It is only when we come to the reigns of Bimbisara and
Ajātaçatru
in
the Çiçunāga dynasty that we find the firm ground of history.
the Çiçunāga dynasty that we find the firm ground of history.
Cambridge History of India - v1
As in all
early geography, the district is known by the plural of the tribal name.
Similar lists are found also in the Mahābhārata and elsewhere. This
extensive geographical literature gives a remarkably full account of the
whole sub-continent.
The geographical, like the dynastic, lists have evidently been brought
up to date from time to time, since foreign invaders of very different dates
appear in them. These seem to range from the Yavanas, Çakas, and
Pahlavas, who came into India in the second and first centuries B. C. , to the
Hūņas, who broke up the Gupta empire at the end of the fifth century A. D.
The fifth and last section of the Purāņas, the vamçānucharita,gives an
account of the kings of the earth, the descendants of Manu Vaivasvata, the
'son of the Sun. ' The narrative uses all three tenses, past, present, and
future ; for it recounts the kings who have been, the kings who are,
and the kings who are to be. The earliest of these genealogies, like
the most ancient chronicles of other peoples, are legendary. They trace
the descent of the rulers of this world from the Sun and Moon, and
through them from the Creator- a claim inherited and still maintained by
the Sūrajbansi and the Chandrabansi families of Rājput princes. Such
pedigrees have been pieced together from fragments of religious lore or
from fancied etymologies on to which old-world traditions and speculations
## p. 272 (#306) ############################################
272
THE PURĀNAS
[CH.
have been engrafted. Ilā, the daughter of Manu, from whom the Lunar
family is derived, personifies, as her name denotes, the sacrificial offering
made by Manu in the legend of the Flood (Çata Br. , 1, 8, 1, 11). Such
legendary characters are everywhere the result of man's early speculations
on the origin of the world. The first glimpses of authentic history only
appear when tribal names are inserted in the genealogies under the dis-
guise of eponymous ancestors. These, too, are the outcome of hypothesis,
but of hypothesis founded on facts. All the members of a tribe are pre-
sumably descended from a common ancestor, and related tribes are des-
cended from related ancestors. On these supposed individuals the names
of the tribes are conferred ; and they supply a sort of genealogical frame-
;
work which continues to be filled in by tradition until the age of records.
Once fashioned in this way such genealogies are accepted without question
until the period when critical scholarship arises and undertakes its first
duty, which is to discriminate between legend and fact in the story of
past ages.
In the Purāņas, which were the common scriptures of the ruling
Āryan peoples of Northern and Western India, the traditional genealogies
of the royal houses have been collected and made to form a consistent
whole. Not only are the ancient tribes of the Rigveda and the kingdoms
immediately descended from them represented here, but the realms of
Kosala (Ayodhyā), Videha, Vaicāli, and Magadha, which were not
Āryanised until a later date, have also been brought into the scheme and
furnished with a still longer and more august pedigree. They belong to
the Solar family and are derived directly from Manu through Ikshvāku.
A family of princes bearing this name is known from Vedic literature ;
and it is quite possible that the Solar dynasties of Kosala and other king-
doms to the east of the Middle Country may have been descended from
this family. If so, the Ikshvāku of the genealogical tree must be regarded
as an eponymous ancestor ; and as his superhuman origin had to be
explained, a myth founded on a far-fetched etymology of his name was
invented. Iksh vāku was so called because he was born from the sneeze
(kshava) of Manu (Vishnu Pur. trans. Wilson, il, p. 259).
Fragments of historical fact may no doubt be found embedded even
in the earliest list ; but these fragments have been carried down the stream
of time and deposited far away from their original home. Thus, for
instance, Purukutsa and his son Trasadasyu, who in the Rigveda are
Pūrus living on the Sarasvati, appear in the Purāņas among the Solar kings
of Kosala; Vadhryaçva, Divodāsa, Pijavana, and Sudās, who form a direct
line in the succession of Bharata princes ruling in the country between the
a
## p. 273 (#307) ############################################
XIII)
TRADITIONAL GENEALOGIES
273
>
case
Sarasvati and Dșishadvati appear in this order, but with intervening
reigns, among the kings of N. Pañchāla'.
It is probable that these
apparently conflicting statements are not really contradictory: the chain of
evidence which might bring the tradition of the Purāņas into substantial
agreement with the Rigveda has been broken.
But it is clear that documents of this kind can only be used with the
greatest caution. To some extent at least they have unquestionably been
fabricated in accordance with preconceived opinions. How these pedigrees
have been elaborated, even at a comparatively late date, by court poets
who sought to magnify the ancient lineage of their lord, may sometimes
be seen at a glance. For example, in the genealogy of the Ikshvākus of
Kosala the immediate predecessors of Prasenajit, the contemporary of
Buddha, are Çākya, Çuddhodana, Siddhārtha and Rāhula. That is to say,
the eponymous hero of Buddha's clan, Buddha's father, Buddha himself,
and his son have all been incorporated in the dynastic list of the kings of
Kosala.
It seems impossible to bring the Purāņic genealogies into any satis-
factory relation with the Vedic literature or with one another until we
approach the period at which they profess to have been recited, that is to
say, the reign of Parikshit in the case of the Vishņu Pur, and the reign of
Adhisimakrishna in the of most of the others. Then certain
synchronisms seem to afford a more secure chronological standpoint.
Parikshit is celebrated as a king of the Kurus in the last and latest book
of the Atharva veda : according to the epic, as usually interpreted, he was
appointed king of Hastinā pura more than thirty-six years after the great
war between the Kurus and Pāņdus. Adhisimakrishna, the great great
grandson of Parikshit is represented by the Purāṇas as contemporary with
Divākara of Kosala and Senājit of Magadha. Between the last mentioned
and his predecessor Sahadeva, who was killed in the great war, six reigns
intervene. The length of each reign and the total duration of the different
dynasties of Magadha are given in some versions. Unfortunately the
state of the text is so corrupt and the numbers are 80 discrepant that
this evidence is generally of no value. Leaving out of account an impossi-
ble reading which attributes a reign of one hundred years to Nirāmitra,
the mss. as they stand give a maximum of 289 and a minimum of 259
years to the six reigns which separate the great war from Senājit of
Magadha ; and even the lesser of these estimates would seem to be
excessive. We must be content with the general conclusion that the tradi-
tion of the Purāņas, according to the dynastic lists of Hastināpura and
Magadha, places the great war early in what we know as the Brāhmana
period, say about 1000 B. C.
Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1910, p. 28.
:See Pargiter, Dynasties of the Kali Age, pp. 11, 67.
## p. 274 (#308) ############################################
274
[ci.
THE PURĀNAS
were
That the war between the Kurus and Pāņdus is historical and that it
took place in ancient times cannot be doubted, however much its story has
been overloaded with legend, and however late may be the form in which
it has been handed down. The legend of the war of the Mahābhārata
in India finds its exact parallel in the legend of the Trojan war in Europe.
Each became the great central point to which the nations of the Middle
Ages referred their history. To have shared ancestrally in the fame
of Kurukshetra or of Troy was for the nations the patent of nobility
and ancient descent. The remotest peopies of Eastern and Southern
India and the late invaders of the North-West alike claim a place in the
story of the Mahābhārata, even as the royal houses of Western Europe
traced their origin to Trojan heroes. Until the close of the sixteenth
century no historian of France or Britain doubted that the kings of these
countries were descended from the Trojan Francus or Brutus, both of whom
were in reality eponymous heroes like Yadu and his brothers in the
Purāṇas. Milton in his History of England (1670) repeats the story of Brutus
at length and in detail ; but a chance phrase - 'they who first devis'd
to bring us from some noble ancestor'-shows that historians
beginning to recognise the origin of such legends. And so far as the
Mahābhārata associates most of the nations of India with the great war it
has been devis'd' in the same manner and for the same purpose. A
nucleus of fact has been encrusted with the legendary accretions of ages.
After the great war detailed dynastic tables continue to be given in
the case of the three royal lines only - the Pūrus, the Ikshvākus, and the
kings of Magadha. Other kingdoms are mentioned summarily with a bare
statement of the number of contemporary reigns. The Purānic history is
thus, professedly though not actually (pp. 277, 284), cenfned in its later
stages to the regions now represented by the United Provinces and S. Bihār.
