PART TWO
1
Megasthenes, the Greek who lived at the court of the Indian king "Sandrocottus" for some years from c. 302 B.C. as the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator, wrote a very popular book entitled Indica. The book itself is lost but it has served as the source for several Classical authors' accounts of the country where the ambassador had sojourned. A question of great moment to the subject of India's antiquity is: "Did Megasthenes receive any information regarding the historical chronology of India from the native annalists of his day?"
Such information is likely to throw sharp light on the problem whether "Sandrocottus" was Chandragupta Maurya, as modern historians hold, or the founder of the Imperial Guptas, Chandragupta I, as the traditional-Purānic chronology makes us conclude.
The Chronological Clue from Megasthenes
We have three versions of a statement by Megasthenes, which can bear upon our problem.1
Pliny (VI. xxl.4-5) reports about the Indians: "From the days of Father Bacchus to Alexander the Great, their kings are reckoned at 154, whose reigns extend over 6451 years and 3 months."
Solinus (52.5) says: "Father Bacchus was the first who invaded India, and was the first of all who triumphed over the vanquished Indians. From him to Alexander the Great 6451 years are reckoned with 3 months additional, the calculation being made by counting the kings, who reigned in the intermediate period, to the number of 153."
Arrian (Indica, I. ix.) observes: "From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians counted 153 kings and a period of 6042 years, but among these a republic was thrice established... and another to 300 years, and another to 120 years. The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India
1. Majumdar, The Classical Accounts of India, pp. 340, 457, 223
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but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked..."
Obviously, a many-sided and comprehensive pronouncement of Megasthenes's has got broken up and been transmitted with some confusion and one lacuna.1To arrive at its proper general drift we must make a few analytic observations. After making them, we may pass on to the first important issue involved: "What historical or legendary figure mentioned by the Indians became identified with Dionysus (Bacchus) in the Greek mind to serve as the starting-point of Indian chronology and of the line of Indian kings?"
To begin with, we may note from the more expansive versions of Solinus and Arrian that Dionysus and Alexander are terms of comparison in respect of the invaders of India - especially the Greek ones. Dionysus is declared to be the first who invaded India, Alexander the only other person to do so. The latter thus stands where he does., in his own right and not as a mistaken substitute for Sandrocottus. And the most appropriate way to connect the two invaders is by calculating the time that elapsed between them. Solinus gives us just this time-connection.
To connect them by a number of kings, as does Pliny, is controversial; for, it brings up at once the query: "Does the number refer to the whole of ancient India?" 153 or 154 kings are far too few for the whole, in which there were a host of practically independent kingdoms, each with its own genealogy of rulers. The number must be in reference to merely one particular kingdom which can be associated with Alexander and with which Dionysus may have been associated either directly or through some scion of his. But can we associate any such kingdom with Alexander? He subjugated the states of several kings - Taxiles (the ruler of Takshaśilā) whose personal name was Omphis (Āmbhi), Sisicottus
1. Majumdar (The Classical Accounts of India, Appendix I) has contended that a good deal of what we attribute to Megasthenes does not originate with him and that what does originate is mostly unreliable. We believe Majumdar mistaken on the whole on both counts; but, even if he were, right, our inquiry would not be affected. First, our quotations, now and later, would still have an ancient Greek source connected with India and relating directly to the time of Sandrocottus. The name Megasthenes is really immaterial, though it is difficult to dissociate Sandrocottus from Megasthenes. Secondly, there is nothing intrinsically incredible about his gathering the chronological information concerned here and elsewhere. Possible defects in other matters are irrelevant in this.
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(Saśigupta), Abisares (the ruler of Abhisāra), Astes (Hastin or Ashtakarāja), the Elder Porus (Paurava), the younger Porus, Sophytes (Saubhūti), Phegelas (Bhagalā), Musicanus (King of the Mushikas?), Oxycanus also called Porticanus (from Sanskrit Partha?). But he was not specifically a king of this or that state. So his name at one end of a king-series is an anomaly.
Quite the reverse is the case with Sandrocottus whose name in Arrian's king-series replaces Pliny's "Alexander". Sandrocottus, though emperor of many peoples, is specifically known as the King of the Prasii - the Prasii whom Pliny elsewhere (VI.22) describes as the greatest nation in India. We can easily conceive him as the tail-end of a line which goes back through various dynasties of kings of Palibothra to a hoary past along one branch among many leading to a common ancestor whom the Greeks identified with an India-conquering Dionysus.
This conception seems natural when we realize that the small king-number - 153 or 154 - was mentioned to Megasthenes at Palibothra itself, where he was stationed as ambassador. And what endows this conception with inevitability is the importance which Indian chronologists and historians have given to Magadha whose capital was Palibothra (Pātaliputra) of the Prasii (Prāchya, Easterners): the kings of Magadha after the Bhārata War are the principal theme of the Purānic lists of dynasties. Sandrocottus and not Alexander was certainly the terminus intended by Megasthenes to the king-series the Indians mentioned to him.
Along with this series there must go also a time-span other than any pertaining to Alexander. True, Alexander and Sandrocottus were contemporaries and the gap of 409 dividing Pliny's and Solinus's 6451 plus 3 months from Arrian's 6042 is a gross mistake; but there is reason for a difference between the periods applicable to Alexander and Sandrocottus respectively. The two which we have are not meant to be the same: one of them is not just a distortion of the other. And that which should apply to Sandrocottus must not be less than the period for Alexander, by however small a margin instead of the wide one of 409 years. It must be a little more than that period. For, Plutarch1 as well as Justin2 records that when Alexander, a few months after his invasion of India, met Sandrocottus, the latter was not yet a king. According
1.Life of Alexander, LXII. The Classical Accounts..., p. 199.
2.Historiarum Philippicarum, XV, iv. The Classical Accounts..., p. 193.
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to Plutarch, the meeting took place at about the time the Macedonians "most resolutely opposed Alexander when he insisted that they should cross the Ganges." Plutarch, of course, is in error if he meant the Ganges to be the last river reached by Alexander. He did have in mind the crossing of it, but the last river reached was the Beās, the Greek Hyphasis, not the Ganges. And Alexander's programme came to a halt at it at approximately the end of July 326 B.C.1 Thus we are sure that Sandrocottus mounted the throne of Palibothra later than this date, just as we are sure - from again Plutarch and Justin - that he had already done so when Seleucus crossed the Indus. But which of the two time-spans shall we take as our basis, helping us to correct the mistake of the other?
Three considerations combine in favour of Pliny and Solinus. The initial one is that, as shown by the lacuna for the first republic's duration, our text of Arrian for all its more abundant detail is not free from damage which might result in either omission or mutilation. Secondly, Solinus, who is dated to 200 A.D. as against Pliny's birth in 23 A.D. and Arrian's 67 years later, is yet no copyist of Pliny or Arrian. In spite of agreeing with the latter in his king-number, he differs from him in several respects; and, in spite of agreeing with the former in several respects, he differs from him in his king-number. So his concurrence with Pliny about the time-span has a weight of its own. Thirdly, the extra 3 months he and Pliny mention with the years, although we may not take them literally to a day, bring a touch of scrupulous computation which cannot be easily ignored. A careful reporting of Indian information is indicated. We may safely accept the chronology of Pliny and Solinus as our basis and then try to guess the one which our text of Arrian misrepresents.
As the numeral 6 proves a definite element of truth in it and as the final 2, exceeding the digit in the same place in Pliny and Solinus, is in consonance with our conclusion that the time-span for Sandrocottus should be greater than the one for Alexander, our right way with Arrian would lie in guessing the intended time-span by introducing as few changes as we can in the figures the text supplies.
We may argue on the following lines: "After 6 the numeral has to be 4, but the exchange of places by 0 and 4 will result only in 6402 which would put Sandrocottus's coronation at Magadha at
1. The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 50.
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still an impossible 49 years' distance from Alexander's time. Some other numeral has to substitute the zero. But this numeral must lead to more years than 6451. Since 2, 3 or 4 will not give us more years, what we need is something greater which will yet not carry us lower than 305 B.C. when the Indus was crossed by Seleucus and when Sandrocottus had already become king.1 Either 5, 6 or 7 can serve our purpose,, providing us with 6452, 6462, 6472 and leading us from 326 B.C., the year of Alexander's invasion of India, to 325, 315, 305 B.C., all within the permitted range. Out of these, 325 looks too early: there is absolutely nothing in the reports at our disposal to hint at it. When Alexander left India in September 325 there was no information that beyond the Hyphasis a new king had arisen, replacing or augmenting the threat posed by Xandrames (or Agrammes) of whom he had heard at the end of July 326. As for 305, it looks too late: the reports tend to indicate some year or other before it, making 305 the lowest limit possible, rather than pinpointing it or even favouring it. 315 is the best and is not laid under suspicion by anything in the reports. All we can deduce from Justin (loc. cit.)2 is that Sandrocottus, before this, had won a victory over Alexander's prefects in the Indus-region and become there a king in place of them after Alexander's death which had taken place in June 323 B.C. A local kingship in north-western India is all that can be said to precede 315. Whether the Magadhan sovereignty came before or after the one in the Indus-region has been a matter of debate among scholars: Some, like Raychaudhuri,3 put it earlier; others, like Mookerji,4 regard it as later. Our sources appear to leave the issue indefinite and the ground keeps open for us to infer 315 from Arrian. Thus Sandrocottus's coronation must have been not 6042 but 6462 years after what Arrian calls 'the time of Dionysus' and Pliny 'the days of Father Bacchus'."
It is worth pausing a little at 315. It happens actually to be one of the dates picked out by an eminent scholar. A. A. Macdonell,5
1.According to both Plutarch and Justin (The Classical Accounts..., pp. 198, 193).
2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 193.
3.An Advanced History of India, edited by R. C. Majumdar, H. C. Raychaudhuri and Kalikinkar Datta (Macmillan & Co., London, 1953), p. 101.
4."Foreign Invasions", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 58.
5- A History of Sanskrit Literature (William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1928), p. 410.
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after identifying Sandrocottus with the first Maurya, opines: "Having gained possession of the Indus territory in 317, and dethroned the king of Pātaliputra in 315 B.C., he became master of the whole Ganges valley as well." As the last Greek agent, Eudemus, lingering on in India as governor of the province between the Indus and the Paropanisus, left the country in 317 B.C.,1 Sandrocottus's triumph over the Greek governors, recounted by Justin (XV.4), can be taken as completed in 317. Then 315 for inland sovereignty may reasonably be conjectured - and the conclusion happily does not depend on who Sandrocottus is identified with, even though Macdonell walks'in the usual rut. 315 also falls into broad relationship with the Purānic pointer which is towards some year in the period from 315 to 302. But this pointer is compatible with our chronological inference from Arrian by substituting Chandragupta 1 for Chandragupta Maurya. So the compatibility may be understood as the first general sign that Sandrocottus was the founder of the Imperial Guptas.
To proceed with our analysis. We must now consider the import of those two phrases: "the time of Dionysus", "the days of Father Bacchus". For, the proper comprehension of them will guide our mode of counting the 153 or 154 kings. Do they direct us to the beginning of Dionysus's (or Bacchus's) kingship in India or to the end of it? In other words, is Dionysus included in the 153 or 154 kings?
The coupling "From... to" employed by all the writers is ambiguous, whether we apply it to the "time" and "days" or to the king-number. Luckily we have an unequivocal expression in Soli-nus to help us out. It occurs in the statement he makes immediately after mentioning the years and months. The statement, as it stands, is a little obscure on the whole, as if a sort of riddle were propounded from which we have to guess an average reign-period by dividing the years and months by the king-number.2 But its general turn seems really to be a somewhat jumbled way of saying: "the calculation being made by counting the reigns of the kings, who ran to the number of 153, in the intermediate period." As it
1.R. K. Mookerji, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times (University of Madras, 1943), pp. 50-51.
2.Such is the interpretation of Mankad in his Purānic Chronology, pp. 16-17. According to us, it has two or'three serious hurdles to leap, but its Tightness or wrongness has no bearing on our present situation.
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comes when Solinus brings into relation with the number of kings the years and months from Dionysus to Alexander, it holds both for the time-span and for the king-series. Separating, as we do, from Alexander the king-series and joining it to Sandrocottus, while keeping for Alexander the time-span found in Solinus as well as in Pliny, we may formulate the situation: "6451 years and 3 months stretch out between the reigns of Dionysus and Alexander in India. After Dionysus ceased reigning and before Alexander started doing so, we have 'the intermediate period'. Similarly, the kings who are counted are the ones succeeding Dionysus and preceding Sandrocottus. Indeed, Dionysus, who 'was the first of all who triumphed over the vanquished Indians', must be regarded as the first king of the Indians, but if we count both of them, the king-number will be 155 or 156."
We find E. R. Bevan aware of the same situation. He1 writes: "Megasthenes was given at the court of Pātaliputra a list of the kings who had preceded Chandragupta on the throne... The line began with the 'most Bacchic' of the companions of Dionysus, Spatembas, left behind as king of the land, when Dionysus retired." After Dionysus and before Sandrocottus (Chandragupta): that is Bevan's reading of the king-series.In referring to Dionysus's "most Bacchic" companion he is drawing upon Arrian (op . cit., I. viii). We shall come to this personage later.
The final point to glance at is: "Which of the two king-numbers is to be accepted?" Since two authors out of three - each independently of the other - give 153 and since Arrian who correctly refers the king-series to Sandrocottus is one of them, 153 would appear to have more weight and could justifiably be preferred. However, when the difference of 154 from it is exceedingly small, perhaps the two serial numbers are there because of a disagreement among the calculators whether a certain name was to be included or not in the final tally. But, for this to hold, the upper name Dionysus must be uniquely identifiable and not exposed to a possible equation with anyone just preceding the analogue discovered in an Indian list.
In view of all our observations our job is to link Sandrocottus with an intervening chain of 153 kings to the ancient monarch of India whom the Greeks named Dionysus. By doing it we should be
1. "India in Early Greek and Latin Literature", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 409.
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able to decide between Chandragupta Maurya and Chandragupta I for Sandrocottus and between the rise of the Mauryas and the rise of the Imperial Guptas in 315 B.C. The whole of ancient Indian chronology hinges on our decision apropos of the clue from Megasthenes.
The Kings from Dionysus to Sandrocottus
Naturally, to come to a decision we must consult the Indian sources on which Megasthenes based himself. Where time-periods or king-lists are concerned, the informants of Megasthenes are very likely to have been Purānic pundits. "In fact," says Mankad1 rightly, "apart from the Purānas, there is no other source for such information." And we may observe one striking correspondence in Megasthenes's mode of chronological statement to a turn of phrase in the Purānas. Megasthenes speaks of "the intermediate period": it at once recalls the repeated use by the Purānas of the word "interval". Megasthenes brings just what is typical of the Purānas.
No doubt, the early Purānas were not quite in the form which we have today of this kind of literature, but there must have been many things in common and we are justified in tracing the extant Purānic documents to versions in fairly ancient times. "The early versions of the Purānas," Pusalker2 sums up, "existed at the period of the Bhārata War and that of Megasthenes." And, like the original work of Megasthenes, these versions must have had a consistent tale of historico-chronological indications, which at present we can rebuild in several if not all respects by critical collation of the various reports.
Pargiter, in his Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, has set up a table of collated genealogical lines from the time of Manu Vaiva-svata to that of the Bhārata War. His Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age collates the members of the eight dynasties which the Purānas set ruling in Magadha after the latter event. As for the line from Vaivasvata backward to Manu Svāyambhuva who marks the ultimate point in the Purānic time-vision for the earth, these two books supply very few details. We have to go elsewhere for whatever details are possible.
1.Op. cit.. p- 2.
2.Studies in the Epics and Purānas of India, p. lxvi.
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Our task is to start, on the one hand, from Chandragupta Maurya and, on the other, from Chandragupta I of the Imperial Guptas and count backward from each in an attempt to see where the 153 preceding kings would lead us, ending with a figure identifiable with Dionysus.
Before Chandragupta Maurya the Purānas name 4 Magadhan dynasties. The Nandas are his immediate predecessors. The Purānas give them as 9, a father and 8 sons.1 They come after the Śiśunagas, about whom we are told by Pargiter: "All the authorities say that there were 10 kings."2 Earlier come the Pradyotas and Barhadrathas. About the former we learn3 that they were 5. About the latter Pargiter4 tells us: "There were 32 kings altogether, 10 before the battle and 22 after." It is the 22 that are immediately relevant. So the total along the Magadhan line amounts to (9+10+5+22=) 46 kings up to the Bhārata War.
The king of Magadha who dies in that war is Sahadeva.5 He is thus the last of the 10 Bārhadrathas "before the battle", his successor Somadhi heading the post-battle 22. Now our count has to go upward from Sahadeva to Manu Vaivasvata. Pargiter's "Table of Royal Genealogies" (see infra, pp. 72-77) is arranged under 12 heads repeating their columns in 3 sets of facing pages. We start with p. 77 and go up col. 1 from Sahadeva to Brihadratha who has the caption MAGADHA above him. From him we pass to col. 2 which carries his father Vasu Chaidya of the CHEDI line. We continue there up to Sudhanvan under the caption PAURA-VAS, the traditional "Lunar Line". He is one of the 3 sons of Kuru whose name occurs in col. 6 of p. 76. From here we follow the continuation of the Pauravas at the bottom of col. 6 on p. 74. On completing this column we continue to col. 6 of p. 72 and climb on from Tamsu to Manu through several Paurava names. Below Manu Vaivasvata stands his daughter Ila. We have to replace her by Budha, with whom, we are told.'' she "consorted". Another departure is in regard to the name Bharadvāja on p. 74, col. 6. It is put within brackets by Pargiter because, as he' says, Bharadvaja
1.The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 25, line 7; p. 26. line 7; p.
69.
2.Ibid., pp. 20, 65.
3-Ibid., p. 19. line 10; p. 68.4, Ibid., p. 13.
5.Ancient Indian Historical Tradition (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. 1962), pp.
52-53.
R-Ibid., p. 252. 7. Ibid., p. 159.
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never sat on the throne: an adopted son of Bhārata, he consecrated his own son Vitatha as Bhārata's successor after the latter had died. So we must omit Bharadvaja if we are to take the actual kings. Thus treated, the list would run as below with 47 for its start:
47. Sahadeva
72. Dushyanta
50. Urja
80. Sudhanvan-Dhundu
83.Pravīra
Beyond Vaivasvata, the collated picture in outline is in Pusalker's remark in The Vedic Age-} "Fifth in descent from Prithu was Daksha, whose daughter's grandson, Manu Vaivasvata, saved humanity from the deluge..." The details of the picture may be filled in from the Purānas,2 with Daksha's daughter Aditi substituted by her husband Kasyapa. We proceed bactward from the
1."Traditional History from the Earliest Time to the Accession of Parīkshit", The Vedic Age, edited by R. C. Majumdar and A. D. Pusalkir (George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, 1952), p. 271.
2.E.g.. Vayu 11.22-26, 39, 41; Matsya XI.
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father of our Manu as the start: Vivasvata or, as Pargiter' designates him, "Vivasvant, 'the sun' ":
For the next collation we may draw upon both Pusalker and Mankad. Pusalker2 mentions Prithu as the son of Vena who in turn he calls the grandson of Chakshusha. In Pusalker's passage Prachl-nagarbha comes before Chakshusha and succeeds Dhruva who is the son of Uttanapada, the third son of Manu Svāyambhuva "who is said to have been born of Brahma" and who is "also known as Viraj". Pusalker adds: "The Vayu Purāna mentions Ananda as a Brahma (supreme ruler) who was a predecessor of Manu Svāyambhuva." Mankad1 cites the Brahma Purāna for a detailed genealogy with explicit links. We may accept it as the most helpful for our purposes:
If we strictly follow the general Indian tradition according to which, as Pusalker4 phrases it, "the dynastic lists begin with the mythical king, Manu Svāyambhuva", the total number would end with 111. But even 113 is a far cry from the 153 demanded by Megasthenes. Passing backward beyond Chandragupta Maurya we fall very seriously short. Megasthenes's Dionysus can never be reached and therefore his Sandrocottus cannot be the founder of the Maurya dynasty.
1.Op. cit..,,. 289.
2.Op. cit., pp. 270-71
3.Op. cit., pp. 22-23.
4.Op. cit., p. 270.
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FROM PARGITER'S ANCIENT INDIAN HISTORICAL TRADITION1
TABLE OF ROYAL GENEALOGIES
1 Pp. 144-49. Pargiicr explains on p. 143: "The names of kings whose positions are fixed by synchronisms or otherwise are printed in italics, and the famous kings are indicated by an asterisk."
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Page 73
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(BY PERMISSION OF MOT1LAL BANARSIDASS, DELHI)
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How will the rival Chandragupta fare? While the other had 4 Magadhan dynasties preceding him, he has 8 in all, including the dynasty of the opposing candidate himself. On the Āndhras whom the Purānas put on the throne of Magadha a little before the first Imperial Gupta, with no other Magadhan line between them, Pargiter1 writes: "the Vāyu, Brahmānda, Bhagavata and Visnu all say there were 30 kings...and 30 is no doubt the correct number." The Kanvas before them count 4.2 The Surigas, to whom they were the successors, run to 10.3 Of the Mauryas "the best attested number" is the same.4 The full tally comes to (30+4+10+10=) 54. With the 9 Nandas, 10 Śiśunagas, 5 Pradyotas and 22 Barhadrathas added, the list of kings after the Bhārata War and before Chandragupta I swells to (54+ 46=) 100. The pre-war monarchs who for Chandragupta Maurya formed the list from 47 to 92 amount to 46. So beyond Chandragupta I we reach Manu Vaivasvata with the number (100+ 46=) 146. To get Megasthenes's 153 anterior to Sandrocottus and posterior to Dionysus we have to bring in Vivasvata (or Vivasvant), Kasyapa, Daksha, Prachetas, Prachina-barhisha, Havirdhana and Antardhana (or Antardhi) - a group of 7 with its predecessor Prithu, son of Vena, generally known as Prithu Vainya, standing beyond the totalled (146+7=) 153 and made to fill the role of Dionysus.
