41-598: Shashanka ( IAST : Śaśāṅka, Sanskrit : शशाङ्क Bengali : শশাঙ্ক) was the first independent king of a unified polity in the Bengal region, called the Gauda Kingdom . He reigned in the 7th century, some historians place his rule between c. 600 and 636/7 CE , whereas other sources place his reign between 590 and 625 CE. Shashanka, is credited with creating the Bengali calendar. The term Bangabda (Bangla year)
82-568: A macron ). Vocalic (syllabic) consonants, retroflexes and ṣ ( / ʂ ~ ɕ ~ʃ/ ) have an underdot . One letter has an overdot: ṅ ( /ŋ/ ). One has an acute accent : ś ( /ʃ/ ). One letter has a line below: ḻ ( / ɭ / ) (Vedic). Unlike ASCII -only romanisations such as ITRANS or Harvard-Kyoto , the diacritics used for IAST allow capitalisation of proper names. The capital variants of letters never occurring word-initially ( Ṇ Ṅ Ñ Ṝ Ḹ ) are useful only when writing in all-caps and in Pāṇini contexts for which
123-454: A "warlike monarch." His endless invasions and conquests tell of a king intent upon growing his kingdom. Sen describes Shashanka as a 'military adventurer', not unlike Yasodharman . But for a pre-medieval Indian king, endless battles, regicide, revenge and intrigue are not uncommon. Like many pre-medieval Indian kings, Shashanka is said to have grasped the importance of consolidating his position. He formed astute political alliances, notably with
164-616: A Gauda king, possibly Jayanaga . Whether Shashanka was a feudatory under the Maukharis or the Guptas is not known. By 605 C.E. following Mahasenagupta's death, Shashanka had established what became known as the Gauda Kingdom . From there, he issued gold coins to celebrate his triumph, and came to be addressed as Maharajadhiraja (king of great kings). Not many historical references to the Gauda Army are available. Like its predecessor,
205-509: A century of scholarly usage in books and journals on classical Indian studies. By contrast, the ISO 15919 standard for transliterating Indic scripts emerged in 2001 from the standards and library worlds. For the most part, ISO 15919 follows the IAST scheme, departing from it only in minor ways (e.g., ṃ/ṁ and ṛ/r̥)—see comparison below. The Indian National Library at Kolkata romanization , intended for
246-433: A font, etc. It can be enabled in the input menu in the menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many programs. Equivalent tools – such as gucharmap ( GNOME ) or kcharselect ( KDE ) – exist on most Linux desktop environments. Users of SCIM on Linux based platforms can also have
287-429: A grudge", and that it was led by Shashanka. Now because the ruling dynasties of Kanyakubja and Sthaniswara were related by matrimony, Thanesar king Rajyavardhana immediately set out with 10,000 cavalrymen to recapture Kanyakubja and avenge his sister Rajyashri. Rajyavardhana fought and killed Devagupta on the way. As he continued towards Kanyakubja, he came across Shashanka's army. c. 606 C.E. Rajyavardhana
328-646: A transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the 19th century from suggestions by Charles Trevelyan , William Jones , Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised by the Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress , in September 1894. IAST makes it possible for
369-582: Is a part of Harsha's Invasion of Bengal, Shashanka marched towards Karnasubarna and sieged it, Harsha's general fled to the East Bengal from the battlefield and by this Harshavardhana got a heavy damage from the side of Gauda Kingdom. Shashanka first established himself in Gauda and set his eyes on Magadha. Magadha at that time was under Maukhari rule, and Shashanka vowed to free it again. Sen (1977) has shown that none other than Shashanka could have defeated
410-455: Is an adventure thriller and the third film in the Sona Da franchise. The movie is based on the discovery of a riddle by the lead trio which leads to a hidden treasure of King Shashanka. It stars Abir Chatterjee , Arjun Chakrabarty and Ishaa Saha in lead roles. International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration ( IAST ) is
451-782: Is by setting up an alternative keyboard layout . This allows one to hold a modifier key to type letters with diacritical marks. For example, alt + a = ā. How this is set up varies by operating system. Linux/Unix and BSD desktop environments allow one to set up custom keyboard layouts and switch them by clicking a flag icon in the menu bar. macOS One can use the pre-installed US International keyboard, or install Toshiya Unebe's Easy Unicode keyboard layout. Microsoft Windows Windows also allows one to change keyboard layouts and set up additional custom keyboard mappings for IAST. This Pali keyboard installer made by Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) supports IAST (works on Microsoft Windows up to at least version 10, can use Alt button on
