Rajmala

Rajmala is the chronicles of Tripura dynasty. Rajmala was first composed during the reign of King Dharma Manikya-1, the 149th King of Tripura in 1431 A.D. According to the tradition, the chief priest (or the Chantai) of the country used to recite the lists and the story of the Kings in the court orally, like the Brahmins used to recite the Veda.

Rajmala was first written in Tripura language. The royal priest Dhurlabhendra Chantai was the author of the earliest Rajmala. Later it was translated into Sanskrit. Its sanskrit name was 'Rajmala Thankaram'. King Dharma Manikya imposed upon the responsibility on to the royal priest Dhurlabhendra Chantai along with the two Brahmin pandits, named Sukreshwar and Baneshwar of the royal court, to translate Rajmala in to Bangla in 1431 AD. This is said to be the oldest specimen of Bengali composition in Bengali language and literature.

Several authors compiled Rajmala in various time. Each part of the book was named after Lahar. Finally it was compiled in four Lahars. From first to last, each lahar contains the chronicles of the Tripura Dynasty. It was started with the name of the prehistoric Tripura king Durjoy and ended with the last coronated king Birbikram Kishoremanikya. Rajmala consisted the list of the name of 186 kings. There are no archaeological or historical sources about the first to 135th kings mentioned in the lists, excepting the legendary sources. We only could find the kingdom name 'Tripura' in Mahabharat. Thus Rajmala conceived the dynastic history of Tripura kings of around five thousand years.

The first part of Rajmala treats of the traditional period of the Tripura Kings, which mixed up with various mythological accounts; it informs us that the ancient name of Tripura was 'Kirat', which means the 'hunter'. The first king Durjoy was from the Lunan or Indo- Scythian race. His father name was Yayati. King Tripur was the 40th ruler of the Kingdom. According to Mahabharat, Trilochon Shiva, son of Hirabati and Tripur, took over the responsibility of Kirat and laid the foundation of the kingdom of 'Tripura' after his father's name. The title of the kings was 'Fa' which means 'father'. Rajmala is an important source to reconstruct the medieval history of Bengal. [Nasrin Akhter]