THE PALAS OF BENGAL. 95 



had no meaning to other persons. The author had great facilities for the collection 

 of information as his father was Ramapala's Sandhivigrahika. The comparison of 

 Ramapala with Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, seems to have been habitual with 

 the courtiers of the nth century a.d. A verse of the Kamauli grant of Vaidyadeva 

 mentions the conquest of Mithila and a king named Bhima, and at the same time 

 compares Ramapala with Rama : — 



Tena yena jagat=traye janaka-bhu-labhad-yathavad = ya$ah. 



Ksauni-nayaka-Bhima Ravana-vadhad-yiiddharnnav = ollamghanat \\. 



verse 4.' 



According to Lama Taranatha, Yaksapala was a colleague of Ramapala. 2 It 

 is stated definitely that this prince was the son of Ramapala who was the son of 

 Hastipaia and was the last prince of the Pala family. 3 An inscription of a king 

 [Narendra) named Yaksapala was found at Gaya by Sir Alexander Cunningham and 

 published by the late Dr. Kielhorn in 1887. But the king mentioned in this record 

 cannot be the same person as that mentioned by Lama Taranatha as Ramapala's son, 

 as the genealogy of this Yaksapala is given in the inscription. He is the son of 



Visvaditya, who built the temple of Gadadhara/ of 

 i\.ksayavata and of Prapitamahesvara, the grandson of 

 Sudraka. The family was a very important one during the reigns of Nayapala 

 Vigrahapala and his sons. The following inscriptions of the family have been dis- 

 covered at Gaya : — 



(1) Inscription on the gate of the modern Krsna-Dvarika temple, recording the 

 erection of a temple of Visnu by a low class Brahmana named Visvaditya in the 15th 

 year of Nayapaladeva. 1 



(2) Inscription inside the small temple dedicated to Narasirhha in the court- 

 yard of the Visnupada temple recording the erection of a temple to Gadadhara and 

 several other minor shrines — -by one Visvarupa of the same lineage as Visvaditya 

 in No. 1." 



(3) Inscription broken into two parts in the wall of small shrine under the 

 Aksayavata at Gaya, recording the erection of two temples of Siva — Vatesa and 

 Prapitamahesvara — by the same Visvaditya. 1 



(4) Inscription under the image of Gadadhara at Gaya — begins with an invoca- 

 tion to the Sun-god and mentioning Paritosa, the grandfather of Visvaditya/ 



(5) The Sitala temple inscription of Yaksapala recording the erection of a 

 temple dedicated to various deities and digging a tank named Uttaramanasa.'* 



The last inscription was published in 1887 and at that time the late Dr. Kielhorn 

 was of opinion that " the characters of the inscription are Devanagarl, or to be more 

 particular, a kind of Devanagarl, which appears to have been current in the 12th 

 century a.d." But if the characters of this inscription are compared with those of 

 the Narasirhha temple inscription of Nayapaladeva, on the one hand, and the 



1 Epi. Ind., Vol II. p. 351. 1 Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXVIII, p. 243. * Ibid., Vol. XVI, p. 64. 



+ See ante, p. 79. 6 J.A.S.B. 1900, pt. I, pp. 192-93. ti See ante, p. 78. 



1 See ante, p. 8;. -i See ante, p. 82. H *nd. Ant., Vol. XVI, p. 64. 