Can he really fill it? If he can, Sandrocottus will be proved to have been the founder of the Imperial Guptas.
Our task now is to search in India's traditional accounts for an Indian analogue of Dionysus. Along with the Purānas, we must draw upon other repositories of tradition - the Vedas, the Brahmanas and the Epics.
Dionysus in India
The Greek Dionysus is, in the first place, a religious figure, the god of wine. Hence, strictly speaking, his Indian analogue is Soma. Soma originally occurs in the Rigveda. There he is apostrophized as lord of the wine of delight (ānanda) and immortality (amrita), pouring himself into gods and men, the deity who is also
1.Op. cit.. pp. 36, 72.
2.Ibid., p. 71.
3.Ibid., pp. 33, 70.
4.Ibid., pp. 27, 70.
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deep-hidden in the growths of the earth, waiting to be released as a rapture-flow for men and gods.
In the times after the Rigveda, Soma emerges more specifically as a lunar god no less than as a king of the vegetable world with his being of nectar passing between heaven and earth through ritual and sacrifice. During those times, Soma is also regarded, in the earliest reference to the origin of kingship (Aitareya Brahmana, I, 14), as the god whom the other gods, seeking to fight the titans (Asuras) effectively, elected as their king after having lived without a king so far. In the Śatapatha Brahmana (V.3.3.12; 4.2.3; XIII.6.2.18; 7.1.13) the Brāhmīns speak of Soma as their king while common folk acknowledge an earthly monarch. The same book (XI.4.3.9) applies to Soma the epithet Rāja-pati, "lord of kings". All this goes to suggest that Soma in ancient Indian tradition was the primeval as well as the supreme king from the religious standpoint.
But the true religious analogue of Dionysus need not be exclusively what the Greeks had in view, and we are concerned with the Indian figure whom they in the days of Alexander and Megasthenes identified with their Dionysus for various reasons, among which a strong touch of Soma, even if inevitable, might yet be only one stimulus. Besides, although Megasthenes connects wine with some religious ceremonies in India, there seems to have been in the country then no marked cult of the wine-god. The god mentioned as "Soroadeios" and interpreted to Alexander as "maker of wine" is now recognized to have been "Sūryadeva", the sun-god. "Some ill-educated interpreter," Bevan1 explains, "must have been misled by the resemblance of sūrya, 'sun', to sura, 'wine'."
In the absence of a marked cult of Soma, the wide-spread Indian worship, which the Greeks reported, of Dionysus must have indicated some other deity tinged with Soma-characteristics. The unanimous vote of scholars, bearing on Strabo's statement (XV.I) from Megasthenes that the Indians who lived on the mountains worshipped Dionysus, whereas the philosophers of the plains worshipped Heracles, is for Shiva, who was worshipped with revelry by certain hill-tribes. The pillar symbol, lihga, associated popularly with Shiva as a phallus, making him a fertility god, and the bull which goes with him as his vāhana, vehicle - these two characteristics must have affined him still further with Dionysus
1. "India in Early Greek and Latin Literature", op. cit., p. 422.
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who "is believed to have been originally a Thracian fertility god worshipped in the form of a bull with orgiastic rites'" and whose exoteric symbol, the phallus, was carried about in the rural festivals as well as in the mysteries.2
But surely when the Greeks spoke of royal history running in India from the time of Dionysus to that of Alexander and Sandrocottus, their Dionysus was the fusion of this Shiva with some legendary hero who, unlike Shiva, was celebrated as a primal king and who carried even more than Shiva a Soma-colour by which in some way he was affined to the wine-aspect of the Hellenic god.
The fusion is to be expected, since he was to the Greeks as much an empire-builder as a god. In the imagination of the Macedonian soldiers he was the subject of Euripides's fable - a conqueror of the East whom they endowed with a constructive role in the remote past of India. This role bulked large in the thought of Megasthenes and it is well spotlighted by Arrian (Indica, I. vii)3 drawing upon the Greek ambassador's book: "Dionysus,... when he came and had conquered the people, founded cities and gave laws to these cities, and introduced the use of wine among the Indians, as he had done among the Greeks, and taught them to sow the land, himself supplying the seeds for the purpose... It is also said that Dionysus first yoked oxen to the plough and made many of the Indians husbandmen instead of nomads, and furnished them with the implements of agriculture; and that the Indians worship the other gods, and Dionysus himself in particular, with cymbals and drums, because he so taught them;... so that even up to the time of Alexander the Indians were marshalled for battle to the sound of cymbals and drums." Then Arrian (I. viii)4 refers to the end of Dionysus's dealings with India and adds some names and numbers, to whose bearing on Indian traditional history we shall advert at later stages of our study: "when he was leaving India, after having established the new order of things, he appointed, it is said, Spatembas, one of his companions and the most conversant with Bacchic matters, to be the king of the country. When Spatembas died his son Boudyas succeeded to the sovereignty; the father reigning over the Indians fifty-two years,
1.Smaller Classical Dictionary (Everyman, London), p. 110, col. 2.
2.The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed.). Vol. VIII, p. 287, col. 2.
3.The Classical Accounts..., p. 221.
4.Ibid.
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and the son twenty; the son of the latter, whose name was Kradeuas, duly inherited the kingdom, and thereafter the succession was generally hereditary..." Among the cities founded by Dionysus, Arrian (Anabasis, V.l; Indica, 1.1) in company with all his fellow-annalists names only Nysa (in the Hindu Kush), so called - according to them - after either Dionysus's nurse or his native mountain.
Some further points may be cited from Diodorus. Like the others he (11.38) mentions the Indian mountain "Meros" (Meru), at whose foot lay the city of Nysa, as a place where Dionysus had been, and he links with its name the Greek legend that Dionysus was bred in his father Zeus's thigh (meros in Greek). In a few things Diodorus differs from what most authors have quoted from Megasthenes. After repeating the story of the invasion of India by Dionysus he (ibid.) mentions Dionysus as not leaving the country after his achievements but as reigning over the whole of India for 52 years and then dying of old age while his sons succeeded to the government and transmitted the sceptre in unbroken succession to their posterity. (Evidently, Diodorus has mixed up the length of Spatembas's reign with that of Dionysus's: the latter should be unknown if the reign-lengths counted are to be only in "the intermediate period" between Dionysus and Sandrocottus.) What is more, Diodorus (III.63) shows us that the Greeks knew of a counter-legend to the one about the entry of Dionysus into India from the west. And from this counter-legend the figure after whom the Indians started their king-series emerges in a clearer shape:1
"Now some,... supposing that there were three individuals of this name, who lived in different ages, assign to each appropriate achievements. They say, then, the most ancient of them was Indos, and that as the country, with its genial temperature, produced spontaneously the vine-tree in great abundance, he was the first who crushed grapes and discovered the use of the properties of wine... Dionysus, then, at the head of an army, marched to every part of the world, and taught mankind the planting of the vine, and how to crush grapes in the wine-press, whence he was called Lenaios. Having in like manner imparted to all a knowledge °f his other inventions, he obtained after his departure from among men immortal honour from those who had benefited by his
1 Ibid., p. 239.
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labours. It is further said that the place is pointed out in India even to this day where the god had been, and that cities are called by his name in the vernacular dialects, and that many other important evidences still exist of his having been born in India..."
There are some more details to the Dionysus-story, but all about him is not of equal moment; and those points in particular which have too closely a Greek colour cannot be of much help to us. A few points which strike us as rather fanciful may also be passed over.
What we have mainly to match from Indian sources is an ancient human-divine personage who is a great progressive and constructive leader - one who is organically knit together with the country's traditional history and geography and stands deified in legend at the head of all royal successions in India.
The Indian Candidates
Indian tradition shows us three human-divine personages, each of whom in an important sense was a king in the past and acted as a fundamental force of progress.
Legendary India starts with Manu Svāyambhuva. He is reputed to have subdued all enemies, become the first king of the earth and revived the institutions of the four castes and of marriage, which had been established by his predecessor and progenitor, the deity Brahmā, alias Ānanda.1
With a status similar in another epoch is Manu Vaivasvata.2 He is said to be the originator of the human race and all the wide-spreading dynasties mentioned in the Purānas spring from him. He framed rules and laws of government, and collected a sixth of the produce of the land as a tax to meet administrative expenses. He is also famous for having saved humanity from the deluge which occurred in his time.
As a conqueror, Dionysus may be seen as resembling Svāyambhuva. As a law-giver, he may be traced in Vaivasvata. As a primal king, he is more like Vaivasvata than Svāyambhuva, for, though both are royal genealogy-starters in their own ways, the latter is such simply by being the first Indian - and Dionysus, even as "Indos", was not the Adam of India. But in all his other
1.The Vedic Age, pp. 270-71.
2.Ibid., pp. 271-72.
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capacities Dionysus is not at all like either Vaivasvata or Svāyambhuva.
The third human-divine figure who is a primal king in Indian eyes stands in time midway between Svāyambhuva and Vaivasvata: he is Prithu Vainya - Prithu, the son of Vena. When we examine him, we discover that in all notable respects he is the candidate par excellence for the Indian Dionysus.
Prithu Vainya as Dionysus
Prithu is not explicitly acknowledged by extant Indian records as a genealogy-starter, but he is called again and again the first king in a very special connotation of the phrase and, if he suited the Greeks who were obsessed with their Dionysus in Indian annals and who connected Dionysus with Sandrocottus through a succession of kings, Indian records could easily lend themselves to making him for them a genealogy-starter. For, although Svāyambhuva was the first king on earth and Vaivasvata the king at the source of all detailed human families, Prithu initiated the special status and significance enjoyed by kingship in ancient Indian history: he is "celebrated as the first consecrated king, from whom the earth received its name Prithvī".1 Even the hoary Satapatha Brahmana (V.3.5.4) styles him the first anointed monarch. As D. R. Patil2 relates, the Vayu Purāna terms him ādirāja (first king) and the Mahābhārata (IV and XI) says that the divine Vishnu entered the person of the king and hence the whole universe worships kings as if they were gods. The Vishnu Purāna3 too, deems him a portion of deity.
Prithu as king precedes Vaivasvata in time, but it is not by such precedence that, like Svāyambhuva, he is primal in royalty. He is ādirāja by God-invested right and thus combines in himself the typical position of Dionysus the starter of royal dynasties: king as god and god as king. Thus he is suited the most to begin a line of duly coronated kings.
Nor is he less a conqueror than Svāyambhuva. When he was born, says the Vayu Purāna,4 he stood equipped with bow, arrows
1. Ibid., p. 271.
2.Cultural History from the Vayu Purāna (Poona, 1946), pp. 28, 163.
3.Wilson, op.cit.. XIII, p. 101.
4.Patil. op. cit.. p. 163.
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and a shining armour. After his consecration he proceeded to vanquish the earth because he found her devoid of Vedic rites and proper service. Terrified of his uplifted weapons the earth fled in the shape of a cow and, on being pursued, pleaded not to be destroyed and she surrendered herself to his demands. Prithu is also the earliest among the kings who came to be chakravartins -that is, in Pargiter's words,1 "sovereigns who conquered surrounding kingdoms and brought them under their authority, and established a paramount position over more or less extensive regions around their kingdoms." As the earth-vanquisher and the chakra-vartin prototype he is exactly like Dionysus who, "at the head of an army, marched to every part of the world". Indeed, these Greek words seem almost echoed in the Vishnu Purāna:2 "The valiant Prithu traversed the universe, everywhere triumphant over his foes..."
Prithu also resembles Dionysus uniquely and exclusively by many of his peace-time achievements. We may remember from Arrian that Dionysus taught the Indians to sow the land, first yoked oxen to the plough, made many of the Indians husbandmen out of nomads, furnished them with the implements of agriculture, and founded cities. As V. M. Apte3 writes, the Atharvaveda (VIII. 10.24) gives Prithu (or to use its peculiar spelling, Prithī) Vainya "the credit of introducing the art of ploughing". Pusalker4 sums up many of his constructive activities: "He levelled the whole earth, clearing it of ups and downs, and encouraged cultivation, cattle-breeding, commerce and building of cities and villages."
Here we may recall Diodorus's phrase on Dionysus: "cities were called by his name in the vernacular dialects." Apropos of Hiuen Tsang's travels (c. 640 A.D.) in India, A. Cunningham5 writes of the town which the Chinese scholar mentioned as Pehoa: "The place derives its name from the famous Prithu-Chakra-varti, who is said to have been the first person that obtained the title Rāja." Then Cunningham refers to the legendary events after the death of Prithu's father Vena: "On his death Prithu performed the Śrad-
1.Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, p. 399.
2.Wilson, op. cit., p. 489.
3."Social and Economic Conditions", The Vedic Age, p. 460.
4."Traditional History...", ibid., p. 271.
5.The Ancient Geography of India, by A. Cunningham, edited with an Introduction and Notes by S. Majumdar (Calcutta, 1924), p. 385.
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dha, or funeral ceremonies, and for twelve days after the cremation he sat on the bank of the Sarasvati offering water to all comers. The place was therefore called Prithūdaka or Prithu's pool, from daka or udaka water; and the city which he afterwards built on the spot was called by the same name. The shrine of Prithūdaka has a place in the Kurukshetra Mahātmya, and is still visited." S. Majumdar1 adds by way of annotation on Prithūdaka: "Referred to in the Kāvyamīmāmsā (p. 93) as the boundary between Northern and Central India." Jaya Chandra Narang2 goes as far back as Patanjali in referring to this town: "Uttarapatha is defined...as the country to the north of Prithūdaka, i.e. the modern Pihowa on the Sarasvatī..."
Neither is this the sole Dionysian item of geography to be noted. In the Hāthigumphā inscription of Khāravela (second half of the 1st century B.C.) we read the claim of this king of Kalihga to have devastated Pithuda, the capital of a king of the Masulipatam region of the Madras State. Kharavela's Pithuda seems to be the same as Pitundra, metropolis of the Masoloi, according to the geographer Ptolemy (c. 140 A.D.). And both the names appear to resolve into the Sanskrit Prithuda.
Now we may turn to the religious aspect of Prithu to match that of Dionysus. Although king, he carried on profound religious practices, as the Matsya Purāna (X) informs us. And his pursuit of the earth, we may recollect, was due to his anger at the neglect of Vedic rites and proper service. In the Rigveda he figures in one hymn (X. 148.5) as a rishi under a name similar to the Atharva-veda's for him: he is Venya Prithī.3 There is, further, the suggestion from the compilers of the Vedic Index (II, p. 16) that, as Patil4 puts it, "Prithu of the Rigveda was probably a vegetation deity." This brings him very close indeed to Dionysus as well as to Soma. And his connection with the vegetable world emerges too from the story of his pursuit of the earth. When the earth surrenders herself to his demands, there takes place "the milching of the earth". This act seems to have many levels of significance. On the most
1.Ibid., p. 702.
2."Regional Structure of India in Relation to Language and History", The Cultural Heritage of India (Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta, 1958), Vol. I, p. 47.
3 Pargiter, op. cit., p.
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apparent, the idea which is prominent is rightly said by Patil1 to be "that the king must provide for his people means for sustenance especially through the vegetable world." But there is also here a relation to the Soma-concept. For, the "milching" involves the preparation of a wondrous drink from earth-products. And this drink assumes directly the aspect of Soma when we observe the circumstances under which the Vayu mentions the deposition of Prithu's father Vena. Vena was deposed because he "held ideas against the performance of sacrifices and in his reign the gods did not partake of Soma at all".2 And Prithu is declared, on his consecration as king, to have restored the Vedic sacrifices: he thus released, as it were, the rapture-wine from the earth for the gods.
The image of the "cow" is itself Soma-suggestive. In the Rigve-da (1.4.1,2) "it is said of Indra,...who is a good milker in the milking of the cows, that his ecstasy of the Soma-wine is verily 'cow-giving', godāid revato madah."3 Again, corresponding to Prithu's milching of Prithvī as a cow - Prithvī-dohana-akhyanā -there is the Rigvedic phrase (III. 1.14) about the immortalizing Soma: amritam duhanah, "they milked out immortality.'"1 Further, the Seven Nectar-bringing Rivers of the Rigveda "are usually designated as...the seven fostering Cows, Sapta dhenavah."5 Lastly, we may quote a remark of Sri Aurobindo's: "We have seen how closely the yield of the cow, the ghrita, and the yield of the Soma plant are connected..."6 An example is 1.20.19, where Rishi Vamadeva says about Agni: "may he press out both the pure udder of the Cows of Light and the purified food of the plant of delight (the Soma) poured out everywhere."7 Thus one of the most Dionysian characteristics - the production of wine, the drink of rapture - can be connected with Prithu.
When we look at the Rigvedic Vena we see in a still more Dionysian light the pertinence of the Purānic story of his depriving the gods of Soma. Vena in the Rigveda is not only called (X.93.14) a "generous patron", the original bounty which in the Purānas is
1.Ibid.
2.Ibid., p. 24.
3.Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1956), p. 143.
4.Ibid., pp. 132, 134.
5.Ibid., p. 141.
6.Ibid., p. 220.
7.Ibid., p. 235.
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pictured as becoming perverted: he is also a form of the Rigvedic wine-god of delight, Soma, the true religious analogue of Dionysus. In one hymn (1.83.4,5), where the birth of Light from the lower life and from its crookedness is spoken of, we have the expression: yatah sūryo vratapā vena ājani, "the Sun was born as the protector of the Law and the Blissful One".1 Vena is the word for "the Blissful One" and the Blissful One is that power or personality of the Supreme which is Bhaga and which is the creative enjoyer, the one who takes the delight of all that is created, the one to whom all creation is bhojanam, meaning both enjoyment and food. Bhaga (= Bacchus?) is Soma, and Soma gets directly implied to be Vena when the Rigveda (V.58.4) speaks of three kinds of clarity (ghritam): "one Indra produced, one Sūrya, one the gods fashioned by natural development out of Vena." Sri Aurobindo,2 after giving this translation, comments: "Indra is the Master of the thought-mind, Sūrya of the supramental light, Vena is Soma, the master of mental delight of existence, creator of the sense-mind."
Thus Prithu Vainya gets steeped in a Soma-connotation. And Megasthenes was encouraged to catch it in a Dionysian shape from his Indian informants all the more by the very sound of this hero's patronymic "Vainya". Just as the Indian hill-fortress Varana becomes "Aornos" to Alexander's army and just as the Indian god-name "Varuna" is answered by the Greek "Ouranos", so too "Vainya" must have sounded to the Greek ear like the Greek "Oinos" (wine), "Oine" (vine), "Oenos" (vinter). We may remember that Dionysus, because of his art of crushing grapes in the wine-press, came to be termed "Lenaios". The Greeks may have understood Prithu to have been designated "Vainya" for the same act. What is more, Greek legend knew of a King Oeneus of Calydon associated with Dionysus. "According to tradition Oeneus of Calydon was the first mortal to whom he gave the vine..."3 Mythology makes Oeneus "father or reputed father of Deianira":4 "the story that Dionysus was the real father of
1. Ibid., p. 276.
2 Ibid., p. 120.
3. The New Century Classical Handbook, edited by Catherine B. Averery (New York, 1962), p. 405, col. I.
4. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by M. Cary and others (1961), p. 618,
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Deianira... suggests that they were originally wine-gods...'" Surely, Vainya to the Greeks could be Oeneus the wine-god who was on a par with Dionysus and even identified with him.
While we are about Prithu as Vainya, son of Vena, we may allude to the myth that Dionysus was bred in the thigh of his father Zeus and delivered from it to the world. The common myth concerning Prithu's birth is that he was born from the churning of Vena's left arm. But Ronald M. Huntington2 has drawn attention to traditional sources which, instead of "left arm", read "thigh".
And this Purānic myth has yet another point worth marking. The expression "churning" is applicable only to a liquid, and the churned Vena assumes the look of an earth-nectar turned unproductive and needing to be revived - once more the idea of perverted Soma.
But, if the Vena of the Purānas reveals the sense of the Rigvedic . Soma becoming perverted, then Prithu the saviour who is churned out of him grows the same Soma set right again: he is Soma once more delight and immortality, Soma restored to divinity.
Thus, Prithu subsumes all that Soma brings of equivalence to Dionysus. Not only does he take into himself the godhead of wine, but also his status as the first consecrated king of earth merges in the kingship which for the first time came into being among the gods.
Even with Dionysus as Shiva, Prithu has a rapport. The Manu-smriti (IX.44) calls the earth Prithu's wife (bhāryā). So, if in the story of his pursuit of her she is given the form of a cow, he as her husband becomes by implication a bull. And the bull, ever since the Rigveda, has been a symbol of generation, inward or outward, spiritual or physical. Hence Prithu joins up on one side to the bull-form that went with the worship of Dionysus and on the other to the bull-vehicle that is Shiva's. Even if we regard with the Purānas the earth-cow as Prithu's daughter he assumes the bull-aspect and gets connected with Shiva and Dionysus. And, since Shiva with his phallus-emblem was a fertility god like Dionysus, Prithu by his connection with the vegetable world and still more as a vegetation deity gets assimilated with equal ease to both. The
1.Ibid., pp. 618-19.
2."The Legend of Prithu", Purāna, (Vārānasi), Vol. II, 1-2, July 1960, p. 190, fn. 8.
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Greeks would find little difficulty in making their Dionysus a composite of Shiva and Prithu.