In the Pūrus or Pauravas of the Purāņas the Bharatas of the Rigveda
and the Kurus of the Brāhmaṇas have been merged. In the Rigveda both
the Pūrus and the Bharatas live in the land of the Sarasvati (Brahmăvarta
or Sarhind). But already the Ārva occupation of Kurukshetra, the
adjacent country of the upper Jumar and Ganges on the south-east, was
beginning; for a victory on the Jumna gained by Sudās, king of the
Tșitsus, over a native leader called Bheda is referred to in vii, 18, 19. In
the Purāṇas, Sudas and his family appear in the list of the kings of
N. Pañchāla to the east of Kurukshetra. That is to say, the later kings of
N. Pañchāla (p. 282) claimed descent from the Tſitsus of the Rigveda, who
are regarded by the Purāṇas as a branch of the Pūrus.
But the great conqueror of Kurukshetra was Bharata Dauḥshanti,
whose victories on the Jumna and Ganges are commemorated in an old
verse quoted by the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (XIII, 5,4,11); and the extension
of Bharata's conquests to Kāçi (Benares) is attributed by another ancient
1
## p. 275 (#309) ############################################
X111)
THE GREAT WAR-PURUS
275
verse (XIII, 5, 4, 19) to Çatānika Sātrājita. In the Purāņic list of Pūru kings,
Bharata and his father, Dushyanta, appear long before, and Çatānika
soon after, the beginning of the Kali Age. Between the periods of the two
conquerors, Bharata and Çatānika, came the war of the Mahābhārata,
which for the Purāņas marks the division between the third and fourth ages
of the world.
The later list contains the names of twenty-nine Pūru kings, who
lived after the war. They reigned first at Hastināpura, the ancient capital
of the Kuru princes, which is usually identified with a ruined site in the
Meerut District ‘on the old bed of the Ganges, lat. 29° 9' N. , long. 78° 3' :
E. ' (Pargiter, Mārk. Pur. , p. 355); but when this city was destroyed by an
inundation of the Ganges in the reign of Nichakshus, the successor of
Adhisīmakrishna, they removed the seat of their rule to Kauçãmbi,
possibly the present Kosam in the Allahābād District. Another of their
capitals was Indraprastha in the Kuru plain, the ancient city of the Pāņdu
princes : it is the modern Indarpat, near Delhi. The Pūrus, therefore, with
their capitals in the north, east, and west, ruled over a large portion of the
present province of Agra from the Meerut Division on the north to the
Benares Division on the south-east. The dynasty came to an end with
Ksliemaka, the fourth king to reign after Udayana, the contemporary of the
Buddha (p. 276)".
From the evidence both of Vedic literature and of the Purāṇas it
appears that the Ikshvākus were originally a branch of the Pūrus. They
were kings of Kosala, the country which lay to the east of the Kurus and
Pañchālas and to the west of the Videhas, from whom it was separated by
the river Sadānīra, probably the Great Gandak. This territory was practi-
cally the modern province of Oudh. The chief cities were Ayodhyā
(Ajodhyā on the Gogrā in the Fyzābād District) with which the Sāketa of
Buddhist writers was probably either identical or closely associated, and
Çrāvasti (Set Mahet in the Gondā District). In story Ayodhyā is famous as
the city of Daçaratha, the father of Rāma, the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa. Both
of these characters, who may possibly have been historical, are assigned by
the Purāņas to a dim and distant period long before the beginning of the
Kali Age.
Although the extension of Brāhmanism from the land of the Kurus
and Pañchālas to Kosala was comparatively late (p. 104), the Āryan occupa-
tion of the country goes back to an earlier period. In the later Vedic litera-
ture two kings of Kosala, Hiraṇyanābha and Para Ātņāra, probably father
and son, seem to be mentioned as performing the horse sacrifice in celebra-
tion of their victories ; and, as the former of these appears in the Purānic
For the historical details here summarised see Vedic Index, I, pp. 153, 155, 165.
169 ; II, pp. 12, 96, 110, 186 ; Pargiter, J. R. A. S. 1910, pp. 26-29 ; í Kali Age, pp. 4 ff. ,
65 ff.
## p. 276 (#310) ############################################
276
[CH.
THE PURĀNAS
list before the Kali Age, the conquest of Kosala was evidently attributed to
the period before the great war.
In the time of the Buddha, Kosala was the predominant kingdom in
Northern India, but it was already being eclipsed by the growing power of
Magadha. Such incidents in its history as can be recovered from early
Buddhist literature have been narrated in Chapter vii (pp. 158 ff. ).
The Purāņic list of Ikshvāku kings in the Kali Age concludes with
Sumitra, the fourth successor of Prasenajit, who was contemporary with the
Buddha. The royal houses of Pūru and Ikshvāku, the sovereigns of Agra
and Oudh, thus disappear from the scene at about the same time (p. 275).
Henceforth the historical interest of the Parāņas centres in Magadha which
had become the suzerain power in the Middle Country.
The Magadhas, who inhabited the Patna and Gaya Districts of
S. Bihār, are unknown by this name to the Rigveda ; but, together with their
neighbours, the Angas, in the Districts of Monghyr and Bhāgalpur, they are
mentioned in the Atharvaveda as a people living on the extreme confines of
Āryan civilisation. Their kings claimed to be Pūrus : they traced their des-
cent from Kuru through the great conqueror. Vasu Chaidya’, whose
son, Brihadratha, was the founder of the dynasty which is known by
his name.
Magadha is the most famous kingdom in ancient and medieval India.
Twice in history did it establish great empires - the Maurya Empire in the
fourth and third centuries B. C. , and the Gupta Empire in the fourth and
fifth centuries A. D. The long line of kings attributed to Magadha by
the Purāņas consists of a series of no fewer than eight dynastic lists furnish-
ed with a statement of the number of years in each reign and the duration of
each dynasty. If all these dynasties could be regarded as successive, and if
the length of reigns could be determined with certainty, the chronology of
Magadha would be a simple matter of calculation. But this is not the case.
Some of the royal families included in the series were undoubtedly contem-
porary, and the text of the Purāṇas has become so corrupt that the numbers
as stated by the different MSs, are rarely in agreement.
Bșihadratha himself and nine of his successors are supposed to have
reigned before the Kali Age. It is recorded that, when Sahadeva, the last of
these, was slain in the great war, Somādhi, his heir, became king in
Girivraja, 'the fortress on the hill,' at the foot of which the old capital of
Magadha, Rājagriha, grew up. The site is marked by the ruined town of
Rājgir in the Patna District. In the reign of Senājit, Somādhi's sixth
successor, most of the Purāṇas claim to have been recited. No other event
is connected with the twenty-one successors of Sahadeva.
1 Vedic Index, I, pp. 75, 190, 491 ; 11, p. 506 ; Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1910, pp. 27,
29 ; Kali Age, pp. 9. 66,
2 Possibly the Kacu Chaidya of Rigveda, VIII, 5, 37.
a
;
## p. 277 (#311) ############################################
-XII]
AVANTI : LATER ÇIÇUNĀGAS
277
The next two dynasties, the Pradyotas and Çiçunāgas, were almost
certainly contemporary. The Pradyota dynasty may be identified with the
Pauņika family mentioned in the Harshacharita (trans. Cowell and Thomas,
p. 193). According to the Purāņas, the founder, Puņika (Pulika) slew his
.
master, Ripuñjaya, the last of the Brihadrathas, and anointed his own son
in his stead. After five reigns, the duration of which is given by some
versions as 52 years and by others as 138 years, the Pradyota dynasty is
supplanted by Çiçunāga, who, after placing his son on the throne of Kāçī
(Benares), himself takes possession of Girivraja.
But this is history distorted. Some editor has evidently placed inde-
pendent lists in a false sequence and supplied appropriate links of connex-
ion. This is clear from the evidence of Buddhist literature.
The Pradyotas were kings of Avanti (W. Mālwā) and their capital
was Ujjain. Pradyota (Pajjota, himself, like Bimbisāra and Ajātaçatru
(Ajātasattu), the fifth and sixth in the list of Çiçunāgas, and like the Pūru
Udayana (Udena) of Vatsa (Vamsa) and the Ikshvāku Prasenajit (Pasen-
adi) of Kosala, was contemporary with the Buddha. The first of the Prad.
yotas, and the fifth and sixth of the Çiçunāgas, who are separated by more
than 150 years at the least according to the Purāņas? , were therefore ruling
at the same period in different countries.
