402 
[No. 4, 
Vestiges of the Kings of Gwalior. 
devotions. The family encomiast accords to his son Bhuvanapala, 
the usual attributes of greatness, but has nothing specific to record 
of him besides his having had “a son of great beauty, unsurpassed 
by Ivarna in charity and the rival of Arjuna in archery.” The 
name of this worthy was Devapala, who bequeathed the family sceptre 
to his son Padmapala. Several verses are devoted to record the glories 
and charities of Padma, his expedition to the South (Dekkan), his 
wars with demons (Bakshasas), and his dedication of temples to 
Brahma, Vishnu, Lakshmi and Narasinha. He died childless, leaving 
his principality to Mahipala the son of his brother Suryapala. Nearly 
a third of the inscription is devoted to recount the glories of the 
last named sovereign. He rivalled all the gods and goddesses of 
the Hindu pantheon and surpassed every eminent object in nature 
to which a prurient imagination could hold him in comparison. 
During his reign a figure of Padmanatha—a Jain divinity—came 
suddenly into existence, and to it he dedicated the temple by the 
doorway of which the inscription under notice is recorded. He 
caused a range of rooms to be built around the temple for the use of 
the officiating priests, and cut flights of steps in the solid rock to 
decorate the whole. Assignments of land in the district of Brahmapura 
were made for the support of the temple, and a charity for feeding 
the poor, and a large number of jewels and gold and silver utensils 
were presented for the use of the idol. Among the donations, men¬ 
tion is made of some jewellery and utensils for the idols of Aniruddha, 
Barnana and Vishnu, but how this allusion to Hindu divinities came 
to be made in a Jain record, put up by the entrance of a Jain temple, 
it is difficult to divine. From Vajra-dama to Mahipala the seven 
successive descendants of Lakshmana oscillated between Hinduism 
and Jainism, but in Mahipala we find the same individual dividing 
his faith equally between the two adverse creeds. 
The date of Vajra-dama has been recorded at 977 A. C., that of 
Mahipala 1093 of the same era, giving 115 years for the seven, or an 
average of 16f- years for each reign. If the date of Vajra’s accession 
and that of Mahipala’s death could be ascertained, this average would 
be slightly increased ; but as it is, it affords a close approximation 
to the average of Indian reigns ascertained by James Prinsep. 
The successor of Mahipala was Bhuvanapala alias Manoratha, who 
is described as a Vaishnava who resided at Mathura and was a pro- 
