16 



Asutosh Gupta — Ruins and Antiquities of Rdmpdl. [No. 1, 



phrase as ' the auspicious lord of Gour.' It is well known that the 

 Sen Rajas, at least some of them, wore S'aivas, or worshippers of S'iva, 

 and the phrase may mean ' the lord of Gaur, a worshipper of S'iva 

 (S'ankaia).' Bnt none of these interpretations seem to me to be appro- 

 priate. I am of opinion that the word sankara here is an euphuism for 

 sanhara, with a dental s, and then it must mean a mixed race, a sug- 

 gestion which has been noticed in Dr. Mitra's paper. This meaning 

 will be a very appropriate one. Mistakes of a palatal s for a dental one 

 and vice versa are not uncommon in the old inscriptions, and when we 

 remember that the inscription in question was written in the Tirhvit or 

 Gaur type, which represents an intermediate stage of orthogiaphy 

 between the Kutila and the modern Bengali character, the commission 

 of such an error is all the more likely. S'ridhara Swaruin, the annotator 

 of the Bhagavata, mentions the commencement of kings of the Varna- 

 sankara or the mixed castes in India in his time. 



In his own work the Danasagara,* Ballal Sen does not call the 

 Sen dynasty Kshatriya, but applies the epithet ■^■sj-^ilX'^Eq', which 

 means ' following the practices of Kshatriyas '. So iu the Gth stanza of 

 the inscription iu the copper-plate found in the Sundarbans, the epithet 

 of ^lajTSj^i^, which virtually means the same thing as 'g^Tf^'gjil, 

 is applied to Lachhman Sen. It therefore appears that the Sen Rajas 

 are never distinctly described as Kshatriyas. Does not this show 

 that they were not pure Kshatriyas but belonged to a mixed casto ? 

 If they were Kshatriyas, why is it not so stated in unequivocal terms ? 

 There is a legend current in Vikrampur that Ballal Sen was born of 

 a Brahniana father, the river-god Brahmaputra, who visited his mother in 

 a dream in the form of a Brahmana. Does not this indicate the mixed 

 nature of the Sen race ? 



I will now briefly consider the evidence on which the theory 

 that the Sen Rajas were Vaidyas is based. In the various Kidupanjil.-as 

 or genealogies of the Ghataks as well as in the Laghubharata, Adisur, 

 Ballal Sen, and other Rajas of the Sen family have been distinctly 

 described as members of the Vaidya caste. It is very likely that Devati- 

 vra Gkataka, Kavikanthahara and other Ghatakas of the Varendra 

 Brahmanas, who lived about four centimes ago and composed the 

 genealogies, knew the true caste of the Sen Rajas. 



My contention is that the inscriptions of the Sen Rajas are not 



* [In his Boole of Indian Eras, p. 77, General Sir A. Crumiiigliam ascribes this 

 work to " Halayuclha, the spiritual adviser of Lakshmana Sena," referring as his 

 authority to Raja Rajendralala Mitra, in his paper on the Sena kings, iu the 

 Journal A. S, B., vol.XXXIV (1865), p. 137. Bui, this is an error, Br. Mitra there 

 quotes a Sanskrit verse, ascribing the work tu Ballal Sen. Kn.] 



