Chapter 2…

Chapter 2

=Puranic Genealogies.=—The chronicles of the Bhagavat and Agni, containing the genealogies of the Surya (sun) and Indu (moon) races, shall now be examined. The first of these, by calculation, brings down the chain to a period six centuries subsequent to Vikramaditya (A.D. 650), so that these books may have been remodelled or commented on about this period: their fabrication cannot be supposed.

Although portions of these genealogies by Sir William Jones, Mr. Bentley, and Colonel Wilford, have appeared in the volumes of the Asiatic Researches, yet no one should rest satisfied with the inquiries of others, if by any process he can reach the fountain-head himself.

If, after all, these are fabricated genealogies of the ancient families of India, the fabrication is of ancient date, and they are all they know themselves upon the subject. The step next in importance to obtaining a perfect acquaintance with the genuine early history of nations, is to learn what those nations repute to be such.

Doubtless the original Puranas contained much valuable historical matter; but, at present, it is difficult to separate a little pure metal from the base alloy of ignorant expounders and interpolators. I have but skimmed the surface: research, to the capable, may yet be rewarded by many isolated facts and important transactions, now hid under the veil of ignorance and allegory.

=Neglect of History by the Hindus.=—The Hindus, with the decrease of intellectual power, their possession of which is evinced by their architectural remains, where just proportion and elegant mythological device are still visible, lost the relish for the beauty of truth, and adopted the monstrous in their writings as well as their edifices. But for detection and shame, matters of history would be hideously distorted even in civilized Europe; but in the East, in the moral decrepitude of ancient Asia, with no judge to condemn, no public to praise, each priestly expounder may revel in an unfettered imagination, and reckon his admirers in proportion to the mixture of the marvellous[2.2.1] [26]. Plain historical truths have long ceased to interest this artificially fed people.

If at such a comparatively modern period as the third century before Christ, the Babylonian historian Berosus composed his fictions, which assigned to that monarchy such incredible antiquity, it became capable of refutation from the many historians of repute who preceded him. But on the fabulist of India we have no such check. If Vyasa himself penned these legends as now existing, then is the stream of knowledge corrupt from the fountain-head. If such the source, the stream, filtering through ages of ignorance, has only been increased by fresh impurities. It is difficult to conceive how the arts and sciences could advance, when it is held impious to doubt the truth of whatever has been handed down, and still more to suppose that the degenerate could improve thereon. The highest ambition of the present learned priesthood, generation after generation, is to be able to comprehend what has thus reached them, and to form commentaries upon past wisdom; which commentaries are commented on ad infinitum. Whoever dare now aspire to improve thereon must keep the secret in his own breast. They are but the expounders of the olden oracles; were they more they would be infidels. But this could not always have been the case.

With the Hindus, as with other nations, the progress to the heights of science they attained must have been gradual; unless we take from them the merit of original invention, and set them down as borrowers of a system. These slavish fetters of the mind must have been forged at a later period, and it is fair to infer that the monopoly of science and religion was simultaneous. What must be the effect of such monopoly on the impulses and operations of the understanding? Where such exists, knowledge could not long remain stationary; it must perforce retrograde. Could we but discover the period when religion[2.2.2] ceased to be a profession [27] and became hereditary (and that such there was these very genealogies bear evidence), we might approximate the era when science attained its height.

=The Priestly Office.=—In the early ages of these Solar and Lunar dynasties, the priestly office was not hereditary in families; it was a profession; and the genealogies exhibit frequent instances of branches of these races terminating their martial career in the commencement of a religious sect, or gotra, and of their descendants reassuming their warlike occupations. Thus, of the ten sons of Ikshwaku,[2.2.3] three are represented as abandoning worldly affairs and taking to religion; and one of these, Kanina, is said to be the first who made an agnihotra, or pyreum, and worshipped fire, while another son embraced commerce. Of the Lunar line and the six sons of Pururavas, the name of the fourth was Raya; “from him the fifteenth generation was Harita, who with his eight brothers took to the office of religion, and established the Kausika Gotra, or tribe of Brahmans.”

From the twenty-fourth prince in lineal descent from Yayati, by name Bharadwaja, originated a celebrated sect, who still bear his name, and are the spiritual teachers of several Rajput tribes.

