Page:The Pālas of Bengal.djvu/16

46 the king Vigrahapāla III was born in the race of the Sun. The Rāmacarita and the Bengali poem Dharmmamaṅgala of Ghanarāma give a different account altogether. This account is given very fully in the Kaṅurpālā of Ghanarāma's work, according to which the kings of the Pāla dynasty after Dharmmapāla were really the descendants of the Sea-god. This tradition is not very coherent as Mahamahopadhyaya Hara Prasada Sastri has shown. In the Rāmacarita, king Dharmmapāla is mentioned as "the light of the race of the Sea." Thus the Rāmacarita corroborates the tradition embodied in Ghanarāma's work to some extent. It shows that the origin of the new line of kings was remembered by the people long after their accession and even after their fall. The descent from the Sea most probably indicates that the forefathers of this line of kings came from the Sea and in the absence of a plausible account of their ancestry became known as the children of the Sea-God.