Perhaps they would be further helped on finding that the appellation "Lord of Prithvī", which would be most apt for Prithu, was also used for Shiva: Shiva is called Prithvīśvara in a Gupta inscription.1
The Sanskrit for the Name "Dionysus"
Our special formula of Dionysus=Prithu and our broad one of Dionysus=Shiva=Prithu would acquire an added interest if in regard to Shiva and Prithu we could light upon a possible Indian equivalent of the name "Dionysus". Here we would be in the realm of conjectures, and it is necessary to state that our formulas do not depend in the least on our incursion into this realm. Their credibility can be neither enhanced nor lessened by our success or failure. No critic should think that our fundamental brief is affected in any way. But a certain imaginative enrichment may ensue if the possibility of an Indian equivalent can be suggested.
The name "Dionysus" as a whole has had various explanations: the terminal component has been taken as "Nusos" (Thracian for "son") or "Nusa" (tree) or "Nusa" ("Nysa", proper name of a mountain or a nurse). The only thing certain is the initial component "Dio" for the Greek "Dios" ("God").
It is well known that the Indian "Deva" for the Greek "Dios" is particularly linked with Shiva: e.g., in the very inscription where he is called Prithvīśvara he is also named Mahādeva, "Great God". It is evident too from the story in the Purānas and the Mahābhārata that the concept of King as Divinity derives from the consecration of Prithu. Prithu is the first king to be considered Deva: the appellation Bhūdeva ("Earth-God") which is common to Indian literature for a king may be traced to the legend of his anointment. So we have for both Shiva and Prithu an Indian equivalent to the initial component of "Dionysus". The terminal component can find also its Indian equivalent with regard to them if we keep in mind how first the companions of Alexander related the cult of Dionysus to India. They did so on reaching the town in the Hindu Kush which they called Nysa after the name heard by them on its occupants' lips. They enthusiastically surmised that
1. Epigraphia Indica, X. 72, lines 7-8.
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Dionysus had given this town its name in honour of his nurse or of his mountain. Naturally then they would expect the God worshipped there to be their own Dionysus and their expectations must have been fulfilled when they may have found this God, who was Shiva, called Deva: what could the Deva of Nysa - Deva Nysasya in Sanskrit - be save Dionysus? Megasthenes, on longer stay in India, particularly in Magadha, heard of a king whose various achievements and functions answered to what the Greeks' own tradition had said about Dionysus, and this king was known not only as the first in an important sense but also as Deva: further, he had some association in common with Deva Nysasya. Would it be any wonder if he too got called Dionysus?
The appropriateness of the dubbing must have been confirmed for Megasthenes by a phrase he may have come across about this king. Since the Godhead is said to have entered Prithu and Prithu to have become the first consecrated monarch by that divine Presence, one can imagine the informants of the Greek ambassador using for Prithu the apt phrase Rāja daivyena sahasā, "King with God-Force". .This phrase could very well be to Greek ears the Indian way of saying "King Dionysus". It is a phrase easily coined for Prithu against a Purānic-cwm-Rigvedic background. In the Purānas Prithu, with the Godhead in him, turnedTruthwards the Earth-cow whose sacrificial and productive "milk" had been confined by irreligious powers. In the Rigveda (X. 108.6) we have actually the expression sahasā daivyena about the heavenly Sara-ma who comes pressing upon the dark powers named the Panis to let the hidden Cows go upward to the Truth.
Or else there might have been a reference to Prithu's most memorable work and the phrase put forth: Dohanēśa, meaning either "Lord of the Milking" or "Master-Milker". This too would have on the Greek tympanum the ring of "Dionysus".
Some Final Considerations
Looked at from every angle, Prithu emerges as the Indian original of the Greeks' Dionysus in a multiple manner impossible to either Svāyambhuva or Vaivasvata. Even the role of Dionysus as law-giver, which relates him to Vaivasvata, is implicit in Prithu's role as champion of Vedic rites and fosterer of trade and sovereign over a vast number of peoples and builder of cities. If law-giving
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can in general be equated to orderly government, it is an activity of Prithu's. For, Patil1 writes, "From the fact that the Prithvī-dohana-ākhyāna - i.e., Prithvī as a cow is milched by Prithu assisted by the Gods and others - forms an essential ingredient of Prithu's tale it is clear that the Purānakāras looked upon him as the originator of Kingship and orderly government." And, though Vaivasvata is the father of the human ages and thereby looks plausible for the part of history-starter which Dionysus plays in the Greek account, the history he starts is joined with Prithu in an organic and essential way. The period at whose head stands Vaivasvata differs from all preceding periods in that, unlike them, it had cities and villages, knew agriculture, trade, pasture and cattle-breeding. And it knew all these things because of Prithu: Prithu has given a special distinguishing character to the Vaivasvata epoch and made the period, in which the Purānic dynasties from that Manu flourished, what it historically is.2
Svāyambhuva himself, the sheer first of all earth-kings in the Purānas, is assimilated in a certain sense. The Vishnu Purāna,3 after describing how Prithu chased and conquered the earth which was fleeing from him like a cow, tells us that the land promised to obey his behests and adds: "he therefore, having made Svāyambhuva Manu the calf, milked the Earth and received the milk into his own hand, for the benefit of mankind. Thence proceeded all kinds of corn and vegetable upon which people.subsist now and perpetually." H. H. Wilson4 has a footnote on the phrase about Svāyambhuva: "by the 'calf, or Manu in that character, is typified, the commentator observes, the promoter of the multiplication of progeny." Whatever the explanation, the phrase renders the prime king Svāyambhuva a living portion of the Prithu-history, a power serving organically the achievement of the first consecrated monarch.
A last consideration, rounding off the rich many-sided equation of Prithu to Dionysus, is a legend connected with Magadha. We have argued that the 153 kings of Megasthenes trace the line upward from Sandrocottus, rather than from Alexander, to
1."Gupta Inscriptions and the Purānic Tradition", Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, Vol. II, Nos. 1-2, p. 156.
2.Vāyu Purāna, 62.170-74. Vide Patil, Cultural History..., p. 71. 3 Wilson, op. cit., XIII, p. 104. 4. Ibid., fn. 8.
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Dionysus and that they pertain to just the province of Magadha at their tail-end. It would be most appropriate if to balance Sandrocottus at the lower extreme as king of Magadha the list went back, with whatever intermediate breaks, to an original Magadhan monarch. Seen through Purānic eyes, the equation of Prithu to Dionysus makes Dionysus such a monarch. Thus the Brahma Purāna (4.67), which in the midst of later accretions is held1 to have very ancient matter enshrined in it, bears a legend in which Prithu is, in B. C. Law's words,2 "the first Samrat or Emperor of Magadha".
Indeed, such a legend is no freak of a flash in one single Purāna. Magadha's original connection with Prithu is borne out also by the Vayu (62.147), the Brahmānda (ii.36.172) and the Harivarhsa (5.325), not to mention the Rāmāyana (i.35.5.35, ed. Gorr) and the MahaBhārata (xii.59, 2234).
It seems impossible to doubt that Prithu Vainya at the commencement and Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Gupta in Magadha, at the termination are what the Indian informants of Megasthenes intended when they spoke of a series of 153 kings from Dionysus to Sandrocottus. Through Megasthenes the Purānic chronology of the rise of the Imperial Guptas in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. appears to be completely vindicated.
The Alternative Number of Kings: 154
With Prithu Vainya uniquely identifiable as Dionysus, we can see in the proper light the less supported alternative king-number 154. On a back-view of Pargiter's Tables it becomes both apt and intelligible. For 153 is reached on omission of Bharadvaja who never sat on the throne. But if we include him because he was next after Bhārata and just before Vitatha we shall get 154 dynastic names.
Even on omitting the non-king Bharadvaja we can entertain the possibility of 154 rulers. In the case of only one dynasty Pargiter brings himself to consider an alternative to his count - by a single addition. His list of the Āndhras3 has No. 24a within brackets, a name mentioned in one copy (e) alone of the Vayu Purāna.4 "A
1.The Cambridge History of India, p. 300.
2.Tribes in Ancient India (Poona, 1943), p. 95.
3.Op. cit., p. 36. 4. Ibid., p. 37.
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line found in only one MS.," Pargiter1 observes, "should not be rejected straight away (see Introduction § 31); hence I have included him in the list in that position.... If he is genuine, we may suppose that the total 30 is a round number." With 31 Āndhras we get 154 kings.
Thus both the numbers from Megasthenes get aligned to the Purānas with an astonishing accuracy.
Answers to Some Possible Objections to Linking Chandragupta I and Prithu
Although Prithu as Dionysus strikes one as most appropriate, a couple of objections may be raised to our counting 153 or 154 between him and Chandragupta I.
It may be said: "The Purānas designate the Pradyotas as kings of Magadha. but modern research is disposed to put them on the throne of Avantī. Also, modern research has not struck upon any definite evidence to regard the Āndhra Sātavāhanas as Magadhan kings. If we leave the two dynasties out, there will never be 153 or 154 kings before Chandragupta I along the Magadhan line backward to Prithu."
The answer is very simple. To begin with, modern research is not unaminous: scholars like V. Smith2 do not agree with the majority opinion. But even if this opinion happens to be correct, our argument stands - and it would stand in spite of any number of dynasties falling under doubt. For, we are unconcerned at the moment with the issue of the Purānas' correctness in this matter: we are concerned with nothing else than what the Purānas record and what we are supposing their pundits to have conveyed to the Greek ambassador in the time of Sandrocottus. The issue really is: "Does the Purānic list, right or wrong, correspond numerically to that of Megasthenes?" The correspondence is very striking.
One may also object: "According to Pargiter's careful analysis,3 the scheme of genealogy from Vaivasvata to Sahadeva, inclusive
1. Ibid.
2 The Early History of India. (London, 1934). Chapters II and VIII. Vide also Anand Swarup Gupta. "The Problem of Interpretation of the Purānas", Purāna (Vārānasi), Vol. VI. No. 1. January 1965, p. 68, fn. 37. on the question of the Pradyotas.
3- Op. cit., pp. 144-49.
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of both, comprises 94 generations. To take only 46 king-names, as you do, misrepresents the state of affairs. You should count 94 kings and, adding the 7 names up to Prithu, get 101 names before the Bhārata war. Then, with the members of the 8 dynasties prior to the Imperial Guptas added, the total number will be (101 + 100=) 201 instead of 153. This will throw the Purānas out of tune with Megasthenes and invalidate your whole procedure and proving."
Here too the main point is overlooked. We dp not affirm that no more than 46 kings existed from Vaivasvata to the Bhārata War along the line linking with the Magadhan monarchs. Nor do the Purānas make such an affirmation. Pargiter1 has shown that they do not really claim to be exhaustive about any line: "in one place it is frankly admitted that there is a gap" and the very word vistarena suggesting completeness turns out to be compatible with expressions like sahkespena and samāsena, signifying "succinct" or "concise", and what is implied is merely "the full traditional account". Our concern is simply with the number of names actually offered and with the problem: "Does it agree or not with the Greek account?" Pargiter's analysis of the generations makes no odds. A most potable agreement is there. Both our procedure and proving remain untouched.
The Time-relation of Dionysus to Heracles
The sole objection truly worth weighing arises from Arrian's concluding remark: "The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations." In the context of the king-series, Heracles is evidently meant to have been either fifteenth in the list or contemporaneous with whoever else was fifteenth. But we know who Heracles was, from Arrian's own slightly earlier statement (Indica, I. viii):2 "Heracles... who is currently reported to have come as a stranger into the country is said to have been in reality a native of India. This Heracles is held in especial honour by the Sourasenoi, an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora and Cleisobora, and through whose country flows a navigable river called the Jobares. But the dress which this Heracles wore, Megasthenes tells us, resembled that of
1.Ibid., p. 89 with fns. 1 & 2.
2.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 221-22. .
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the Thracian Heracles, as the Indians themselves admit. It is further said that he had a numerous progeny of male children born to him in India (for, like his Theban namesake, he married many wives) but that he had only one daughter. The name of this child was Pāndaia, and the land in which she was born and with the sovereignty of which Heracles entrusted her was called after her name Pāndaia." Sufficient clues have been seen by scholars' in this account to identify Heracles.
D.R. Bhandarker equates him with Krshna Vasudeva (plus Krishna's brother Balarāma) and the Sourasenoi with the Surasenas or Satvatas. Lassen, McCrindle and Hopkins state that Methora and Cleisobora are respectively Mathura and Krish-napura on the Jamunā (Jobares). The story about Pāndaia is a confused reference to Krishna's close personal association with the Pāndavas in the Bhārata War and to his family-tie to them by the marriage of his sister to the Pāndava Arjuna. A further fact is spotlighted by Sircar:2 "There is some evidence to show that the association of Vasudeva with the Pāndya country is old. In the fourth century B.C. the grammarian Katyayana explains the word Pāndya as 'one sprung from an individual of the clan of the Pandus or the king of their country'. Katyayana therefore associates the Pāndya country with the Pandus or Pāndavas whom epic tradition intimately connects with Vasudeva." Even linguistically the equivalent of "Heracles" can be found: "Harikrishna." When the "Krishna" of "Krishnapura" becomes "Cleiso" in "Cleisobora", the terminal "cles" of "Heracles" can well be equated to "Krishna" added to "Hera" for "Hari".
But, if we have Krishna Vāsudeva here, how in any sense can he be 15th after Dionysus or Prithu? He cannot be even 15th from Vaivasvata, for he was a contemporary of Sahadeva. In fact, Pargiter, when followed not along the lunar line leading to Sahadeva but along another line of the Lunar family which leads to Krishna, shows him to be the 53rd name, though the 94th generation, if Vaivasvata is the 1st name and generation. This would make him (53+7=) 60 in name-number after Prithu and (94+7=) 101 in generation after him. Hence the account of Megasthenes cannot be equated here to the Purānic results and the rift threatens
1.Pusalker, Studies in the Epics and Purānas of India, p. 64.
2. "The Early History of Vaisnavism", The Cultural Heritage of India (Sri Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta 1956), Vol. IV, p. 142.
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to invalidate our conclusions, by means of Purānic comparisons, in favour of Chandragupta I.
One may put up the defence that the rift may be due to a slip by the copyists of Megasthenes, like the enormous yet obvious error of a much smaller time-gap between Dionysus and Sandrocottus than between Dionysus and Alexander. Such a slip need not prejudice the highly impressive correspondence already traced. But, of course, it would be better if the discrepancy could be explained. And actually there is a way out of the difficulty. It lies in inquiring: "Can Krishna be put, in some sense or other, immediately after the 14th name in our Purānic list so that he may be the 15th after Prithu?" If he can, we may legitimately suggest that Megasthenes has made a mix-up without truly falsifying the Purānic information.
When we examine our Purānic lists we find that after Prithu the 14 names are: (1) Antardhana, (2) Havirdhāna, (3) Prachina-barhisha, (4) Prachetas, (5) Daksha, (6) Kaśyapa, (7) Vivasvata, (8) Manu Vaivasvata, (9) Budha (for Ilā), (10) Pururavas (11) Ayu, (12) Nahusha, (13) Yayati, (14) Pūru. But Pūru, the 14th successor, is not the only son of Yayati: we have named him alone because through him we arrive ultimately at the Magadhan line. Pusalker,' drawing upon the Purānas and the MahaBhārata, tells us, as also does Pargiter by his Tables: "Yayati had five sons. Devayānī bore two, Yadu and Turvasu, and Śarmishthā three, Anu, Druhyu, and Puru." All these sons are 14th after Prithu. Pusalker continues: "Yadu, the eldest son of Yayāti, founded the Yādavas, the first Lunar dynasty to rise into prominence." The greatest and almost the last Yādava was Krishna.2 The term "Yada-va" means in general a member of Yadu's family: its first and immediate meaning is "son of Yadu". If Krishna, who is the Yādava par excellence just as Rāma Dāśarathi is the preeminent Raghava (descendant of the Solar Line of Raghu), is understood as "son of Yadu", then, since Yadu is 14th in succession to Prithu, Krishna is 15th. And he is 15th not only as a name: those who are next in succession to Yadu - his "sons", as they are called - are 15th in generation no less than in name-number. Pargiter,3 counting Vaivasvata as the 1st generation, makes Yadu's sons the 8th:
1."Traditional History. "The Vedic Age, p. 274.
2.Ibid., pp. 298-99.
3.Op. cit., p. 144, col.l.
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they become the 15th when 7 are counted between Vaivasvata and Prithu. Therefore Prithu would be exactly 15 generations earlier than Krishna who, according to us, substitutes one of these sons in Megasthenes's understanding.
The precise generation-number 15 which Krishna as "Yādava" could fit is too suggestive to be without relevance to our problem of Dionysus's having been "fifteen generations earlier than Heracles". Besides, the very name of the son, through whom the line which nearly ended with Krishna came into being, is somewhat allied in sound to Krishna's name: it is Kroshtu.1
We may mention also an alternative possible reason for Megasthenes's mistake. In fact it would be a double possibility. In Pargiter's Tables2 we have, in the same generation as Krishna, one Dhristadyumna of the South Panchāla line. If we count 15 names upward before him in the same line we strike upon a member of it who, like the famous Vainya, bears the name "Prithu" as part of his full appellation which is "Prithusena".3 Again, if we count the generations back from Dhristadyumna by taking him to be one of the generations counted, we reach another member of the same line at the 15th earlier generation, whose name is "Prithu": this Prithu and Dhristadyumna are respectively the 80th and the 94th generation.4
Whichever standpoint we may choose of the three which are open to us, we come to the end of our labours with the objections that may be made. So we may hold, in conclusion, that Megasthenes on his evidence was not a contemporary of Chandragupta Maurya. He is historically on the side of the Purānic chronology in so far as it leads to the accession of Chandragupta I somewhere in the period 315-302 B.C. - a date which the 315 B.C. we have read in Megasthenes for this accession suits excellently. His chronological information came from Indians who in c. 302 B.C. - the date of his arrival at the court of Sandrocottus - were setting up their time-scheme with the end of Prithu's semi-legendary reign at one extreme and at the other the rise of the Imperial Guptas in their own day.
2.Ibid., p. 148, col. 5.
3.Ibid.,
4.Ibid., p. 148, col. 5.
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2
As a result of our scrutiny of the three versions that have come down to us in the reports of Pliny, Solinus and Arrian, we may read the total chronological clue from Megasthenes thus:
"Dionysus was the first who invaded India, and was the first of all who triumphed over the vanquished Indians. From the days of Dionysus to Alexander the Great, 6451 years are reckoned with 3 months additional. From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians reckoned 6462 years, the calculation being made by counting the kings who reigned in the intermediate period, to the number of 153 or 154. But among these years a republic was thrice established, one extending to...years, another to 300 and another to 120. The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked."
With this manifold chronological clue at the back of our mind we have made several identifications and computations aligning Megasthenes to the Purānas, but a few knots still remain to be unravelled.
The Remaining Knots
We have to find the precise starting-point of the Indian chronology conveyed to Megasthenes by the Purānic pundits of his age, as well as to ascertain the missing number of years for the first "republic". Also, the two discoveries, along with the very fact of three "republics", have to be brought into line with the chronological materials in the Purānas and with the traditional Indian chronology applied to them. This will enable us to see whether more evidence is available from Megasthenes to resolve the rivalry between Chandragupta Maurya and Chandragupta I for identification with Sandrocottus.
Before we proceed, we may remind ourselves of three Purānic traditional dates:
1.3102 B.C., the advent of the Kaliyuga with Krishna's death.
2.3138 B.C., the year of the Bhārata War and Parīkshit's birth.
3.3177 B.C., the year in which the Sapta Rishi, the Seven Rishis, the stars of the constellation Great Bear, are said to have
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entered the Nakshatra (lunar asterism) Maghā in the course of a cycle of 27 centuries supposed to be running through the 27 lunar asterisms of the ecliptic by a stay of 100 years in each of them.
The Exact Date of Alexander's Invasion
We must begin our task of reaching the starting-point of Indian chronology in the age of Megasthenes by deciding the date from which to count backward to Dionysus the 6451 years and 3 months, a date connected with Alexander.
Obviously, we are concerned here with the question: "When exactly did Alexander invade India and stand as victor on Indian soil?" As India proper was then east of the Indus we have to know the year, month and day of Alexander's crossing of this river. The year is 326 B.C. And the consensus of historians is that the crossing occurred in the beginning of spring. But what were the month and day?
For a satisfactory answer we should take note of all the information provided by the classical accounts of Alexander's campaign.
The opinion that the invasion took place at the beginning of spring in 326 B.C. is derived from a passage in Strabo (XV. 17)1 founded on Aristobulus, a companion of Alexander's. Strabo says about Alexander and his men: "they spent the winter near the mountainous country in the land of the Hyspasians and of Assaca-nus, and...at the beginning of spring they went down into the plains and to Taxila, a large city, and thence to the Hydaspes River and the country of Porus..."
But evidently the notion of the beginning of spring is general rather than precise: it does not connote the very first day of the season, for that day cannot equally apply to the Indus-crossing and the arrival at Taxila. Vincent Smith2 tells us that the arrival must have been 3 days later. So Aristobulus must mean a span of several days constituting the initial portion of spring. This is confirmed by another passage in Strabo (XV.61),3 based again on Aristobulus. Here he speaks of this historian's meeting with the Indian ascetics at Taxila and, referring to climatic conditions, observes that "the spring of the year had begun".
1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 250.
2The Early History of India, p. 63.
3The Classical Accounts..., p. 276.
