454 SANSCRIT INSCRIPTIONS 



tryinen. He fell a sacrifice to their combined resentment but his death 

 brought back the Ghaznavi prince to the Doab, and he appears to have ex- 

 acted severe retribution : the confusion consequent upon his march through 

 the Doab to Benares and even to Behar if not to Bengal (ix. 203) afforded a 

 favourable opportunity for the rise of an enterprising character such as we 

 have already suggested Yasovigraha to have been. Amidst these troubles 

 the power of Kanoj must have especially suffered, and it is not astonish- 

 ing therefore that in some twenty or thirty years from the transactions 

 adverted to, it should have become the prize of a new foe and owned Sri 

 Chandra-deva as its lord. 



The inscription states that this prince visited the Tirthas of Kasi, Kusika 

 and Northern Kosala, and the expressions used as well as the character of 

 the individual, indicate his visiting Benares, Gorakhpur, Til-hut and Oude 

 as much for purposes of conquest as of pilgrimage. It was this prince 

 then who in all probability overturned the authority of that dynasty which 

 seems so long to have exercised an extensive sway in gangetic Hindustan; 

 the Pdla princes of Gaur : in that case however the Sri Deva-pala of the 

 Mongir inscription could not have lived later than the Mohammedan inva- 

 sion as supposed by Col. Wilford, (ix. 205 and 208.) as unquestionably the 

 power of the race was too much curbed by the new princes of Kanoj for 

 those of Gour to have undertaken an invasion of the Panjab as mentioned 

 in that inscription : without therefore concluding that the date as printed in 

 the Researches is correct it seems likely that Deva-pala Deva was long 

 anterior to the Palas of Benares and the disappearance of this name from 

 amongst the princes of India. If as supposed by Col. Wilford the Sthira 

 Pala of the Benares inscription (vol. ix.) is the Dhir Pal of Abulfazl (Ay. 

 Akberi, ii. 24) and consequently was followed by a succession of princes of 

 the same family appellation, they must have reigned over limits much more 

 contracted than those they governed when the buildings at Sarnath were 

 erected: the identification is however very doubtful for the lists of Abulfazl 

 give fifteen princes between Dhirpal and the conquest of Bengal by Bakhtyar 