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#1732792977066492-495: Is found in the 7th century hill fort Rohtasgarh in the small town of Rohtas in the kingdom of Magadha. The seal bore a curt inscription, "Mahasamanta Shashankadeva." Some historians believe that Shashanka began his career as a feudatory chief (maha samanta ) under Mahasenagupta, of the Later Gupta Dynasty . And that after the death of Mahasenagupta, Shashanka drove the later Guptas and other prominent nobles out of
533-556: Is found too in two Shiva temples many centuries older than Akbar era, suggesting that a Bengali calendar existed long before Akbar's time. He is the contemporary of Harsha and of Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa . His capital was at Karnasuvarna , in present-day Murshidabad in West Bengal. There are several major contemporary sources of information on his life, including copperplates from his vassal Madhavavarma (king of Ganjam ), copperplates of his rivals Harsha and Bhaskaravarman,
574-641: The Malva king, Devagupta , to counteract the combined might of the Kanauj-Thaneshwar coalition. As king, Shashanka continued many Gupta-era traditions, e.g., making land grants to Brahmins, as evidenced by the copperplate inscriptions from the era. Gold and silver coins, known as Dinars, issued by Shashanka have also been discovered. He vigorously propagated Hinduism, and had Sakadvipi Brahmins and Vedic Brahmins invited into his kingdom, presumably from Kanyakubja, among other places. Historians argue that
615-527: The Maukhari rulers of Magadha. Next, he focused on extending his kingdom to Odissa , parts of Central Provinces, and Bihar. Though Shashanka remains known, and referred to, as the Lord of Gauda , his kingdom included more than just that region. By the end of his reign, his domain stretched from Vanga to Bhuvanesha while in the east, his kingdom bordered Kamarupa . Shashanka, at first glance, appears like
656-708: The Egra Copperplate, was discovered near Kharagpur and bears no date. A 12th century text states that Shashanka destroyed the Buddhist stupas of Bengal and was an oppressor of Buddhism. Shashanka is reputed to have cut the Bodhi tree where the Buddha found enlightenment, in the Mahabodhi Temple of Bodh Gaya . R. C. Majumdar states that this account is doubtful because it was written 500 years after
697-643: The Hindu Vastu Shastra school of architecture, design and aesthetics. According to Bengali folk lore and legends, the dighi was excavated at the behest of King Shashanka. Published in 1914, Shashanka is a historical novel penned by the famous Indian archaeologist Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay , who is best known for his discoveries in Mohenjo Daro . He found Shashanka to be a potent symbol of Bengal's glorious past and future political aspirations. The Bengali movie Karnasubarner Guptodhon (2022)
738-683: The Late Gupta army, Shashanka's army had infantry and cavalry units. D. C. Sircar (1990) reports that the Gauda army also fielded a strong elephant corps in Kamarupa. Kamarupa king Bhaskaravarman describes the Gauda army as fielding a strong naval force. It appears that between 595 and 600 C.E. the Gauda army had carried out attacks against the Varman King Susthitavarman of Kamarupa (Assam). The Varman king died early in
779-546: The accounts of Banabhatta , who was a bard in the court of Harsha, and of the Chinese monk Xuanzang , and also coins minted in Shashanka's reign. Not much is known about the early life of Shashanka. Historian D K Ganguly is reported to have concluded that he was a native of Magadha. The same source reports that the historian Padmanath Bhattacharya took Shashanka to be a son of Mahasenagupta. R D Banerji concluded that he
820-417: The alleged persecution, and that it is "unsafe to accept the statements recorded in this book as historical". Radhagovinda Basak states that there is no reason to believe that this 12th century Buddhist author had cherished any ill feeling about 7th century Shashanka, and he may have had reasons to describe the events as they occurred. Following his death, Shashanka was succeeded by his son, Manava , who ruled
861-557: The area of Sanskrit studies make use of free OpenType fonts such as FreeSerif or Gentium , both of which have complete support for the full repertoire of conjoined diacritics in the IAST character set. Released under the GNU FreeFont or SIL Open Font License , respectively, such fonts may be freely shared and do not require the person reading or editing a document to purchase proprietary software to make use of its associated fonts. Jayanaga Jayanaga ( Bengali : জয়নাগ)
