Person · last Sena king · India
Lakshmana Sena
Also known as Lakshmana Sena, Lakshmana Sen, Laksmana Sena
Sena emperor from about 1178 to 1206 CE and the dynasty's last ruler of unified Bengal, whose court at Nabadwip and Lakhnauti was the subcontinent's major Vaishnava literary centre in the twelfth century. Jayadeva composed the Gita Govinda at his court; the astronomer Halayudha and the poet Dhoyi served him. Bakhtiyar Khilji's cavalry raid in 1203 took the capital Nadia almost by stealth — Lakshmana Sena was eating his midday meal when the alarm came and he fled through the back door, which turned the Sena state into a slow collapse. He died in exile in East Bengal in 1206.
- Date
- 1130–1206
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Sena
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles and institutional records as applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
The Gita Govinda, Jayadeva's Sanskrit poem on Radha and Krishna in twelve cantos, was written for Lakshmana Sena's court between about 1180 and 1200 and became the single most consequential devotional text of the entire later Vaishnava tradition — Chaitanya's Nabadwip movement three hundred years later took its name from the Sena capital and its devotional vocabulary from Jayadeva. Lakshmana Sena's calendar reform (the Lakshmana Samvat, 1119 CE) is still used liturgically in parts of Bengal.
About the place
Placed at Nabadwip, the capital of his court.
Connections (1)
- Ruled fromNabadwīp
Lakshmana Sena ruled the Sena dynasty's capital at Nabadwip (then Nadia) from about 1178 to 1203, when Bakhtiyar Khilji's small cavalry raid caught him at his midday meal and he fled across the river to East Bengal. The town — whose nine islands later became Chaitanya's Vaishnava centre three centuries later — was the Sena court's main capital through the late twelfth century. The specific episode of the Bakhtiyar raid is preserved in Minhaj al-Siraj's Tabaqat-i-Nasiri.