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Is there a way to know how small or large we should make Aristobulus's span of several days, and how to place in it with accuracy the Indus-crossing? Aristobulus himself supplies no clue. As with the Indus-crossing and the arrival at Taxila, his whole first statement crams together in quick and uninterrupted sequences many occurrences which actually stand fairly apart. Smith,1 following Arrian (V.8), Diodorus (XVII.87) and Curtius (VII.12, 13),2 speaks of Alexander's "stay in his comfortable quarters at Taxila for a sufficient time to rest his army". Then the march to the Hydaspes (Jhelum) took, by Smith's calculation,3 probably a fortnight. On the western bank of the Hydaspes there were watching and foraging, while Porus deployed his army on the eastern bank. Smith4 supposes 6 or 7 weeks of preliminaries and preparations such as described by Arrian (V.9.10):5 at least a month may be supposed. Aristobulus slurs over all these things.
He slurs similarly over intervals prior to the Indus-crossing. Smith,6 quoting Curtius (VIII. 12),7 writes that, having left the mountainous country, Alexander "arrived at the Indus after the sixteenth encampment" - that is, at the end of 16 days of marching "through the forests down to the bridgehead of Ohind". On the authority of Diodorus (XVIII.86)8 and Arrian (V.3),9 Smith10 mentions 20 days' rest and recreation for the army at the bridgehead. This means that the Indus was crossed (16+30=) 46 days after the men had started leaving the mountainous country.
In what season should we put these days? Aristobulus has said that Alexander's men "spent the winter" near that country. So the 16 days of downward march before touching the plains and the 30 by the Indus before the crossing cannot be during the winter. We should thus be led to take Aristobulus's "beginning of spring" in a very broad sense: the Indus was crossed 46 days after winter had ended, and 49 days of spring had elapsed before Taxila was
1.Op. cit., p. 66.
2.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 29, 166, 114-16.
3.Op. cit., p. 67.
4.Ibid., pp. 68, 90.
5.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 30-31.
6.Op. cit., pp. 62-3
7.The Classical Accounts..., p. 113.
8.Ibid., p. 165.
9.Ibid., p. 23. 10.Op. cit., p. 63.
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reached. But to say even after the 49th day that "spring of the year had begun" is to make nonsense of that expression. Even to designate the 46th day as "beginning of spring" is nonsensical. If the expression is to stand, we must take in rather a broad sense Aristobulus's mention of winter also. Some of the 46 days before the Indus-crossing should be put into that season. But we cannot push there more than half the number. So, approximately, the Indus-crossing will take place after the first 23 days of spring and the arrival at Taxila after the first 26 days. Since Arrian (V.4)1 informs us that the river was crossed early one morning, we may roughly put the passage in the dawn of the 24th spring-day.
When exactly in the year would this day fall? It is surprising that Smith2 should write: "The passage of the Indus must be dated in February or at the latest in March." Apparently he is going by that particular Indian Calendar which divides the year into 6 seasons, each of 2 months. Originally, by this Calendar, Vasanta or spring commenced in late February, 2 months after Sislra or dew-time had commenced in late December, strictly speaking at the winter solstice of December 21. But if Smith goes by this Calendar, what becomes of Aristobulus's phrase? About 27 days out of a season of 2 months will carry us pretty close to the middle of it and clean beyond the beginning in even the broadest sense. The conclusion is inevitable that Aristobulus, in Strabo's report, was not writing in terms of the Calendar of 6 seasons.
And, indeed, would it not be odd that he should? When we know that the Greeks were writing for Greek readers, then, unless they give a warning about a change of meaning in the terms intelligible to such readers, we have to assume for "spring" or for any other season the meaning commonly attached to it in the Greek Calendar. The proof is to be found in Strabo himself. He (XV.1.13)3 says: "India is watered by the summer rains and... the plains become marshes." Arrian (V.IX)4 is clear-cut on the point when he speaks of "the time of the year when the sun is wont to turn towards the summer solstice", and adds: "At this season incessant and heavy rain falls in India." The summer solstice
1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 24.
2.Op. dr., p. 64, fn. 2.
3.The Classical Accounts..., p. 249. 4-Ibid., p. 3r.
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comes on June 21. But the scheme of 6 seasons has Grishma (heat) from late April to late June and then Varsha (rain) from June 21 for 2 months. Its summer is Grishma: it has no regular rains during that season. The Greek historians leave little doubt that, when they do not provide us with an open sign of a different sense, their "summer" covers with its start the Indian monsoon and that this start is on the solstice of June 21. Here is an index to the usual Greek division of the year into 4 seasons, each of 3 months, in which spring begins on the vernal equinox, March 21, and runs up to the summer solstice.
Hence, from all points of view, the first 27 days or so of spring which we have shown to be Aristobulus's "beginning" must extend from March 21 (inclusive) to nearly April 16 (inclusive). Then c. April 16 will mark the arrival at Taxila and c. April 13 the Indus-crossing.
C. April 13 is the date of Alexander's invasion of India and the end-point from which we have to count backward by 6451 years and 3 months to reach the starting-point of Indian Chronology.
The Starting-point of Indian Chronology in Megasthenes
Adding 6451 years and 3 months to c. April 13, 326 B.C., we go backward to c. January 13, 6777 B.C. But if the 3 months are not meant to be taken quite literally, the starting-point of Indian chronology in the age of Megasthenes was a date somewhere in January 6777 B.C.
What is striking about this year is the two end-digits. Immediately we are reminded of the Sapta Rishi cycle. The Seven Rishis enter each asterism in the year 77 of a century, just as in the Purānic traditional chronology they entered Maghā in 3177 B.C. It would seem that Megasthenes's 6777 B.C. was related to this cycle and that its being the starting-point of Indian chronology implied for this cycle in his day a starting-point in January 6777 B.C., coinciding with the first year of the intermediate period between Dionysus and Sandrocottus, the year in which the reign of the former came to an end and that of his successor, the first king out of the 153, commenced.
If we attend to some of the Vedic associations of Sapta, the very use by the Greeks of the name "Dionysus" facilitates our bringing in the Sapta Rishi cycle. "The number seven," writes Sri
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Aurobindo,1 "plays an exceedingly important part in the Vedic svstem, as in most very ancient schools of thought." It is also applied to those beings, at once human and divine, called Arigir-asas, whose parable or legend is "on the whole the most important of all the Vedic myths".2 The Aiigirasas are called sapta rishayah, the Seven Rishis or Seers.3 "The Ahgirasa Rishis are ordinarily described as seven in number: they are the sapta viprāh, the seven sages who have come down to us in the Purānic tradition4 and are enthroned by Indian astrology in the constellation of the Great Bear."5 They are, as described in Hymn VI, 25.9, "the Fathers who dwell in the sweetness (the world of bliss), who establish the wide birth..."6 Expressive of this world of bliss is the Soma-wine, the heavenly effluence of the god Soma. "The drinking of the Soma-wine as the means of strength, victory and attainment is one of the pervading figures in the Veda... The Ahgirasas also conquer in the strength of the Soma."7 "They are brāhmanāso pitarah somyāsah... ritāvridhah (VI. 75.10), the fathers who are full of the Soma and have the word and are therefore increasers of the Truth."8 The relation of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, to the Vedic deity Soma, lord of the wine of delight (ānanda) and immortality (amrita), is obvious. Through Soma, Dionysus can be more easily linked with the Seven Rishis and with the astronomical time-calculation known as their cycle.
We may even suggest that the same Vedic association of the Seven Angirasas with Soma is related to the name which Arrian (Indica, I. VIII)9 gives of Dionysus's successor who was "the most conversant with Bacchic matters": Spatembas. This name can be thought of as a Greek hearing of the possible Sanskrit compound Saptāmbhas. The word ambhas or water is a typically Purānic one {e.g., Vishnu Purāna, 1.5) but it occurs earlier too, as in the Aitareya Brāhmana (V.I.1.2) and even in the Rigveda (X.129.1). Saptāmbhas would mean "Seven-watered" and yield a sense apt to
1.On the Veda, p. 111.
2.Ibid., p. 158.
3.Ibid., p. 207.
4."Not that the names given them by the Purānas need be those which the Vedic tradition would have given them." (Sri Aurobindo's footnote).
5-Ibid., p. 198.
6-Ibid., p. 190.8. Ibid., p. 210.
7.Ibid., pp. 209-10.9. The Classical Account..., p. 221.
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our purpose. For the Rigveda (VII.42.1) speaks of the Aiigirasas as being not only with "the divine Word, the cry of Heaven ... and of its lightnings thundering out from the Word", but also with "the divine waters ... that are set flowing by that heavenly lightning ... and with the outflowing of the divine waters the outpressing of the immortalising Soma....." 1 These waters "are usually designated in the figured Vedic language as the Seven Mothers or the seven fostering Cows, sapta dhenavah."2 And "this Soma-wine is the sweetness that comes flowing from the streams of the upper hidden world, it is that which flows in the seven waters..."3 Thus the Seven Rishis, Soma and the seven waters or rivers all go together and Spatembas as Saptāmbhas fits naturally and perfectly into the picture.'Through the idea of the Soma-bearing seven waters that are associated with the Ahgirasas, the successor of Dionysus can also be linked with the cycle of the Sapta Rishi.
Against a Vedic background we may even see a subtle identification of the stars of the Great Bear with the wine-carrying waters; for, the expressions sapta mātarah and sapta dhenavah ("the seven mothers" and "the seven fostering cows") are applied in the Rigveda indifferently to Rays and to Rivers.4 Spatembas (Saptāmbhas) would appear to have a rapport still more close than Dionysus with the Sapta Rishi. Perhaps the Purānic pundits in the age of Megasthenes held that it was he who, seeing the link of the Sapta Rishi with his predecessor, established their cycle as starting with the end of his predecessor's reign and the beginning of his own.
In any case, we may well hazard to put the start of the cycle in January 6777 B.C. But the moment we do so we suggest a contact between Megasthenes's starting-point of Indian chronology and the chronological statements in Indian tradition. And the question arises: "Initiating the cycle in 6777 B.C. with an appropriate asterism, would we reach in the course of the cycle's repetitions the Maghā-century in 3177 B.C. within which the Indian Purānic tradition places the Kaliyuga's commencement (3102 B.C.) and the Bhārata War (3138 B.C.) with Parīkshit's birth soon after it in the same year?" If that century could be reached, there would be convincing proof that Megasthenes's 6777 B.C. was in direct
1.On the Veda, pp. 215-16.
2.Ibid., p. 146.
3.Ibid., p. 210. 4. Ibid., p. 111.
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relation to those two dates and that those dates were part of the traditional Indian chronology as far back as c. 302 B.C.
The crucial point to settle is: "What asterism out of the 27 should be considered the first one in 6777 B.C.?" But before we can settle it we must decide whether the Seven Rishis were understood as traversing the asterisms in a forward or in a retrograde motion. Modern scholars have reported two schools of reckoning. Colonel Wilford1 remarked in 1805 that the direction was supposed to be retrograde. But Cunningham2 in 1883 took it to be forward. What was it in ancient times?
The Direction of the Seven Rishis' Cycle
If we look at the cycle in the light of the Vedic Angirasas, we would take a hint from the verses: "Forward let the Angirasas travel, priests of the Word, forward go the cry of heaven, forward move the fostering Cows that diffuse their waters..." (VIII.42.1).3 Apropos of the Purānas we have to answer by studying a verse which is found in both the Vishnu and the Bhagavata Purānas and which is the sole one naming another asterism in relation to Maghā. It runs in Pargiter's translation:4 "When the Great Bear will pass from Maghās to Pūrva Āsādhā, then, starting with Nanda, the Kali age will attain its magnitude." Who exactly is this Nanda and how long after Parīkshit does he come and at what remove from Maghā is Pūrva Āshādhā?
Let us glance at the sequence of the 27 asterisms commencing with Aśvini as at present: (1) Aśvinī (2) Bharanī (3) Krittikā (4) Rōhinī (5) Mrigaśira (6) Ardra (7) Punarvasu (8) Pushya (9) Aslesha (10) Maghā (11) Pūrva Phalguni (12) Uttara Phalguī (13) Hasta (14) Chitra (15) Svatī (16) Visakha (17) AnuRādhā (18) Jyeshtha (19) Mūla (20) Pūrva Āshādhā (21) Uttara Āśhādhā (22) Śravana (23) Dhanishtha (formerly Śūravishtha) (24) Śatabhisha (25) Pūrva Bhadrapada (26) Uttara Bhadrapada (27) Revatī.
If we go forward from Maghā to Pūrva Āshādhā we pass from the 10th to the 20th asterism, a space of 1000 years from the beginning of the one to the beginning of the other. By a retrograde
1- "The Kings of Māgadha", Asiatic Researches, Vol. 9.
2.The Book of Indian Eras.
3.Sri Aurobindo's translation, op. cit., p. 215.
4.The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 75.
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motion we do the same after 1700 years. When does Nanda occur in Purānic history?
In the Vishnu and the Bhāgavata themselves,1 the name Nanda is used for Mahāpadma, who is called Mahānanda in the Brāhmanda,2 and ranked as the first of nine Nandas in all the Purānic lists. Also, the period from Parīkshit's birth to the coronation of this Nanda, which is given in some Purānas as either 1500 or 1115 or 1050 years, is 1015 in the version examined by Pargiter3 of the Vishnu and the Bhagavata. So Nanda's reign would begin in (3138-1015=) 2123 B.C. This date must be included in the Pūrva Āshādhā century meant by Pargiter's version. But that is exactly what would happen if that century ran after 1000 years from the commencement of the Maghā's 100. For it would be from (3177-1000=) 2177 to 2078 B.C. Clearly, then, the motion of the Seven Rishis in these Purānas from Maghā to Pūrva Āshādhā is in a forward and not in a retrograde direction.
Of course, since the durations of the 3 dynasties preceding the first Nanda, Mahāpadma, are 1000, 138, 362 years and add up to 1500 years, 1015 is a wrong number. Pūrva Āshādhā too is a mistake for the asterism whose century would begin 1500 years after the beginning of Maghā - and it is a very likely mistake because the other asterism has a name with an identical opening half: what begins 1500 years later than the commencement of Maghā is Pūrva Bhadrapada. Moreover, there is the first king of the Pradyota dynasty to be thought of. The Purānas start this dynasty at once after the Barhadrathas' 1000 years - that is, in (3138-1000=) 2138 B.C. - and thus within the first half of the Pūrva Āshādhā's century from 2177 to 2077 B.C. The first Pradyota had a name and a reputation somewhat like those of the first Nanda, Mahāpadma. He was, as our historians4 tell us, Chanda Mahāsena. We are also told by them:5. "The Purānas refer to him as having subjugated the neighbouring kings, but describe him as 'destitute of good policy'." As we learn from Pargiter,6 Mahāpadma in all the Purānas is a conqueror of many countries, who made
1.Ibid., p. 69, fn. 15.
2.Ibid., p. 58, fns. 14, 15.
3.Ibid., p. 74, fn. 10.
4.B. C. Law, "North India in the Sixth Century B.C.", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 14.
5.Ibid.
6.Op. cit., p. 75, with fn. 11.
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himself Ekarāt, sole monarch, and he is designated by the Matsya as "a portion of Kali". Perhaps it is these words of the Matsya that clinched the misreading of "Nanda" for "Chanda" in the Vishnu's and Bhāghavata's phrase ending with: "....Kali age will attain its magnitude." And possibly the 1015 years after 3138 B.C. are meant to suggest that in the 15th of his 23 years of reign Chandra reached his height in being "destitute of good policy".
Yes, both Pūrva Āshādhā and 1015 years in connection with Nanda are errors - unless we follow the famous traditional commentator Śrīdhara in taking the passage to mean in condensed form: "The darkness of the Kaliyuga will go on increasing in the reign of King Pradyota during the Seven Rishis' conjunction with Piirva Āshadha, It will increase still more by the time Nanda begins to rule. " But the rightness or wrongness of the Vishnu's and Bhagavata 's indications is not our immediate concern. The indicationsare of importance to us here inasmuch as they determine the Puranic view of the Sapta Rishi's motion.
The First Asterism for 6777 B. C.
With this motion established as forward, the ground is cleared for us to inquire what asterism should be the first in 6777 B.C. for the Sapta Rishi cycle. As we saw, the list of asterisms at present opens with Aśvinī. But Whitney1 informs us that the opening with Aśvinī was introduced in about 490 A.D. when the vernal equ inox took place' in the first point of that asterism. And C. R. Kaye2 rightly tells us: "The early lists all began with Krittikā." Shall we make Krittikā our initial aste rism?
But did the early lists put Krittikā first because of a linking of it , as of Aśvinī, with an astronomical phenomenon serving to begin the New Year ? And did Krittikā always stand first before Aśvinī took the lead ? What Kaye himself has to communicate to us in full is: "The early lists all began with Krittikā, but the Mahābhārata puts Śravana first , the Jyotisha Vedānga begins with Śravishthā , the Sūrya Prajnāpti with Abhijit, the Sūrya Siddhānta with Aśvinī. But here Aśvinī is definitely equated with the vern al equinox, while Abhijit , Śravana and Sravishthā, which are continuous, are equated with the winter solstice." As Abhijit stands between
1.Sūrya Siddhanta, VIII, 9. p. 211.
2.The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 50, p. 47.
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Uttara Āshādhā and Śravana in a system of 28 instead of 27 asterisms, Uttara Āshādhā would replace it in the system with which we are dealing apropos of the Seven Rishis. So we learn that when the winter solstice occurred successively in Uttara Āshādhā, Śravana and Śravishthā (later called Dhanishtha), the list successively opened with these asterisms. But, when we look further into the Jyotisha Vedānga, which is admittedly the earliest astronomical treatise in our possession, we find light thrown on the initial position of Krittikā in the early lists. For, although Śravishthā leads the asterism-list, the list of the deities presiding over the various asterisms gives the prime place to Agni, the presiding deity of Krittikā.1 A distinction between the ritualistic or religious primacy and the astronomical is brought out here. Krittikā as a list-header is suggested to have a religious and not an astronomical import. And this suggestion is confirmed in the famous statement of Garga quoted by B. G. Tilak2 and, from Tilak, by Kaye: "Krittikā is first for purposes of ritual, Śravishthā for the purpose of the calendar."
It is easy to understand the religious primacy accorded to Krittikā. As the centre of all ancient ritual was the sacrificial fire, the physical manifestation of the god Agni, and as Agni was the presiding deity of Krittikā this asterism stood the most prominently in the mind of the Brāhmanas. But it can have no astronomical significance except when it could be associated with either the winter solstice or the vernal equinox, the two points at which the New Year used to start in different ages.
Thus, to accept Krittikā for starting the Sapta Rishi cycle in 6777 B.C. merely because it heads all the early lists would be a mistake. The asterism we want is one in which the winter solstice or the vernal equinox occurred in that year and which on account of that occurrence would open the list.
In view of the extreme antiquity of the year concerned we may simplify our research by attending to expert opinion. According to J. B. Fleet,3 originally the year started at the winter solstice, with Śiśira as the first season beginning then. P. C. Sengupta4 assures us
1.B. G. Tilak, Orion (Bombay, 1893), p. 41.
2.Ibid., p. 30.
3.The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed), Vol. XIII, p. 493.
4."Hindu Astronomy", The Cultural Heritage of India (Sri Ramkrishna Mission, Calcutta, 1937), Old Series, Vol. HI, p. 345.
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that the Vedic year began with the winter solstice and the spring came to be reckoned as the first season in a new system of computation. We may add from Sengupta1 a few other indications. The oldest astronomical reference he discovers is to the winter solstice happening on the full-moon day of the month Phālguna in the year c. 4550 B.C. He has also said: "The Vedic year-long sacrifices were begun in the earliest times on the day following the winter solstice...Winter was thus the first season of the year...The Indian years, before the time of Āryabhata I, were generally begun from the winter solstice day, but after his time gradually the years came to be reckoned from the vernal equinoctial day."
To find, however, our asterism we must understand the peculiarity of "the precession of the equinoxes". The equinox - vernal or autumnal - moves through the asterisms in the reverse, order and the last point of an asterism is reached first and the first point last: conversely, the asterism, in which the equinox takes place immediately before it occurs in another, is the one which in the normal order comes after it. This seeming anomaly is caused, as Newton explained, by the action or attraction of the planets, the sun and the moon on the earth's protuberant equatorial ring, so that daily the equinoctial points reach the meridian a little sooner than they otherwise would.2 The movement of the points is called "precession". The point of the winter solstice lies exactly halfway between those of the autumnal and the vernal equinoxes, that of the summer solstice vice versa.3 So the seeming anomaly applies to the solstitial points as well. The rate at which the equinoctial and solstitial points shift from asterism to asterism can be known by dividing by 27, which is the number of the asterisms, the time required by these points to perform one complete circuit of the heavens. The points perform the circuit, called a period of precession, in 25,868 years/ Consequently, the passage from asterism to asterism, in connection with either the equinoxes or the solstices, occurs at the average rate of (25,868/27=) 9582/27 years.
To calculate where the winter solstice was in 6777 B.C., we need
1.Ancient Indian Chronology (Calcutta, 1947), pp. xviii, 169; p. 156; p. 166; p. xx.
2.The New American Encyclopedia (New York, 1945), p. 1116, "Precession of •he Equinoxes".
3.Ibid., p. 1265, "Solstices".
4.Ibid., p. 116.
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to start from a definite datum about its occurrence at some time or other. J. C. Ray,' working from the accepted identification of Dhanishtha (or Śravishthā) with the star Beta Delphini, has calculated that the winter solstice occurred in the first point of Dhanishtha in 1372 B.C. and in the first point of Śravana in 405 B.C., though the earliest year in which the new moon happened on the day of the winter solstice so as to make Sravana observable as the star of this solstice was 401 B.C. From this it is easy to calculate that the winter solstice began to be in Dhanishtha - that is, at the last point of the asterism -in (1372+958=) 2330 B.C. A table based on the average rate of precession can show us at a glance the asterisms of the winter solstice in the ages before 2330 B.C. :
From 3288 to 2330 B.C.: Satabhisha
From 4246 to 3288 B.C.: Pūrva Bhadrapadā
From 5204 to 4246 B.C.: Uttara Bhadrapadā
From 6162 to 5204 B.C.: Revatī
From 7220 to 6162 B.C.: Aśvini
Our 6777 B.C. fell between the last two dates. Hence in that year, as throughout the period of 7220 to 6162 B.C., Aśvini would head the asterism-list. If the Sapta Rishi cycle was thought to have commenced in 6777 B.C., Aśvini could be considered its first asterism.