Of the twenty-sixth prince, Manava, two sons devoted themselves to religion, and established celebrated sects, viz. Mahavira, whose descendants were the Pushkar Brahmans; and Sankriti, whose issue were learned in the Vedas. From the line of Ajamidha these ministers of religion were continually branching off.

In the very early periods, the princes of the Solar line, like the Egyptians and Romans, combined the offices of the priesthood with kingly power, and this whether Brahmanical or Buddhist.[2.2.4] Many of the royal line, before and subsequent to Rama, passed great part of their lives as ascetics; and in ancient sculpture and drawings the head is as often adorned with the braided lock of the ascetic as with the diadem of royalty.[2.2.5]

The greatest monarchs bestowed their daughters on these royal hermits and sages [28]. Ahalya, the daughter of the powerful Panchala,[2.2.6] became the wife of the ascetic Gautama. The sage Jamadagni espoused the daughter of Sahasra[2.2.7] Arjuna, of Mahishmat,[2.2.8] king of the Haihaya tribe, a great branch of the Yadu race.

Among the Egyptians, according to Herodotus [ii. 37, 141], the priests succeeded to sovereignty, as they and the military class alone could hold lands; and Sethos, the priest of Vulcan, caused a revolution, by depriving the military of their estates.

We have various instances in India of the Brahmans from Jamadagni to the Mahratta Peshwa, contesting for sovereignty; power[2.2.9] and homage being still their great aim, as in the days of Vishvamitra[2.2.10] and Vasishtha, the royal sages [29] whom “Janaka sovereign of Mithila, addressed with folded hands in token of superiority.”

=Relations of Rajputs with Brahmans.=—But this deference for the Brahmans is certainly, with many Rajput classes, very weak. In obedience to prejudice, they show them outward civility; but, unless when their fears or wishes interfere, they are less esteemed than the bards.

The story of the King Vishvamitra of Gadhipura[2.2.11] and the Brahman Vasishtha, which fills so many sections of the first book of the Ramayana,[2.2.12] exemplifies, under the veil of allegory, the contests for power between the Brahmanical and military classes, and will serve to indicate the probable period when the castes became immutable. Stripped of its allegory, the legend appears to point to a time when the division of the classes was yet imperfect; though we may infer, from the violence of the struggle, that it was the last in which Brahmanhood could be obtained by the military.

Vishvamitra was the son of Gadhi (of the race of Kausika), King of Gadhipura, and contemporary of Ambarisha, King of Ayodhya or Oudh, the fortieth prince from Ikshwaku; consequently about two hundred years anterior to Rama. This event therefore, whence we infer that the system of castes was approaching perfection, was probably about one thousand four hundred years before Christ.

=Dates of the Genealogies.=—If proof can be given that these genealogies existed in the days of Alexander, the fact would be interesting. The legend in the Puranas, of the origin of the Lunar race, appears to afford this testimony.

Vyasa, the author of the grand epic the Mahabharata, was son of Santanu (of the race of Hari),[2.2.13] sovereign of Delhi, by Yojanagandha, a fisherman’s daughter,[2.2.14] [30] consequently illegitimate. He became the spiritual father, or preceptor, of his nieces, the daughters of Vichitravirya, the son and successor of Santanu.

=The Herakles Legend.=—Vichitravirya had no male offspring. Of his three daughters, one was named Pandaia[2.2.15]; and Vyasa, being the sole remaining male branch of the house of Santanu, took his niece, and spiritual daughter, Pandaia, to wife, and became the father of Pandu, afterwards sovereign of Indraprastha.

Arrian gives the story thus: "It is further said that he [Herakles][2.2.16] had a very numerous progeny of children born to him in India ... [31] but that he had only one daughter.[2.2.17] The name of this child was Pandaia, and the land in which she was born, and with the sovereignty of which Herakles entrusted her, was called after her name Pandaia" (Indika, viii.).

This is the very legend contained in the Puranas, of Vyasa (who was Hari-kul-es, or chief of the race of Hari) and his spiritual daughter Pandaia, from whom the grand race the Pandavas, and from whom Delhi and its dependencies were designated the Pandava sovereignty.

Her issue ruled for thirty-one generations in direct descents, or from 1120 to 610 before Christ; when the military minister,[2.2.18] connected by blood, was chosen by the chiefs who rebelled against the last Pandu king, represented as “neglectful of all the cares of government,” and whose deposition and death introduced a new dynasty.