That the Pradyota of the Purānas and the Pradyota of Ujjain were
one and the same person does not admit of question. The fact is implied
in the statement of the Matsya Pur), and is clear when the Purāņas are
compared with other Sanskrit literature. Udayana, the king of Vatsa, is
the central figure in a large cycle of Sanskrit stories of love and adventure,
and in these Pradyota, the king of Ujjain, the father of the peerless Vāsa-
vadattā, plays no small part. In some of the stories he appears also as
the father of Pālaka and the grandfather of Avantivardhana". Now of the
five members of the dynasty in the Purāņas the first two are Pradyota and
Pālaka (v. l. Bālaka), and the last is probably Avantivardhana ; for the
various readings of the ass, as given by Mr Pargiter (Kali Age, p. 19), indi-
cate that this may be the correct form of the name which appears in his
text as Nandivardhana.
This intrusion of kings of Avanti in the records of Magadha is pro-
bably to be explained, as in the similar case of the Andhras (p. 284), as
the result of a suzerainty successfully asserted by Avanti ; and this may
have been the outcome of the attack on Ajātaçatru which Pradyota was
reported to have been contemplating shortly before the Buddha's death. If
so, the supremacy of Avanti, which may have been temporary, was not
established until some years after the beginning of Ajātaçatru's reigon, and
the Pradyotas of the Purāņas were contemporay with the later Çiçunāgas
Ajātaçatru, Darçaka, and Udāyin.
1 See Chapter VII, pp. 160, 163, 165, 166
2 Kali Age, pp. 18-21, 68. 9.
: Mr Harit Krishna Dey in Udayana Vatsarāja(Calcutta, 1919), p. 4.
4 Lacote, Guņādhya et la Brhatkathā, p. 164,
5 Chapter VII, p. 165.
## p. 278 (#312) ############################################
278
[CH.
THE PURĀNAS
.
It is only when we come to the reigns of Bimbisara and Ajātaçatru in
the Çiçunāga dynasty that we find the firm ground of history. At this
period lived Mahāvīra and Buddha, the founders, or perhaps rather the
reformers, of Jainism and Budhism ; and now the Purāņas are supplement-
ed by two other lines of tradition which are presumably independent. In
the Jain accounts Bimbisāra appears as Çreņika and Ajātaçatru as Kūņika:
the former began the expansion of Magadha by the conquest of the
kingdom of Anga (Monghyr and Bhāgalpur), and the latter is said to have
come to the throne after the death of Mahāvira and a few years before the
death of Buddha.
Unfortunately on one important point the three sources of imformation
are not in agreement. The first eight kings in the Purānic genealogy may
be arranged into two groups, the first headed by Çiçunāga and the second
by Bimbisara. This arrangement is reversed in the Buddhist lists, while
Çiçunāga's group is omitted altogether by the Jains. It is difficult to see
how the there traditions, each of which has its champions among modern
scholars, can be reconciled.
The Brāhman and Buddhist books record the length of the reigns of
Bimbisara and Ajātaçatru ; but they are not in agreement with one another,
and moreover the Brāhman accounts are not consistent. In the present
corrupt condition of the text the various mss. of the Purāņas attribute a
reign of either 28 or 38 years to Bimbisāra, and one of 25, 27, or 28 years
to Ajātaçatru (Kali Age, p. 21). Until the text has been restored by criti-
cal editing the authentic tradition of the Brāhmans cannot be ascertain-
ed. In contrast with this discrepancy the Buddhist chronicles of Ceylon,
the Dipavamsa and the Mahāvamsa, offer a consistent and more detailed
account of these reigns and of certain important events in the lifetime of
Siddhārtha, the Çākya prince who became the Buddha. Whether this
tradition is to be accepted as correct in preference to the other may be
questioned ; but it affords the best working hypothesis which has yet been
discovered. The chronology as determined by Prof. Geiger in the intro-
duction to his translation of the Mahāvamsa (pp. xl-xlvi) may by tabula-
ted as follows:
Cicunāga Kings
Siddhartha (the Buddha)
Bimbisara's birth
558 B. C. Born
563 B. C.
accession
543
Leaves his father's house 534
death
Becomes Buddha
Ajātacatru's accession
Meets Bimbisara (for the
99
528
. . .
9
491
491
. . .
second time)
death
459
Attains nirt āņa
1 See Chapter VII, pp. 163 f.
528
483
99
## p. 279 (#313) ############################################
XII]
NANDAS
279
After these two reigns we come once more to a period of conflicting
authorities and chronological uncertainty which lasts until the reign of
Chandragupta. The Buddhist genealogy preserved in the Mabāvamsa is
certainly not above suspicion“; for each of the five kings from Ajātasattu
to Nāgadāsaka is said to have killed his father and predecessor within a
period of fifty-six years, and we are solemnly told that, after the last of
these, Nāgadāsaka had occupied the throne for twenty-four years, the
citizens awoke to the fact that 'this is a dynasty of parricides' and appoint-
ed the minister Susunāga (Çiçunāga) in his stead. The Jain tradition recog-
nises only Udāyin and the nine Nandas as reigning during this interval ;
and the Purānic list (Kali Age, pp. 21-6, 68-9) is as follows :
Darcaka reigned 24, 25, or 35 years
Udāyin
Nandivardhana reigned 40, or 42 years.
Mahānandin
33
43
9
12
Mahāpadma
28, or 88
" Total, 100 ]years.
His eight sons
Darçaka appears not to be mentioned by the Buddhist writers,
unless indeed he is to be identified with Nāgadāsaka whom they
place before Udāvin (Udāyi-bhadda); but he is known to Sanskrit literature
as a king of Magadha and the brother of Pad māvatī, the second queen of
Udayana, king of Vatsa”. Udāyin, or Udāyi-bhadda, is known to all
the three traditions. Te him the Brāhmans and Jains attribute the
foundation of Kusumapura on the south bank of the Ganges. The new
city, which was either identical with the later Pātaliputra or in its imme-
diate neighbourhood, was built near the fortress which Ajātaçatru had esta-
blished at the village of Pāšali as a protection against the Vajjian (Vșiji)
confederacy of Licchavis, Videhas, and other clans of N. Bihār. The
foundation of Pāțaliputra is ascribed by the Buddhists to Kālāsoka.
The ten Çiçunāga kings are expressly called Kshatriyas by the
Purāņas, but the last of these, Mahānandin, became through his marriage
with a Çūdra woman the founder of a Çūdra dynasty which endured for
two generations, Mahāpadma and his eight sons. One of the latter,
usually supposed to be named Dhanananda, was on the throne in 326 B. O. ,
when Alexander the Great was obliged by the unwillingness of his
army to abandon his scheme of attacking the Prasioi, or 'eastern nations'
then united under the suzerainty of Magadha. Within a few years
of Alexander's retirement from India, this euzerainty passed from the
Nandas to the Mauryas, probably c. 321 3. c.
The period of the nine Nandas is thus determined. According
to the Purāņas they represent no new family : they are the direct descen-
1 Chapter VII, pp. 168 f.
2 Svapnavāsavadattā, Act, I (ed. Trivandrum Series, pp. 4, 5).
## p. 280 (#314) ############################################
280
[Ch.
THE PURANAS
.
dants of the Çiçunāgas, the last and the last but one of whom, Mahānandin
and Nandivardhana, bear names which indicate their connexion. There are,
therefore, two groups of these kings, which seem to be distinguished
in literature as the 'old' and the 'new' Nandas ; and, as Mr Jayaswal has
suggested,'new' and not 'nine' may have been the correct designation of the
later group. The Purāņas know no break of political continuity between
the Çiçunāgas and the Nandas ; but they recognise that a great social and
religious gulf has been fixed between the earlier and the later Nandas
by the flagrant violation of caste law which placed Mahāpadma, the
son of a Çūdra woman, on the throne ; and they mark their sense
of this chasm by interpolating after the reign of Mahānandin a summary of
the number of reigns in other contemporary dynasties before proceeding
with their account of the rulers of Magadha.
As to the origin of the Nandas we have no certain information ; but
the name is probably tribal, and it may be connected with the Nandas who
lived near the river Rāmgangā, between the Ganges and the Kosi in the
Himālayan region of the United Provinces. The countries of the Himālayan
fringe at this period were occupied by innumerable clans governed by tribal
constitutions which may best be described as aristocratic oligarchies.