Megasthenes's Starting-point and the Purānic Maghā
Starting with Aśvini in 6777 B.C., let us see where the Maghā century would come according to a forward movement of the Seven Rishis through the asterisms at the rate of an asterism per century.
Maghā is the 10th asterism when Aśvini is the 1st. So from the beginning of its century to the beginning of Aśvini we have 900 years. The Seven Rishis, in the period before Alexander and Sandrocottus, would enter Maghā once in (6777-900=) 5877 B.C. and a second time, after 2700 years more, in (5877-2700=) 3177 B.C. and a third time in (3177-2700=) 477 B.C.
The middle date is a most remarkable result. For, the century
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from 3177 to 3077 B..C. which it gives as the one during which the Seven Rishis stayed in Maghā is precisely the century holding within it, according to the traditional Indian chronology, those two events - the birth of Parīkshit in the wake of the Bhārata War and the advent of the Kaliyuga - which the Purānas declare to have occurred in the 100 years of the Seven Rishis' stay in Maghā.
The conclusion appears inevitable that the chronology communicated to Megasthenes as starting from 6777 B.C. not only employs the Sapta Rishi cycle known to the Purānas but is also related, through this cycle, both to the Purānic associations of Maghā and to the dates traditionally going with those associations: 3138 and 3102 B.C. The implication of such a conclusion is that the Purānic pundits who were the informants of Megasthenes had already these dates, together with 3177 B.C., as important points of reference. In other words, the Purānas are linked to these traditional dates through a common background which is a chronology starting from 6777 B.C. and employing, like them, the cycle of the Seven Rishis and having, like tradition, for important points of reference 3138 and 3102 B.C.1
A strong hint that his chronology was cognizant of these dates is contained in some words of Megasthenes himself. Does he not mention Heracles no less than Dionysus and does he not mention his very epoch and has not scholarship identified his Heracles with Krishna who played a central part in the Bhārata War of 3138 B.C. and died in 3102 B.C.? No doubt, the merely 15 generations he gives us from Dionysus to Heracles cannot cover the period from 6777 B.C. to the Purānic epoch of Krishna; but the intention to communicate accurately the chronological position of Krishna is perfectly clear, and we have already explained how even the mistake of 15 generations can rest on a specific traditional point connected with the Yadava family to which Krishna belonged.
The liaison between Megasthenes's starting-point and the Purānic Maghā, which from 3177 B.C. starts the century holding those traditional dates, has a most critical bearing on Indian history. But we shall touch on this bearing at the end. At the moment let us add
1. Here a tribute is due to Cunningham (op. cit., pp. 14-15) for reaching by a sure instinct what we have demonstrated by logical reason. He was perhaps the first to draw serious attention to the chronological evidence of Megasthenes and divine its true import.
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a few remarks to render more definite to our minds the place of the starting-point in the January of 6777 B.C., and then pass on to consider the three "republics". We have two facts to remember in arriving at greater definiteness: it is the Sapta Rishi cycle that is concerned and it is the winter solstice of December 21 that begins the ancient year. The years of the cycle are lunar1 and get adjusted to the solar by the general arrangement of intercalated and suppressed months. The lunar year begins after the first new-moon conjunction or the first full-moon conjunction, subsequent to the entrance of the sun into the Zodiacal sign with which the year commences.2 At present the former conjunction is used in Southern India, the latter in Northern.3 About the India known to Megasthenes, Curtius (VIII.9)4 has preserved the information that the Indians "mark the divisions of time by the course of the moon not like most nations when the planet shows a full face but when she begins to appear horned." About still more ancient India Sengupta5 says: "The months were begun either from a full moon or a new moon." The Sapta Rishi cycle as observed in Kashmir and thereabouts (from c. 800 A.D.) has its lunar months ending with the full moon." But, as Jean Filliozat7 reminds us, they must originally have ended with the new moon, for their reckoning was from Śudi I which is the start of the bright fortnight. We have no knowledge of what the still older Sapta Rishi cycle did. According to our reference that it commenced in January 6777 B.C., it would seem to mark the beginning of the first month of the lunar year connected with the winter solstice of December 21, 6778 B.C. And, since there is a gap of about 15 days between the new moon and the full moon, one of the two in relation to that solstice must fall in the opening half of January. If an astronomer could calculate which of the two did so, we should know the very day, the first of the lunar year, from which ancient Indian Chronology as formulated in c. 302 B.C. was taken to start.
1.The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed.), Vol. XIII, p. 493.
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
4.The Classical Accounts..., p. 106.
5.Op. cit., p. 343.
6.The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 13th Edition, Vol. XIII, p. 499.
7.L'Inde Classique (Paris, 1953), Vol. II, Appendix, p. 736.
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The Three "Republics" and the Purānic Chronology
Now for the "republics". Do the Purānas contain any suggestions that there were 3 gaps in their dynastic series and do they indicate the time-lengths of these gaps?
A first glance at the Purānic material we have presented so far must direct us at once to the gap between the end of the Āndhras— Māgadha-rulers, according to the Purānas - and the rise of the Guptas who are mentioned as Māgadha-ruling dynasts. In this gap we have only one king linked with Māgadha, a king whose name has many versions and who is brought into Pargiter's text1 as Viśvasphāni. In spite of some unorthodox destructive deeds on his part, he is almost extolled to the skies, even designated "Visnu's peer in battle". As an isolated phenomenon he stands oddly, almost freakishly. Since he cannot be included among the Āndhras, he prompts us to take him along with the Guptas. How he might figure in their line we shall discuss in another place. Suffice it to say now that his position, without predecessor or successor, in Pargiter's text at a little distance from the Guptas cannot efface our impression that the Purānas are showing us, from the Āndhras' termination to the Guptas' commencement, a "republic" in Māgadha.
And indeed Māgadha, just before the Guptas became an Imperial Māgadhan dynasty, seems to have been in republican hands. Here the famous clan of the Lichchhavis comes upon the scene. Two facts stare us in the face in regard to Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Guptas: he is the monarch of Pātaliputra, the capital of Māgadha, and he is the husband of Kumāradevī, a Lichchhavi princess. And it would appear that he obtained Pātaliputra by his marriage with Kumāradevī, in honour of whom he issued gold marriage-coins jointly representing her with him as if in recognition of her share in the political supremacy, the imperial status which he was the first among the Guptas to enjoy. In D.R. Bhandarkar's view,2 it is clear not only from the tradition of the Lichchhavis but also from one of the Nepāl inscriptions published by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indrajit 3 that the Lichchhavis used to rule at
1.Op. cit. p. 73.
2.Carmichael Lectures. 1921, p. 10.
3.The Indian Antiquary. IX, p. 7.
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Pātaliputra. R. K. Mookerji1 too opines: "There is some evidence of Lichchhavi rule in Māgadha." There certainly were periods when Pātaliputra was under another sway, but the hold of the Lichchhavis on it just before the time of Chandragupta I seems just as certain. And, as Mookerji2 tells us, the Lichchhavis had been republicans from long before the time of the Buddha.
We can hardly doubt that a part of Arrian's information is borne out by the Purāna's section on the post-Āndhra epoch, although the testimony is only by silence. However, two objections are likely to be voiced.
First, do we not hear of a King of Māgadha, whom the Greeks call Xandrames and whose powerful army on the other bank of the Ganges was what chiefly daunted the Macedonians of Alexander and caused their refusal to march with him further beyond the River Hyphasis (Beās)? How then could Pātaliputra have been in republican hands after the end of the Āndhras and before Chandragupta I (Sandrocottus) mounted the throne?
This is too big a question to be shortly dealt with in all its aspects - particularly as regards tracing the Indian equivalent of Xandrames in conformity with the equivalent we have traced of Sandrocottus.3 But we can pretty satisfactorily answer in general the assumption that the Greeks definitely make Xandrames out to be a King of Māgadha, a ruler of Pātaliputra.
There are three Classical writers who refer to Xandrames in one way or another: Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch. Two of the relevant phrases from Diodorus (VII.93)4 are: "The dominions of the nation of the Prasioi and the Gandaridai, whose king was Xandrames, had an army of 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants... Poms... added that the king of the Gandaridai was a man of quite worthless character..." On the basis of these phrases we hear, once in the same chapter and twice in the next, of Alexander's projected "expedition against the Gandaridai". One more phrase of Diodorus's (II.37)5 does not mention Xandrames but surely implies him when, after mention-
1.The Gupta Empire, p. 8.
2.Hindu Civilisation (Bhavan's Book University, Bombay, 1957), 11, p. 240.
3.For a full treatment of the identity of Xandrames see Supplement Two at the end of this Part.
4.The Classical Accounts..., p. 172.
5.Ibid., p. 234.
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ing "the Gangaridai, a nation which possesses a vast force of the largest-sized elephants", it runs: "Owing to this, their country has never been conquered by any foreign king... Thus Alexander the Macedonian, after conquering all Asia, did not make war upon the Gangaridai,...when he learned that they possessed four thousand elephants well trained and equipped for war." We may note that the Prasii (or Prasioi, as Diodorus designates them), the people who have been identified by our historians as of Māgadha proper, are mentioned only once in connection with Xandrames. And in that very context he is called the king only of the Gangaridai (misspelled Gandaridai). On five other occasions they are without the Prasii apropos of Alexander's desired march eastward beyond the Beās (Hyphasis) towards Xandrames. And on no occasion do we hear of Palibothra (Pātaliputra).
Curtius (IX.2),1 calling Xandrames Agrammes, speaks of him as the King of "two nations, the Gāngāridae and the Prasii". There is no further reference, but we may observe that, unlike the case in Diodorus, the Gāngāridae are mentioned first and the Prasii after them. Plutarch (LXII)2 follows the same order and, without giving any name - Xandrames or Agrammes - simply writes: "the kings of Gandaritai and the Praisiai were reported to be waiting for (Alexander)..." Plutarch has "kings", in the plural: Xandrames would thus be the king of only one of the two nations. A slightly later statement by Plutarch, couched in terms similar to those used by Porus about Xandrames, suggests Xandrames alone as king of the whole stretch of country with which Alexander had to deal. But this, alongside the previous mention of more than one king, would imply, on Xandrames's part, a king-leadership of both the nations in their coalition against Alexander and not his being actually the monarch of both. Perhaps we should give him even direct rule over a part of the Prasii so that his over-all king-leadership would be a natural one. But as neither Plutarch nor Curtius, any more than Diodorus, breathes at all of Palibothra in the context of Xandrames, whether he be explicit or implicit, Palibothra which is the heart of Māgadha should lie outside his government.
In contrast we read of Sandrocottus in Strabo (XV.1.36):3 "It is
l Ibid., p. 128.
2.Ibid., p. 198.
3.Ibid., p. 262.
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said that Palibothra lies at the confluence of the Ganges and the other river [Erannoboas=Hiranyavaha, or Sonos=Son ],...and that the tribe of people amongst whom this city is situated is called the Prasii and is far superior to the rest; and that the reigning king must be surnamed after the city, being called Palibothros in addition to his own family name, as, for example, King Sandrocottus, to whom Megasthenes was sent on an embassy." Strabo (II.1.9)1 also says in connection with the ambassadors despatched from the Seleucid kingdom to the Indian court: "Both of these men. were sent to Palibothra, Megasthenes to Sandrocottus and Deimachus to Amitrochades, his son."
The Prasii, Palibothra, Sandrocottus - these go together. And nowhere is Sandrocottus joined with the Gangaridai, even though we must presume he ruled over them since he is considered the master of all India and particularly since - as Raychaudhuri2 reminds us - "a passage in Pliny [VI.223] clearly suggests that the Palibothri, i.e. the rulers of Pātaliputra, dominated the whole tract along the Ganges". Xandrames, on the other hand, is eminently the king of the Gangaridai, having nothing to do with Palibothra even if practically he was for Alexander the military master of the India banded against the foreigner.
Where the Gangaridai, with whom Diodorus links Xandrames exclusively again and again, are to be located is also a many-sided problem.4 But its general solution is provided in unmistakable terms by a passage we have not yet drawn upon from Diodorus (XVIII.6).5 Mentioning the "Gandaridai" as a nation whose elephants deterred Alexander from undertaking an expedition against them, he fixes their "region": "This region is separated from Farther India by the greatest river in those parts (for it has a breadth of thirty stadia), but it adjoins the rest of India which Alexander had conquered..." The "greatest river", thirty stadia in breadth, is, of course, the Ganges, to which this dimension or one very near it is often ascribed in the Classical accounts. So we learn that the Gangaridai extended from the country between the Beās
1.J. McCrindle, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (Westminister, 1893), p. 408.
2.The Political History of Ancient India (3rd Ed.), p. 256.
3.The Classical Accounts..., p. 342.
4.The problem is exhaustively treated in Supplement One to this Part.
5.The Classical Accounts..., p. 239.
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(Alexander's halting-place) and the Ganges, across the Madhyadeśa (Middle Country) through Māgadha, into Lower Bengal where the Ganges, forming its delta, marks the Gangaridai off from Farther India. People of the entire Ganges-region - of what Pliny, intending to indicate an extensive unity, calls "the whole tract along the Ganges" - are the Gangaridai.
Some details from Pliny (VI.22)1 and Solinus (52.7)2 about the Gangaridai in the Ganges-delta point us towards the internal structure, so to speak, of this wide-spread "nation". We gather that they were known as the "Gāngārides Calingae", as a branch of the Calinga-people whose other branches are named by Pliny3 the Modogalingae and the Maccocalingae. We also gather that they had a king of their own, over whom 60,000 foot-soldiers, 1000 horsemen and 700 elephants kept watch and ward. Comparing these figures with those associated with Xandrames, king of the Gangaridai, we conclude that the Gangaridai-king in Lower Bengal was distinct from Xandrames and a much smaller power. Xandrames was evidently a more westward ruler of a more central section of the Gangaridai. And, as Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch set him on the Ganges' eastern bank, awaiting Alexander, there must be a third and still more westward section too, one between the Beās and the Ganges. It is to this section that Diodorus (VII.91)4 alludes when he reports that the Younger Porus fled to the nation of the Gangaridai to escape Alexander advancing beyond the Acesines (Asiknī, Chenāb) to overrun his kingdom. The fleeing ruler crossed the Hydraotes (Irawati, Ravi) to reach the Hyphasis (Beās) and pass into the Gangaridai's territory. That territory must have started from the Hyphasis at the frontiers of the Punjāb. Xandrames, therefore, is situated more inland, in the Madhyadeśa.
But, in one passage (II.37),5 Diodorus not only mentions the Gangaridai's "eastern boundary" in the Ganges-delta; he also gives to the eastward-extended Gangaridai 4,000 elephants. Telling us of no other boundary, he obviously is writing of the total Gangaridai nation. This would imply that Xandrames's full
1.Ibid., pp. 341. 350 fn. 8a.
2.Ibid., p. 457.
3.Ibid., pp. 341, 342.
4.Ibid., p. 170. 5Ibid., p. 234.
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elephant-strength - 4,000 - has a contribution from Lower Bengal too. The king of the Ganges-delta, although independent essentially, must be acknowledging in a loose way Xandrames as the chief Gangaridai-monarch. Hence, broadly, Xandrames was an overlord. But fundamentally he was the king of the middle Gangaridai group. This group was west of both Lower Bengal and the heart of Māgadha, Pātaliputra.
Thus the first objection, picturing Xandrames as basically a Māgadhan emperor, may be disposed of. In spite of what we read about him and the Prasii, Palibothra in the post-Āndhra age could have been a republic under the Lichchhavis with their multitude of small rāja-figures - princes and princessess - jointly administering their land.
The second objection would ask: "How can the republican period of Māgadha in the post-Āndhra age be of 120 years, as in Arrian the third and last republic's duration is, when we know that the Purānic chronology has the Āndhras ending in 390 B.C. and the Imperial Guptas rising at some point within 315-302 B.C.? Since you have inferred from Arrian 315 B.C. for the Māgadhan coronation of Sandrocottus, will you not have only 75 years instead of 120?"
To get a possible answer let us go back to the ipsissima verba of Arrian. Referring to the number of kings and the number of years, he1 says: "but among these a republic was thrice established...and another to 300 years and another to 120." The repeated "another" shows that there was no such word as "first": the absence of "second" and "third" proves that the missing phrase must have been as we have reconstructed it: "one extending to...years." That McCrindle has not mistranslated is clear if we consult Pierre Chantraine's edition which has the original Greek on one side and the French version on the other.2 The Greek words used with both the republics whose years are given are: Thv.., Thv meaning "once...once" and rendered "une fois...une fois" by Chantraine. McCrindle has not been absolutely literal but his English idiom is essentially faithful to the Greek turn of speech. There is no denying that Arrian refrains from specifying which republic was the first in time and which the last. After the opening expression -"From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus" - it is quite on the
1.Ibid., p. 223.
2.Arrien: L'Inde- Texle etablit et traduit (Paris, 1927), pp. 34, 35.
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cards that he gives the durations of the republics from the reign of Sandrocottus backward because Sandrocottus has just been named and that, after reaching the earliest republic, goes again forward in time in the next statement where the earlier person precedes the later one: "The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations." Moreover, the last-mentioned republic could appropriately be the first in time since the name "Dionysus" occurring in the next statement neighbours it.
The very Purānas, whose pundits were Megasthenes's informants, vary their sequences in their general chronological summary. When, at this summary's conclusion, they use the Sapta Rishi cycle they proceed from the earlier Parīkshit's time to the beginning-part or the end-part of the Āndhras; but, when they lead on to the Sapta Rishi cycle with a series of "intervals", they have in each case the opposite movement. They begin by passing from Mahāpadma's coronation to the birth of Parīkshit. Then they go to the "interval" from the Pulomas-Āndhras to Mahāpadma. And, then, referring to the whole period constituted by the two time-lengths given, they tell us of the "interval" from the time that has the Āndhras at its end to the time of Parīkshit. Every "interval" is in the reverse order - from the later event to the earlier.
This fact may have some bearing on Megasthenes. Arrian introduces the three republics with the words: "but among these", and "these" are the "years" of the "period" from Dionysus to Sandrocottus - the self-same period whose length Solinus calculates by counting the reigning kings within it and which he calls "intermediate". As with the events joined by the Purānic "intervals", may not the republics that were part of the "intermediate period" have been counted in the reverse order? Besides, the republics themselves are breaks, blanks, intervals in the king-series and may function in the order observed by the "intervals" of the Purānas.
Everything considered, there should be little anomaly in believing that the republics are listed from later to earlier. And, if the one about which we have a gap in Arrian's Indica is that from the downfall of the Āndhras to the emergence of the Guptas as an imperial power in Māgadha, we can fill the gap from our knowledge with (390-315=) 75 years.
What about the two other republics - the nearer one of 300 years and the farther of 120? We may approach the question with
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some penetrating comments by Mankad. He1 says: "It is, of course, evident that what Arrian calls a republic may mean a kingless period; and a kingless period would mean a period without a king, but, in the case of an imperial seat like Māgadha, an absence of Imperial Dynasty." In other words, whatever the Greeks may have understood, a "republic" in Indian thought can cover rule over Māgadha by either freebooters or foreigners as well as a kingless polity.
Mankad goes on to refer to a Purāna unnoticed by Pargiter - the unconventional Yuga-Purāna. It is the historical chapter of the Gārgīsarhhitā. "Scholars," says A. K. Narian,2 "are almost unanimous in regarding the Yoga-Purāna as the earliest among the extant works of Purāna type and as exhibiting an independent tradition." It would be no wonder if Megasthenes received information from it. And the Yuga-Purāna speaks of breaks in the dynastic series of Māgadha.
Mankad3 writes: "Usually the Purānas say that the Śungas came immediately after the Mauryas... The Yuga-Purāna...is unequivocal in saying that there was a period of foreign rule between the Mauryas and the Śungas." Mankad next cites the analysis he has made of the edition published by himself,4 perhaps the best edition so far, of this old document. From his analysis we see that the Kānvas who in the other Purānas immediately succeed the Śungas came also after an intervening period in which foreigners overran the country.
Hence we have actually two "republics". But their time-lengths are not mentioned - unless we accept an ingenious theory of Mankad's which does bring a remarkable "coincidence". In Megasthenes the two "republics" total (300+120=) 420 years. Mankad5 observes about the conventional Purānas: "The usual figure for the Śungas is 112 years and, as is pointed out by Pargiter (p. 30), if we include months, then 118 years. Now jmt (j MS of Matsya) gives 538 years to the Śungas (see Pargiter's texts, p. 33, fn. 50), i.e. exactly [538-118=] 420 years more than the usual
1.Op. cit., p. 85.
2.The Indo-Greeks. p. 82.
3.Op. cit., p. 89.
4.Yuga-Purāna (Anand. 1951).
5.Purānic Chronology, p. 12.
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figure. This, I suggest, includes the 420 years of the kingless periods."
Of course, Mankad, not reading Arrian in the reverse order we have surmised, makes the post-Maurya "republic" last 300 and the post-Sunga 120 years. We would have to go the other way around. But, in either case, we should remark that though Mankad's interpretation of the 538 years as inclusive of the two republics may be right, the time-lengths thus indicated must be regarded as pretty covert.
