In the Rigveda both
the Pūrus and the Bharatas live in the land of the Sarasvati (Brahmăvarta
or Sarhind).
the Pūrus and the Bharatas live in the land of the Sarasvati (Brahmăvarta
or Sarhind).
Cambridge History of India - v1
G.
, pp.
654, 658 ff.
) to prove that both the
dynastic lists of the Andhra kings and the duration of the different reigns
as stated in the Matsya Purāņa are substantially correct.
The critical study of the Purāņas, which was inaugurated by
Mr. Pargiter's Dynasties of the Kali Age (1913), is still in its infancy. When
this important branch of literature has been examined by the methods
which have been applied to the Vedas and Brāhmanas, there can be little
doubt that valuable historical results will be obtained. The Purāņas are
confessedly partly legendary and partly historical. The descriptions of
superhuman beings and of other worlds than this are glorified accounts of
the unknown founded on the analogy of the known. They find their
counterpart in that Christian Purāņa, Milton's Paradise Lost. The descrip-
tions of ancient monarchs and of their realms are essentially historica).
They may be compared to the Sagas and the medieval chronicles of
Europe. They are the products of an imaginative and uncritical age in
which men were not careful to distinguish fact from legend. It is the task
of modern criticism to disentangle the two elements. Its first object should
be to remove from the existing Purāṇas all later additions, and then from
a comparison of their oldest portions to determine the relations in which
they stand to one another, and thus, as far as possible, to restore their
common tradition to its original form.
As yet this necessary preliminary process has not even been begun ;
and until it is completed the real value of the Purāņas as historical evidence
cannot be estimated. They still continue to be dated by scholars according
to the latest indications which can be discovered in them, and they are too
often rejected as incompetent witnesses for the events of any early period.
The elementary fact that the date, whether of a building or of a literary
production, is not determined by its latest addition is in their case generally
ignored.
The eighteen Purāņas are associated with an equal number of
Upapurāņas. Traditional lists, in which all of these Purāṇas and
Upa purāņas are arranged in a definite order of precedence, have been pre-
served in the works themselves. In these the Brahmā Purāna stands first ;
and, as this position and its alternative title 'Adi' or 'the First' would alike
seem to indicate, it is probably the oldest. There would appear to be
nothing in its earlier portions to discountenance this claim ; but it has
received late additions, and on the evidence of these Wilson ascribed it to
>
## p. 268 (#302) ############################################
268
[Ch.
THE PURĀNAS
the thirteenth or fourteenth century. This affords a signal instance of the
misconception which may be caused by failure to discriminate between the
ages of different parts of a work. All the Purāņas without exception have
been altered. The Vishņu Pur. , which stands third in the list, has
apparently suffered less than the others.
Comparatively little is known about the Upapurāņas. Few of them
have been published or thoroughly investigated. They appear to be, as a
rule, still more narrowly sectarian than the Purāņas, and to be intended to
further religious interests which are more purely local. They probably have
little, if any, historical worth.
The total number of couplets comprised in the eighteen Purāņas as
given in the lists is 400,000, the length of the different versions varying
from 10,000 to about 81,000 couplets. These statements were no doubt
accurate at the time when the computation was made ; but great changes
have since taken place. On the one hand, whole sections have been lost.
The Vishnu Pur. , usually regarded as the best conserved of all, has now
less than 7,000 couplets : in the lists it appears with 23,000. On the
other hand, numerous more recent works claim to belong to one or other
of the Purāņas, so that it is now sometimes impossible to define the precise
limits of the latter. If all the productions which profess to form portions
of the Skanda Pur. , for instance, were included, the total given in the lists
would be greatly exceeded.