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#1732792977066902-449: The army and attacked Kannauj. Shashanka and his allies fought a major war with the then emperor of Thanesar , Harsha , and his allies. It is evident that Shashanka had to retreat from Kannauj. The result of the battle was inconclusive as Shashanka is documented to have retained dominion over his lands. Shashanka continued to rule Gauda with frequent attacks from Harsha, which he is known to have faced bravely. Siege of Karnasubarna This
943-536: The consumer edition since XP. This is limited to characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Characters are searchable by Unicode character name, and the table can be limited to a particular code block. More advanced third-party tools of the same type are also available (a notable freeware example is BabelMap ). macOS provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in
984-631: The convention is to typeset the IT sounds as capital letters. For the most part, IAST is a subset of ISO 15919 that merges the retroflex (underdotted) liquids with the vocalic ones ( ringed below ) and the short close-mid vowels with the long ones. The following seven exceptions are from the ISO standard accommodating an extended repertoire of symbols to allow transliteration of Devanāgarī and other Indic scripts , as used for languages other than Sanskrit. The most convenient method of inputting romanized Sanskrit
1025-568: The death of Shasanka the capital city Karnasuvarna passed in to the hands of Bhaskaravarman. However Hiuen Tsang who travelled in Bengal about 638 CE, shortly after the death of Shashanka, didn't mention the name of Karnasuvarna's ruler in his description. Hans Bakker argues that the army that set out to attack the Maukharis in Kanyakubja was more of a "confederation of all those who held
1066-506: The declining empire from multiple sides. Defence of the vast empire put a strain on the royal treasury. Though the Huns were initially driven out, the protracted invasions quickened the downfall of the Gupta kings. It may be noted that Indian archeologist Shanker Sharma has argued that the empire's end was precipitated by a massive deluge around the middle of the sixth century C.E. Near the end of
1107-586: The demise of the Gauda Kingdom. In Pala inscriptions, this time is called Matsyanyayam, implying times of 'jungle rule' when big fish swallow up small fish. It is thought that the development of the Bengali calendar took place under Shashanka's reign. Situated in present-day Midnapore , Sarasanka is a massive dighi (manmade lake) measuring over 140 acres. That is nearly equal to the total area of 80 football fields. Its aesthetics show clear influences of
1148-622: The kingdom for eight months. However, Gauda was soon divided amongst Harsha and Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa , the latter even managing to conquer Karnasuvarna . Commenting on the symbolism of Gauda, Akshay Kumar Maitreya remarked, “The whole of Gauḍa was once known as Gauḍa Desh. The Bengali language only a few days ago was known as Gauḍiya Bhasha… Even now in many parts of India Bengalis are known as Gauḍiya. So, if one attempts to write our history, one must begin with Gaur.” King Shashanka's unification, and subsequent defence, of local, disparate kingdoms including Vanga, Samatata and Gauda, against
1189-464: The mighty king Harsha , is considered seminal in the formation of the idea, and the polity, of Bengal . Many historians and commentators argue that Shashanka was the first independent king of not only Gauda, but of Bengal. As such he is a symbolic figure in the region's aspirations for independence and self-rule. Shashanka's feat in bringing the many tribes and kingdoms under a single flag becomes clear only after his death. Chaos broke out in Bengal with
1230-481: The moon on his head. The Chinese monk Xuanzang 's writings, he is mentioned as She-Shang-Kia. He is also called Śaśānka Gaur, which initially lent credence to the claim that he was descended from the later Gaur. In Sinha's Dynastic History of Magadha, the names 'Śaśānka' and 'Soma' are used interchangeably. The Gupta Empire saw a series of weak kings after the death of Skandagupta in 467 C.E. On top of that, starting circa 480 C.E. Alchon Hun armies began attacking
