The
Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda
Shrikant
G. Talageri
According to India's traditional Indian history, in
the most ancient period the whole of India was divided among the ten
sons of the mythical First King Manu Vaivasvata: this
translates into Ten Great (conglomerates of) Tribes, who
are believed to have been the occupants of different parts of India. However, very little is known about eight
of these, and whatever little is given about them is so meagre, garbled, and
mixed with all kinds of contradictory data, that it becomes clear that the
Puranic editors in northern India were well acquainted with the history of only
two main divisions mythically treated as descendants of two of
the "sons", Iḷa/Sudyumna and Ikṣvāku: the Lunar
Race (Aiḷas) and the Solar Race (Ikṣvākus) respectively.
The Rigveda is the Book of the Pūru, and in
fact, in the earlier period of the Rigveda, in the Family Books (2-7),
it is specifically the Book of the Bharata Pūru.
The Anu and Druhyu to their west and
northwest are mostly their rivals and enemies, especially in the
earlier periods, though there is more friendly co-existence in the period of
the New Books, (5,1,8,9,10), the Mature Harappan period.
The Yadu and Turvaśa (Turvasu)
to their south are farther off, almost always referred to as a pair, described
as coming from afar after crossing many rivers, on specific occasions where
they are sometimes friends and sometimes enemies. These are the Five Tribes
known to tradition as the Lunar tribes.
But what is the role of the Ikṣvāku, or the Solar,
tribes in Rigvedic history? It would appear that they were too far to the east
to have played any important role in Rigvedic history. Nevertheless, one
section of the Ikṣvāku did play
an important role in the Rigveda. We will examine here the exact nature of this
role:
I. The Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda.
II. The Northwestern Connection.
I.
The Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda
The word Ikṣvāku is found only once in the
whole of the Rigveda, in X.60.4. It simply means "the Sun".
However, the Ikṣvāku are referred to in the
Rigveda by another name: as the Tṛkṣi: this word is found twice in the
Rigveda: VI.46.8; VIII.22.7.
a) In the second reference, VIII.22.7,
the word is used as an epithet of a king called Trāsadasyava, "the
son of Trasadasyu". The actual name of this king, "the son of
Trasadasyu", is not given in the hymn, but most Indologists assume his
name to be Tṛkṣi, on account of the phrase "Tṛkṣim Trāsadasyavam"
(mis)translated as "Trikṣi, the son of Trasadasyu". However,
it should actually be translated as "the Trikṣi, the son
of Trasadasyu", meaning "the son of Trasadasyu, of the Trikṣi
(tribe)". The other earlier reference makes it clear that the word is
not the name of a person but of a tribe:
b) The first reference, VI.46.8, is
one of those directional references which names tribes as references of direction.
The two verses VI.46.7-8 are as follows:
"All the manly powers of the Nahuṣa Tribes,
all the Glory of the Five Tribes, bring it together, O Indra!
All the Strength with Trikṣi, with
Druhyu, and with Pūru, bestow it all on us, O Indra, that we may conquer all
our enemies in battle".
Very clearly, tribes are being referred to, not
individuals. The translators clearly translate as "the Druhyu
folk/tribes/people" and "the Pūru folk/tribes/people"
in two of the three cases, but simply "Trikṣi" in the third,
and assume it to be the name of a person! Obviously, it is the name of a
tribe!
The two verses are clear: the first verse refers to
"Nahuṣa Tribes" and "Five Tribes"
in the sense of "All the Tribes". The second
specifically names together the easternmost tribes, the Trikṣi in the
far east, the westernmost tribes, the Druhyu in the far northwest, and
the central tribes, the Pūru, in
the home areas, to again indicate "All the Tribes".
And they ask Indra to give all the strength and power of all these
tribes to Us, the Bharatas.
Therefore also, the word in VIII.22.7
means the Trikṣi, and not Trikṣi.
The Tṛkṣi (Ikṣvāku) kings are referred
to as follows:
1. Mandhātā: I.112.13; VIII.39.8;
40.12.
2. Purukutsa: I.63.7; 112.7;
174.2; VI.20.10.
3. Trasadasyu: I.112.14; IV.38.1;
42.8,9; V.27.3; 33.8; VII.19.3; VIII.8.21;
19.32,36; 36.7; 37.7; 49.10; X.33.4; 150.5.