As to the history of these eighteen versions of a common tradition,
it seems certain that they were moulded into their present form at various
centres of religious activity. The case has been clearly stated by the late
Mr. A. M. T. Jackson in Centenary Volume of the Jour. of the Bombay
Branch of the R. A. S. (105), p. 73 :
A very striking analogy to the mutual relations of the various Purāņas is to be
found in the case of our own Saxon chronicle, which, as is well known, continued
to be written up in various monasteries down to the reiga of Stephen, though the
additions made after the Roman conquest were independent of each other. Similarly
the copies of the original verse Purāņa that were possessed by the priests of the
great centres of pilgrimage were altered and added to chiefly by the insertion of local
events after the fall of a central Hindu government had made communication between
the different groups of Brāhmans relatively difficult. In this way, the Brahmā Purāna
may represent the Orissa version of the original work, just as the Padma may give
that of Pushkara, the Agni that of Gayā, the Varāha that of Mathurā, the Vāmana
that of Thānesar, the Kūrma that of Benares, and the Matsya that of the Brhāmans on
the Narmadā.
At what period the eighteen Purāņas assumed their distinctive titles
is uncertain. It was no doubt long after they had ceased to be regarded as
repositories of historical information, for they are grouped in the
traditional lists entirely according to their religious character. It has
sometimes been supposed that one of their number is the immediate
source of all the others ; but it seems more probable that they belong to
## p. 269 (#303) ############################################
XIII ]
DIFFERENT VERSIONS AND AGE
269
several groups which represent different lines of tradition. Possibly
the Purāņas which are narrated by the Sūta may belong to one such group,
and those which are narrated by Maitreya to another. One at least of the
present titles may be traced back to an early period ; for the Bhavishya
;
or Bhavishyat Pur; the ninth in the list, is quoted in the Dharma Sūtra of
Āpastamba (II, 9, 24, 6) which cannot be later than the second century B. C.
and may possibly be still more ancient. But as a rule early references
to this traditional lore describe it generally as Purāņa or Itihāsa-Purāņa,
a class of literature which, as we have seen, undoubtly goes back at least
to the time of the Atharvaveda.
Some such antiquity is implicitly claimed by the Purāņas in their
prologues. Parāçara, whò narrates the Vishņu Pur. , is the grandson of
Vasishtha, the rishi of the seventh mandala of the Rigveda ; and his
narration takes place in the reign of Parikshit? who is celebrated as a king
of the Kurus in the Atharvaveda. Nearly all the other Puraņās are
attributed to the Sūta and to a period four generations later. Of the
prologues to these that of the Vāyu Pur, may be selected as typical. The
rishis are performing their twelve-year sacrifice in the Naimisha forest on the
bank of the sacred river Dșishadvati. To them comes the Sūta, the
custodian of the ancient Kshatriya traditions. At their request he takes
up bis parable and retells the legends entrusted to his care by Vyāsa. The
scene is laid in the reign of the Pūru king Adhisimakrishņa, who is
supposed to have lived before the beginning of the Kali Age, or, as we
should say, before the historical period. But the genealogy assigned to
him indicates a more definite date ; for of his immediate forbears -
Açvamedhadatta, Çatānika, Janamejaya, Parīkshit-all but the first, his
father Acvamedhadatta, are no doubt to be identified with kings of the
same names who appear in the Brāhmaṇas.
Whatever may be the historical value of these prologues, they certainly
carry us back to the same period, the period of the Atharvaveda and the
Brāhmaṇas, to which modern research has traced the existence of an
Itihāsa-Purāņa literature. To suppose that they are altogether concoctions
of the Middle Ages is to place too great a strain on our credulity. They
can scarcely have been reconstructed from the fragmentary evidence
supplied by Vedas and Brāhmaṇas at a period when no one could have
dreamed of treating Vedas and Brāhmaṇas as historical documents-a task
reserved for the nineteenth century. We cannot escape from the only
possible conclusion, that the Purāṇas have preserved, in however perverted
and distorted a form, an independent tradition, which supplements the
priestly tradition of the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, and which goes back to the
1 Chapter x, pp. 222-23 f.
2 The name appears as Parikshit in the earlier, and as Parikshit in the later,
literature,
## p. 270 (#304) ############################################
270
THE PURĀNAS
[ch.
same period. This tradition, as we way gather from the prologues, was
handed down from one generation of bards to another and was solemnly
promulgated on the occasion of great sacrifices.