1271-700: The opportunity to install and use the sa-itrans-iast input handler which provides complete support for the ISO 15919 standard for the romanization of Indic languages as part of the m17n library. Or user can use some Unicode characters in Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended Additional and Combining Diarcritical Marks block to write IAST. Only certain fonts support all the Latin Unicode characters essential for
Shashanka - Misplaced Pages Continue
1312-599: The reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing popularity amongst scholars. Scholars commonly use IAST in publications that cite textual material in Sanskrit, Pāḷi and other classical Indian languages. IAST is also used for major e-text repositories such as SARIT, Muktabodha, GRETIL, and sanskritdocuments.org. The IAST scheme represents more than
1353-408: The region and established his own kingdom with his capital at Karnasubarna . Other historians like Sailendra Nath Sen are of the opinion that Mahasenagupta - already under pressure from the Maukharis (for failing to provide adequate protection) - wouldn't have knowingly appointed Shashanka to such an important position. Middleton (2015) argues in a similar vein that Shashanka served as maha samanta to
1394-471: The right side of the keyboard instead of Ctrl+Alt combination). Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually. ISO/IEC 14755 refers to this as a screen-selection entry method . Microsoft Windows has provided a Unicode version of the Character Map program (find it by hitting ⊞ Win + R then type charmap then hit ↵ Enter ) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in
1435-486: The romanisation of all Indic scripts , is an extension of IAST. The IAST letters are listed with their Devanagari equivalents and phonetic values in IPA , valid for Sanskrit , Hindi and other modern languages that use Devanagari script, but some phonological changes have occurred: * H is actually glottal , not velar . Some letters are modified with diacritics : Long vowels are marked with an overline (often called
1476-560: The sixth century, the empire was ruled over by a feeble ruler belonging to the Later Gupta dynasty , Mahasenagupta (r. c. 562-601 C.E.). The decline of the Gupta empire had left the disintegrating empire in chaos. Numerous local kings and rulers like Yashodharman emerged, and started vying for control of the many pieces of the former empire. Shashanka emerged as one of these ambitious local rulers, aiming to seize control of Gauda and its surrounding region. The first mention of Shashanka
1517-487: The transliteration of Indic scripts according to the IAST and ISO 15919 standards. For example, the Arial , Tahoma and Times New Roman font packages that come with Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions also support precomposed Unicode characters like ī . Many other text fonts commonly used for book production may be lacking in support for one or more characters from this block. Accordingly, many academics working in
1558-633: The unique Gauda style of composition developed with the development of poetry in the courts of the princes of Bengal. These princes of Bengal are none other than the Lords of Gauda. To commemorate his coronation, he started the Bengali era called 'Bangabda' in accordance with earlier Hindu tradition of year counting, which has now become a symbol of Bengal and Bengali cultural identity. Three copperplate inscriptions issued by King Shashanka have been discovered. Two of these were issued in his 8th and 10th regnal years and discovered from Midnapore. The other, known as
1599-420: The war, and his two sons stepped up. The Doobi Copper Plate inscriptions tell us that the Gauda army fought and defeated the king, and princes Bhaskaravarma of kamrupa And Supratisthita The princes are described as fighting a mighty elephantry force. The princes were brought back to Gauda as prisoners but released shortly thereafter. They supposedly returned to their kingdom as feudatories under Shashanka. After
1640-532: Was descended from the Magadha Guptas. These views are opposed by other historians like B. S. Sinha and John Middleton, citing lack of evidence. Shashanka's name appears in multiple forms, including Śaśānka and Śaśānka-deva. The name is derived from Sanskrit , as another name for the Moon. Śaśānka-deva therefore loosely translates to Moon god. The Hindu god Shiva is also known as Shashank Sekhar as He holds
1681-500: Was killed by Shashanka. No conclusive evidence exists but it is possible that Shashanka, who joined the battle as an ally of Devagupta , murdered him. The only source available in this matter is the Harshacharita by Bāṇabhaṭṭa , who was a childhood friend and constant companion of Harsha ; neither of these men were present at the death. Harsha succeeded his brother as ruler of Thanesar in 606 C.E. and he once again gathered