Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/117

II.] giving the solution of a very knotty problem in the history of Bengal. The Sena Kings of Bengal were formerly believed to have belonged to the Vaidya or medical caste. In all the genealogical works written by the Brāhmins, Vaidyas and Kāyasṭhas, they were described as Vaidyas. In fact Rājā Rajendra Lal Mitra, who was the first to dispute the point of their caste, had to admit, "The universal belief in Bengal is that the Senas were of medical caste and families of Vaidyas are not wanting in the present day who trace their lineage from Vallāla Sen." But in the copper-plate inscriptions of the Sena Kings, lately discovered in various parts of the country, they have been found to declare themselves as Brāhma-Kṣatriyas. In the face of their own declaration on this subject, the traditions and written accounts, which were formerly considered as perfectly reliable, lost all authority, and the Sena Kings were generally accepted by scholars as having been Kṣatriyas. Now the descendants of those Brāhmins, Kāyasṭhas and persons of other castes, on whom Vallāla Sen had bestowed Kaulinya, knew him to have belonged to the Vaidya caste, and they were in possession of written records substantiating this point. Yet nothing was now considered more reliable than a declaration on the part of the princes themselves as to the caste to which they belonged, preserved in the lasting impression borne by the copper-plates. The Kārikā, to which we have referred, however, unravels the history of these aspirations and proves them to have been