105 
1898.] Dr. Hoernle —Tioo Copper-plate Grants of Ratnapala. 
he was the father of Harjara. On the other hand, the Nowgong grant 
ignores Pralambha altogether, and commences the dynasty with Harjara. 
Nor is there any' thing in the latter grant to connect him with Naraka's 
dynasty; on the contrary the non-Hindu sound of the name Harjara 
points to a foreigner. I am unable to suggest any satisfactory solution; 
but the weight of the evidence seems to me to be for both dynasties 
(Cala Stambha’s and Harjara’s or Pralambha’s) being those of foreign 
invaders, though they may have occasionally preferred a claim to 
belong to the ancient indigenous line of kings. 
The Pala dynasty distinctly put forward that claim in both the 
JBargaon and Gauhati grants ; though it may still remain a question 
whether the claim was well founded. I may here notice a correction, 
in the Gauhati grant, Plate I, reverse, line 13, the puzzling name 
Kaumra should be Bhanma or ‘ Earth-born,’ a name of Naraka. I 
may also notice, that the Bargaon grant distinctly states that Durjaya, 
which the Nowgong grant describes as a nag art or ‘ townlet ’ and as the 
vasati or ‘residence’ of the king, received that name from Ratnapala, 
who either founded it or made it, into a fortified place, and fixed it as 
the residence of his dynasty. The fact that the Pala kings resided 
in the fort of Durjaya, and the Harjara dynasty in the “ancestral 
camp” of Haruppe^vara, while yet both dynasties called themselves 
“ Lords of Pragjyotisa,” may perhaps justify the conclusion that in 
their time Pragjyotisa, which was originally the name of a town, had 
become the name of a country. 
Of Ratnapala it is related that he came into hostile contact with 
the kings of Gurjara, Gauda, Kerala, and the Dekkan, and with the 
Bahikas and Taikas. Assuming that Ratna.pala’s age has been rightly 
fixed at about 10L0 to 1050 A.D., the king of Gurjara of that period 
would be the Western Calukyan king Jayasimha III or Somecvara I. 
By the Kerala king the Cola Rajaraja is perhaps intended. The 
Gauda king may have been Mahipala or Nayapala of the Pala dynasty 
of Bengal and llihar. To whom the term “king of Daksinatya” or the 
Dekkan may refer, I do not know. The Bahikas and Taikas are 
generally taken to be Trans-Indus people, those of Balkh and the 
Tajiks. But, as will be seen from the next paragraph, the panegyrist 
probably only wished to^parade his familiarity with Sanskrit litera¬ 
ture, and further attempts at identification would be waste of labour. 
There is again a curiosity to be noted in the Ratnapala grants, 
similar to that in the Nowgong grant (see ante , Vol. LXVI, p. 288), 
the discovery of which is due to Dr. Th. Bloch, the Society’s Honorary 
Philological Secretary. This is the existence of plagiarisms, or at 
least imitations, from Baua’s Harsa Carita. The following passages, 
J. i. Jl 
