Was Viśvāmitra involved in the Battle of Ten Kings?
Shrikant G Talageri
This is a point which is made so overwhelmingly often that, although refuted many times in my books, I felt it necessary to write a separate blog on it. The reason was the following invitation to a "Sangam Talks" episode:
A. To begin with, I find the reference to "10 disgruntled kings" rather out of place: the battle took place because Sudās, the Rigvedic Bharata Pūru king, wanted to conquer surrounding lands. The story may be summarized as follows from the data in the Rigveda:
The Bharata Pūru king Sudās' campaign of expansion and conquest starts in Book 3, where he performs a yajña and lets the horse loose and starts conquering "east, west and north" (III.53.11) under Viśvāmitra's priesthood. The yajña was conducted in the Haryana homeland of Sudās, and he first (under Viśvāmitra) moves westwards across the Vipāś and Śutudrī (present day Beas and Satlej), the two easternmost rivers of the Punjab.
Later, under Vasiṣṭha's priesthood, Sudās moves further in the westward direction into the Punjab, and fights the dāśarājña battle (the Battle of the Ten Kings) on the banks of the Paruṣṇī (Ravi) in central Punjab against a coalition of 10 tribes of the area.
The battle hymn VII.18 is composed, after Sudās completes all his conquests and the dust has settled down, by the Vasiṣṭhas, who receive gifts from Sudās (at the end of the hymn), and the hymn refers to all the battles of Sudās in a glorificatory summarization of his valour.
Therefore, the 10 kings (or, more properly, the ten Anu tribes) were merely coming together under their king Kavi Cāyamāna to ward off the attack on their lands from their east. The word "disgruntled" can be used for them only if we are also prepared to use the word for Porus who stood up against Alexander's attacks from the west in a later period. Whether the attacker is a foreigner or a fellow Indian (both Sudās and the 10 tribes were Indians), surely our sympathies should be with the attacked and not the attacker!
While advocates of the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory) try to convert this battle into a battle between an "Aryan invader" Sudās and a coalition of indigenous native tribes of the Punjab (to which they sometimes generously add that a small section of the Aryan invaders also sided with the 10 native "non-Aryan" tribes against Sudās) — a claim which is not supported by the Rigveda, since none of the antagonists have "non-Aryan" names — a section of anti-AIT writers take the "side" of Sudās and treat the battle as if the original attackers were the 10 tribes. For example, an article by a very great writer, environmentalist and activist, Nanditha Krishna, entitled "Sudasa: India's First War Hero" (https://openthemagazine.com/columns/sudasa-indias-first-war-hero/), with the subtitle "he drove away north-western tribes, which have attacked India over the millennia, from the Ravi", calls the 10 kings "a coalition coming from the west" and sums up the case as: "tribes from the east resisted the onslaught and banished the tribes back to the west". She further categorizes the 10 tribes as follows: "The Ten Kings were cattle raiders, a constant cause of war in ancient times. All these tribes have been attacking India through ancient, medieval and modern times".
[Nanditha Krishna, for whose scholarship I have the very greatest respect, cites my blog article "The identity of the Enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda". But clearly she has not understood the article:
1. She not only refers to Sudās as "Sudāsa" (a completely different name not found in the Rigveda, as I have pointed out many times), but even concludes that "Sudasa, the Arya hero, is a dasa. He was the grandson of Divodasa, another Vedic hero and a dasa".
2. She refers to the Anu coalition as a "Puru confederation", further referring to them as "the cattle-stealing Pūru tribes". It is Sudās himself who is a Bharata Pūru, and none of his opponents in the dāśarājña battle were Pūrus, although his earlier battles on the Yamuna included the non-Bharata Pūrus (the Matsyas, for example) as opponents.
B. But my main point is about the statement, in the above intimation of the talk by Dr. Shankar Kashyap, that the dāśarājña was "also a battle between two of the RgVeda's most powerful sages, Vashista and Vishwamitra".
Nanditha Krishna also tells us: "The spiritual head of the Tritsu-Bharatas was Vashishtha and that of the invading Purus was Vishwamitra, who was advisor to the cattle-stealing Puru tribes".
This has been the most persistent misconception about the battle which has been reiterated time and again by different scholars, both Indian and western, and among them the supporters of both the AIT and the OIT.
There is absolutely nothing in the Rigveda or in any other Vedic text or in any reference from the Puranas or the Epics to suggest that Vasiṣṭha and Viśvāmitra were antagonists in this battle, or that Viśvāmitra was anywhere in the picture in the battle, and no-one has been able to produce the slightest evidence for such a claim.
The only fact that can be ascertained from the Rigveda is that Viśvāmitra was the earlier priest of Sudās when he started out on his campaign of conquest, and he was later replaced by Vasiṣṭha. That this must have caused bad blood between the two families of rishis is a plausible conclusion: certainly the Puranas and Epics are full of stories indicating their mutual rivalry (although none of these stories refer to, or even know about, this historic battle), and even in the Rigveda, various scholars have, rightly or wrongly, pointed out verses in the books of the two families which are interpreted as imprecations against each other. Also, I am told, some later texts discourage marriage between people belonging to gotras of the two families.