Paurukutsa:
IV.42.9; V.33.8; VII.19.3; VIII.19.36.
4. Trivṛṣan: V.27.1.
5. Tryaruṇa: V.27.1-3.
Trasadasyu:
V.27.3.
6. Trāsadasyava: VIII.22.7.
7. Kuruṣravaṇa: X.32.9; 33.4.
Trāsadasyava:
X.33.4.
The first of these, Mandhāta is clearly a
distant ancestral king in this line, since he is not referred to in any
contemporary sense: in the first reference, I.112.13, he is
included in a long list of beneficiaries of the grace of the Aśvins. In the next
two (both by one composer), he is clearly an old ancestral figure: VIII.40.12
specifically refers to him as an ancestor (pitṛ). The composer is
Nābhāka Kāṇva: incidentally, in the Ikṣvāku dynastic lists
in both the Puranas and Epics, Nābhāga is the name of one of the far
descendants of Mandhātā.
The rest of the kings are clearly kings contemporary
to the period of the New Books. They are found in all in 14
hymns in the New Books, and in 6 of them they are the
patron kings of the hymns (i.e. the king from whom the composer is receiving
some kind of gifts): V.27,33; VIII.19,49; X.32,33. In the
remaining 8, they appear in regular lists of people aided by the Gods:
in 4 by Indra: I.63,174; VIII.36,37; in 3 by the
Aśvins: I.112; VIII.8,22; in 1 by Agni: X.50.
But then we come to the 4 references to them
in the Old Books: VI.20; VII.19; IV.38,42.
How can kings of the period of the New Books be found in
references in the Old Books?
As I pointed out in detail in my second book
(TALAGERI 2000:66-72), the names of these Tṛkṣi kings in these 4
references are unique and extraordinary in the ethos of the
Rigveda, since they are cases where their names were deliberately added
into the Old Hymns in the period of the New Books,
by composers belonging to the two families most closely associated with the Bharata
Pūrus, the Angiras and Vasiṣṭha composers, as a special
homage of gratitude for some extraordinary aid given by them to the Bharata
Pūrus in particular or the Pūrus in general.
In general, in the Old Books, even
the Redacted Hymns are found modified (due to repeated popular
recitals in front of new audiences during the Rigvedic period) only in language
but not in geographical or historical content. Thus they
refer only to the people, events and geographical features of the Old
times. Book 6 is associated with Divodāsa, and Books 3 and 7
with Sudās:
a) In Book 6, Divodāsa is found in 6
hymns: 3 Old (26,31,43) and 3 Redacted (16,47,61).
There is no reference to the later Sudās in any hymn in Book 6.
b) In Book 3, Sudās is found in 2
hymns: 1 Old (33) and 1 Redacted (53).
c) In Book 7, Sudās is found in 10
hymns: 8 Old (18,19,20,25,53,60,64,83) and 2 Redacted
(32,33).
d) Eastern geographical names (rivers up to
the Asiknī) are found:
In Book 6 in 11 hymns: 6 Old
(1,4,8,17,20,27) and 5 Redacted (45,49,50,52,61). In Book 3
in 10 hymns: 7 Old (4,5,23,45,46,54,58) and 3 Redacted
(26,29,53).
In Book 7 in 13 hymns: 10 Old
(2,9,18,35,39,40,44,58,69,98) and 3 Redacted (36,95,96).
e) Western geographical names are totally
missing in all the three Books (6,3,7) in all
the Hymns, Old as well as Redacted.
The logic of inadvertently interpolating new
pieces of geographical or historical data into old works must be
understood. No one would seriously introduce (except in joke or satire) a
reference to England or apples, or to Nehru or Shivaji,
or to telephones or the internet, in writing out or retelling the
story of the Ramayana or Mahabharata, since a person would normally be aware of
the fact that the places or objects or people or technologies represented by
these words cannot be part of the geographical and historical ethos of
the Epics. But words not known to be representing later phenomenon could
be interpolated into the stories. Thus the writers, editors and redactors of
the Epics and Puranas, which relate events which took place long before
they were set out in writing (in the period after 500 BCE), and which were
carried forward for long periods and countless generations of retelling as oral
traditions, did unknowingly interpolate countless names of
places, people and things which were so common and current in their time
that it did not seem to have occurred to them that they were new things.
