1878.] 
and the Sena Bdjds of Bengal. 
391 
It is obvious that the several authorities quoted above all refer to the 
same dynasty, and the question therefore arises—how to reconcile their dis¬ 
crepancies P The list of the Ain-i-Akbari and that of Taranath, may be 
left out of consideration, as they are founded upon tradition, and, in dealing 
with long lists of names, tradition is always open to mistakes. But the case 
is different with patents issued during the lifetime of the grantors, and 
which, from that circumstance, are naturally expected to be accurate in so 
important a matter as the names of the immediate ancestors of royal per¬ 
sonages. Discrepancies in such cases cannot easily be explained away, and 
in the present instance the difficulty has been greatly enhanced by some of 
the patents available being imperfect and mutilated. It is the farthest 
from my wish to cast any reflection on the translators whose works I have 
to review ; I have high respect for their ability and profound scholarship ; 
but where the originals they had to work upon were smudgy, obliterated, and 
partially illegible, their translations cannot be implicitly relied upon. 
The first discrepancy I have to notice is in the name of the founder of 
the dynasty. According to three inscriptions, of which two are in a perfect 
state of preservation, and tradition as recorded by Taranath, it is Go-pala ; 
but in a fourth, and that the most defective, it is Loka-pdla • and the Ain-i- 
Akbari changes it to Bhu-jpdla. Assuming Colebrooke’s reading of the 
Dinajpur plate to be in this part correct, I can account for the difference 
by attributing it to the exigency of metre. The genealogy is given in verse, 
and the necessity for a word of two syllables, I think, induced the convey¬ 
ancer to change the first part of the name from the monosyllable go to 
the dissyllable lolca, the meaning remaining unchanged —go = ‘ earth’ and 
lolca = ‘region’ or earth. The bhu of the Ain-i-Akbari has the same signifi¬ 
cation. It might appear repulsive to an Englishman that Mr. Black should 
change into Mr. Melanos, to suit the convenience of a poet, but in the 
middle ages it was not uncommon in Europe to translate English names into 
Latin even in prose epitaphs, and in the present day poets not unfrequently 
change the quantity of proper names to suit their rhyme. In Sanskrit 
the practice of using synonyms either for the sake of metre, or for that of 
rhetoric, was at one time not unknown. If this explanation be not accepta¬ 
ble, it might be supposed that the person referred to had two aliases ; and the 
writer of the Dinajpur plate used one name, that of the Ain i Akbari another. 
It is worthy of note that the writer of the Bhagalpur monument was only 
five generations removed from the founder of the dynasty, whereas that 
of the Dinajpur plate was separated from him by over twice that interval, and 
greater faith must be reposed on him who was the nearest to the founder. 
The second name is the same in all the three inscriptions in which it 
occurs, and calls for no remark. The third, however, is not so. In the 
Bhagalpur record, which is the most perfect, it is Vak-pala, but in the 
