THE PALAS OF BENGAL. 53 



the campaign of Dharmmapala and Govinda III against Nagabhata II, the Pala and 

 Rastrakuta kings fell out and in the struggle which ensued Dharmmapala was 

 defeated. This must have taken place after the defeat of Nagabhata II by the 

 confederate armies: — 



Kerala-Malava-Gaudan = sa-Gurjjara[fn\& = Citrakutagiridu[r]-ggasthan baddhva 

 Kancl&an = atha sa Klrttinarayano jdtah} 



Dharmmapala must have reigned for at least thirty-two years as his Khalimpur 



grant is dated in that year. Taranatha says that he ruled for sixty -four years, which 



is impossible as we shall see in the following pages. The late Dr. Kielhorn was also of 



opinion that Dharmmapala had a long reign. z In the Monghyr grant it is stated that 



Dharmmapala married the daughter of the Rastrakuta chief Parabala, a lady named 



Rannadevi. 3 Recently Dr. Kielhorn has published an inscription found on a pillar 



at Pathari, in the Native State of Bhopal in Central India. According to this 



inscription a king of the Rastrakutas named Parabala was 



Length of reign, reigning in the Vikrama year 917 = 861 a.d. + This Parabala 



and relations. 00 j y 1 



is most probably the father-in-law of Dharmmapaladeva. So 



if Parabala married his daughter to the Pala king, the latter must have had reigned 

 for a very long time. Parabala and his father were very long-lived men. His 

 father Karkaraja defeated a king named Nagavaloka, who was a contemporary of 

 Chahamana Guvaka I of Sakambhari and one of whose grants is dated in the year 

 813 of the Vikrama era =756 a.d. 5 Dharmmapala had a son named Tribhuvanapala, 

 who is mentioned in the Kha'impur grant as the dutaka, and who seems to have died 

 during the lifetime of his father as Dharmmapala was succeeded by his second son 

 Devapaladeva after a reign of about forty years. 



No coins of Dharmmapala have been discovered as yet, and the only other 

 inscription of Dharmmapala besides the Khalimpur grant is a small votive inscrip- 

 tion of the 26th year of his reign, found at Bodh-Gaya in the Gaya district of 

 Bengal. The sculpture, on which the inscription has been incised, was removed to 

 the Indian Museum in 1895 when Mr. Broadley's collection of antiquities was sent to 

 Calcutta by the order of the Government of Bengal. The inscription was published 

 in 1908 by Pandit Nilmoni Chakravartti, Professor of Pali and Sanskrit in the 

 Presidency College, Calcutta. It records the erection of a four-faced Mahadeva in a 

 place called Campasayatana, by a man named Kesava, the son of a sculptor named 

 Ujvala, and the excavation of a tank at the cost of three thousand drammas, in 

 the 26th regnal year of Dharmmapala. tt His Khalimpur grant was issued from 

 Pataliputra. It is well known that he is the king of Bengal repeatedly referred to 

 in the Rastrakuta and Gurjara records. In the Monghyr grant of his son Devapala, 

 Dharmmapala 's followers are said to have bathed at Kedara, and at the mouth of 

 the Ganges during his expeditions, and this bears out the statements made in the 



1 Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 103. 1 Nach. Kon. Ges. der Wiss. zu Gottengen, 1905, p. 303. 



3 Ind. Ant., Vol. XXI, p. 255. * Epi. Ind., Vol. IX, p. 250. 6 ibid., p. 231, note 4. 



6 J.A.S.B., Vol. IV, New Series, p. 102. 



