Hindoos, nor could they be so, coming whence they did ; there 

 is moreover no trace of Hindoo religionism among their descendants. 

 Putting this supposition therefore aside, I will take up Captain Jenkins' 

 list of the Pal Rajas, which Mr. James Prinsep seems to have considered 

 in a great measure apocryphal, as he does not insert them in his tables, 

 and indeed notes, with marked incredulity, the tradition of Dhurmapala 

 having brought Brahmins into Assam from Gaur, a fact however proved by 

 the plate granting the Maha Rudra Dewalee, and proved further to have 

 been a practice with his predecessors by Vanamala's grant. In Captain 

 Jenkins' list we have after Ramchundra (a Hindoo ?), the word jaintee^ 

 which Captain J. suggests may allude to the country of Jainteah, but 

 which I am inclined to think has reference to the conqueror {Jynti, or Jytari 

 jy — victory) who is noted by Captain Westmacott, (Journal Asiatic Society, 

 vol. IV. No. 40) as follows, " Shribahu, ninth sovereign of the second 

 dynasty, was vanquished by Vikramaditya, and was succeeded by Jytari, 

 a pious Chhatri from the Dekhan, who overcame Kamroop, and on ascending 

 the throne assumed the title of Dharma-pala." Now there is nothing more 

 natural than that a Hindoo leader of the military class, successful in his 

 attack on a foreign land, should be emphatically called jytari, " the con- 

 queror," or that having established the religion he professed(?) in the 

 country, he should take a title (Dharma pala) expressive of his fosterage 

 of the true faith, giving thence a title to his dynasty, were it not, as I shall 

 show, already peculiar to one whence he sprang. A descendant of his, 

 according to Capt. Westmacott's authority, by name Rama Chundra 

 began his reign a. s. 1160, (a. d. 1238-9) " and is the first prince the 

 date of whose accession is commemorated in the volume," whence the 

 authority is taken, and which makes him twenty-fourth sovereign of part 

 of ancient Kamroop, and the eleventh of the third dynasty of its kings. 

 Chundra Pal, the seventh from Jytari in Capt. Jenkins' list, may be 

 identical vdth this sovereign, and the notice of the date of his accession, 

 according to the ordinary sera, may have been consequent on his having been, 

 the first to abandon the custom of dating by what we may call the Pal cera, 

 two dates of which we find on the Assam copper plates, and which must 

 certainly have fallen into disuse at no remote period after its establish- 

 ment, the dates on the grant being the first notice we have of its ex- 

 istence. Now it is worthy of remark, how well these dates seem to apply to the 

 list of Rajas in Capt. Jenkins' Pal dynasty, allowing the fair average of 

 12 years to a reign, and beginning with Jytari, its founder. We have after 

 his immediate successor, Japandu Pal, (Prulumbha? v. 7. Sloka of the 

 inscription), the name of Hari (Hujara?) Pal, in whom we may reason- 

 ably recognise the Raja surnamed Vanamala, who in the year 19 of the 

 dynasty of which he is third, granted lands to Brahmins on the Vashishty- 

 Gunga; he is immediately followed by Dhumba, or Dhurma Pala, one 

 of whose grants has been found with the date 36 of the Pal sera. Thence 

 to Rama Chundra, or Chundra Pal, we have only two, instead of, as should 

 be the case by Capt. Westmacott's authority, six Raja's names, and from 