Thus all of Megasthenes's 3 republics have their originals in the Purānas. And our job of tallying chronologically the Greek evidence and the Indian is complete. But we must attend briefly to one small lacuna remaining in our interpretation of the Greek material bearing on Indian traditional history: Arrian's passage on the successors of Dionysus.
The Successors of Dionysus
"Spatembas", the name of Dionysus's immediate successor, we have explained as "Saptāmbhas", "Seven-watered", and connected with Soma and the seven rivers of Divine Delight (as well as the seven seers) famous in the Rigveda. What about the two next kings: "Boudyas" and "Kradeuas"?
By reference to the Rigveda's vision we can throw light on them also. Sri Aurobindo1 has cited from V. 45 the 11th verse: Dhiyam vo apsu dadhise svarsām... From the root dhi, meaning "to hold or to place", he2 interprets the Rigvedic use of the word dhī psychologically: "Dhi is the thought-mind or intellect; as understanding it holds all that comes to it, defines everything and puts it into the right place, or often dhi indicates the activity of the intellect, particular thought or thoughts". Sri Aurobindo3 notes too "the seven forms of Thought-consciousness, sapta dhītayah (IX.9.4)." Evidently, there is a relation to the seven waters or rivers. And this is confirmed in the verse we have culled. Sri Aurobindo4 translates it: "I hold for you in the waters (i.e. the Seven Rivers) the thought that wins possession of heaven..." Another confirming
1.Op. cit., p. 199.
2.Ibid., p. 86.
3.Ibid., p. 98.
4.Ibid., pp. 199-200.
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phrase, svādhvo diva ā sapta yahvīh (1.72.8), he1 translates: "The seven mighty ones of heaven (the rivers) placing aright the thought." And we find a correspondence to this in an expression which takes us straight to what we want: ritasya bodhi ritachit svādhih (IV.3.4), which Sri Aurobindo2 renders: "the Truth-conscious who places aright the thought." Ritasya bodhi is analogous to another Rigvedic locution, ritasya dhitih (1.68.3), "the thought of the Truth", and bodhi which is a developed variant of dhi is obviously the basic equivalent of "Boudyas".
As for "Kradeuas", we have only to inquire what goes Rigvedi-cally with the activity of dedicated sacrificial Thought to complete the psychological service of the Divine Delight that is also the Divine Truth. In 1.2, towards the end we have the expressions: dhyam ghritāchim and kratum brihantam. Translating the first as "richly luminous Thought",3 Sri Aurobindo takes the second as "vast effective will-power".4 He5 comments: "Thus the two requisites on which the Vedic Rishis always insist are secured, Light and Power, the Light of the truth working in the knowledge, dhiyam ghritdchim, the Power of the Truth working in the effective and enlightened Will, kratum brihantam." "Kratu," says Sri Aurobindo,6 "means in Sanskrit work or action and especially work in the sense of the sacrifice; but it means also power or strength (the Greek kratos) effective of action. Psychologically this power effective of action is the will. The word may also mean mind or intellect and Sayana admits thought or knowledge as a possible sense..." In Kratu we have the right inevitable accompaniment to or else next-step from bodhi and the basic equivalent of the name of Boudyas's successor: "Kradeuas."
"Saptāmbhas", "Bodhi", "Kratu" make a connected series against the background of the Rigvedic Sacrifice to Soma in the inner psycho-spiritual sense. How do they become relevant to their counterparts that have come down to us in the Purānas, the names of Prithu's three successors: "Antardhī", "Havirdhāna", "Prāchinabarhisha"?
1.Ibid., pp. 229-30.
2.Ibid., p. 239.
3.Ibid., p. 86.
4.Ibid., p. 88.
6.Ibid., p. 73.
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In the psycho-spiritual sense, "Saptāmbhas" and "Bodhi" stand for what Sri Aurobindo1 calls "the intoxication of the Ananda,... inflowing upon the mind from the supramental consciousness..." "Inflowing" is the word to remember in relation to "Antardhana". This name conventionally means "disappearance, invisibility";2 but its components, understood literally, convey an inner holding or placing or setting. And in the Rigveda IX.83.4 Soma gets, though without the same vocables, the description: "Lord of the inner setting."3 Our second name "Havirdhāna", similarly interpreted, indicates, the holding or placing or setting of the food or wine of the Sacrifice. And in the next verse of the same Hymn we read about Soma: "O Thou in whom is the food, thou art the divine food..."4 On this phrase and its sequel Sri Aurobindo5 writes: "Soma manifests here as the offering, the divine food, the wine of delight and immortality, havi, and as the Deva, lord of that divine offering (havismah)....hz flows about and enters into this great march of the sacrifice which is the progress of man from the physical to the superconscient. He enters into it and encompasses it wearing the cloud of the heavenly ether, nabhasy the mental principle, as his robe and veil." Soma, flowing into the being and held or placed or set there as the Sacrifice in the mould of the mental principle, the "thought", is "Havirdhāna".
Our third name, "Prachīnabarhisha", has its second component associated by the Rigveda with the Seven Rishis, the Angirasas, who, as Sri Aurobindo6 tells us, "take their seats with the gods on the barhis, the sacred grass, and have their share in the sacrifice." But barhis in the Rigveda has a multiple sense:7 it means not only the sacred grass but also "one who has or spreads the sacred grass, a worshipper, sacrificer". Prachīna Rigvedically connotes8 "turned towards the front or eastward"; it also points to a forward direction. Later it signifies9 "ancient". Combining both the meanings, the full name "Prachlnabarhisha" suggests "the forward-looking,
1.Ibid., p. 85.
2.Monier-Williams, op. cit., p. 44, col. 2.
3.Sri Aurobindo, op. cit., p. 402.
5.Ibid., p. 411.
6.Ibid., p. 181.
7.Monier-Williams, op. cit., p. 722, col. 2.
8.Ibid., p. 704, col. 3.
9.Ibid.
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light-facing sacrificer who persists from the past, is long-practised, ever-energetic, and joins the past to the future." At once we are recalled to the phrase in the Hymn - "the march of the sacrifice" -to which Sri Aurobindo has given the gloss: "the progress of man from the physical to the superconscient." It also takes us back to the Hymn's preceding verse, whose last phrase runs: "Those who are utterly perfected in works taste the enjoyment of his honey-sweetness."1 Thus "Prachīnabarhisha" is affined - again in the context of Soma - with "Kratu" which, as we learn from Sri Aurobindo, may mean either work of sacrifice or effective power.
Megasthenes's reign-periods for Spatembhas and Boudyas - 52 and 20 years respectively - we cannot match with any Indian record, for the Purānas' reign-periods commence only after the Bhārata War. But we shall see at a subsequent point their relevance to our picture of Indian traditional history in the time of Megasthenes.
Megasthenes's Chronology and the Identity of Sandrocottus
We are at the end of our labour. But we may revert to the practically perfect comparison which we have found possible between the chronological clue from Megasthenes and the traditional-Purānic scheme of dynasties and durations. For, this comparison calls for a revolution in our historical ideas.
Not only have we to carry to c. 302 B.C. the cognizance of the dates for the Kaliyuga's advent and for the Bhārata War - 3102 and 3138 B.C. - and thus give the lie to the conception dear to modern historians that they were introduced after 400 A.D. We learn also to see that in the light of this cognizance we come face to face with the Purānic time-indications about the various king-lines by reference to the birth of Parīkshit immediately after the Bhārata War in 3138 B.C. As we have already noted, these time-indications at even their longest stretch bring Chandragupta Maury a not later than the 16th century B.C. And all chronological clues from the Purānas, including the references to the 24th and 27th centuries of the Seven Rishis after Maghā in indicating the length of the Āndhra dynasty, combine to put Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Guptas, in the age of Alexander the Great.
1. Sri Aurobindo, op. cit., p. 420.
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Again, if the 3 republics, enumerated by Megasthenes as occurring in the interval between Dionysus and Sandrocottus, answer to a trio of breaks of the Purānic dynasties after the Mauryas and before the Guptas, then Megasthenes's contemporary Sandrocottus cannot be the Chandragupta who was the first of the Mauryas but another and later Chandragupta who flourished fairly after them. This Chandragupta can only be the founder of the Imperial Guptas.
So the results, to which we come by commencing Indian chronology in the first half of January 6777 B.C. and by taking into account 3 republics, bear out the result to which we came by counting 153 or 154 kings backward from the coronation of Sandrocottus and reaching Prithu Vainya who is identifiable with Dionysus. In a fourfold fashion Megasthenes, contemporary of Sandrocottus, supports the Purānic equation for this king of the Prasii whose Māgadhan coronation took place in 315 B.C.
This, of course, does not automatically mean that all the Purānic dates are correct for the several dynasties preceding the Imperial Guptas. All would depend on whether the Bhārata War, 36 years before the Kaliyuga's advent, was fought or not in 3138 B.C. The Purānic pundits, accepting this date, have built up their chronology so as to lead from this date down to Chandragupta I in the time of Megasthenes. But the fact remains that they took their stand on the founder of the Gupta dynasty as the contemporaneous terminus of their chronology. The coronation of that king in 315 B.C. in Māgadha is an event we have to admit on the evidence of Megasthenes. Consequently, the whole of Indian history has to be reoriented on the basis of this new date established by the evidence of Megasthenes no less than by other considerations.
3
Modern historians are bound to look askance at our attempt to bring the chronology reported by Megasthenes into close rapport with that which is based mainly on the Purānas. But in one respect the modern pundits of the Purānas themselves rather than these historians may raise their voices in protest. Their complaint would not be against our case, from both Megasthenes and the Purānic time-scheme, for Chandragupta I in 315 B.C. substituting Chandragupta Maurya as Sandrocottus. It would be against some of the
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chronological implications of equating 6777 B.C. with the first year of the period after Prithu Vainya whom we have identified with the Greek ambassdor's starter of India's royal lines, Dionysus.
The Mathematics of the Four Yugas
The Purānic pundits may cry: "If Prithu's successor is put in 6777 B.C. the whole Purānic mathematics of the Four Yugas or Ages breaks down. The Purānas speak of a recurring cycle of Four Ages, Chaturyuga - Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali - whose lengths progressively diminish in the ratio of 4:3:2:1. The Kri-tayuga is alloted 1,728,000 years, the Tretā 1,296,000, the Dvāpara 864,000, the Kali 432,000 years. The total or Mahāyuga is 4,320,000 years. The sum of the first 3 Yugas is 3,888,000 years. If the Kaliyuga of the cycle in which we are living started in 3102 B.C., as the Purānas hold, the Kritayuga of our cycle should have started in (3102+ 3,888,000=) 3,891,102 B.C. Manu Vaivasvata whom the Purānas put at the beginning of our Kritayuga should therefore be in 3,891,102 B.C. and Prithu from whom he was eighth in descent should be even earlier and not just precede 6777 B.C. According to the Greek version of the Purānic chronology the sum of the first 3 Yugas is less than the (6777-3102=) 3675 years after Prithu. If the Kaliyuga has gone on for over 600 years and if only 3675 years went before it up to Prithu, how shall we adjust the proportions of 4:3:2:1 as among Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali? If we accept the companions of Alexander and their immediate successors as transmitting correct Purānic lore, we shall have to throw overboard the time-honoured Yuga-mathematics."
Our reply in brief has to be that when so much proof has been shown of the Purānic origin of the Greek information the sole course open to us is to take the Yuga-mathematics as foreign to the ancient editions of the Purānas. In the opinion of Pusalker,1 the earlier versions which existed at the period of the Bhārata War and even those at the time of Megasthenes were different from the extant ones which have come down with inflation, omission, emendation and contamination during the last 2000 years and more. We may suggest that the Yuga-mathematics found a place
1. Studies in the Epics and Purānas of India, Introduction, p. lxvi.
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in the Purānas after Megasthenes had derived his information from them.
Referring to the whole complex of chronology which includes not only the Four Yugas with their diminishing ratio and their Sandhyās or connective intervals containing each a tenth of a Yuga's period, but also fourteen Manvantaras (Periods of presiding Manus), each with seventy-one Chaturyugas (and a surplus), a thousand of which Chaturyugas make a Kalpa (Aeon), a Kalpa being a day or night of Brāhma and such a day or night being equivalent to 12,000,000 years of the gods (divya) as against 4,320,000.000 of men (manāva) - referring to all these details, Pusalker1 says: "This chronological system... is purely hypothetical and a later elaboration. The idea of four ages seems to be an early one." Pargiter2 considers the division of time into Four Yugas to have had a historical basis but the elaboration of it and the fitting of it into an amazing yet precise scheme of cosmogony to be a subsequent speculative development. A cogent pointer to the truth of Pargiter's contention is: there is a repeated reference in the Purānas3 to the application of the history of the Four Ages to India alone and not to the whole world. Exclusion of the rest of the world argues that originally these Yugas had nothing to do with cosmogony. Cosmogony surely cannot be confined to India. Hence, in the eyes of both Pusalker and Pargiter, while a fourfold pattern of Ages can be traced to India's antiquity, the colossal numbers associated with all the parts of it cannot be taken as integral to it.
Actually, the extant Purānas bear signs of two distinct stages in the material of their Yuga-system. As Paul4 informs us, Wilson5 shows two systems of calculation observable regarding the duration of a Kalpa in the Purānas: the original and simple one equates a Kalpa to 1000 Mahāyugas, the later incorporates into it the Manvantaras also. It should then be possible to think of the Yuga at a pre-cosmological stage when the amazing mathematical conception of them was absent from the Purānas.
Even the vestige of such a stage can be spotted in the Purānas
1.Ibid., p. lvi.
2.Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, p. 175.
3.Pargiter cites: Brāhmanda, 19, 20; Vishnu, ii, 3, 19; Linga, i, 52,32.
4.Cultural History from the Vdyu Purāna, p. 195.
5.Vishnu Purāna, translation, p. 24, fn. 6.
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today, hinting at a flexible tradition in which the Yuga-lengths could not be fixed beforehand but would depend on certain significant circumstances and be shorter or longer according to turns of history and complexes of events. Thus we read1 apropos of "the portion of the Lord Visnu, which was born in Vasudeva's family and named Krsna": "As long as he touched the earth with his lotus-feet, so long the Kali age could not encompass the earth." This means not that Krishna had to die in 3102 B.C. exactly after 864,000 years of the Dvāparayuga but that the Kaliyuga had to wait for his death, and its advent was determined by a contingent historical event with a psychological meaning rather than by a fore-fixed mathematical necessity or destiny.
Is it, then, any wonder Megasthenes has none of the set colossal numbers and yet A. A. Macdonell2 is able to tell us: "We...learn from Megasthenes that the doctrine of the four ages of the world (yugas) was fully developed in India by his time"? Such a situation has no un-Purānic colour. We should hardly be surprised if the Purānas of c. 302 B.C. were themselves free of these numbers.
Some Indian Variants of the Yuga-Idea
At least we do not have to cast about very far in non-Purānic Indian literature to realise that the idea of cycles and even of a recurring fourfold cycle is not inseparably linked with the numbers of the Purānas' mathematics.
Fleet3 writes: "The original scheme of a Yuga seems to have been on the decimal system of notation, a cycle of 10,000 years (Atharvaveda, 8.2.21)..." R. T. H. Griffith4 translates the source of Fleet's information: "A hundred years, ten thousand years we give thee, ages two, three, four." The sentence is rather obscure, yet we may note that not only are 10,000 years made the limit but also Four Yugas are clearly enumerated. And, after the rise to 10,000 years, we cannot drop down to a piffling "decade" or "generation" as "Yuga". Four Yugas, substantial no less than systematised, seem to be here.
The very names by which they have come to be known are
1.Pargiter, The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 75.
2.A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 411.
3.Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1911, p. 486, fn. 1.
4.The Hymns of the Atharvaveda (Benares, 1916), I, p. 390.
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fairly ancient too. The Aitareya Brāhmana (VII.15.4), describing the merits of exertion, has the picturesque phrases: "A man while lying is the Kali; moving himself he is the Dvāpara; rising, he is the Tretā; walking, he becomes the Krita.'" Here there is an explicit mention of Yugas. But to what are we referred by means of these four terms? It is common knowledge that in Vedic literature different throws at dice, probably counted to 1, 2, 3 and 4, were called Kali, Dvāpara, Tretā and Krita. If the Aitareya Brāhmana had the dice in mind, why is there no inkling of the quantitative relationship of the numbers? What it does offer us is a qualitative gradation - the changes usually attributed to the Yugas in a descending order of merit from Krita to Kali are very suggestively present, vividly symbolized, in an ascending form the other way around. What is at work on the qualitative side is the same general turn of imagination as appreciated by C. S. Venkateswaran2 from the Purānas:3 "The waning strength and stability of Dharma in the four yugas is graphically depicted by representing it as a majestic bull which stood firm on its four legs in the golden age of the world (krtayuga) and lost one of its legs to [ either of] the succeeding two yugas, Tretā and Dvāpara, to stand tottering on a single leg during the present kaliyuga." The Purānic image, however, has a quantitative side too, affined to the dice-throws. The Aitareya Brāhmana has the Yuga-import in its progressive picture but without any hint of a ratio like 4:3:2:1 in the reverse. Nor does it prompt the notion that the years of the four divisions are equal in number. In fact, the numerical issue is not involved in any shape: it is kept out of sight and the sole Yuga-implying typification is in terms of quality.
The names, in direct association with the Yugas, are found -with a couple of variations - in the later yet sufficiently old Sadvimsa Brāhmana (V.8): Pusya, Dvāpara, Kharva, Krita. If so striking a feature as the Purānic ratio had gone with them, some allusion to it would have been most likely - all the more when such attention-gripping lengths went with this ratio. We cannot plead that the names' being a little different renders all comparison
1.A. A. Macdonell and A. B. Keith, The Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (John Murray & Co. London, 1912), II, p. 193.
2."The Ethics of the Purānas", The Cultural Heritage of India, (Calcutta, 1962), II, p. 287.
3.Brāhma, clxxv.24; Liriga, xxxix.13.
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irrelevant and argues against the pre-Purānic presence of a scheme like that of the Purānas but without their peculiar trappings. Patil1 tells us about the Purānas themselves: "Instead of Kali, at some places, Tisya is mentioned." Pargiter2 has Purānic citations where Dharma does duty for Krita. And, of course, Satyayuga is a well-known substitute for Kritayuga. The slight discrepancies in the names do not interfere with the impression that the Purānic peculiarities to which we are accustomed have no vital, inevitable or obsessive relation to the scheme as such.
Coming closer to the time of the Purānas we have the Manu-smriti (1.68 ff) which, with all the usual names for the Yugas and with the Purānic ratio, provides to us the following table of years: Krita 4800, Tretā 3600, Dvāpara 2400, Kali 1200. If the years are divya (divine), they amount to the Purānas' table, for each divya year equals 360 manāva (human). But, as Mankad3 remarks,"the years are not characterised as divya, and therefore they are taken as manāva years." This makes indeed a world of difference. And, for the manāva-interpretation, Mankad refers us to Tilak as well as to "Aiyar who quotes on this point the agreement of Roth, Wilking and others". The Manusmriti brings in the word "divya" only in regard to the total of the lengths of the Four Yugas: 12,000 years. It terms this period "Divya Yuga" and adds that 2000 Divya Yugas make the day and night of Brāhma. Mankad descerns here "some distinct tradition" preserved, giving new names to what are usually taken as Chaturyuga and Kalpa.
Mankad4 also stresses that the MahāBhārata (Vana Parva, 188.V. 12-28), repeating the Manusmriti's figures, does not name the years divya or manāva and therefore again we should consider them manāva. So, again, the numbers which resemble those that go into the Purānas' calculations have another significance and represent much smaller periods.
Two other references of Mankad's5 are important as well:
(1) According to Yāska's Nirukta (14th Adyaya), Brāhma's
1.Op. cit., p. 74. The texts concerned are: Vayu, xxiv.l; lviii.30 ff.
2.Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, p. 178. The texts are: Brāhmanda iii.63,121; Vayu, lxxxviii.123; Harivarhsa, 13,761; Brāhma, viii.30, Siva, vii.61,23.
3.Purānic Chronology, p. 313, fn. 1.
4.Ibid., pp. 311-12.
5.Ibid., p. 112.
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day has 1000 Yugas and so has His night. The word used is Yuga and not Chaturyuga or Kalpa or Divya Yuga. Thus the designations employed by the Purānas for units of extreme length are replaced by one which Purānically means a lesser duration, and even the number given of these units is very moderate.
(2) Albērūnī (I, p. 373) writes: "Brāhmagupta says that Āryabhata considers the Four Yugas as the four equal parts of a Chaturyuga." In the very epoch of the Purānas and among eminent astronomers the fourfold scheme admitted of divergences, and one of the most typical Purānic features - the diminishing ratio of the Yugas - could be jettisoned.
The varied evidence we have cited from various times may be summed up in a rough chronological order: "Much before the extant Purānas, a cycle - apparently fourfold - was there of a substantial number of years, which was yet far smaller than the Purānic. The very names and attributes seen in the Purānas for the Four Yugas are fairly ancient and-they are not associated with any numerical convention. Under names slightly different here and there - as in the Purānas themselves - the Four Yugas were explicitly recognised in the epoch before these books but with no recognition of any such fixed interrelated lengths as are typical of the extant Purānas. Or else there was a scheme whose unit of extreme length carried a name which Purānically stood for a lesser span, and even its numerical value was less than the latter's. Where a scheme of Four Yugas, with the Purānic ratio as well as names, existed, the numbers were not swollen out to the dimensions found in the Purānas. The fourfold scheme, in the Purānic epoch itself, had equal divisions instead of the Purānic ratio."
