/ 



FROM BENARES. 463 



repeated by traditionary exaggeration has converted this kingdom into the 

 empire of all India, and the contest for this imperial throne according to 

 Wilford, (ix. 171,) was the cause of the last great war in India: that a 

 ■war was excited by a dispute for pre-eminence between the princes of Dehli 

 and Kanoj, inflamed by their being members of different rival tribes, is 

 probable enough; but it can scarcely be believed to have had much influ- 

 ence on the general state of Hindustan : we cannot suppose that either 

 Bengal or the Dekhin was conscious of a struggle between two princes, 

 who appear only to have shared the dominion of a comparatively limited 

 tract with many others, possibly subordinate but not dependant, and who 

 appeared in the field against the Mohammedans, as the allies not the mas- 

 ters, of the princes of Merat, Gualior, Kalinjer, Mathura, and Bindraban.' 



That Kanoj however had long been a city of great celebrity and the capi- 

 tal of an independant and important state is undeniable : as Kanyakubja 

 it is the subject of an ancient though absurd legend in the Ramayana, and 

 as Kanogiza it has a place with something like accuracy in the Tables of 

 Ptolemy. It gives a designation to a principal division of the Brahmanical 

 tribe, and is said in the history of Cashmir to have supplied that province 

 with Brahmans at a very early date: according to Firdausi, a king of Kanoj 

 called Shankal, was cotemporary with Behram Gor or reigned in the 5th 

 century. Col. Wilford says the whole of India was subject to the princes of 

 Kanoj in the 8th century, (ix. 200,) but according to the Raja Taringini 

 Yasoverma who was prince of Kanoj in the beginning of the eighth centu- 

 ry was dispossessed of his dominions by Lalitaditya, sovereign of Kashmir : 

 this subjugation must however have been merely temporary for a prince 

 named Sdhasanlca must have occupied the throne about the middle of the 

 tenth century as Mahes'ivara the author of the Viswaprakasa in the year till, 

 makes himself sixth in descent from the physician of that monarch: in the 

 early part of the eleventh century Mohammedan writers call the king of Ka- 

 noj Kora: this prince after being overcome by Mahmud was admitted to 

 an alliance with him, and in consequence incurred the enmity of his coun- 