The Kshatriya literature of the heroic age of India has for the most
part been lost.
Such of it as has survived has owed its preservation to its
association with religion. The commemoration of the lineage of kings
found a place in religious ceremonial, as, for instance, in the year-long
preparation for the ‘horse-sacrifice,' by the performance of which a king
ratified his claim to suzerainty over his neighbours. It is no doubt to such
commemorations that we owe the dynastic lists which have been preserved
in the Purāņas.
The historical character of these works is disguised by their setting.
They have been made to conform with Indian ideas as to the origin
and nature of the universe and its relation to a First Cause. The effect of
this has been to remove the monarch who is represented as reigning when
the recital takes place, and all his predecessors from the realm of history
into the realm of legend ; and it has been found necessary to preserve
the illusion throughout the subsequent narrative. The Sūta is invited by
the sacrificing rishis of the Naimisha forest to describe the Kali Age which
is still to come. It is evident that he can only do so prophetically. He can
only reproduce the foreknowledge which has been divinely implanted in
him by Vyāsa. Accordingly he uses the future tense in speaking of kings
who have actually reigned and of events which have actually happened.
History has been made to assume the disguise of prophecy.
When this pretence is set aside, and when all legendary or imaginary
elements are removed, the last two sections of the Purāņas afford valuable
,
information as to the geography and history of ancient India.
The fourth section, the manvantara, deals with the periods of the
different Manus. ' These form part of a chronological system which is
purely hypothetical. Time, like soul and matter, is a phrase of the Supreme
Spirit. As Brahmā wakes or sleeps, the universe wakes or sleeps also.
Each day and each night of Brahmā is an ‘aeon' (kalpa) and is equivalent
to a thousand 'great ages' (mahāyuga), that is to say, 1000 X 4,320,000
mortal years. During an 'aeon’ fourteen Manus or 'fathers of mankind'
appear, each presiding over a period of seventy-one 'great ages' with
a surplus. Each ‘great age' is further divided into four ‘ages' (yuga)
of progressive deterioration like the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages
of Greek and Roman mythology. These are named, from the numbers on
the dice, Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali, and are accordingly supposed to
last for periods represented by the proportion 4:3:2:1. We need not
follow this subdivision of time down to its ultimate fraction 'the twinkling
of an eye' (nimesha) or dwell on the sectarian zeal which leads some of the
## p. 271 (#305) ############################################
XII ]
THE MANUS
271
9
Purāṇas to assert that an 'aeon' of Brahmā is but ‘the twinkling of an eye'
in the endurance of Çiva or Vishņu.
The account of the manvantara of Manu Svāyambhuva, the first in
the series of fourteen, includes a description of the universe as it now exists
or is supposed to exist. The greater part of this description is, like the
chronology, imaginary. The world, according to this primitive geography,
consists of seven concentric continents separated by encircling seas.
These are the 'seas of treacle and seas of butter' at which Lord Macaulay,
with his utter inability to understand any form of early culture, scoffed in
his celebrated minute on Indian education. The innermost of these
continents, which-and here we come to actuality-is separated from
the next by salt water, is Jambudvīpa; and of Jambudvīpa the most
important region is Bharalavarsha or Bhārata, that is to say, the sub-
continent of India :
The country that lies north of the ocean, and south of the snowy mountains, is
Bhārata ; for there dwell the descendants of Bharata . . .
The seven main chains of mountains in Bhārata are Mahendra, Malaya, Sahya,
Çuktimat, Riksha, Vindhya, and Pāripātra. . .