As recently as the 1960s, the film Sampoorna Ramayan showed a
scene where, after Sita's abduction, a distraught Rama saw an image of Sita in
a sitaphal and Sita (in her place of imprisonment in the Ashokavan)
saw an image of Rama in a ramphal. Obviously, the filmmaker was unaware
that these two fruits were brought into India from Latin America only a few
centuries ago by the Portuguese! This is why the data in the texts cannot be
taken unquestioningly or without examination in serious historical discussions.
On the other hand, the Vedic texts, and especially
the Rigveda, were carried forward by such a strict, unique and totally
unparalleled system of oral recitation (the ghaṇapāṭha) that the Rigveda
remained totally unchanged once the text was given its final canonical
form sometime around 1500 BCE. I always give the quotations of Witzel
in this respect since they are so perfect, and I will repeat them here (the
quotation from WITZEL 1999a alone is a new one, and it gives an additional
proof):
“Right from the beginning, in Ṛgvedic times,
elaborate steps were taken to insure the exact reproduction of the words of the
ancient poets. As a result, the Ṛgveda still has the exact same wording in such
distant regions as Kashmir, Kerala and Orissa,
and even the long-extinct musical accents have been preserved. Vedic
transmission is thus superior to that of the Hebrew or Greek Bible, or the
Greek, Latin and Chinese classics. We can actually regard present-day Ṛgveda
recitation as a tape recording of
what was composed and recited some 3000 years ago. In addition, unlike the
constantly reformulated Epics and Purāṇas, the Vedic texts contain contemporary materials. They can serve
as snapshots of the political and cultural situation of the particular period
and area in which they were composed. […] as they are contemporary, and faithfully preserved, these texts are
equivalent to inscriptions. […] they
are immediate and unchanged evidence, a sort of oral history ― and sometimes
autobiography ― of the period, frequently fixed and ‘taped’ immediately after
the event by poetic formulation. These aspects of the Vedas have never been
sufficiently stressed […]” (WITZEL 1995a:91).
“[…] the Vedas were composed orally and they
always were and still are, to some extent, oral
literature. They must be regarded as tape
recordings, made during the Vedic period and transmitted orally, and
usually without the change of a single word.” (WITZEL 1997b:258).
"At the outset, it must be underlined that
the Vedic texts excel among other early texts of other cultures in that they
are 'tape recordings' of this archaic period. They were not allowed to be
changed: not one word, not a syllable, not even a tonal accent. If this sounds
unbelievable, it may be pointed out that they even preserve special
cases of main clause and secondary clause intonation, items that have even escaped
the sharp ears of early Indian grammarians. These texts are therefore better than
any manuscript, and as good―if not better―than any contemporary inscription"
(WITZEL 1999a:3).
“It must be underlined that just like an
ancient inscription, these words have not changed since the composition of
these hymns c.1500 BCE, as the RV has been transmitted almost without any
change […] The modern oral
recitation of the RV is a tape recording
of c.1700-1200 BCE.” (WITZEL 2000a:§8).
“The language of the RV is an archaic form
of Indo-European. Its 1028 hymns are addressed to the gods and most of them are
used in ritual. They were orally composed and strictly preserved by exact
repetition through by rote learning, until today. It must be underlined that
the Vedic texts are ‘tape recordings’ of this archaic period. Not one word, not
a syllable, not even a tonal accent were allowed to be changed. The texts are
therefore better than any manuscript, and as good as any well preserved
contemporary inscription. We can therefore rely on the Vedic texts as
contemporary sources for names of persons, places, rivers (WITZEL 1999c)”
(WITZEL 2006:64-65).
