42 Facsimiles of Ancient Inscriptions. [Jan. 



It is curious that wherever the name of KesAva Sena occurs on the 

 plate, there are marks of an erasure ; as if the grant had been prepared 

 during the reign of Ma'dhava Sena, and, on his dying before it was com- 

 pleted (for such a plate must have taken a long time to engrave), the name 

 of his successor Kesa va, fortunately happening to be of the same proso- 

 dial quantity, was ingeniously substituted, and mutato nomine, the endow- 

 ment was completed and promulgated. Kesava must have been in 

 this case the brother of Ma'dhava. 



Little of the historical occurrences of Kesava's reign are to be ga- 

 thered from the inflated eulogistic style common to this species of com- 

 position. It is said in general terms that he kept his enemies in awe, that 

 he was religious and bountiful to the priesthood. There is considerable 

 poetical ingenuity in the triple similes applied to the smoke of his 

 sacrificial fires, and to that of the sparkling of the moon-beam in the 

 s ^cond verse. The allegory of the bird with two dissimilar wings at the 

 opening of the inscription might be thought to apply rather to the moon 

 than the sun ; but the Surya Siddhanta, according to the pandit, shews 

 that the sun has as much to do with the phenomena as the moon — or in 

 fact that the moon, when east or west is, as it were, a wing to the sun : — 

 thus 



" From the sttn retreating eastward when goes each day the moon 

 by twelve degrees, that forms the tit hi — the moon's day." 



The title of Sankara Gaureswara applied to all the members of 

 the family may mean either the auspicious lord of the city of Gaur ; or ft 

 may convey a sly hint, by the substitution of ¥1^ for ^r^ (mixed 

 race) of the inferior caste of this Sena dynasty. 



Nothing is said of the miraculous descent of Ballala Sena, as before 

 remarked: but he is said to have worshipped Siva for many hundred 

 years (in former generations ) to obtain so famous a son as Lakshmana 

 Sena, who seems to have been the hero of the family, erecting pillars of 

 victory and altars at Benares, Allahabad and Jaganndtha. It may how- 

 ever be reasonably doubted whether these monuments of his greatness 

 ever existed elsewhere than in the poet's imagination. 



The date of the grant is very clearly written in the lowermost line 

 *h"5&^fe;>f S'mvat 3 jynwtha dine ... but the rest is not legible. The 

 third year doubtless refers to the reign of Kesava Sena, which brings 

 the age of the plate to the year 1136 of our era. 



Mere follows Govindara'ma's version of the text : 