The broad conclusion we arrive at along several routes is: the Yuga-mathematics of the extant Purānas cannot be regarded as the only system of recurring Yuga or Chaturyuga entertained in ancient India. A particular inference, as to what one may expect as a possibility, is: since the regularly diminishing ratio was not always kept and the stunningly vast numbers were not always present, there could be anywhere a system in which the numbers were smaller than the Purānic but resembled them simply in being unequal as between Yuga and Yuga.
Once again we may legitimately think of the Purānic pundits, who were contemporaneous with Megasthenes, as being free of the Yuga-mathematics that have come down to us. And, once
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again, if Megasthenes starting with 6777 B.C. has none of the huge numbers, he need not be adjudged un-Purānic.
The Source of the Mathematical Speculations
Cunningham has put his finger on the source of the later speculations which have supplied us with the gigantic collective length of the Four Yugas. In doing so, he enables us to catch the starting-point in time for the conception of this length.
He1 says: "The present extravagant system...was an invention of the astronomers, which they based on their newly acquired knowledge of the precession." Cunningham is talking of the precession of the equinoxes. He informs us that the precession per year fixed by Parasāra was 46.5 seconds and that by Āryabhata 46.2. The problem springing from these numbers was: given the precession, what would be the period of one revolution through the whole circle of the ecliptic of 360 degrees? As 60 minutes make 1 degree and 60 seconds 1 minute, to cover the full circle of the ecliptic takes (360x60x60=) 1,296,000 seconds divided by 46.5 or 46.2. To get rid of the decimal point we have to multiply both the dividend and the divisor by 10. Then we get 12,960,000/465 or 12,960,000/462 years. As both the upper and the lower terms are divisible by 3 we get 4,320,000/155 or 4,320,000/154 years. The numerator is exactly the number of years which goes into a Māhayuga, a set of Four Ages . The Māhayuga seems to have a link with this astronomical figure . If we multiply by 155 Parasāra's number of years for the run of the ecliptic and by 154 Āryabhata's number, we do away with the denominator and get simply 4,320,00 years as the period in which the ecliptic would be circled 155 or 154 times. The Māhayuga appears originally to have been conceived as such a period. Interestingly enough, the same number of years, though with a different number of cycles required, would be obtained if we operated with the precession of 49.8 seconds as determined by the Greek Hipparchus (c. 160-125B.C.), the pioneer in this field,or with the precession of 50.1 seconds accepted in Cunningham's day (1883).2
Fleet3 has mentioned some other possibilities than the one put
1.The Book of Indian Eras, p. 4.
2.The reason, of course, is that these values, like the others, are divisible by 3.
3.Op. cit., p. 492, fn. 2.
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forward by Cunningham. But most of them have to do with astronomy - calculations connected with this or that astronomical fact or belief. It is hardly to be doubted that the origin of the Yuga-mathematics lay with the astronomers. And, if Hipparchus is the first precessionist, the Purānic mathematics must have evolved in the post-Hipparchan era or, at the earliest, the Hippar-chan era itself. Since Hipparchus was born in c. 160 B.C., the time in either case is after Megasthenes. So, in the ancient scheme before the astronomers took it up, there may have been neither the bewilderingly large durations nor the fixed proportions and the Yugas may have been distinguished according to historical and psychological signs. There is, in consequence, nothing incongruous in that the Krita Age of our present cycle should be held by Megasthenes and the Purānic lore of his epoch to start some time after 6777 B.C., which marks in our interpretation the end of Prithu's (or Dionysus's) reign.
Towards the Original Yuga-Scheme through the Indian Generation-unit
Basing ourselves on the concordance between the Greek reporter and the original Purānas, we may try to construct the fourfold scheme of ancient Indian traditional history, which must have preceded the Yuga-mathematics of the astronomers. Here to build aright we must ascertain the number of generations involved and the value of the Indian generation-unit.
We have seen the extant list of 153 kings in "the intermediate period" between Dionysus and Sandrocottus dividing into two parts: (1) 53 after Prithu down to Sahadeva who, according to the Purānic chronology, died in the Bhārata War of 3138 B.C., (2) 100 from the first member of the Bārhadratha dynasty after the war down to the last of the Āndhras. In dealing with the Four Yugas, the more apt division would be 54 down to the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. and 99 onward from it.
The period of the 54 is (6777 - 3102=) 3675 years. That of the 99 may be computed by counting from 3102 B.C. to 390 B.C., the date we have found on Purānic evidence for the end of the Āndhra dynasty. We get 2712 years. Evidently, to have 54 kings for 3675 years and 99 for 2712 is gross disproportion. We may reasonably hold that the right number of generations have been preserved for
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the years from 3102 B.C., onward - the period for which the Purānas claim detailed knowledge - but that there are gaps for the earlier span of time.
Our conclusion is borne out by Pargiter's analytic calculation of 94 generations from Vaivasvata to Sahadeva, and 95 to Somadhi who succeeded Sahadeva in 3138 B.C., after the Bhārata War. We can count 95 generations from Vaivasvata to the Kaliyuga in 3102 B.C. As 7 names go between Prithu and Vaivasvata, these 95 generations actually stand behind (54-7=) 47 of our kings. Again, as those 7 names, obtained on collation, have not been challenged, we may accept them as being free of gaps. Then, behind our 54 kings, we get (95+7=) 102 generations extending over (6777-3102=) 3675 years.
At first glance, there is some disproportion here also in comparison to the 99 generations for 2712 years. But we must remember one distinction between the two groups: the latter group belongs to the Kaliyuga, the former to the pre-Kali period. In the Purānic view, all things deteriorate in general in the Kaliyuga. Hence a smaller generation-unit for that Age is quite a natural concept, provided the comparative smallness is within certain limits and leads to no grossness of disproportion. Actually, the two units work out to: (1) very slightly over 36 years for the pre-Kali period; (2) about 27 1/4 years for the Kali.
The rationale of the difference between the two units lies in a consideration of what Indian books call the period of celibate studentship, BrāhmachĀrya. K. V. Rangaswami Aiyangar1 sums up the information "The longest period of BrāhmachĀrya was forty-eight years... The smaller periods stopped at thirty-six, twenty-four and eighteen..."
In very ancient times the upper limit observed was the highest possible. Thus the Rigveda (1.89.9) speaks of Rishis living "a hundred autumns till their sons become fathers in their turn". If a Rishi could not see before he was 100 his grandchild who was the second generation after him, he must not have seen, before he was himself 50, his own child who was the first generation. If 100 is just a round number, the generation-unit was in the neighbourhood of 50. Obviously, the celibate student-life of 48 years was lived by a Rishi; so he would marry and beget at the age of 49. Everybody
1. "The Samavartana or Snana (The End of Studentship)", Prof. K V. Rangaswami Aiyangar Commemoration Volume (Madras, 1940), p. 55.
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could not be expected to emulate the Rishi's example. Yet, looking up to it, they would attempt their best and we may say that some would achieve 36 years and others 24. With 48 as their model, they would endeavour to avoid the lowest period, 18. The years, then, at which the married life of the householder would begin would be 49 , 37 or 25. The average drawn from them by dividing their sum by 3 is 37. For very ancient times, therefore, 37 years could be calculated as the generation-unit, a number remarkably close to our "slightly over 36" for the pre-Kali epoch.
In later times the highest period of BrāhmachĀrya would be 36 years and the next best 24 and 18. The beginning of the householder's married life would be at 37, 25 or 19. The average comes to 27 l/4 years - again a notable correspondence to our "about 27" for the Kali period.
Our reading of two particular generation-units in Purānic thought is thus justified. But what clinches it is the material we can gather from Megasthenes on the problem before us. He is of help to us at three places in his report.
Arrian, basing himself on Megasthenes, has in his Indica (I.IX), at the end of his chronological statement about the number of years and then the number of kings, the sentence: "The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations.'" Here four things have to be remarked. First, although the "generations" occur in the same context as the "kings", the two ideas cannot be put on a par. The number of kings offered us carries no guarantee that it exhausts the full roll of monarchs: it merely repeats what tradition has broadly preserved. But, when generations are counted, they have to stand as an unbroken series. Continuity without gaps is implied here by tradition. We need not doubt that Megasthenes had in mind the consecutive repetition of a certain numerical unit, as one usually has when speaking of generations. Secondly, the reference is clearly to an Indian generation-unit ("The Indians tell us..."). Thirdly, it is certainly to the pre-Kali epoch: the time is not very long after 6777 B.C. Fourthly, the unit, though specified as Indian and set in a context of remote antiquity, is mentioned by Megasthenes without any comment on its quantitative value. Evidently, if it had been much at variance - either on the short or on the long
1. We have already given the correct interpretation of this sentence on the assumption that Heracles was Hari-Krishna.
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side - with the current Greek unit, he would have felt obliged to add an enlightening gloss. So, could we but know what the Greek unit was in about 302 B.C., we should be not far off from the Indian which was conceived as proper to the pre-Kali epoch.
Herodotus,1 the Greek historian shortly preceding Megasthenes, writes of reckoning "three generations as a hundred years". This means 33V3 years to a generation. Hence the Indian generation applicable to the pre-Kali time must be either 331/3 years or so near it as to call for no differentiating observation. If Megasthenes received from his Indian sources even 30 years on the one hand or 37 on the other, that generation-unit would vary as little from the Greek as would make no matter. A conjecture by us that he was close to our "slightly over 36 years" would be perfectly in order.
And indeed we have from another place in him a numerical implication which is close to the Greek average and as good as agrees with ours. It is there just in passing, but applies directly to the pre-Kali epoch. Arrian's Indica (I.VIII) registers that the successor of Dionysus reigned for "fifty-two years" and the successor's son for "twenty". No other regnal period is given; but these two added together make 72 years and yield an average of 36 for the generation-unit.
To this pre-Kali unit a third place in Megasthenes indirectly yet concretely points. Not only that: we get also a pointer to a different generation-unit applying to the period of the Kaliyuga, including Megasthenes's own day in India. Strabo (XV. 1.59),2 paraphrasing him, tells us that among the Brāhmanas the student-life extended to thirty-seven years, after which the married householder's life started. This number is just a tiny bit at odds with one of the Indian figures we have cited for the BrāhmachĀrya period. Unquestionably a mistake has crept into Strabo's report. Instead of saying that the householder's life began for the Brāmanas at 37, he has said that the student's terminated for them at this age. But, from the fact that a stretch of 36 years of studentship has traditionally been deemed an arduous discipline in the Kaliyuga, actually the extreme according to the Manusmriti (III. 1), and from the fact of the Brāhmanas being picked out for mention by
1.The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (The Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1960), Book Two, p. 158.
2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 274.
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Megasthenes apropos of the 36 years, we may infer a distinction in discipline between this class and the others. The classes less prone to religion must be confining their studious celibacy to the lower periods - 24 and 18 years. Married life would commence for them not at 37 but at 25 and 19. And, as we have already found, the average generation-unit resulting from these figures is 27. To Megasthenes's own day in our country as well as to the Kaliyuga in general, the generation-unit applicable is implied to be hardly more than this, while the exceptional practice of the most dharma-inclined class, the Brāhmanas, shows what the average generation-unit was ascribable to the pre-Kali antiquity.
If the 36 years gathered from Arrian and the 37 derived from Strabo are looked upon as alternative truths of that antiquity we strike the balance of 361/2 years as the overall truth of it.
Thus probing Megasthenes we see him essentially at one with our reading of the Purānic mind. And we may move on to determine the original scheme of the Yugas.
The Original Scheme of the Yugas
With 6777 B.C. against the 7th name before Vaivasvata and with each generation slightly exceeding 36 years, we can at once fix the start of the Four Ages which were initiated by Vaivasvata. 7 generations are about (7x36=) 252 years. So the Kritayuga must open in c. (6777-252=) 6525 B.C. Our next step is to ask what events would go to distinguish and separate the Four Yugas.
Pargiter1 writes: "It is a commonplace of history that great wars, conquests or political changes put an end to one age, and usher in a new age, or mark the transition from one age to the other; and so the Mohammedans and the British introduced new ages into India. It is natural therefore to surmise that similar changes occurred and were so regarded in ancient India, and indications of this are found in tradition. The end of the Dvāpara age was admittedly marked by the Bhārata battle, for it is declared that the battle occurred in the interval (sandhyā) between the Dvāpara and Kali ages... Tradition speaks also of an earlier time of great destruction and misery, when the ksatriyas were well-nigh exterminated and North India was plunged into grievous calamities, and Brāhmanic fable attributes that to Rāma Jāmadagnya, though ksatriya tradition
1. Op. cit., pp. 175-7.
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shows it really occurred in consequence of the devastating raids of the Haihayas, from which Sagara delivered the land and restored peace... There is no later similar period of calamity that suggests itself as a change of age, but tradition treats Rāma's destruction of Ravana and the Rāksasas of the Dekhan and Ceylon as an epoch of signal vengeance upon evil foes."
Pargiter's table of genealogies indicates that the three periods of destruction divide the whole duration of time from the Krita Age to the end of the Dvāpara into three parts of not very unequal lengths which might well constitute three Ages. He continues: "This division accords with what tradition says about the transition from one age to another. Krsna lived at the time of the Bhārata battle and the close of the Dvāpara age. Rāma Dasarathi lived in the interval between the Tretā and Dvāpara ages. To Rāma Jamadagnya is assigned the same position, and the references say he lived in the Tretā age, and smote the ksatriyas in the interval between the Tretā and Dvāpara ages. But this was Rāma Dasar-athi's position, and that particularization is clearly wrong, for Rāma Jamadagnya was avowedly prior as shown by the synchronisms in chapter XIII, and the allegation that he destroyed all ksatriyas off the earth twenty-one times (really the long-continued Haihaya devastations) is wholly incompatible with the story of Rāma Dasarathi. It is obvious that Rāma Jamadagnya belonged to the interval between the Krta and Tretā ages, when in fact the Haihayas had their dominion, and the references should be to the Krta age and that interval.1 The Krta age then ended with the destruction of the Haihayas; the Tretā began approximately with Sagara and ended with Rāma Dasarathi's destruction of the Rāksasas; and the Dvāpara began with his reinstatement at Ayodhya and ended with the Bhārata battle so that, taking the numbers in the table of genealogies, the division is approximately thus, the Krta Nos. 1-40, the Tretā Nos. 41-65, and the Dvāpara Nos. 65-95."
Whether or not we agree with Pargiter's watertight compart-mentalization of Brāhmanic and Kshatriya traditions, his playing down of the former and his substitution of Sagara for Rāma Jamadagnya as the historical destroyer at the Krita's end, the demarcating lines he draws for the Four Ages are very persuasive.
1. Patil. op. cit., p. 76, with fn. 12, is able to cite the Vayu Purāna (99.499) as putting Rāma Jamadagnya's work in the Kritayuga. (K.D.S.)
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So, utilizing the 36 years and slightly over per generation at our disposal, we may affirm that the Krita Age covered (40x36=) 1440 years plus X, the Tretā (25x36=) 900 plus X and the Dvāpara (30x36=) 1080 plus X. They total 3420 years and a small excess. What the excess comes to can be decided by deducting 3102 B.C. (the start of the Kaliyuga) from c. 6525 B.C. (the start of the Kritayuga). The result is about 3423 years, which is 3 years more than 3420. We may distribute the 3 years equally among the three Ages, so that our final account gives 1441 for the Krita, 901 for the Tretā, 1081 for the Dvāpara. Then, as our Krita began in c. 6525 B.C., we should begin our Tretā in c. (6525-1441=) 5084 B.C. and our Dvāpara in c. (5084-901=) 4183 B.C.
For clarity's sake we may draw it all up in tabular form. The Purānic Yugas in the time of Megasthanes must have been roughly:
Krita, starting 6525 B.C., running 1441 years;
Tretā, starting 5084 B.C., running 901 years;
Dvāpara, starting 4183 B.C., running 1081 years;
Kali, starting 3102 B.C., running ? years
The Run of the Kaliyuga
The question-mark for the run of the Kaliyuga has to be paid a little attention. According to the current Purānic thinking, the Kali has kept running from 3102 B.C. for over 5000 years. Of course, in a flexible scheme such a length is not utterly anomalous, but a more natural denouement would consist in a smaller span. And that is precisely what a glance at some points in the Purānic material prompts us to propose.
Both the Vishnu and the Bhagavata have the phrase which, in Pargiter's translation,1 we have noticed apropos of the problem whether the motion of the Seven Rishis is forward or retrograde: "...starting from Nanda, this Kali age will attain its magnitude." The Nanda spoken of is, as we already know, Mahāpadma whom the Matsya calls "a portion [incarnation] of Kali". And his coronation, according to the Purānas with their 1000, 138 and 362 years for the 3 dynasties preceding him and starting from Parīkshit's birth in 3138 B.C., we have fixed Purānically as 1500 years after that event. From the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. he would be 1464
1. The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 75.
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years away. If, with his coronation the Kaliyuga attained its "magnitude" {vriddhi), we may fairly say it was past its half course and began to be on the way to its culmination, its end. In less than double 1464 years we should have its whole run. As the double is 2928 years, somewhat before (3102 -2928=) 174 B.C. the Kaliyuga would come to a close.
In connection with the phrase from the Vishnu and Bhagavata we have discussed how their mention of the asterism Pūrva Āshādhā, which is the 10th if Maghā is reckoned as the 1st, and how their placing of Nanda 1015 years after Parīkshit's birth bring us, according to the dynastic durations, to the 15th year of the reign of the first Pradyota king, Chanda Mahāsena, whose name as well as ill-fame could lead to an identification with Nanda Mahāpadma in the Purānic pundits' mind. The Kaliyuga's "magnitude", therefore, could more comprehensively be understood as attained after (3138-1015=) 2123 B.C. and before (3138-1500=) 1638 B.C. - that is to say, between 1015 and 1500 years from Parīkshit's birth. Starting with the Kaliyuga we get the period between the Kali's 979 and 1464 years. Doubling the numbers we reach, for the Kaliyuga's close, somewhere between (3102-1958) 1044 and (3102- 2928=) 174 B.C. As the completion of the vriddhi comes with Nanda's reign we should have once more a point not much prior to 174 B.C., but now as the logical consequence of a process commencing with the earlier event that is Chanda's rule.
Our result anyhow will be in excellent conformity with our table of Yugas. Our next step is to see what direct support the Purānas give to this line of thinking.
First, let us observe the "Evils of the Kali Age" in Pargiter:1 "There will be Yavanas here by reason of religious feeling, or ambition, or plunder... Massacring women and children and killing one another, kings will enjoy the earth at the end of the Kali age. Kings of continual upstart races, falling as soon as they arise, will exist in succession through Fate. They will be destitute of righteousness, affection and wealth. Mingled with them will be Ārya and Mleccha folk everywhere..." Then let us note what the Avatar Kalki, who is supposed to come and wind up the Kaliyuga, will do. We learn from PatiP that this Avatar of Vishnu will annihilate various peoples such as Yavanas and Tushāras and
1.Ibid., p. 74.
2.Op. cit., pp. 75, 307, No.842.
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other Mlechchhas and, after his victorious career, he will give up his life at the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Yamunā.
Now we may pick out some details of the period marking the downfall of the Āndhras (Sātavāhanas), the dynasty shortly preceding the Guptas. The Purānas1 mention kings of several races, mostly Mlechchhas, and the second of the two lists is headed by 8 Yavanas and 14 Tusharas. After enumerating many other rulers, the Purānas2 remark: "All these kings will be...niggards in graciousness, untruthful, very irascible, and unrighteous."
Surely, there is a parallelism between all this state of affairs and the evils "at the end of the Kali age". And we come across a very suggestive phrase in the same post-Āndhra context. After mentioning "the kings of Nisadha", the Purānas3 say that they "will exist till the termination of the Manus". Pargiter1 enters the footnote: "Or perhaps 'as long as Manu's race'." Traditionally, a Manu starts a series of roughly 71 Chaturyugas, is the father of the race living in it and presides over it till its termination. In any of these Chaturyugas, his race could well be called "Manu's". And our phrase would seem to mean that the dynasty of Nishadha in the immediate post-Āndhra time would continue up to the present Chaturyuga's end. But then the end should not be very far. In fact, the Purānas could not know how long the dynasty would last unless this termination of the existing Chaturyuga. preceded their account. Everything indicates, though fragmentarily, that the Kali Age was drawing towards its culmination at this time.
And what makes the indication most vivid, most definitive, is a passage which is the centre-piece, so to speak, of the whole account. Here we encounter an extremely striking figure whose name has many versions. We have already alluded briefly to him earlier. Now we shall deal with him in some detail. His name is a compound whose first part is the same in the several forms: Visva (World). The second has: sphatika, sphāti, sphani, sphīni, sphūrji or sphurti.5 We may quote the passage from Pargiter:6 "Of the Māgadhas the king will be very valiant Viśvasphāni. Overthrowing
1.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 72.
2.Ibid., p. 74.
3.Ibid., p. 73.
4.Ibid., fn. 11.
5.M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 994, col.
6.Op. cit., p. 73.
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all kings he will make other castes kings... Viśvasphāni the magnificent will be mighty, Visnu's peer in battle... After gratifying the gods, the pitrs and Brāhmans once and again, he will resort to the bank of the Ganges and subdue his body: after resigning his body he will go to Indra's world."
No historical post-Krishna figure in the Purānas is suggested to be divine as is this king. Like both Krishna and Kalki he is equated with Vishnu, and he is a conqueror like them, and his death most explicitly resembles Kalki's. Certainly, a mysterious Avatar is before us. If, from the many versions of his name, we take Viśvasphurti we get a very significant appellation for an Avatar: sphurti1 can mean "breaking forth visibly, sudden appearance or display, manifestation". What can be more apt than "World-manifestation"? We are reminded at once of Vishnu's Visvarupa, "World-Form". And, as the very period in which Viśvasphurti is thrown into relief reflects in general the description of the Kaliyuga's end, a Kaliyuga would seem to have reached its close with an Avatar of Vishnu just before the Purānas started taking their present shape with "(Kings) born of the Gupta race"2 among the last to be mentioned.
