43 
1894.] U. C. Batavyal— Copper-plate Grant of Dharmap&la. 
counts of the early genealogical writers, who place the reign of Adi^ura 
shortly before the rise of the Pala dynasty, the conjecture would seem 
to be well founded. 
We learn from the copper-plate that a time of great commotion and 
political turmoil preceded the rise of the Pala dynasty. The country was 
torn with internecine war, and the people everywhere longed for a strong 
ruler who would restore peace and order. The sceptre of QUaditya had 
fallen into weaker hands, and in the midst of these disorders Gopala 
rose to supreme power in Gauda, in the latter part of the 8th century, 
and was everywhere welcomed by the subject people as a great deliver¬ 
er. By Gauda here we must understand the five Gaudas, comprising 
North Bihar and Oudh. Gopala was succeeded by his son Dharma Pala, 
who threw a bridge of boats across the Ganges, and with a host of 
cavalry, “ Supplied by the many vassal kings of the North,” overran 
the country on the south bank of the great river, and established him¬ 
self at Pataliputra. Towards the west his victories extended over 
Kannauj, which, it would seem, was at that time, reduced to a state 
of subjection to foreign princes, viz., the Bhojas, the Madras, &c., and 
which he liberated from them, restoring its king to his paternal throne. 
The kingdom of Paundravardhana had, we find, become absorbed 
into the dominions of Dharma Pala: for the villages to which the grant 
relates were all situated within that kingdom which now became part 
and parcel of Gauda. 
Bhatta Narayana, the grantee, is well-known to the learned as the 
author of the drama Veni Samhara, the last great work of the imaginative 
art in classical Sanskrit, in point of time. The drama is largely quoted 
in the Avaloka of Dhanika—the commentator of the Da$a-rupaha— 
who according to Dr. Hall was living about the middle of the 10th 
century. At the end of this drama there is a verse, in which the poet 
deplores the decay of poetry in his age. The royal patrons of poetry 
he writes, “have flown away like swans.” 1 Is this an allusion to 
Harsa Vardhana, the royal patron of Bhatta Vana ? The Veni Satnhara, 
itself, may be nothing more or less than a patriotic though covert 
appeal to the poet’s countrymen, the Pancalas, to remember their 
disgrace, as the daughter of the old king of Pancala, the heroine of the 
1 The entire verse runs as follows :— 
TP5TWJ1 TIT¬ 
BIT *r *tr-* i 
wz fin:; 