On the east of Bhārata dwell the Kirātas (the barbarians); on the west, the
Yavanas; in the centre reside Brāhmans, Kshatriyas Vaiçyas, and Cūdras. (Vishņu
Pur. , trans, Wilson. II. pp. 127-9. )
General descriptions such as this are followed by lists, more or less
detailed, of the rivers which flow from the Himālayas and the seven
great ranges, and of the tribes inhabiting the various regions. 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.
dynastic lists of the Andhra kings and the duration of the different reigns
as stated in the Matsya Purāņa are substantially correct.
The critical study of the Purāņas, which was inaugurated by
Mr. Pargiter's Dynasties of the Kali Age (1913), is still in its infancy. When
this important branch of literature has been examined by the methods
which have been applied to the Vedas and Brāhmanas, there can be little
doubt that valuable historical results will be obtained. The Purāņas are
confessedly partly legendary and partly historical. The descriptions of
superhuman beings and of other worlds than this are glorified accounts of
the unknown founded on the analogy of the known. They find their
counterpart in that Christian Purāņa, Milton's Paradise Lost. The descrip-
tions of ancient monarchs and of their realms are essentially historica).
They may be compared to the Sagas and the medieval chronicles of
Europe. They are the products of an imaginative and uncritical age in
which men were not careful to distinguish fact from legend. It is the task
of modern criticism to disentangle the two elements. Its first object should
be to remove from the existing Purāṇas all later additions, and then from
a comparison of their oldest portions to determine the relations in which
they stand to one another, and thus, as far as possible, to restore their
common tradition to its original form.
As yet this necessary preliminary process has not even been begun ;
and until it is completed the real value of the Purāņas as historical evidence
cannot be estimated. They still continue to be dated by scholars according
to the latest indications which can be discovered in them, and they are too
often rejected as incompetent witnesses for the events of any early period.
The elementary fact that the date, whether of a building or of a literary
production, is not determined by its latest addition is in their case generally
ignored.
The eighteen Purāņas are associated with an equal number of
Upapurāņas. Traditional lists, in which all of these Purāṇas and
Upa purāņas are arranged in a definite order of precedence, have been pre-
served in the works themselves. In these the Brahmā Purāna stands first ;
and, as this position and its alternative title 'Adi' or 'the First' would alike
seem to indicate, it is probably the oldest. There would appear to be
nothing in its earlier portions to discountenance this claim ; but it has
received late additions, and on the evidence of these Wilson ascribed it to
>
## p. 268 (#302) ############################################
268
[Ch.
THE PURĀNAS
the thirteenth or fourteenth century. This affords a signal instance of the
misconception which may be caused by failure to discriminate between the
ages of different parts of a work. All the Purāņas without exception have
been altered. The Vishņu Pur. , which stands third in the list, has
apparently suffered less than the others.
Comparatively little is known about the Upapurāņas. Few of them
have been published or thoroughly investigated. They appear to be, as a
rule, still more narrowly sectarian than the Purāņas, and to be intended to
further religious interests which are more purely local. They probably have
little, if any, historical worth.
The total number of couplets comprised in the eighteen Purāņas as
given in the lists is 400,000, the length of the different versions varying
from 10,000 to about 81,000 couplets. These statements were no doubt
accurate at the time when the computation was made ; but great changes
have since taken place. On the one hand, whole sections have been lost.
The Vishnu Pur. , usually regarded as the best conserved of all, has now
less than 7,000 couplets : in the lists it appears with 23,000. On the
other hand, numerous more recent works claim to belong to one or other
of the Purāņas, so that it is now sometimes impossible to define the precise
limits of the latter. If all the productions which profess to form portions
of the Skanda Pur. , for instance, were included, the total given in the lists
would be greatly exceeded.