Like the Rājputs, they were conquerors ruling in the midst of subject
peoples ; and, as Dr Vincent Smith has suggested3, many of these
clans may bave been of Tibeto-Chinese origin. It is possible that the
Çiçunāgas and Nandas may have been the descendants of mountain
chieftains who had won the kingdom of Magadha by conquest.
A Nanda king is twice mentioned in the Häthigumphā (inscrip-
tion of king Khāravela of Kalinga (Orissa). The inscription, which is
a record of events in thirteen (or fourteen) years of the king's reign,
has been badly preserved. Considerable portions have been lost, and both
the reading and the interpretation of many passages uncertain.
The record in its present state can only be used as a basis for history with
the utmost caution. It is clear, however, that in his fifth year Khāravela
executed some public work which was associated with the memory of
king Nanda', and that in his twelfth year he gained a victory over the king
1 Jour. Bihar aud Orissa Research Soc. , September 1915, p. 21.
2 Pargiter, Mārk. Pur. , pp, 292, 393. 3 Oxford History of India (1919), p. 49.
4 The different versions of this passage in line 6 of the inscr. depend chiefly,
though not solely, on the translation of ti-vāsa-sata; The following renderings have been
proposed :
(1) •He opened the three-yearly almshouse of Nandarāja' (Pandit Bhagvānlal
Indrāji, Trans. Inter. Or. Cong. , Leiden, 1884, Part 3, p. 135. Sata=sattra or catra, cf.
Ep. Ind. , x, Appendix, no. 967, p. 100, and no. 985, p. 102);
are
3
## p. 281 (#315) ############################################
XIII]
GROWTH OF MAGADHA: OTHER POWERS
:
281
of Magadha and, according to Mr Jayswal's translation, recovered
certain trophies which had been carried away by king Nanda.
These statements of the inscription, coupled with the somewhat
enigniatical testimony of an ancient Sanskrit. Ms. quoted by Mr Jayaswal, 2
seem to show that Kalinga had been conquered by one of the Nanda kings
and lost by another. Kalinga was undoubtedly conquered by Açoka, the
third of the Maurya emperors, c, 262 3. 0. 3 We must infer, therefore, either
that it was not included in the dominions of the first two emperors,
Chandragupta and Bindusāra, or that it had revolted and was reconquered
by Açoka.
Certain stages in the growth of the power of Magadha from its
ancient stronghold in the fortress of Girivraja may thus be traced. The
expansion began with the conquest of Anga (Monghyr and Bhāgalpur in
Bengal) by Bimbisāra, c. 500 B. C. The establishment of a supremacy over
Kāçi (Benares), Kosala (Oudh), and Videha (N. Bihār) was probably the
work of his son and successor, Ajātaçatru, in the first half of the fifth century.
Kalinga (Orissa) was perhaps, temporarily included in the empire as
a result of its conquest by a Nanda king. It remained for Chandragupta
to extend the imperial dominions by the annexation of the north-western
region which for a few years had owned the sway of Alexander the Great
and his satraps, and for Açoka to conquer, or reconquer, Kalinga.
The summary of reigns, which comes in the Purāṇas between the
description of the earlier and later Nandas, has reference to ten dynasties
in Northern and Central India which were contemporary with the kings of
Magadha. It is a bare list of names and numbers without any orderly
arrangement, and, as usual, the numbers given by the different mss. are not
consistent. The summary may be rearranged geographically as follows
(of, Kali Age, pp. 23-4, 69).
(United Provinces : Agra)
Central India and Gujarat)
1. Kurus; 36(19,26, 30, or 50) reigns. 6. Haihayas 28 (24)
reigns
2. Panchālas : 27 (25)
7. Acmakas : 25
3. Çūrasenas : 23
8. Vitihotras : 20
4. Kācis : 24 (36)
(N. Bihar)
(United Provinces : Oudh)
9. Mithilas : 28 (18)
5. Ikshvākus : 24
(Orissa)
10. Kalingas : 32 (22, 24, 26, or 40),,
[Contd. from p. 280
(2) 'He had an aqueduct, that had not been used for 103 years since king Nanda
(or since the Nanda kings), conducted into the city'(Prof. Luders, Ep. Ind. , x, Appendix,
no. 1345, p. 161. Sata=Catu, as also in the next translation);
(3) He brings into the capital. . . the canal excavated by king Nanda three
centuries before' (Mr. J. P. Jayaswal Mr. R. D. Banerji, Jour. Bihar and Orissa Research
Soc. , Dec. 1917, pp. 425 ff. )
1 Op. cit. , pp. 447, 464-5.
2 Ibid. p. 482.
3 Chapter xx.
)
9
## p. 282 (#316) ############################################
282
[CH.
THE PURANAS
9
1. The Kirus ara no doubt the Pūrus of the detailed list : but the number of
reigns differs.
2. The Pañchālas, a confederation of five tribes, were neighbours of the Kurus.
The capital of N. Pañchāla was Ahicchatra, now a ruined site still bearing the same
name near the village of Bāmnagar in the Bareilly District. The capital of S. Pañchāla
was Kāmpilya, now represented by ruins at the village of Kāmpil in the Farrukhābād
District.
3. The peoples living to the south of Kurukshetra claimei descent from
Yadu. Of these the Çūras-nas occupied the Muttra District and possibly some of
the territory still farther south. This capital was Muttra (Mathurā), the birthplace of the
hero Kộishņa.
To the west of Çūrasenas dwelt the Matsyas. The two peoples are constantly
associated, and it is possible that at this time they may have been united under one
king. The Matsyas occupied the state of Alwar and possibly some parts of Jaipur and
Bhartpur. Their capitals were Upaplavya, the site of which is uncertain, and Vairāta
the city of king Virāța, the modern Bairāt in Jaipur.
4. The little kingdom of Kāci (Benares) was bordered by Vatsa on the west,
Kosa'a on the north, and Magadha on the east. Some details of its relations with
these countries may be recovered from early literature. According to the Çatapatha
Brāhmaṇa (xiii, 5,4, 19), its king Dhșitarāshtra was conquered by the Bharata prince
Çatānika (p. 275). Sātrājita Such incidental notices of its later history as have been
preserved by Buddhist writers have been collected in Chapter VII, pp. 160 ff.
At different periods Kāçi came under the sway of the three successive suzerain
powers of Northern India--the Pūrus of Vatsa, the Ikshvākus of Kosala, and the
kings of Magadha; but it seems to have enjoyed its period of independent power in the
interval between the decline of Vatea and the rise of Kosala, when king Brahmadatta,
possibly about a century and a half before the Buddha's time, conquered Kosala. The
fame of Brahmadatta has been kept alive in Buddhist literature ; for in his reign the
Jātakas, or stories of the Buddha in previous births, are conventionally set.
The account given in the Purāṇas of the accession of Çiçunāga to the throne of
Magadha shows that this king was associated also with Kāçi (f. 277).
5 The number of Ikshvāku kings given in the summary is 22. This is not
in accordance with the detailed list which (pp. 308 f) contains 30.
6, 7, 8. The Haihayas, Açmakas, and Vitihotras, like the çūrasenas, belonged
to the great family of the descendants of Yadu who occupied the countries of the
river Chambal in the north and the river Narbadā in the south; but it is difficult
to identify with precision the kingdoms indicated by these different names. Haihaya
in often used almost as a syronym of Yādava to denote the whole group of peoples ;
and the Vitihotras are a branch of the Haihayas. Both the Vitihotras and the Acmakas
are closely associated in literature with the Avantis of W. Mālwā, whese capital was
Ujjain (Ujjayini) on the Siprā, a tributary of the Chambal (Charmaņvati 1.
It would be strange if the rulers of a city so famous both politicaly and com.
mercially as Ujjain should have found no place in this summary. The most plausible
explanation of thcir apparent absence from the list is that they are here called
Hailayas.
9. The Mithilas take their name from Mithilā, the capital of the Videhas, one
of the numerous clans, possibly of Tibeto-Chinese origin, who inhabited Tirhut (the
districts of Champāran, Muzaffarpur, and Darbhangā in N. Bibār). Videgha Mathava,
to whom the Brāhmanisation of this region is attributed by the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa
(v. sup. p. 109) is probably its earliest recorded monarch. According to the Purāņas
the Āryan kings of the Videhas were a branch of the Pūru family.
early geography, the district is known by the plural of the tribal name.
