1889.] Asutosh Gupta — Ruins and Antiquities of Rampal. 19 



took a pigeon in his coat and proclaimed that the bird's return to the palace 

 without him would mean his death and serve as a signal for the females of 

 the house to perish in the flames to save their caste and chastity. Ballal 

 Sen came to the faqir and struck him with the sword, hut the faqir was 

 invulnerable and the sword would not cut his skin. After concluding 

 his prayers, the faqir asked Ballal what broiight him there. " To kill 

 you, " replied the king. The faqir asked him whether he would embrace 

 the Muhammadan faith or not. The king of course answered in the ne- 

 gative. The faqir said : " It is so ordained that I shall die at your 

 hands. But no sword other than my own will cut me. So take this 

 sword and kill me." Ballal took the sword thus offered and killed the 

 faqir at one stroke. His body was cut into two parts. His head flew 

 to Ohittagong, where there is still a prayer-house consecrated to him. 

 His body was buried at Rampal, and the mosque was subsequently 

 erected over his remains by the Badshah after the Muhammadan con- 

 quest of Bengal. After the death of the faqir, Ballal went to the tank 

 to bathe and purify himself. As he left his gory clothes on the bank, 

 the pigeon, unobserved, flew to the palace, and at this signal the females 

 of the royal household threw themselves into the fire and perished. Soon 

 finding that the pigeon had flown away, Ballal rode to his palace, but 

 it was too late. Finding that all his family was killed and life was not 

 worth living, he threw himself into the fire and perished in the flames. 



Such is the legendary account of the death of Ballal Sen and the 

 fall of Rampal. The city appears to have been abandoned after his 

 death, aud I think there is a substratum of truth in the legend. It is 

 a. historical fact that the Arabs were the first race of Muhammadans 

 who invaded Hindustan, aud it is not unlikely that their missionary 

 expeditions penetrated as far as Bengal in the eleventh century and 

 fought the Sen kings who had no standing army. The Pal kings re- 

 gained their ascendancy in this part of Bengal after the death of Ballal. 

 It has been asserted, and not without some show of reason, that Laksh- 

 maniya, after his flight from Nadiya, took refuge in old Vikrampur, 

 and he and some of his descendants lived in Rampal or Sunargaou, 

 and maintained their sway in this part of Bengal during the early years 

 of Muhammadan rule. It is mentioned in the Bengali book on the Sen 

 Rajas of Bengal by Kailash Chandra Sinha, that probably there was a 

 second Ballal Sen who reigned after the Muhammadan conquest. It 

 first struck me that if there was a second Ballal Sen, he must be the 

 prince who reigned at Rampal and killed the faqir Ba-A'dam and after- 

 wards himself perished in the funeral pyre, thereby putting an end to 

 the Sen dynasty. But the theory is not based on any reliable evidence, 

 while tradition distinctly says that the Ballal Sen who killed this faqir 