In these circumstances, the deliberate
interpolations into Old Hymns, of references to Tṛkṣi kings of
the New Books, during the later Rigvedic period must have been
motivated by a truly extraordinary sense of gratitude for the help given by
these kings to the Vedic Pūrus. While we cannot discover the details,
the basic fact is clear: the 4 references in the Old Books stand out
from normal references to kings in the Rigveda: IV.42.8-9 twice
refers to Trasadasyu as an ardhadeva or "demi-god",
an extraordinarily adulatory phrase found nowhere else in the Vedic texts. It glorifies
his birth in a manner reminiscent of the glorification of the birth of later divine
heroes not only in India but all over the world, but without parallel in the
Rigveda: the Seven Great Sages (sapta ṛṣi) gather together, Purukutsa's
wife gives oblations to Indra and Varuṇa, and the two Gods are pleased to
reward her with the birth of Trasadasyu "the demi-god, the slayer of
the foe-men".
That these 4 references are late interpolations
in the hymns is definite. Although it cannot be expected that there should
necessarily be discernible clues to the lateness of these references in
the Old Books, since that was not the intention of the
interpolators (late composers from the Aṅgiras and Vasiṣṭha
families), we do find such clues:
1. In the case of IV.42.8-9: the idea
of Seven Sages (sapta ṛṣi), is a very late one, common in the
Atharvaveda, but otherwise found in the Rigveda only in two verses in the very
late Book 10: X.82.2; 109.4―it is also found in the
Avesta. Understandably, although the hymn is not a Redacted Hymn,
Griffith tells us that "Grassmann banishes stanzas 8, 9 and 10 to the
appendix as late additions to the hymn".
2. VI.20.10 is the only verse in the Old
Books, singled out by Prof. Hopkins (HOPKINS 1896a:72-73), in the
"Final Note" to his path-breaking article "Prāgāthinī - I",
as a verse which seems to have "interesting marks of lateness",
in spite of the hymn not being a Redacted Hymn. He notes not only that Purukutsa
is a king belonging to a much later period, but that the verse contains the
phrase purah śāradīh, found elsewhere only in the New
Book 1; and, most significantly, the phrase pra stu-
which is "a very important word in the liturgical sense; and it is one
of the commonest of words in later literature", found very commonly in
the Brahmanas, five times in the Atharvaveda, and also very commonly in the
Avesta as fra stu-. But, in the Rigveda, outside
this single reference in an Old Book, it is found 10
times in the New Books.
3. Verse
IV.38.1 is
definitely totally out of place in
the hymn. Hymns 38-40 are hymns
in praise of Dadhikrās, the deified war-horse, and this one verse, out of the
21 verses in the three hymns, is the only verse which stands out from the other
20 verses in deifying Trasadasyu (who is not mentioned at all in the
other verses) rather than Dadhikrās.
4. About VII.19, the hymn itself may have
been composed long after the period of Sudās, since Griffith points out that the contemporaneous
king referred to in verse 8 is "probably a descendant of Sudās,
who must have lived long before the composition of this hymn, as the favor
bestowed on him is referred to as old in stanza 6".
These references in the Old Books (and one
more in Book 1 by a composer belonging to the same Aṅgiras branch
as the composers of Book 4, the Gautamas) are absolutely
unanimous in specifically crediting Purukutsa and/or Trasadasyu
for help given to the Pūrus:
IV.38.1
thanks Mitra and Varuṇa for the services which Trasadasyu, "the
winner of our fields and plough-lands, and the strong smiter who subdued the
dasyus", rendered to the Pūrus.
VII.19.3
refers to Indra helping the Pūrus "in winning land and slaying
foemen" once by way of Sudās (the hero of Book 7) and
once by way of Trasadasyu Paurukutsa (who is otherwise not connected in
any way with Sudās, but is elevated to his level with this reference in
Book 7).
Likewise, I.63.7 refers to Indra
rendering military aid to the Pūrus, once by way of Sudās and
once by way of Purukutsa.
VI.20.10 shows
the Pūrus lauding Indra for destroying the fortresses of their enemies
by way of Purukutsa.
It may be noted that in all the other references to
these Tṛkṣi kings Purukutsa and Trasadasyu, in the New
Books, not one refers even once to the Pūrus in connection with
them, and the only praise for these kings is in the dānastutis (V.33;
VIII.19) for gifts given to the composers of those hymns. It is clear
therefore that the 4 interpolated references in the Old Books
are special memorial references to the two Tṛkṣi kings of the
period of the New Books, who saved the Bharata Pūrus or
the Pūrus in general from total defeat and destruction in some
unspecified wars. They were inserted into the Old Books by late
composers of the respective families since the Old Books represented the
special period of the Bharata Pūrus.