Similar lists are found also in the Mahābhārata and elsewhere. This
extensive geographical literature gives a remarkably full account of the
whole sub-continent.
The geographical, like the dynastic, lists have evidently been brought
up to date from time to time, since foreign invaders of very different dates
appear in them. These seem to range from the Yavanas, Çakas, and
Pahlavas, who came into India in the second and first centuries B. C. , to the
Hūņas, who broke up the Gupta empire at the end of the fifth century A. D.
The fifth and last section of the Purāņas, the vamçānucharita,gives an
account of the kings of the earth, the descendants of Manu Vaivasvata, the
'son of the Sun. ' The narrative uses all three tenses, past, present, and
future ; for it recounts the kings who have been, the kings who are,
and the kings who are to be. The earliest of these genealogies, like
the most ancient chronicles of other peoples, are legendary. They trace
the descent of the rulers of this world from the Sun and Moon, and
through them from the Creator- a claim inherited and still maintained by
the Sūrajbansi and the Chandrabansi families of Rājput princes. Such
pedigrees have been pieced together from fragments of religious lore or
from fancied etymologies on to which old-world traditions and speculations
## p. 272 (#306) ############################################
272
THE PURĀNAS
[CH.
have been engrafted. Ilā, the daughter of Manu, from whom the Lunar
family is derived, personifies, as her name denotes, the sacrificial offering
made by Manu in the legend of the Flood (Çata Br. , 1, 8, 1, 11). Such
legendary characters are everywhere the result of man's early speculations
on the origin of the world. The first glimpses of authentic history only
appear when tribal names are inserted in the genealogies under the dis-
guise of eponymous ancestors. These, too, are the outcome of hypothesis,
but of hypothesis founded on facts. All the members of a tribe are pre-
sumably descended from a common ancestor, and related tribes are des-
cended from related ancestors. On these supposed individuals the names
of the tribes are conferred ; and they supply a sort of genealogical frame-
;
work which continues to be filled in by tradition until the age of records.
Once fashioned in this way such genealogies are accepted without question
until the period when critical scholarship arises and undertakes its first
duty, which is to discriminate between legend and fact in the story of
past ages.
In the Purāņas, which were the common scriptures of the ruling
Āryan peoples of Northern and Western India, the traditional genealogies
of the royal houses have been collected and made to form a consistent
whole. Not only are the ancient tribes of the Rigveda and the kingdoms
immediately descended from them represented here, but the realms of
Kosala (Ayodhyā), Videha, Vaicāli, and Magadha, which were not
Āryanised until a later date, have also been brought into the scheme and
furnished with a still longer and more august pedigree. They belong to
the Solar family and are derived directly from Manu through Ikshvāku.
A family of princes bearing this name is known from Vedic literature ;
and it is quite possible that the Solar dynasties of Kosala and other king-
doms to the east of the Middle Country may have been descended from
this family. If so, the Ikshvāku of the genealogical tree must be regarded
as an eponymous ancestor ; and as his superhuman origin had to be
explained, a myth founded on a far-fetched etymology of his name was
invented. Iksh vāku was so called because he was born from the sneeze
(kshava) of Manu (Vishnu Pur. trans. Wilson, il, p. 259).
Fragments of historical fact may no doubt be found embedded even
in the earliest list ; but these fragments have been carried down the stream
of time and deposited far away from their original home. Thus, for
instance, Purukutsa and his son Trasadasyu, who in the Rigveda are
Pūrus living on the Sarasvati, appear in the Purāņas among the Solar kings
of Kosala; Vadhryaçva, Divodāsa, Pijavana, and Sudās, who form a direct
line in the succession of Bharata princes ruling in the country between the
a
## p. 273 (#307) ############################################
XIII)
TRADITIONAL GENEALOGIES
273
>
case
Sarasvati and Dșishadvati appear in this order, but with intervening
reigns, among the kings of N. Pañchāla'.
It is probable that these
apparently conflicting statements are not really contradictory: the chain of
evidence which might bring the tradition of the Purāņas into substantial
agreement with the Rigveda has been broken.
But it is clear that documents of this kind can only be used with the
greatest caution. To some extent at least they have unquestionably been
fabricated in accordance with preconceived opinions. How these pedigrees
have been elaborated, even at a comparatively late date, by court poets
who sought to magnify the ancient lineage of their lord, may sometimes
be seen at a glance. For example, in the genealogy of the Ikshvākus of
Kosala the immediate predecessors of Prasenajit, the contemporary of
Buddha, are Çākya, Çuddhodana, Siddhārtha and Rāhula. That is to say,
the eponymous hero of Buddha's clan, Buddha's father, Buddha himself,
and his son have all been incorporated in the dynastic list of the kings of
Kosala.
It seems impossible to bring the Purāņic genealogies into any satis-
factory relation with the Vedic literature or with one another until we
approach the period at which they profess to have been recited, that is to
say, the reign of Parikshit in the case of the Vishņu Pur, and the reign of
Adhisimakrishna in the of most of the others. Then certain
synchronisms seem to afford a more secure chronological standpoint.
Parikshit is celebrated as a king of the Kurus in the last and latest book
of the Atharva veda : according to the epic, as usually interpreted, he was
appointed king of Hastinā pura more than thirty-six years after the great
war between the Kurus and Pāņdus. Adhisimakrishna, the great great
grandson of Parikshit is represented by the Purāṇas as contemporary with
Divākara of Kosala and Senājit of Magadha. Between the last mentioned
and his predecessor Sahadeva, who was killed in the great war, six reigns
intervene. The length of each reign and the total duration of the different
dynasties of Magadha are given in some versions. Unfortunately the
state of the text is so corrupt and the numbers are 80 discrepant that
this evidence is generally of no value. Leaving out of account an impossi-
ble reading which attributes a reign of one hundred years to Nirāmitra,
the mss. as they stand give a maximum of 289 and a minimum of 259
years to the six reigns which separate the great war from Senājit of
Magadha ; and even the lesser of these estimates would seem to be
excessive. We must be content with the general conclusion that the tradi-
tion of the Purāņas, according to the dynastic lists of Hastināpura and
Magadha, places the great war early in what we know as the Brāhmana
period, say about 1000 B. C.
Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1910, p. 28.
:See Pargiter, Dynasties of the Kali Age, pp. 11, 67.
## p. 274 (#308) ############################################
274
[ci.
THE PURĀNAS
were
That the war between the Kurus and Pāņdus is historical and that it
took place in ancient times cannot be doubted, however much its story has
been overloaded with legend, and however late may be the form in which
it has been handed down. The legend of the war of the Mahābhārata
in India finds its exact parallel in the legend of the Trojan war in Europe.
Each became the great central point to which the nations of the Middle
Ages referred their history. To have shared ancestrally in the fame
of Kurukshetra or of Troy was for the nations the patent of nobility
and ancient descent. The remotest peopies of Eastern and Southern
India and the late invaders of the North-West alike claim a place in the
story of the Mahābhārata, even as the royal houses of Western Europe
traced their origin to Trojan heroes. Until the close of the sixteenth
century no historian of France or Britain doubted that the kings of these
countries were descended from the Trojan Francus or Brutus, both of whom
were in reality eponymous heroes like Yadu and his brothers in the
Purāṇas. Milton in his History of England (1670) repeats the story of Brutus
at length and in detail ; but a chance phrase - 'they who first devis'd
to bring us from some noble ancestor'-shows that historians
beginning to recognise the origin of such legends. And so far as the
Mahābhārata associates most of the nations of India with the great war it
has been devis'd' in the same manner and for the same purpose. A
nucleus of fact has been encrusted with the legendary accretions of ages.
After the great war detailed dynastic tables continue to be given in
the case of the three royal lines only - the Pūrus, the Ikshvākus, and the
kings of Magadha. Other kingdoms are mentioned summarily with a bare
statement of the number of contemporary reigns. The Purānic history is
thus, professedly though not actually (pp. 277, 284), cenfned in its later
stages to the regions now represented by the United Provinces and S. Bihār.