As to the history of these eighteen versions of a common tradition,
it seems certain that they were moulded into their present form at various
centres of religious activity. The case has been clearly stated by the late
Mr. A. M. T. Jackson in Centenary Volume of the Jour. of the Bombay
Branch of the R. A. S. (105), p. 73 :
A very striking analogy to the mutual relations of the various Purāņas is to be
found in the case of our own Saxon chronicle, which, as is well known, continued
to be written up in various monasteries down to the reiga of Stephen, though the
additions made after the Roman conquest were independent of each other. Similarly
the copies of the original verse Purāņa that were possessed by the priests of the
great centres of pilgrimage were altered and added to chiefly by the insertion of local
events after the fall of a central Hindu government had made communication between
the different groups of Brāhmans relatively difficult. In this way, the Brahmā Purāna
may represent the Orissa version of the original work, just as the Padma may give
that of Pushkara, the Agni that of Gayā, the Varāha that of Mathurā, the Vāmana
that of Thānesar, the Kūrma that of Benares, and the Matsya that of the Brhāmans on
the Narmadā.
At what period the eighteen Purāņas assumed their distinctive titles
is uncertain. It was no doubt long after they had ceased to be regarded as
repositories of historical information, for they are grouped in the
traditional lists entirely according to their religious character. It has
sometimes been supposed that one of their number is the immediate
source of all the others ; but it seems more probable that they belong to
## p. 269 (#303) ############################################
XIII ]
DIFFERENT VERSIONS AND AGE
269
several groups which represent different lines of tradition. Possibly
the Purāņas which are narrated by the Sūta may belong to one such group,
and those which are narrated by Maitreya to another. One at least of the
present titles may be traced back to an early period ; for the Bhavishya
;
or Bhavishyat Pur; the ninth in the list, is quoted in the Dharma Sūtra of
Āpastamba (II, 9, 24, 6) which cannot be later than the second century B. C.
and may possibly be still more ancient. But as a rule early references
to this traditional lore describe it generally as Purāņa or Itihāsa-Purāņa,
a class of literature which, as we have seen, undoubtly goes back at least
to the time of the Atharvaveda.
Some such antiquity is implicitly claimed by the Purāņas in their
prologues. Parāçara, whò narrates the Vishņu Pur. , is the grandson of
Vasishtha, the rishi of the seventh mandala of the Rigveda ; and his
narration takes place in the reign of Parikshit? who is celebrated as a king
of the Kurus in the Atharvaveda. Nearly all the other Puraņās are
attributed to the Sūta and to a period four generations later. Of the
prologues to these that of the Vāyu Pur, may be selected as typical. The
rishis are performing their twelve-year sacrifice in the Naimisha forest on the
bank of the sacred river Dșishadvati. To them comes the Sūta, the
custodian of the ancient Kshatriya traditions. At their request he takes
up bis parable and retells the legends entrusted to his care by Vyāsa. The
scene is laid in the reign of the Pūru king Adhisimakrishņa, who is
supposed to have lived before the beginning of the Kali Age, or, as we
should say, before the historical period. But the genealogy assigned to
him indicates a more definite date ; for of his immediate forbears -
Açvamedhadatta, Çatānika, Janamejaya, Parīkshit-all but the first, his
father Acvamedhadatta, are no doubt to be identified with kings of the
same names who appear in the Brāhmaṇas.
Whatever may be the historical value of these prologues, they certainly
carry us back to the same period, the period of the Atharvaveda and the
Brāhmaṇas, to which modern research has traced the existence of an
Itihāsa-Purāņa literature. To suppose that they are altogether concoctions
of the Middle Ages is to place too great a strain on our credulity. They
can scarcely have been reconstructed from the fragmentary evidence
supplied by Vedas and Brāhmaṇas at a period when no one could have
dreamed of treating Vedas and Brāhmaṇas as historical documents-a task
reserved for the nineteenth century. We cannot escape from the only
possible conclusion, that the Purāṇas have preserved, in however perverted
and distorted a form, an independent tradition, which supplements the
priestly tradition of the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, and which goes back to the
1 Chapter x, pp. 222-23 f.
2 The name appears as Parikshit in the earlier, and as Parikshit in the later,
literature,
## p. 270 (#304) ############################################
270
THE PURĀNAS
[ch.
same period. This tradition, as we way gather from the prologues, was
handed down from one generation of bards to another and was solemnly
promulgated on the occasion of great sacrifices.