Here a small clarification may be made. We must not exactly equate Viśvasphurti with Kalki. Kalki, of the Purānas as we have them today, is a figure by himself, and they conceive him without conceiving Viśvasphurti as an Avatar. The latter's Avatarhood is no part of the existing Purānic scheme of the Kaliyuga end. It belongs to the context of a close of the Kaliyuga, that was once envisaged but later hazed off and is now overlooked. Viśvasphurti is not Kalki: he is only like him in some essential traditional attributes and actions. There is resemblance, not identity.
But who would Viśvasphurti be and what should be his date closing the Kaliyuga? A bell is rung in our minds the moment we read the whole Purānic sentence about the Gupta kings. We find associated with them, as with Viśvasphurti, not only the Ganges but also the Māgadhas. The Māgadhas link him very intimately with the Guptas. For, in the post-Āndhra epoch it was only the Gupta conquerers who had, like Viśvasphurti, the Māgadhas as the seat of their empire.
1.Monier-Williams, op. cit., p. 1271, col. 1.
2.Pargiter, op.cit., p. 73.
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Mankad1 has argued that this mysterious figure is none other than the greatest conqueror among the Guptas, the hero of the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription, the overthrower, uprooter or paramount lord of many kings: Samudragupta, son of the dynasty-founder Chandragupta I. Mankad has also shown Samudragupta as fitting very satisfactorily into the chronological sequence conjured up by the Purānas' list of the kings - Vindhyasakti, Pravīra, etc. - soon after the Āndhras and before Viśvasphurti. And, to confirm and crown the comparison, he has ably approached it from the religio-spiritual angle. But here perhaps we cannot do better than cite some observations of Sircar2 on Samudragupta from a quite independent context:
"The Allāhābād pillar inscription...represents him actually as the god Visnu in human form. Samudragupta is described as equal to the four loka-pālas, viz. Kubera, Varuna, Indra, and Yama, and also as 'one who is a mortal only in celebrating the observance of mankind, but is otherwise a god dwelling on the earth'. This no doubt refers to the conception of a divine king similar to that found in the Manu Smrti (VII.4-8). But more important is another passage of the same record in which Samudragupta is represented as identical with the achintya purusa or inscrutable Being, i.e. Visnu, who is 'the cause of the prosperity of the pious and the destruction of the wicked'. It is quite clear that this passage is an echo of a verse of the Gitd (IV.8) which refers to the descent of God on the earth, in human form, for protecting the pious and destroying the sinners."
Correspondence with the locus classicus of Avatarhood in the Gita is particularly meaningful for us. For there Krishna, as Vishnu's incarnation, says: "I am born from age to age." The final expression in Sanskrit is yuge-yuge. It seems to set the seal on the Purānic view of the Avatar of Vishnu as coming at the end of every one of the Four Yugas - Rāma Jamadagnya in the Krita, Rāma Dasarathi in the Tretā, Krishna Vasudeva in the Dvāpara, Kalki in the Kali as computed in the current form of the Purānas. An implied harking back by the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription to the Glta's yuge-yuge in connection with Samudragupta invests this emperor with the typical Avatar's position and purpose.
1.Op. cit., pp. 269-76.
2."Early History of Vaisnavism", The Cultural Heritage of India, (Calcutta, 1956), IV, p. 131.
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And surely warrior Samudragupta, who is imaged as Vishnu descended on earth, is very much like Viśvasphūrti, who is "Vishnu's peer in battle". Also, as the terminator of a Kaliyuga and the initiator of a Kritayuga, he is exceedingly appropriate. "There can be no doubt," writes R.C. Majumdar,1 "that Samudragupta ushered in a new age in the history of India." And Majumdar2 calls the era which Samudragupta "heralded...in Āryavarta" the "Golden Age which inspired succeeding generations of Indians and became alike their ideal and despair". In the reigns soon after Samudragupta's, the very term "Kritayuga" was in the air. Several inscriptions of Gupta times show its popularity.' How compellingly the presence of a Golden Age was felt may be seen from an inscription" during the reign of Samudragupta's grandson Kumār-agupta I. It is said to be made by "Dhruvasarman, who follows the path of the customs of the Krita age..."
So much for the evidence of the Purānas and modern historians. What do the Greeks have to communicate? Strabo (II. 1.9) calls the son of Sandrocottus "Amitrochades", and Athenaeus (XIV.67) "Amitrachates". "Amitrachates" can be equated to "Amitrachchhettā" ("Mower of enemies"), reminding us of the name often applied to Samudragupta by his successors: "Sarvara-jochchhetta" ("Mower of all kings"). "Amitrachades" could be, as B. M. Barua5 opines, "Amritakhada7' ("Eater of ambrosia"), a designation most apt for the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription's "god dwelling on the earth" and achintya purusha in human form. The Greek view, therefore, of the son of Sandrocottus accords both with the warrior-side and with the Avatar-side of the son of Chandragupta I. And it has the special value of suggesting independently a place for Samudragupta in the post-Alexandrine era.
1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", The Classical Age, p. 15.
2.Ibid., p. 16.
3.Patil, op. cit., pp. 198, 200, referring to Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute (Poona), 2, 163.
4.Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, III, The Gupta Inscriptions, No. 10, Plate V, pp. 44-45.
5.Aśoka and His Inscriptions (New Age Publishers, Calcutta, 1946), Part I, pp. 46-47.
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One more pointer it provides for the identification of Sandrocottus with Chandragupta I and fixes more firmly the Purānic Kaliyuga's termination in the very era for which we have contended by equating Viśvasphurti with Samudragupta.
Now we may reach out to the precise date. In the Mathura inscription (No. 5) Chandragupta II gives the 61st year of the establishment of the imperial dynasty by his grandfather and the 5th of his own reign,1 which means that he became king in the 56th year after his grandfather's accession. So Samudragupta's death must have occurred, according to our chronology, in (315-56=) 259 B.C. We may take 259 B.C., as the end of the Kaliyuga which commenced in 3102 B.C. Then we get (3102-259=) 2833 years for the Kaliyuga's full run, a time-span in just the right relation to the limit of 2928 years (leading to 174 B.C.) which we deduced for that run on the basis of the 1464 years making in the Purānas the Kaliyuga's vriddhi.
Thus we obtain from the Purānas the traces of a tradition about the return of the Kritayuga, which the later pundits must have lost in face of the numerous mishaps the country suffered not long after the reign of the fifth Gupta emperor, Skandagupta, and the loss of which made them look forward to Kalki in the remote future.
This tradition's count of the Kaliyuga sits with fair symmetry within the pattern of unequal and moderate Ages'we have reconstructed as likely in the milieu of Megasthenes in c. 302 B.C.
The Evidence of Megasthenes about the Chaturyuga
And when we turn to Megasthenes we discover in general terms exactly what we should expect him to gather from the Purānic lore of his day. He would not be able to report in c. 302 B.C. anything answering to the passage on Viśvasphūrti. He would actually have had to be ambassador to Chandragupta II and not Chandragupta I if he was to collect from the pundits the substance of that passage. At the close of the 4th century B.C. he should be in the position only to convey to us, with his background of a chronology starting before Manu Vaivasvata, the idea of an entire cycle completed in the far past and of another one begun long ago and now in a state fraught with omens and forebodings of the end, a grim state
1. Majumdar, "The Expansion of the Gupta Empire", A New History..., p. 166.
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corresponding in its own way to the condition the Purānas feel in the post-Āndhra epoch during which, amidst a lot of strange vicissitudes, the Gupta dynasty has arisen. As a whole, Megasthenes's scheme should be pliant, historically rather than mathematically oriented.
Strabo (IX.1.64),1 believed to be drawing upon Megasthenes, recounts the speech of the Indian ascetic Calanus to Alexander's messenger Onesicritus:
"In olden times the world was full of barley-meal and wheaten-meal, as now of dust, and fountains then flowed, some with water, others with milk and likewise with honey, and others with wine, and some with olive oil; but, by reason of his gluttony and luxury, man fell into arrogance beyond bounds. But Zeus, hating this state of things, destroyed everything and appointed for man a life of toil. And when self-control and the other virtues in general reappeared, there came again an abundance of blessings. But the condition of man is already close to satiety and arrogance, and there is danger of destruction of everything in existence."
Obviously, the words of Calanus begin with a reference to a Krita yuga (or Golden Age). They pass on to a time of destruction just before a return of the Age of abundance, a Kaliyuga before another Kritayuga. And they conclude with an awareness of ever-worsening circumstances of a contemporary Kaliyuga under the threatening shadow of a new divine destruction. There can be no doubt that Calanus speaks, in an abridged or telescoped form, of two Chaturyugas, a group of pre-Vaivasvata Four Ages already gone and the next group seeming to draw to its culmination in his own day - that is, during Alexander's invasion of India in what, according to the Purānas, is the post-Āndhra epoch, with the rise of the Guptas in the offing.
A broad or overall characteristic of the account is: the change of Ages is due to changing human traits and attitudes (man's "gluttony and luxury", his "self-control and the other virtues"). The "blessings" of Zeus as well as His punitive judgments follow upon historico-psychological events. Nothing is made dependent on pre-determining mathematics on a cosmological scale.
Thus Megasthenes and the Purānas can be shown to stand in accord in the matter of the Four Ages and we need not let the astronomical Yuga-mathematics trouble us. We have answered
1. Majumdar, The Classical Accounts..., p. 277.
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the single query relevantly cropping up after we had completed our task of proving the chronology of Megasthenes to be the old Indian one and to be based at its lower end in the historical fact of the accession of Chandragupta I of the Imperial Guptas, rather than Chandragupta Maurya, as Megasthenes's Sandrocottus, to the throne of Pātaliputra, Megasthenes's Palibothra, in 315 B.C.1
4
A last item remains to be treated in order for us to complete our picture of correspondence between the chronology set down by Megasthenes and the Purānic computations. Both our sources are in perfect accord over Chandragupta of the Imperial Guptas. The date 315 B.C. which we have derived from Megasthenes for his accession within the period 326-305 B.C. suggested by the Classical accounts fits unforcedly within the period which we can infer from the Purānas: 315-302. Will it be possible to match all Purānic regnal dates with those derivable from Megasthenes with the aid of the information gained from the Purānas about individual reign-lengths and the lengths of dynasties? A central test-case would be the accession-year obtained from the Purānas and Megasthenes for the modern historians' equivalent of Sandrocottus, Chandragupta Maurya whom we have substituted by Chandragupta I.
Do Megasthenes and the Purānas Correspond in the Date for Chandragupta Maurya?
The traditional-Purānic time-scheme starts from 3138 B.C. where the Bhārata War is placed. It counts the dynasty-lengths onward - 1000 years for the 22 Barhadrathas, 118 for the 5 Pradyotas, 362 for the 10 SlsuNāgas - and also separately mentions 1500 years, which is their exact sum-total, as the period from the birth of Parīkshit in the year of the Bhārata War to the coronation of Mahāpadma, the first member of the Nanda dynasty succeeding the SisuNāgas. It gives 100 years to the 9 Nandas who are the predecessors of the Mauryas. Thus 3138-1500-100 brings us to Chandragupta Maurya's accession in 1538 B.C.
The calculation according to Megasthenes would begin from the
1. Supplement Three attempts a comparison between the claims of the two Chandraguptas to the main personal characteristics of Sandrocottus.
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accession of the Imperial Guptas' founder in 315 B.C. By his clues we struck, by means of a comparative study of the well-known Purānas as well as the less known Yuga-Purāna section of the Gārgi-Sarhhitā, upon the proper placement of his 3 "republics" -that is, periods during which no great dynasty ruled over Māgadha. We determined their lengths as 75 years between the Guptas and the preceding Āndhras, 300 between the Kānvas and the preceding Śungas, 120 between the Śungas and the preceding Mauryas. We gave the Āndhras a duration of 412 years, the number we found, along with 411, the most suitable, with the help of the Purānas' Sapta Rishi cycle, out of the five they provide - the other three being 300, 456 and 460. To the Śungas the Purānas assign 112 years and to the Kānvas 45. Adding up all the figures -75, 300, 120, 412, 45 and 112 - we get 1064 years. If we add this number to 315 B.C., our accession-date for Chandragupta I, we reach 1379 B.C. for the end of the Mauryas. The Purānas count 10 Mauryas and their total duration as 137 years. So, by our calculation, the rise of the Mauryas is in (1379+137=) 1516 B.C.
There is a discrepancy of 22 years with the result we arrived at directly from the Purānas' starting-pont in 3138 B.C. We may surmise that something in the Purānic information available in the time of Megasthenes and capable of resolving the discrepancy is missing in the extant Purānas. On a close look, the Maurya dynasty-length of 137 years which we have accepted in either calculation gets suspected as the source of the non-alignment. From what Pargiter remarks it would appear that there was an alternative version to which a clue exists in the extant Purānas. He1 observes that the Purānic account of the Mauryas has suffered more than that of any other dynasty. And he2 asks in a footnote: "Because its great fame in Buddhism disgraced it in Brāhmanical eyes?" His regular comment concludes:3 "All agree that the dynasty lasted 137 years. The regnal periods added together (excluding the Matsya list which is incomplete) are 160 years in eVa, and (Śaliśuka being omitted) 133 in Va and Bd;4 or, if we add Śaliśuka's reign to the latter, the total is 146 years; and the total in eVa
1.The Purāna Text..., p. 26.
2.Ibid., fn. 1.
3.Ibid., p. 27.
4.The abbreviation eVa stands for the e Ms of the Vayu, and Bd for the Brāhmanda. (K. D. S.).
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would be reduced to about 145 years if we correct its duplication in the middle. This figure, 145 or 146, is compatible with the stated duration, 137 years, if (as is probable) the total of the several reigns is nominally raised above the true total by reckoning fractions of years as whole years." Or else we may take 137 as a round number left by omission of the extra years actually constituted by totting up the year-fractions but unfortunately now lost to us. In that case 145 or 146 would be the true sum, provided the three reign-periods - namely, Chandragupta's 24 years, Bindusar-a's 25 and Aśoka's 36 - which appear uniformly everywhere, except that the Matsya omits the first two - can be regarded as the only ones handed down.
The proviso arises because the Buddhists, for whom this dynasty has - as Pargiter's footnote indicates - "great fame", have a different reading for these three reigns. As the Buddhists are particularly concerned with Aśoka, the king-model par excellence of their religion, we may justifiably ask whether their chronology for the first three Mauryas may not serve as a worthy alternative. The answer is bound to be "Yes".
The Purānas and the Mahāvamsa-like Figures
To ascertain this alternative correctly we must resort to the Mahāvarhsa, the most substantial of the Pali Chronicles, and see what its deliverances are. The usual count claimed from it is: 24 years for Chandragupta, 27 (or 28) for Bindusāra and 37 for Aśoka,1 as against the Purānas' 24, 25 and 36 respectively. But actually 24 for the founder-Maurya is not the Mahāvamsa's number. It hails from the later Manjusri Mulakalpa (V.441) which, by the way, allots (V.449) to Bindusāra 70 years. The true position in regard to the Mahāvamsa emerges from a statement of Max Muller's in his History of Sanskrit Literature:2 he quotes 34 years from that Chronicle, although adjudging the digit 3 a mistake for 2. If the Buddhist chronology is valued, as it should be, for the three opening Mauryas, we must compute their joint reign-periods as (34+27+37=) 98 years rather than the Purānic (24+25+36=) 85.
1.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 70, 89, 704.
2.2nd Edition, published by Williams and Norgate, London, p. 271, fn. 1 and p 297, fn. 1.
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The Mahāvamsa's addition yields 13 more years than the Purānas'. If we join them to the 146 we have received from Pargiter's calculations, we come to 159 years as the duration of the Mauryan dynasty. On counting this number, instead of 137, upwards from 1379 B.C. which is the date we have drawn from Megasthenes for the end of the Mauryas, we strike precisely upon (1379+159=) 1538 B.C. for the accession of this dynasty's founder. The junction with the extant Purānic chronology from the Bhārata War to the advent of the Mauryas is complete.
We can have the same junction if we choose 28 and not 27 for Bindusāra and pick up the 145 which Pargiter offers as equally eligible with his 146.
Of course there was no Mahāvarhsa in c. 300 B.C. when Megasthenes consulted the Purānic pundits of his day. But there would be nothing unprecedented in figures like the Mahāvarhsa's having been communicated by them to him. For, there are several differences between his Purānic knowledge and the data we can gather from the extant Purānas. Although he carries an overall reflection of the latter, which is definitive for jointly equating Sandrocottus to the founder of the Imperial Guptas, the vast number leading to the upper end of the Greek ambassador's chronology has dropped out of the Purānic writings in our possession now. Similarily, from the 3 "republics" reported by him, only the last emerges - and that too in an indirect fashion - while the earlier 2 are lost to these documents and are flashed out only in the unusual and somewhat confused Yuga-Purāna. Besides, in the present Purānas themselves there are variants to the general figures, some of them scattered but others seeming equally acceptable: an instance of the latter kind is the interval between Parīkshit's birth and Mahāpadma's coronation - 1015, 1050, 1115, 1500 years. So, in c. 300 B.C., the Mahāvarhsa-figures as alternatives to the ones which alone have come down to us are not unlikely.
Perhaps their ancient presence may be suspected in the blanks to which Pargiter points in the Matsya Purāna whose version, he1 tells us, is the earliest. Pargiter2 says the Matsya omits all reference to the reign-periods of Chandragupta Maurya and Bindusāra as well as to that of Aśoka's successor Kunāla. The blanks for the first two Mauryas may cover a divergent Mahāvamsan tradition
1.Op. cit., pp. 26-27.
2.Ibid., p. 70, fns. 1, 2 & 3.
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now vanished. And the Kunāla-blank may conceal the extra year which should, by that tradition, have belonged to Aśoka. Anyway, our recourse to the Buddhist reign-periods as a possibility in the Purānas of Megasthenes's day looks valid from the very fact that they so easily and naturally combine with the already existing variant of 145 or 146 years for the Maurya dynasty's duration to set Megasthenes alongside the current Purānas.
The Several Purānic Alternatives
Indeed, the several alternatives hidden away in stray versions of these writings are absolutely necessary if we are to match or approximate, with dynasty-lengths, the interval from Mahāpadma's coronation to the start of the Āndhras: 836 years. Megasthenes with 2 out of his 3 "republics" - the pair of pre-Āndhra ones amounting to 120 and 300 years respectively - can make up for the poor extension of the pre-Āndhra king-lines as commonly computed: the meagre 45 of the Kānvas, the modest 112 of the Śungas, the none-too-substantial 137 of the Mauryas and the scanty 100 of the Nandas. The extant Purānas can muster with these numbers no more than 394 years in contrast to Megasthenes's total of 836, consisting of the same Kānvas-Śungas-Nandas duration of 257 plus the differing 159 for the Mauryas plus the 2 republics' 420. The Purānas cannot reach the wanted amount unless we attend to some divergences in them. Thus for the Nandas, instead of Mahāpadma's 88 years before his sons' 12, a variant is 28.' For the Mauryas we have cited Pargiter's reference to 160 in eVa or, if a duplication in the middle is omitted, 145 and, if the omission of 6alisuka in Va and Bd is made good, 146 in them, in place of the general mention of 137. For the Śungas we have two amazing alternatives: 3002 and 5383 substituting 112. The Kānvas have 85" in some versions rather than 45. From all these the pundits could take the Nanda 100, the Suriga 538, the Kanva 45 and, after totalling them to 683, scrutinize the several Maurya lists. Neither 137, 145, 146 nor 160 would yield the remaining 153. By invoking the same lost Mahāvarhsa-figures for Chandragupta
1.Ibid., p. 69, fn. 17.
2.Ibid., p. 33, fn. 50.
4.Ibid., p. 35, fn. 29.
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Maurya, Bindusāra and Aśoka as Megasthenes used - namely, 34, 27 and 37 - and, adding the extra 13 thus gained to 137, the pundits could reach 150. The still lacking 3 they could perhaps manage by choosing the appropriate successor of the first 5 names which are common to the Vayu and eVa and whose reign-periods perfectly accord. For, then, the Vayu's Indrapalita who has 10 years would replace the eVā's Dasona who has only 7.' Or some other possibility was there, of which we have no trace in the surviving documents.
Certainly a way had to be found to support that general wide interval forming part of the crucial chronological material which at the same time conjured up immense antiquity and adjusted Chandragupta of the Imperial Guptas into the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. In fact, the interval had to answer to some kind of detailed dynastic computation: otherwise it would be disbelieved. If we cannot discern its diverse components at once it is because the Purānas have come to us considerably mutilated. Yet enough basic structure remains in them to indicate broadly the lines of chronology which Megasthenes reflected in the Indica around 300 B.C. and which, along with his information, the existing Purānas in their own manner follow, with the resultant identification of Chandragupta I with his Sandrocottus.
The Core of Our Reconstruction and the Dispensable Items
This identification, let us repeat, is the living core of the Purāna-cum-Megasthenes reconstruction of ancient Indian history. As the items of the reconstruction move further and further into the past beyond the 315 B.C. for Chandragupta I, they may increasingly lose credibility and we must not hesitate to abandon or modify them in the interests of modern research. The year 1538 B.C. for Chandragupta Maurya is one such item; but to establish it as an implication common to Megasthenes and the Purānas is to help their joint unerring establishment of the correct year for the accession of Chandragupta I. And to this cogent point of chronology we must hold on, calmly undertaking the Herculean labour of explaining anew all that modern research may pose in battle array against it.
1. Ibid., p. 70, cols. 1 & 2.
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