In the Pūrus or Pauravas of the Purāņas the Bharatas of the Rigveda
and the Kurus of the Brāhmaṇas have been merged. In the Rigveda both
the Pūrus and the Bharatas live in the land of the Sarasvati (Brahmăvarta
or Sarhind). But already the Ārva occupation of Kurukshetra, the
adjacent country of the upper Jumar and Ganges on the south-east, was
beginning; for a victory on the Jumna gained by Sudās, king of the
Tșitsus, over a native leader called Bheda is referred to in vii, 18, 19. In
the Purāṇas, Sudas and his family appear in the list of the kings of
N. Pañchāla to the east of Kurukshetra. That is to say, the later kings of
N. Pañchāla (p. 282) claimed descent from the Tſitsus of the Rigveda, who
are regarded by the Purāṇas as a branch of the Pūrus.
But the great conqueror of Kurukshetra was Bharata Dauḥshanti,
whose victories on the Jumna and Ganges are commemorated in an old
verse quoted by the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (XIII, 5,4,11); and the extension
of Bharata's conquests to Kāçi (Benares) is attributed by another ancient
1
## p. 275 (#309) ############################################
X111)
THE GREAT WAR-PURUS
275
verse (XIII, 5, 4, 19) to Çatānika Sātrājita. In the Purāņic list of Pūru kings,
Bharata and his father, Dushyanta, appear long before, and Çatānika
soon after, the beginning of the Kali Age. Between the periods of the two
conquerors, Bharata and Çatānika, came the war of the Mahābhārata,
which for the Purāņas marks the division between the third and fourth ages
of the world.
The later list contains the names of twenty-nine Pūru kings, who
lived after the war. They reigned first at Hastināpura, the ancient capital
of the Kuru princes, which is usually identified with a ruined site in the
Meerut District ‘on the old bed of the Ganges, lat. 29° 9' N. , long. 78° 3' :
E. ' (Pargiter, Mārk. Pur. , p. 355); but when this city was destroyed by an
inundation of the Ganges in the reign of Nichakshus, the successor of
Adhisīmakrishna, they removed the seat of their rule to Kauçãmbi,
possibly the present Kosam in the Allahābād District. Another of their
capitals was Indraprastha in the Kuru plain, the ancient city of the Pāņdu
princes : it is the modern Indarpat, near Delhi. The Pūrus, therefore, with
their capitals in the north, east, and west, ruled over a large portion of the
present province of Agra from the Meerut Division on the north to the
Benares Division on the south-east. The dynasty came to an end with
Ksliemaka, the fourth king to reign after Udayana, the contemporary of the
Buddha (p. 276)".
From the evidence both of Vedic literature and of the Purāṇas it
appears that the Ikshvākus were originally a branch of the Pūrus. They
were kings of Kosala, the country which lay to the east of the Kurus and
Pañchālas and to the west of the Videhas, from whom it was separated by
the river Sadānīra, probably the Great Gandak. This territory was practi-
cally the modern province of Oudh. The chief cities were Ayodhyā
(Ajodhyā on the Gogrā in the Fyzābād District) with which the Sāketa of
Buddhist writers was probably either identical or closely associated, and
Çrāvasti (Set Mahet in the Gondā District). In story Ayodhyā is famous as
the city of Daçaratha, the father of Rāma, the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa. Both
of these characters, who may possibly have been historical, are assigned by
the Purāņas to a dim and distant period long before the beginning of the
Kali Age.
Although the extension of Brāhmanism from the land of the Kurus
and Pañchālas to Kosala was comparatively late (p. 104), the Āryan occupa-
tion of the country goes back to an earlier period. In the later Vedic litera-
ture two kings of Kosala, Hiraṇyanābha and Para Ātņāra, probably father
and son, seem to be mentioned as performing the horse sacrifice in celebra-
tion of their victories ; and, as the former of these appears in the Purānic
For the historical details here summarised see Vedic Index, I, pp. 153, 155, 165.
169 ; II, pp. 12, 96, 110, 186 ; Pargiter, J. R. A. S. 1910, pp. 26-29 ; í Kali Age, pp. 4 ff. ,
65 ff.
## p. 276 (#310) ############################################
276
[CH.
THE PURĀNAS
list before the Kali Age, the conquest of Kosala was evidently attributed to
the period before the great war.
In the time of the Buddha, Kosala was the predominant kingdom in
Northern India, but it was already being eclipsed by the growing power of
Magadha. Such incidents in its history as can be recovered from early
Buddhist literature have been narrated in Chapter vii (pp. 158 ff. ).
The Purāņic list of Ikshvāku kings in the Kali Age concludes with
Sumitra, the fourth successor of Prasenajit, who was contemporary with the
Buddha. The royal houses of Pūru and Ikshvāku, the sovereigns of Agra
and Oudh, thus disappear from the scene at about the same time (p. 275).
Henceforth the historical interest of the Parāņas centres in Magadha which
had become the suzerain power in the Middle Country.
The Magadhas, who inhabited the Patna and Gaya Districts of
S. Bihār, are unknown by this name to the Rigveda ; but, together with their
neighbours, the Angas, in the Districts of Monghyr and Bhāgalpur, they are
mentioned in the Atharvaveda as a people living on the extreme confines of
Āryan civilisation. Their kings claimed to be Pūrus : they traced their des-
cent from Kuru through the great conqueror. Vasu Chaidya’, whose
son, Brihadratha, was the founder of the dynasty which is known by
his name.
Magadha is the most famous kingdom in ancient and medieval India.
Twice in history did it establish great empires - the Maurya Empire in the
fourth and third centuries B. C. , and the Gupta Empire in the fourth and
fifth centuries A. D. The long line of kings attributed to Magadha by
the Purāņas consists of a series of no fewer than eight dynastic lists furnish-
ed with a statement of the number of years in each reign and the duration of
each dynasty. If all these dynasties could be regarded as successive, and if
the length of reigns could be determined with certainty, the chronology of
Magadha would be a simple matter of calculation. But this is not the case.
Some of the royal families included in the series were undoubtedly contem-
porary, and the text of the Purāṇas has become so corrupt that the numbers
as stated by the different MSs, are rarely in agreement.
Bșihadratha himself and nine of his successors are supposed to have
reigned before the Kali Age. It is recorded that, when Sahadeva, the last of
these, was slain in the great war, Somādhi, his heir, became king in
Girivraja, 'the fortress on the hill,' at the foot of which the old capital of
Magadha, Rājagriha, grew up. The site is marked by the ruined town of
Rājgir in the Patna District. In the reign of Senājit, Somādhi's sixth
successor, most of the Purāṇas claim to have been recited. No other event
is connected with the twenty-one successors of Sahadeva.
1 Vedic Index, I, pp. 75, 190, 491 ; 11, p. 506 ; Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1910, pp. 27,
29 ; Kali Age, pp. 9. 66,
2 Possibly the Kacu Chaidya of Rigveda, VIII, 5, 37.
a
;
## p. 277 (#311) ############################################
-XII]
AVANTI : LATER ÇIÇUNĀGAS
277
The next two dynasties, the Pradyotas and Çiçunāgas, were almost
certainly contemporary. The Pradyota dynasty may be identified with the
Pauņika family mentioned in the Harshacharita (trans. Cowell and Thomas,
p. 193). According to the Purāņas, the founder, Puņika (Pulika) slew his
.
master, Ripuñjaya, the last of the Brihadrathas, and anointed his own son
in his stead. After five reigns, the duration of which is given by some
versions as 52 years and by others as 138 years, the Pradyota dynasty is
supplanted by Çiçunāga, who, after placing his son on the throne of Kāçī
(Benares), himself takes possession of Girivraja.
But this is history distorted. Some editor has evidently placed inde-
pendent lists in a false sequence and supplied appropriate links of connex-
ion. This is clear from the evidence of Buddhist literature.
The Pradyotas were kings of Avanti (W. Mālwā) and their capital
was Ujjain. Pradyota (Pajjota, himself, like Bimbisāra and Ajātaçatru
(Ajātasattu), the fifth and sixth in the list of Çiçunāgas, and like the Pūru
Udayana (Udena) of Vatsa (Vamsa) and the Ikshvāku Prasenajit (Pasen-
adi) of Kosala, was contemporary with the Buddha. The first of the Prad.
yotas, and the fifth and sixth of the Çiçunāgas, who are separated by more
than 150 years at the least according to the Purāņas? , were therefore ruling
at the same period in different countries.