The Kshatriya literature of the heroic age of India has for the most
part been lost.
Such of it as has survived has owed its preservation to its
association with religion. The commemoration of the lineage of kings
found a place in religious ceremonial, as, for instance, in the year-long
preparation for the ‘horse-sacrifice,' by the performance of which a king
ratified his claim to suzerainty over his neighbours. It is no doubt to such
commemorations that we owe the dynastic lists which have been preserved
in the Purāņas.
The historical character of these works is disguised by their setting.
They have been made to conform with Indian ideas as to the origin
and nature of the universe and its relation to a First Cause. The effect of
this has been to remove the monarch who is represented as reigning when
the recital takes place, and all his predecessors from the realm of history
into the realm of legend ; and it has been found necessary to preserve
the illusion throughout the subsequent narrative. The Sūta is invited by
the sacrificing rishis of the Naimisha forest to describe the Kali Age which
is still to come. It is evident that he can only do so prophetically. He can
only reproduce the foreknowledge which has been divinely implanted in
him by Vyāsa. Accordingly he uses the future tense in speaking of kings
who have actually reigned and of events which have actually happened.
History has been made to assume the disguise of prophecy.
When this pretence is set aside, and when all legendary or imaginary
elements are removed, the last two sections of the Purāņas afford valuable
,
information as to the geography and history of ancient India.
The fourth section, the manvantara, deals with the periods of the
different Manus. ' These form part of a chronological system which is
purely hypothetical. Time, like soul and matter, is a phrase of the Supreme
Spirit. As Brahmā wakes or sleeps, the universe wakes or sleeps also.
Each day and each night of Brahmā is an ‘aeon' (kalpa) and is equivalent
to a thousand 'great ages' (mahāyuga), that is to say, 1000 X 4,320,000
mortal years. During an 'aeon’ fourteen Manus or 'fathers of mankind'
appear, each presiding over a period of seventy-one 'great ages' with
a surplus. Each ‘great age' is further divided into four ‘ages' (yuga)
of progressive deterioration like the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages
of Greek and Roman mythology. These are named, from the numbers on
the dice, Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali, and are accordingly supposed to
last for periods represented by the proportion 4:3:2:1. We need not
follow this subdivision of time down to its ultimate fraction 'the twinkling
of an eye' (nimesha) or dwell on the sectarian zeal which leads some of the
## p. 271 (#305) ############################################
XII ]
THE MANUS
271
9
Purāṇas to assert that an 'aeon' of Brahmā is but ‘the twinkling of an eye'
in the endurance of Çiva or Vishņu.
The account of the manvantara of Manu Svāyambhuva, the first in
the series of fourteen, includes a description of the universe as it now exists
or is supposed to exist. The greater part of this description is, like the
chronology, imaginary. The world, according to this primitive geography,
consists of seven concentric continents separated by encircling seas.
These are the 'seas of treacle and seas of butter' at which Lord Macaulay,
with his utter inability to understand any form of early culture, scoffed in
his celebrated minute on Indian education. The innermost of these
continents, which-and here we come to actuality-is separated from
the next by salt water, is Jambudvīpa; and of Jambudvīpa the most
important region is Bharalavarsha or Bhārata, that is to say, the sub-
continent of India :
The country that lies north of the ocean, and south of the snowy mountains, is
Bhārata ; for there dwell the descendants of Bharata . . .
The seven main chains of mountains in Bhārata are Mahendra, Malaya, Sahya,
Çuktimat, Riksha, Vindhya, and Pāripātra. . .
On the east of Bhārata dwell the Kirātas (the barbarians); on the west, the
Yavanas; in the centre reside Brāhmans, Kshatriyas Vaiçyas, and Cūdras. (Vishņu
Pur. , trans, Wilson. II. pp. 127-9. )
General descriptions such as this are followed by lists, more or less
detailed, of the rivers which flow from the Himālayas and the seven
great ranges, and of the tribes inhabiting the various regions. 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.