The presence of these Ikṣvāku kings in the
Rigveda has always been a pain for the Indologists, firstly because they are
not specifically called Ikṣvākus (and the Indologists do not realize
that the tribal term for them in the Rigveda is Tṛkṣi, which they assume
to be the name of an individual king) and secondly because they actually
misinterpret the 5 special memorial references (4 in the Old
Books and 1 by the Gautama Āṅgirasa composer in Book 1)
to the great help given to the Pūrus by these two kings to mean
that the two kings themselves were Pūrus!
They are aware that this misinterpretation has no
support anywhere in the Rigveda outside their own misinterpretations
of these 5 references, and certainly nowhere in any other Vedic,
Puranic or Classical Sanskrit text. It is not only the Puranas and Epics
which unanimously classify these kings as Ikṣvāku: other Vedic
texts also do so: the Panchavimsha Brahmana xiii.3.12 calls Tryaruṇa
an Aikṣvāka, and the Shatapatha Brahmana xiii.5,4,5 calls Purukutsa
an Aikṣvāka. Nowhere are they called Pūrus.
But instead of realizing the mistake, some
Indologists try to explain this (most others simply ignore or stonewall it) by
suggesting that "the Ikṣvāku line was originally a line of the princes
of the Pūrus" (MACDONELL-KEITH 1912a:75).
Not only is their misinterpretation of the 5
references totally unsupported anywhere, but it leads them into
contradictions and confusion. Instead of realizing that the word Pūru in
these verses in fact refers to the Bharatas, they somehow conclude that Bharatas
and Pūrus were the main rivals in the Rigveda, and treat Purukutsa
and Trasadasyu as the leaders of these rival or enemy Pūrus. But
then those very 5 references on which their entire
misinterpretation is based become incomprehensible to them, since in 3
of them, I.63.7; VI.20.10; and VII.19.3,
Indra is described as helping both Sudās and Purukutsa/Trasadasyu
to victory!
This confusion and contradiction is reflected in
their interpretations:
Witzel, in his 1995 papers, recognizes that it is “the Pūru, to whom (and to […] the Bharata) the Ṛgveda really belongs”
(WITZEL 1995b:313), and that the Rigveda was “composed primarily by the Pūrus and Bharatas” (WITZEL 1995b:328),
and even that the Bharatas were “a
subtribe” (WITZEL 1995b:339) of the Pūrus. But he convinces himself
that, while Divodāsa and Sudās were Bharatas, Purukutsa and Trasadasyu were Pūrus;
and hence he confuses every reference to Pūrus (i.e. to the Bharatas)
as a reference to those non-Pūru
Tṛkṣi kings, whom, moreover,
he somehow identifies as the enemies
of Sudās and the Bharatas in the Battle of the Ten Kings.
Altogether, therefore, he ends up with a thoroughly chaotic and confused
picture of Rigvedic history, for which
he blames “conflicting glimpses” and
“inconsistencies” in the hymns
themselves (!):
“Although
book 7 is strongly pro-Bharata, it provides several, conflicting, glimpses of
the Pūru […in] 7.5.3, Vasiṣṭha himself praises Agni for
vanquishing the ‘black’ enemies of the Pūrus ― this really ought to have been
composed for the Bharatas. Inconsistencies also appear in hymn 7.19.3, which
looks back on the ten kings’ battle but mentions Indra’s help for both Sudās
and Trasadasyu, the son of Purukutsa, and also refers to the Pūrus’ winning of
land […]” (WITZEL 1995b:331)!
In her comment on VII.19.3, Jamison
tells us: "The first half of this hymn (vss. 1-5) celebrates various
victories of Indra, giving aid both to men of the mythic past (e.g., Kutsa, vs.
2) and those of the present, especially King Sudās (vs. 3, also 6), the
leader also in the battle of the Ten Kings treated in the preceding
well-known hymn (VII.18). The allegiances and enmities of that hymn are
strikingly different here: for example, Indra helps the Pūru king in this
hymn (vs. 3), whereas in VII.18, the Pūrus are the enemy". She
does not comment on the other verses (I.63.7, and VI.20.10)
where both Purukutsa/Trasadasyu and Sudās are led to
victory by Indra!
