Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/80

50 and King Haripāl was ultimately forced to submit. Kāneḍa was, however, given in marriage to Lāu Sen with the consent of the Emperor. But Lāu Sen's great achievement, was the conquest of Dhākur. Ichhāi Ghoṣa, who had baffled all attempts of the Emperor to bring him to submission, by destroying the vast armies sent at various times for the purpose, was killed by Lāu Sen in a pitched battle.

Besides these historical events, the poems give accounts of very mean plots and machinations to kill Lāu Sen, by Māhudya,—the brother-in-law and prime minister of the Emperor of Gauḍa. Lāu Sen was Māhudya's nephew, being his sister's son. The marriage of his sister Rañjāvatī with Karṅa Sen, who was old and decrepit, had not been approved of by him and though it had been celebrated under the orders of the Emperor, yet her brother tried his best to dissuade Rañjā from going to Maynā-gaḍa with her husband. Rañjā did not listen to her brother's counsel, but firmly told him, that as Karṅa Sen was now her lord,—young or old, it mattered not to her,—she was bound to follow him wherever he might go. In great anger Māhudya cursed his sister, saying that no child would be born to her. Hence when her son was actually born, and prince Lāu Sen grew to be a handsome young hero with courage and spirit for any enterprise, a deep seated rage rankled in his uncle's bosom. There are hundreds of incidents in the poems, describing the plots to assassinate Lāu Sen formed by Māhudya and last though not least was a command issued by the Emperor of Gauḍa at the instigation of the prime minister, calling upon