Viśvāmitra may have been replaced by Vasiśṭha either because differences arose between Sudās and Viśvāmitra, or because Sudās under Viśvāmitra failed to conquer the Paruṣṇī territory after crossing the Vipāś and Śutudrī and consequently he felt that Vasiṣṭha was a better bet. This is confirmed by the fact that the eastern battles on the Yamunā are also mentioned only in book 7 and not in book 3, and perhaps it was Sudās' eastern conquests under his new priest Vasiṣṭha that convinced him to resume his western campaign from the point where he had earlier left off after crossing the Vipāś and Śutudrī, There is no specific data and we can only speculate. But none of this indicates that Viśvāmitra fought against Sudās in this battle, and if he did do so, there is no reason why such an important fact would have remained unmentioned in the Rigveda.
The only early western Indologist who has attempted to try to show, by inference from the Rigveda, that Viśvāmitra was the opponent in this battle is Edward Hopkins, who, in a paper "Problematic Passages in the Rig-Veda" (JAOS, VOL 15, 1893, pp.252-283) cited the words amitra (opponent), durmitra (bad friend) and sakhā (friend) used in the battle hymn (VII.18) by Vasiṣṭha as puns referring to Viśvāmitra.
This is an extremely doubtful conjecture, since the word amitra is used for the opponents even in the two hymns referring to the subsequent vārṣāgira battle which took place in Afghanistan (in I.100.15 and IV.15.4), and unless we want to assume that Viśvāmitra was consistently an Iranian priest opposed to the Vedic Aryans till that period, this is clearly absurd. Further, the word amitra is used even by the Viśvāmitra composers themselves (in III.18.2; 29.15; 30.16) to refer to their opponents.
Even if one assumes the words were used as puns by Vasiṣṭha to needle Viśvāmitra, this only shows their mutual rivalry, and does not lead to the very serious conclusion that Viśvāmitra was even a part (let alone the leader) of the Anu coalition in this battle and was defeated! As the aim of the hymn is to emphasize the role of the Vasiṣṭhas in Sudās' victory (VII.18.21, etc.) the "puns" (if they are that) could be a way of rubbing it in that Sudās did the right thing by replacing Viśvāmitra with Vasiṣṭha as his priest.
Another western scholar, Michael Witzel, goes a few steps forward in trying to prove that Viśvāmitra was the main architect of the alliance opposed to Sudās. He first converts Viśvāmitra into a Bhṛgu (a totally different family): "Viśvāmitra is, via his teacher Gāthin, a Jamadagni, ie. a Bhṛgu" (WITZEL 1995b:334 f.n.); and then tells us: "there is even the possibility that it was Viśvāmitra who - in an act of revenge - forged the alliance against his former chief. Whatever the reason, however, the alliance failed and the Pūru were completely ousted (7.8.4, etc) alongwith Viśvāmitra (=Bhṛgu, 7.18.6)" (WITZEL 1995b:334). Thus he actually manufactures a fake reference to Viśvāmitra in the battle hymn by treating a reference to Bhṛgu as a reference to Viśvāmitra!
But then, as he tries to elaborate that theme further, he ends up so confused with his own story that he ends up tying himself into knots in a funny way:
In the very same above article, on the previous page, Witzel writes about Book 3: “This book was composed by Viśvāmitra (and his clan), the purohita of Sudās until his ouster by Vasiṣtha, the reputed author of much of book 7. It praises the dominant position of the Bharata in an area more or less corresponding with the later Kurukṣetra, culminating in an aśvamedha by Sudās to commemorate his triumphs in a late hymn ([footnote] i.e. 3.53.11-14)” (WITZEL 1995b:333). In his critique of my earlier book, Witzel elaborates this further: “RV 3.53.14 clearly speaks of Kurukṣetra and surroundings, some 750 miles to the west. It refers to the performance of the aśvamedha (3.53.11) after Sudās’ victory in the Ten Kings’ Battle (7.18: cf. Witzel 1995)” (WITZEL 2001b:§8).
In other words, according to Witzel’s account of the events, Vasiṣṭha ousted Viśvāmitra as the priest of Sudās; and, in revenge, Viśvāmitra led a coalition of tribes in the Ten Kings’ Battle against Sudās and Vasiṣṭha, and was “completely” defeated. And, later, the descendants of Viśvāmitra organized an aśvamedha and composed a hymn, III.53, in “praise” and glorification of the Bharatas, in order to celebrate and “commemorate” the “triumphs” of Sudās and Vasiṣṭha and the defeat and humiliation of their own ancestor Viśvāmitra!
Note that the aśvamedha, which is organized before the commencement of Sudās' campaign of conquest, and which clearly refers to him letting loose the horse before setting out "east, west and north" (III.53.11) on his conquests, is now transposed by Witzel to after the completion of his conquests, and the Viśvāmitras are supposed to have conducted the aśvamedha to commemorate their own defeat at the hands of Sudās and the Vasiṣṭhas!
This is what happens when research into documented history degenerates into the fabrication of unsubstantiated stories. The fact is that Viśvāmitra has no connection at all with the dāśarājña battle.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
WITZEL 2001b: WESTWARD HO! The Incredible Wanderlust of the Rgvedic Tribes Exposed by S. Talageri. The Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, 2001.
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.
HOPKINS 1893: Problematic Passages in the Rig-Veda. Hopkins, Edward. JAOS, 1893.