In fact, as per Macdonell, the early Indologist
Ludwig, in order to push his view that Purukutsa and Sudās were mutual
enemies, went so far as to decide that a word in I.63.7 was wrong,
and to actually alter that word sudāsam to sudāse
(MACDONELL-KEITH 1912b:327,fn7)!
All this had been dealt with in my books, but now we
must discuss a new dimension of this Ikṣvāku or Tṛkṣi history in
the Rigveda.
II.
The Northwestern Connection
There is one more point about the Ikṣvāku
presence in the Rigveda which should cause puzzlement: the prominent presence in
the northwest of these kings―who are located in the Puranas and Epics in
the far east (northeastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar).
This does not cause puzzlement to the Indologists,
of course, because according to their theory, all the ancestors of all
the Puranic tribes and dynasties were located in the northwest in the Rigvedic
period as constituents among the newly arrived Vedic Indo-Aryans,
and it was only later that these tribes migrated eastwards and spread
out all over northern India. Scholars like P.L. Bhargava, who try to fit the
Puranic data into the geographical constraints of this Rigvedic-origin
paradigm, also locate the Ikṣvākus in the northwest. Then we have crank
writers like Rajesh Kochhar trying to push even the geography of the Ramayana
into the northwest. Unfortunately, the views of orthodox Hindus opposed to
the AIT, who support the Vedic-origin-of-Indian-culture-and-history
paradigm, indirectly falls in the same category.
But as we have seen elsewhere (see my books and
articles), the data in both the Rigveda and the Puranas prove that the Vedic
Indo-Aryans were in fact the Pūrus alone (and, in the earlier
period, specifically the Bharata Pūrus). And they alone
occupied the home territory within the Rigvedic horizon. The Ikṣvākus
were indeed to their far east from very early pre-Rigvedic times: the location-based
reference to the Tṛkṣi tribe in the early VI.46 clearly places
them to the far east in contrast to the Druhyu in the far west
and the Pūru in the central home area.
But the 14 hymns in the New Books
which treat these kings as contemporary (in dānastutis) or merely
enumerate them (in lists of persons favored by the Gods) seem to be located in
the northwest. At least, not one of these hymns has an eastern
geographical name, but northwestern rivers Rasā (I.112.12)
and Suvāstu (VIII.19.37) are named in two of them, in the
second as the actual river on whose banks Trasadasyu gave gifts to the
composer. A later reference in the Shatyayana Brahmana records that Trasadasyu's
wife was a Piśācī (i.e. a person belonging
to the Piśāca or Nooristani Anu people who occupied exactly the
same area).
So what accounts for the presence of these Ikṣvāku
kings in the northwest?
The explanation is in the Puranic accounts:
There were non-Bharata Pūrus
living to the east and slightly south of the central area of the Rigvedic
Bharata Pūrus, in western UP and parts of northern Madhya
Pradesh. We have the Pūru Matsyas, who lived to the south of the Yamunā
and fought against Sudās and the Bharata Pūrus in the
battle on the Yamunā in alliance with the Yadus and Turvasus
of the area (VII.18). We have the Kīkaṭa, whom later tradition
actually associates with the Magadha area in the east, but, even without going
that far, even Witzel identifies it as an interior location to the south-east
of Haryana "in eastern Rajasthan or western
Madhya Pradesh" (WITZEL 1995b:333 fn)!
So the Bharata Pūrus of the Rigveda
were certainly generally acquainted with the people to their east and immediate
south from pre-Rigvedic times. They were acquainted so well enough with
the far eastern location of the Tṛkṣi, even in the period
of the oldest Book 6, as to be able to use the name as a
location-based reference to the far east (in VI.27). Doubtless, the
relations between the more eastern (non-Bharata) Pūrus and
the Ikṣvākus to the far east must have been even closer.
In any case, the Puranas tell us that the ancient Ikṣvāku
king Mandhātā of the east was related to the Pūrus through his
mother, who was the daughter of a Pūru king Matīnāra. It is at
least clear from this that Mandhātā (half a Pūru himself) had
reason to be friendly with the Pūrus, who were his maternal relations.
