Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/72

50 that the descendants of the Anabhiṣikta members of the Rāj family, become Bābus, and these Bābus are employed as ministerial officers.

More interesting seems to me the history of the Vaidyas or Bengal, who like the Kāyasthas are in no way inferior to the Brahmaṇs, in intellectual powers and moral virtues. The term Vaidya, we all know, is singularly peculiar to Bengal, to indicate a caste; this term for medical profession may be assumed, by any men of any caste from Brahmaṇ downwards, in other parts of India. It is an interesting history, how a high class of people got Vaidya as a caste-name in Bengal. As the Vaidyas acknowledge universally, because of their family tradition, that their origin has to be traced from the Sena Rājās of Bengal, we should see what history we may get of the origin of these Senas.

That the Senas described themselves as Karṇāṭa Kṣatriyas, i.e. the Kṣatriyas of the Dravidian country, is well known. Referring to these Senas and the rulers of their kin, who once became supreme in the Northern Mithilā, Mr. R. D. Banerjee writes in the Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. V, No. 3:—

The invasion of the Coḷa King did not change the political divisions of the country, but it left one permanent mark in the shape of a body of settlers, who occupied the thrones of Bengal and Mithilā, as the Sena and Karṇāṭa dynasties, during the latter days of the Pālas (p. 73). To unveil the mystery of the warlike people who came with Rājendra Coḷa and settled in Western Bengal,