Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/389

PALA AND SENA DYNASTIES 343 ments closing the outlets in a circle of hills, was his noblest monument, and continued to testify to the skill of his engineers until the fifteenth century, when the dam was cut by order of a Mohammedan king, and the water drained off. The bed of the lake is now a fertile plain intersected by the Indian Mid- land Railway. About 1053 A. D. this accomplished prince succumbed to an attack by the confederate Kings of Gujarat and Chedi, and the glory of his house departed. 1 His dynasty lasted as a purely local power until the begin- ning of the thirteenth century, when it was superseded by chiefs of the Tomara clan, who were in their turn followed by Chauhan rajas, from whom the crown passed to Mohammedan kings in 1401. Akbar sup- pressed the local dynasty in 1569, and incorporated Malwa into the Mogul empire. VH PALA AND SENA DYNASTIES OF BIHAR AND BENGAL Harsha, when at the height of his power, exercised a certain amount of control as suzerain over the whole of Bengal, even as far east as the distant kingdom of Kamarupa, or Assam, and seems to have possessed full sovereign authority over Western and Central Bengal. After his death, the local rajas no doubt asserted their independence; but, except for the strange story of Arjuna and Wang-Hiuen-tse, related in the thirteenth 1 Bhoja Paramara of Dhara must not be confounded with the numerous dis- tinct rajas of the same name. Bhoja, a King of Kanauj late in the ninth century, was a specially notable personage.