That the Pradyota of the Purānas and the Pradyota of Ujjain were
one and the same person does not admit of question. The fact is implied
in the statement of the Matsya Pur), and is clear when the Purāņas are
compared with other Sanskrit literature. Udayana, the king of Vatsa, is
the central figure in a large cycle of Sanskrit stories of love and adventure,
and in these Pradyota, the king of Ujjain, the father of the peerless Vāsa-
vadattā, plays no small part. In some of the stories he appears also as
the father of Pālaka and the grandfather of Avantivardhana". Now of the
five members of the dynasty in the Purāņas the first two are Pradyota and
Pālaka (v. l. Bālaka), and the last is probably Avantivardhana ; for the
various readings of the ass, as given by Mr Pargiter (Kali Age, p. 19), indi-
cate that this may be the correct form of the name which appears in his
text as Nandivardhana.
This intrusion of kings of Avanti in the records of Magadha is pro-
bably to be explained, as in the similar case of the Andhras (p. 284), as
the result of a suzerainty successfully asserted by Avanti ; and this may
have been the outcome of the attack on Ajātaçatru which Pradyota was
reported to have been contemplating shortly before the Buddha's death. If
so, the supremacy of Avanti, which may have been temporary, was not
established until some years after the beginning of Ajātaçatru's reigon, and
the Pradyotas of the Purāņas were contemporay with the later Çiçunāgas
Ajātaçatru, Darçaka, and Udāyin.
1 See Chapter VII, pp. 160, 163, 165, 166
2 Kali Age, pp. 18-21, 68. 9.
: Mr Harit Krishna Dey in Udayana Vatsarāja(Calcutta, 1919), p. 4.
4 Lacote, Guņādhya et la Brhatkathā, p. 164,
5 Chapter VII, p. 165.
## p. 278 (#312) ############################################
278
[CH.
THE PURĀNAS
.
It is only when we come to the reigns of Bimbisara and Ajātaçatru in
the Çiçunāga dynasty that we find the firm ground of history. At this
period lived Mahāvīra and Buddha, the founders, or perhaps rather the
reformers, of Jainism and Budhism ; and now the Purāņas are supplement-
ed by two other lines of tradition which are presumably independent. In
the Jain accounts Bimbisāra appears as Çreņika and Ajātaçatru as Kūņika:
the former began the expansion of Magadha by the conquest of the
kingdom of Anga (Monghyr and Bhāgalpur), and the latter is said to have
come to the throne after the death of Mahāvira and a few years before the
death of Buddha.
Unfortunately on one important point the three sources of imformation
are not in agreement. The first eight kings in the Purānic genealogy may
be arranged into two groups, the first headed by Çiçunāga and the second
by Bimbisara. This arrangement is reversed in the Buddhist lists, while
Çiçunāga's group is omitted altogether by the Jains. It is difficult to see
how the there traditions, each of which has its champions among modern
scholars, can be reconciled.
The Brāhman and Buddhist books record the length of the reigns of
Bimbisara and Ajātaçatru ; but they are not in agreement with one another,
and moreover the Brāhman accounts are not consistent. In the present
corrupt condition of the text the various mss. of the Purāņas attribute a
reign of either 28 or 38 years to Bimbisāra, and one of 25, 27, or 28 years
to Ajātaçatru (Kali Age, p. 21). Until the text has been restored by criti-
cal editing the authentic tradition of the Brāhmans cannot be ascertain-
ed. In contrast with this discrepancy the Buddhist chronicles of Ceylon,
the Dipavamsa and the Mahāvamsa, offer a consistent and more detailed
account of these reigns and of certain important events in the lifetime of
Siddhārtha, the Çākya prince who became the Buddha. Whether this
tradition is to be accepted as correct in preference to the other may be
questioned ; but it affords the best working hypothesis which has yet been
discovered. The chronology as determined by Prof. Geiger in the intro-
duction to his translation of the Mahāvamsa (pp. xl-xlvi) may by tabula-
ted as follows:
Cicunāga Kings
Siddhartha (the Buddha)
Bimbisara's birth
558 B. C. Born
563 B. C.
accession
543
Leaves his father's house 534
death
Becomes Buddha
Ajātacatru's accession
Meets Bimbisara (for the
99
528
. . .
9
491
491
. . .
second time)
death
459
Attains nirt āņa
1 See Chapter VII, pp. 163 f.
528
483
99
## p. 279 (#313) ############################################
XII]
NANDAS
279
After these two reigns we come once more to a period of conflicting
authorities and chronological uncertainty which lasts until the reign of
Chandragupta. The Buddhist genealogy preserved in the Mabāvamsa is
certainly not above suspicion“; for each of the five kings from Ajātasattu
to Nāgadāsaka is said to have killed his father and predecessor within a
period of fifty-six years, and we are solemnly told that, after the last of
these, Nāgadāsaka had occupied the throne for twenty-four years, the
citizens awoke to the fact that 'this is a dynasty of parricides' and appoint-
ed the minister Susunāga (Çiçunāga) in his stead. The Jain tradition recog-
nises only Udāyin and the nine Nandas as reigning during this interval ;
and the Purānic list (Kali Age, pp. 21-6, 68-9) is as follows :
Darcaka reigned 24, 25, or 35 years
Udāyin
Nandivardhana reigned 40, or 42 years.
Mahānandin
33
43
9
12
Mahāpadma
28, or 88
" Total, 100 ]years.
His eight sons
Darçaka appears not to be mentioned by the Buddhist writers,
unless indeed he is to be identified with Nāgadāsaka whom they
place before Udāvin (Udāyi-bhadda); but he is known to Sanskrit literature
as a king of Magadha and the brother of Pad māvatī, the second queen of
Udayana, king of Vatsa”. Udāyin, or Udāyi-bhadda, is known to all
the three traditions. Te him the Brāhmans and Jains attribute the
foundation of Kusumapura on the south bank of the Ganges. The new
city, which was either identical with the later Pātaliputra or in its imme-
diate neighbourhood, was built near the fortress which Ajātaçatru had esta-
blished at the village of Pāšali as a protection against the Vajjian (Vșiji)
confederacy of Licchavis, Videhas, and other clans of N. Bihār. The
foundation of Pāțaliputra is ascribed by the Buddhists to Kālāsoka.
The ten Çiçunāga kings are expressly called Kshatriyas by the
Purāņas, but the last of these, Mahānandin, became through his marriage
with a Çūdra woman the founder of a Çūdra dynasty which endured for
two generations, Mahāpadma and his eight sons. One of the latter,
usually supposed to be named Dhanananda, was on the throne in 326 B. O. ,
when Alexander the Great was obliged by the unwillingness of his
army to abandon his scheme of attacking the Prasioi, or 'eastern nations'
then united under the suzerainty of Magadha. Within a few years
of Alexander's retirement from India, this euzerainty passed from the
Nandas to the Mauryas, probably c. 321 3. c.
The period of the nine Nandas is thus determined. According
to the Purāņas they represent no new family : they are the direct descen-
1 Chapter VII, pp. 168 f.
2 Svapnavāsavadattā, Act, I (ed. Trivandrum Series, pp. 4, 5).
## p. 280 (#314) ############################################
280
[Ch.
THE PURANAS
.
dants of the Çiçunāgas, the last and the last but one of whom, Mahānandin
and Nandivardhana, bear names which indicate their connexion. There are,
therefore, two groups of these kings, which seem to be distinguished
in literature as the 'old' and the 'new' Nandas ; and, as Mr Jayaswal has
suggested,'new' and not 'nine' may have been the correct designation of the
later group. The Purāņas know no break of political continuity between
the Çiçunāgas and the Nandas ; but they recognise that a great social and
religious gulf has been fixed between the earlier and the later Nandas
by the flagrant violation of caste law which placed Mahāpadma, the
son of a Çūdra woman, on the throne ; and they mark their sense
of this chasm by interpolating after the reign of Mahānandin a summary of
the number of reigns in other contemporary dynasties before proceeding
with their account of the rulers of Magadha.
As to the origin of the Nandas we have no certain information ; but
the name is probably tribal, and it may be connected with the Nandas who
lived near the river Rāmgangā, between the Ganges and the Kosi in the
Himālayan region of the United Provinces. The countries of the Himālayan
fringe at this period were occupied by innumerable clans governed by tribal
constitutions which may best be described as aristocratic oligarchies.
