Page:Report of a Tour Through the Bengal Provinces of Patna, Gaya, Mongir and Bhagalpur; The Santal Parganas, Manbhum, Singhbhum and Birbhum; Bankura, Raniganj, Bardwan and Hughli in 1872-73.djvu/46

Rh perhaps, in the form of a brief summary; while the details have all been added by the author of the play, who, as Professor Wilson conjectures, lived about the time of the Muhammadan invasions. Naturally, in composing the details, the author would be guided by the existiug features of the country whenever they entered into the plot; precisely as, in ascribing fabulous antiquity to various personages, the Hindus have yet recorded their birth, or some great action of theirs, as having taken place under certain conjunctions and positions of the heavenly bodies which could not have taken place at the time indicated, but which doubtless took place at the time the book describing the event was composed. This furnishes a means of arriving at a rough approximation of the dates of various compositions, and it has ere now been largely made use of by many writers; though not always used with the necessary caution, the method is unexceptionable. In the present instance, had any hint been conveyed in the play, or elsewhere, that it was an adaptation of a written record in existence before, I should have had to examine carefully whether such pre-existing account was or was not likely to describe transactions in such detail as to fix the position of the River Son; but as there is no such hint or mention, and the plot of the play bears on the face of it marks of having been a production of the author’s imaginative or inventive powers, such examination, as I have above indicated, becomes needless and indeed impossible. Professor Wilson, on the plot of this play, page 127, Volume II, says “although there is occasionally some want of probability in their execution,” clearly showing that in his opinion the details of the play have been produced by the author’s ingenuity and imaginative powers.

It is then clear that the change in the course of the Son took place shortly before or at the period of the great Muhammadan invasions, when the author of the Mudra Râkhshasa flourished.

After this time mentions of the Son are frequent, and with it is often mentioned Maner, a small town at its junction with the Ganges. Maner appears to have been founded by the Muhammadans, and was the capital of a parganah named "Maner Sheikh Yahya" (Elliot’s India, page 364). His name is clearly Muhammadan, which induces me to suppose that the parganah comprised waste or newly formed lands, which had no name before, not having been in existence. I suppose the circumstances to have been these: