
1865.] On the Sena Rdjds of Bengal. 137 
tion owing as much to the names of Su Sena Noujib and a second 
Lakshmana not occurring in any authentic early document, as to there 
being no sufficient time available between the dates of Ballala Sena 
and that of the Mahomedan conquest for the allocation of three reigns, 
after making the necessary allowance for Lakshmana, Madhava and 
Kesava Senas and Lakhmaniya. It is possible that those reigns were 
only of a few months’ duration each, but there is nothing authentic to 
support such a theory, and therefore, I feel fully justified in the assump- 
tion I have made above. 
The inscriptions are very unsatisfactory on the subject of dates. 
The Bakerganj plate professes to have been recorded in the month of 
_ Jaishta in the third year of the king’s reign, but does not name any cur- 
rent era. The Rajashahi stone has no date whatever. But it is not 
difficult to find the probable time when the different members of the 
Sena dynasty flourished in Bengal. According to the author of the 
Samaya Prakds'a, the Danasdgara was written (or completed?) in the 
S’aka year 1019* — A. D.1097. Ballala must therefore have lived at 
about the end of the eleventh century, and this accords well with the 
statement of the Ayin Akbary which makes that prince commence his 
reign in the year 1066. Lakshmana, according to Abul Fazel, assumed 
the sovereignty of Bengal in 1116, which gives a period of 51 years to 
Ballala. I doubt, however, the accuracy of the last date. The date 
of Bakhtiar’s conquest of Bengal is well known (1203), and the 
testimony of Minhajuddin regarding the eighty years’ reign of 
Lakshmaniya cannot be easily set aside. This carries us back to 1123. 
On the other side if we allow only three years to Ballila after the 
completion of his Daénasigara we come to the end of the 11th century, 
leaving only 23 years between 1101 and 1123 for distribution among 
Lakshamana, Madhava and Kesava. The exact period of Laksmana’s 
reign is not known. Abul Fazel allots to him only 8 years, but Halay- 
—udha, his prime minister, suggests a much longer time. He says that 
he was in his boyhood made a court pandit, by the king; that in his 
(ee ea 
_ éarly manhood, he attained to the rank of a minister; and that 
*fifescraafraatramaacsd | qu ufe-aa-enfaa wate 
SIaaathaa: 