The Puranic accounts of the Ikṣvāku dynasty
associate all the early kings with the east, but in the case of Mandhātā,
they relate his movement westwards in support of his Pūru kinsmen
who were under assault from the Druhyus to their west in a pre-Rigvedic
period. The Druhyus had attacked all the people to their east and all
the eastern people combined against them to drive them out. Mandhātā moved out as far as the Punjab and drove the Druhyus
out from the Punjab into the northwest. Pargiter describes it as follows:
"The Druhyus occupied the Punjab, and Mandhātṛ of Ayodhya had a long
war with the Druhyu king Aruddha or Aṅgāra and killed him" (PARGITER
1962:167). Later, more in detail, he tells us that Mandhātā pushed past "the prostrate Paurava
realm, and pushing beyond them westwards, he had a long contest with and
conquered the Druhyu king who appears to have been then on the confines of the
Panjab, so that the next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave
his name to the Gandhāra country" (PARGITER 1962:262).
Later, Mandhātā returned to his own kingdom
in the east, and there is little record in traditional history of the
activities of his successor kings in the east having much to do with the
northwest (until the much later period of the Epics). However, it is clear that
some of his descendants remained in the northwest and originated a new northwestern
branch of Tṛkṣi or Ikṣvāku kings distinct from the eastern ones.
Undoubtedly Purukutsa, Trasadasyu and their descendants in the
Rigveda were late descendants, in the period of the New Books of the
Rigveda, belonging to this northwestern branch.
The evidence for this is that, in spite of both the
Puranas as well as later Vedic texts regularly classifying these kings as Ikṣvākus,
and in spite of the fact that they are the main or only Ikṣvākus in the New
Books of the Rigveda, the eastern Ikṣvāku traditions are
completely blank about these important kings. Purukutsa and Trasadasyu,
though the descendants of Mandhātā, are not known to the Ramayana
traditions as being ancestors of Rama. The Ramayana (II.110) records all the important ancestors of Rama and
kings of Ayodhya known to the Puranic traditions, including (other than Mandhātā)
Ikṣvāku, Triśaṅku, Dhundhumāra, Ajita, Sagara,
Aṁśuman, Dilīpa, Bhagīratha, Raghu, Kalmāṣapāda
and Ambarīṣa, none of whom (again other than Mandhātā) are known
to the Rigveda. But it does not seem to know the very important Purukutsa,
Trasadasyu and the other Ikṣvāku kings known to the Rigveda (but
also to the Puranas).
Bhargava notes this fact: he points out that "Eleven
Purāṇas and the Harivaṁśa give the list of the kings of this dynasty more or
less completely", as also two Upa-Puranas and the Mahabharata, and
also the Ramayana (twice), but "all the lists are in general agreement
except the two Ramayana lists, which differ from all others. Thus the Ramayana
genealogy omits many kings, such as Purukutsa, Trasadasyu, Hariśchandra and
Rohita, who are well-known in Vedic literature as Aikshvāku kings" (BHARGAVA
1956:56).
The reason is clear. Obviously Purukutsa and Trasadasyu
were not known to the eastern traditions as ancestors of Rama, because they
were not ancestors of Rama: they were kings of the northwestern
branch of the Ikṣvākus.
[Incidentally, Bhargava himself provides the logic
for different versions in different Puranas or groups of Puranas. He gives a
case where "between Mitrasaha and Dilīpa Khaṭvāṅga two lines of kings
are given in two sets of Purāṇas for six generations", which he
explains as follows: "It is clear that one line is the main line and
the other a branch line, and while some Purāṇas have dropped the main line, the
others have dropped the branch" (BHARGAVA 1956:59). This is the
explanation for the differences in the Ikṣvāku lineages: always keeping
in mind that the Puranic lists in different texts are in any case often jumbled,
confused and partial (and sometimes even fictitious) except where confirmed
by more definite evidence, the fact is that the Puranas retain lists of all
the Ikṣvāku kings, while the Vedic texts name only kings from the
northwestern branch line, and the eastern traditions
(though also in the manner of the Puranic records) name only kings from the main
eastern line].