Like the Rājputs, they were conquerors ruling in the midst of subject
peoples ; and, as Dr Vincent Smith has suggested3, many of these
clans may bave been of Tibeto-Chinese origin. It is possible that the
Çiçunāgas and Nandas may have been the descendants of mountain
chieftains who had won the kingdom of Magadha by conquest.
A Nanda king is twice mentioned in the Häthigumphā (inscrip-
tion of king Khāravela of Kalinga (Orissa). The inscription, which is
a record of events in thirteen (or fourteen) years of the king's reign,
has been badly preserved. Considerable portions have been lost, and both
the reading and the interpretation of many passages uncertain.
The record in its present state can only be used as a basis for history with
the utmost caution. It is clear, however, that in his fifth year Khāravela
executed some public work which was associated with the memory of
king Nanda', and that in his twelfth year he gained a victory over the king
1 Jour. Bihar aud Orissa Research Soc. , September 1915, p. 21.
2 Pargiter, Mārk. Pur. , pp, 292, 393. 3 Oxford History of India (1919), p. 49.
4 The different versions of this passage in line 6 of the inscr. depend chiefly,
though not solely, on the translation of ti-vāsa-sata; The following renderings have been
proposed :
(1) •He opened the three-yearly almshouse of Nandarāja' (Pandit Bhagvānlal
Indrāji, Trans. Inter. Or. Cong. , Leiden, 1884, Part 3, p. 135. Sata=sattra or catra, cf.
Ep. Ind. , x, Appendix, no. 967, p. 100, and no. 985, p. 102);
are
3
## p. 281 (#315) ############################################
XIII]
GROWTH OF MAGADHA: OTHER POWERS
:
281
of Magadha and, according to Mr Jayswal's translation, recovered
certain trophies which had been carried away by king Nanda.
These statements of the inscription, coupled with the somewhat
enigniatical testimony of an ancient Sanskrit. Ms. quoted by Mr Jayaswal, 2
seem to show that Kalinga had been conquered by one of the Nanda kings
and lost by another. Kalinga was undoubtedly conquered by Açoka, the
third of the Maurya emperors, c, 262 3. 0. 3 We must infer, therefore, either
that it was not included in the dominions of the first two emperors,
Chandragupta and Bindusāra, or that it had revolted and was reconquered
by Açoka.
Certain stages in the growth of the power of Magadha from its
ancient stronghold in the fortress of Girivraja may thus be traced. The
expansion began with the conquest of Anga (Monghyr and Bhāgalpur in
Bengal) by Bimbisāra, c. 500 B. C. The establishment of a supremacy over
Kāçi (Benares), Kosala (Oudh), and Videha (N. Bihār) was probably the
work of his son and successor, Ajātaçatru, in the first half of the fifth century.
Kalinga (Orissa) was perhaps, temporarily included in the empire as
a result of its conquest by a Nanda king. It remained for Chandragupta
to extend the imperial dominions by the annexation of the north-western
region which for a few years had owned the sway of Alexander the Great
and his satraps, and for Açoka to conquer, or reconquer, Kalinga.
The summary of reigns, which comes in the Purāṇas between the
description of the earlier and later Nandas, has reference to ten dynasties
in Northern and Central India which were contemporary with the kings of
Magadha. It is a bare list of names and numbers without any orderly
arrangement, and, as usual, the numbers given by the different mss. are not
consistent. The summary may be rearranged geographically as follows
(of, Kali Age, pp. 23-4, 69).
(United Provinces : Agra)
Central India and Gujarat)
1. Kurus; 36(19,26, 30, or 50) reigns. 6. Haihayas 28 (24)
reigns
2. Panchālas : 27 (25)
7. Acmakas : 25
3. Çūrasenas : 23
8. Vitihotras : 20
4. Kācis : 24 (36)
(N. Bihar)
(United Provinces : Oudh)
9. Mithilas : 28 (18)
5. Ikshvākus : 24
(Orissa)
10. Kalingas : 32 (22, 24, 26, or 40),,
[Contd. from p. 280
(2) 'He had an aqueduct, that had not been used for 103 years since king Nanda
(or since the Nanda kings), conducted into the city'(Prof. Luders, Ep. Ind. , x, Appendix,
no. 1345, p. 161. Sata=Catu, as also in the next translation);
(3) He brings into the capital. . . the canal excavated by king Nanda three
centuries before' (Mr. J. P. Jayaswal Mr. R. D. Banerji, Jour. Bihar and Orissa Research
Soc. , Dec. 1917, pp. 425 ff. )
1 Op. cit. , pp. 447, 464-5.
2 Ibid. p. 482.
3 Chapter xx.
)
9
## p. 282 (#316) ############################################
282
[CH.
THE PURANAS
9
1. The Kirus ara no doubt the Pūrus of the detailed list : but the number of
reigns differs.
2. The Pañchālas, a confederation of five tribes, were neighbours of the Kurus.
The capital of N. Pañchāla was Ahicchatra, now a ruined site still bearing the same
name near the village of Bāmnagar in the Bareilly District. The capital of S. Pañchāla
was Kāmpilya, now represented by ruins at the village of Kāmpil in the Farrukhābād
District.
3. The peoples living to the south of Kurukshetra claimei descent from
Yadu. Of these the Çūras-nas occupied the Muttra District and possibly some of
the territory still farther south. This capital was Muttra (Mathurā), the birthplace of the
hero Kộishņa.
To the west of Çūrasenas dwelt the Matsyas. The two peoples are constantly
associated, and it is possible that at this time they may have been united under one
king. The Matsyas occupied the state of Alwar and possibly some parts of Jaipur and
Bhartpur. Their capitals were Upaplavya, the site of which is uncertain, and Vairāta
the city of king Virāța, the modern Bairāt in Jaipur.
4. The little kingdom of Kāci (Benares) was bordered by Vatsa on the west,
Kosa'a on the north, and Magadha on the east. Some details of its relations with
these countries may be recovered from early literature. According to the Çatapatha
Brāhmaṇa (xiii, 5,4, 19), its king Dhșitarāshtra was conquered by the Bharata prince
Çatānika (p. 275). Sātrājita Such incidental notices of its later history as have been
preserved by Buddhist writers have been collected in Chapter VII, pp. 160 ff.
At different periods Kāçi came under the sway of the three successive suzerain
powers of Northern India--the Pūrus of Vatsa, the Ikshvākus of Kosala, and the
kings of Magadha; but it seems to have enjoyed its period of independent power in the
interval between the decline of Vatea and the rise of Kosala, when king Brahmadatta,
possibly about a century and a half before the Buddha's time, conquered Kosala. The
fame of Brahmadatta has been kept alive in Buddhist literature ; for in his reign the
Jātakas, or stories of the Buddha in previous births, are conventionally set.
The account given in the Purāṇas of the accession of Çiçunāga to the throne of
Magadha shows that this king was associated also with Kāçi (f. 277).
5 The number of Ikshvāku kings given in the summary is 22. This is not
in accordance with the detailed list which (pp. 308 f) contains 30.
6, 7, 8. The Haihayas, Açmakas, and Vitihotras, like the çūrasenas, belonged
to the great family of the descendants of Yadu who occupied the countries of the
river Chambal in the north and the river Narbadā in the south; but it is difficult
to identify with precision the kingdoms indicated by these different names. Haihaya
in often used almost as a syronym of Yādava to denote the whole group of peoples ;
and the Vitihotras are a branch of the Haihayas. Both the Vitihotras and the Acmakas
are closely associated in literature with the Avantis of W. Mālwā, whese capital was
Ujjain (Ujjayini) on the Siprā, a tributary of the Chambal (Charmaņvati 1.
It would be strange if the rulers of a city so famous both politicaly and com.
mercially as Ujjain should have found no place in this summary. The most plausible
explanation of thcir apparent absence from the list is that they are here called
Hailayas.
9. The Mithilas take their name from Mithilā, the capital of the Videhas, one
of the numerous clans, possibly of Tibeto-Chinese origin, who inhabited Tirhut (the
districts of Champāran, Muzaffarpur, and Darbhangā in N. Bibār). Videgha Mathava,
to whom the Brāhmanisation of this region is attributed by the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa
(v. sup. p. 109) is probably its earliest recorded monarch. According to the Purāņas
the Āryan kings of the Videhas were a branch of the Pūru family.