Three other interesting points emerge out of all
this:
1. The fact that the kings of the northwestern
branch of Tṛkṣi or Ikṣvāku kings were close allies of the Pūrus
in the post-Sudās period of the Rigveda may throw light on the identity of the Ambarīṣa
of I.100.17, one of the five Vārṣāgiras in the battle
beyond the Sarayu in the period of Sahadeva and Somaka. He
was not a Bharata Pūru, but an Ikṣvāku―but then there is
no reason to believe that the five Vārṣāgiras were brothers or clansmen.
Ambarīṣa seems to have been a common family name among Ikṣvākus: we have kings of Ayodhya named Ambarīṣa,
and apparently that was also the name of one of Purukutsa's brothers
(PARGITER 1962:93).
2. As inhabitants of the northwest, the
northwestern Ikṣvākus must have been experts at horsemanship and may
have introduced the war-horse of the northwest to their Pūru allies.
There are two clear indications of this in the Rigveda:
a) The verse referring to Trasadasyu in IV.38,
is inserted at the beginning of a group of three hymns (IV.38-40,
with a total of 21 verses) addressed to a divine war-horse Dadhikrās.
The verse (IV.38.1) describes the war-hero Trasadasyu and the war-horse Dadhikrās
as the two great gifts given by Varuṇa and Mitra to the Pūrus which enabled
them to win back their plough-lands and fields.
b) Another divine war horse, named in two late
verses, I.89.6 and X.33.4, is named Tārkṣya,
which is literally derived from the name Tṛkṣi: i.e. "of the Tṛkṣi".
3. This early expansion
of a group of Ikṣvākus from eastern India to the northwest explains the
westward transfer of the names of the two eastern rivers Gomatī and Sarayu.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
BHARGAVA 1956:
India in the Vedic Age: A History of
Aryan Expansion in India. Upper India Publishing House Pvt. Ltd. Lucknow,
1956.
GRIFFITH 1889:
The Hymns of the Rigveda. (tr) Griffith, Ralph T.H. Munshiram Manoharlal, rep
1987, Varanasi.
JAMISON-BRERETON 2014:
The Rigveda―The Earliest Religious Poetry of India. Oxford Univ. Press,
New York, 2014.
HOPKINS 1896a: Prāgāthikāni. Hopkins, Edward W.
pp. 23-92 in JAOS (Journal of the American Oriental Society), Vol. 17.
MACDONELL-KEITH 1912a: Vedic Index
of Names and Subjects. Vol 1. Macdonell A.A. and Keith A.B. John Murray,
London, 1912.
MACDONELL-KEITH 1912b: Vedic Index
of Names and Subjects. Vol 2. Macdonell A.A. and Keith A.B. John Murray,
London, 1912.
PARGITER 1962: Ancient Indian
Historical Tradition. Pargiter F.E. Motilal Banarsidas,
Delhi-Varanasi-Patna, 1962.
TALAGERI
2000:
The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis. Talageri, Shrikant G. Aditya
Prakashan (New Delhi), 2000.
WITZEL
1995a:
Early Indian History: Linguistic
and Textual Parameters. Witzel.
Michael. pp. 85-125 in
“The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia”, ed. by George Erdosy. Walter de
Gruyter. Berlin, 1995.
WITZEL
1995b:
Rgvedic History: Poets, Chieftains
and Politics. Witzel, Michael. pp. 307-352 in “The Indo-Aryans of
Ancient South Asia”, ed. by George Erdosy. Walter de Gruyter. Berlin.
WITZEL 1997b: The Development of the Vedic Canon and Its
Schools: The Social and Political Milieu. Witzel,
Michael. in “Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts”, ed. by M.Witzel, Cambridge
1997 (being the proceedings of the International Vedic Workshop, Harvard univ.,
June 1989).
WITZEL 1999a: Early
Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages. Witzel, Michael. in MOTHER
TONGUE, Special Issue, 1999.
WITZEL
2000a:
The Languages of Harappa. Witzel, Michael. Feb. 17, 2000.
WITZEL 2006: Central Asian Roots and Acculturation in
South Asia: Linguistic and Archaelogical Evidence from Western Central Asia,
the Hindukush and Northwestern South Asia for Early Indo-Aryan Language and
Religion. in “Indus Civilization: Text and Context”, edited by Toshiki
Osada, Manohar Publications, New Delhi, 2006