Two other dynasties succeeded in like manner by the usurpation of these military ministers, until Vikramaditya, when the Pandava sovereignty and era of Yudhishthira were both overturned.

Indraprastha remained without a sovereign, supreme power being removed from the north to the southern parts of India, till the fourth, or, according to some authorities, the eighth century after Vikrama, when the throne of Yudhishthira was once more occupied by the Tuar tribe of Rajputs, claiming descents from the Pandus. To this ancient capital, thus refounded, the new appellation of Delhi was given; and the dynasty of the founder, Anangpal, lasted to the twelfth century, when he abdicated in favour of his grandson,[2.2.19] Prithiviraja, the last imperial Rajput sovereign of India, whose defeat and death introduced the Muhammadans.

This line has also closed with the pageant of a prince, and a colony returned from the extreme west is now the sole arbiter of the thrones of Pandu and Timur.

Britain has become heir to the monuments of Indraprastha raised by the descendants of Budha and Ila; to the iron pillar of the Pandavas, "whose pedestal[2.2.20] [32] is fixed in hell"; to the columns reared to victory, inscribed with characters yet unknown; to the massive ruins of its ancient continuous cities, encompassing a space still larger than the largest city in the world, whose mouldering domes and sites of fortresses,[2.2.21] the very names of which are lost, present a noble field for speculation on the ephemeral nature of power and glory. What monument would Britain bequeath to distant posterity of her succession to this dominion? Not one: except it be that of a still less perishable nature, the monument of national benefit. Much is in our power: much has been given, and posterity will demand the result.

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Footnote 2.2.1:

The celebrated Goguet remarks on the madness of most nations pretending to trace their origin to infinity. The Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Scythians, particularly, piqued themselves on their high antiquity, and the first assimilate with the Hindus in boasting they had observed the course of the stars 473,000 years. Each heaped ages on ages; but the foundations of this pretended antiquity are not supported by probability, and are even of modern invention (Origin of Laws).

Footnote 2.2.2:

It has been said that the Brahmanical religion was foreign to India; but as to the period of importation we have but loose assertion. We can easily give credit to various creeds and tenets of faith being from time to time incorporated, ere the present books were composed, and that previously the sons of royalty alone possessed the office. Authorities of weight inform us of these grafts; for instance, Mr. Colebrooke gives a passage in his Indian Classes: “A chief of the twice-born tribe was brought by Vishnu’s eagle from Saca Dwipa; hence Saca Dwipa Brahmins were known in Jambu Dwipa.” By Saka Dwipa, Scythia is understood, of which more will be said hereafter. Ferishta also, translating from ancient authorities, says, to the same effect, that “in the reign of Mahraje, King of Canouj, a Brahmin came from Persia, who introduced magic, idolatry, and the worship of the stars”; so that there is no want of authority for the introduction of new tenets of faith. [The passage, inaccurately quoted, is taken from Dow i. 16. See Briggs’s translation, i. Introd. lxviii.]

Footnote 2.2.3:

See Table I. [now obsolete, not reprinted].

Footnote 2.2.4:

Some of the earlier of the twenty-four Tirthakaras, or Jain hierarchs, trace their origin from the solar race of princes. [As usual, Buddhism confused with Jainism.]

Footnote 2.2.5:

Even now the Rana of Mewar mingles spiritual duties with those of royalty, and when he attends the temple of the tutelary deity of his race, he performs himself all the offices of the high priest for the day. In this point a strong resemblance exists to many of the races of antiquity.

Footnote 2.2.6:

Prince of the country of Panjab, or five streams east of the Indus. [Panchāla was in the Ganges-Jumna Duāb and its neighbourhood.]

Footnote 2.2.7:

The legend of this monarch stealing his son-in-law’s, the hermit’s, cow (of which the Ramayana gives another version), the incarnation of Parasuram, son of Jamadagni, and his exploits, appear purely allegorical, signifying the violence and oppression of royalty over the earth (prithivi), personified by the sacred gao, or cow; and that the Brahmans were enabled to wrest royalty from the martial tribe, shows how they had multiplied. On the derivatives from the word gao, I venture an etymology for others to pursue:

ΓΑῙΑ, γέα, γῆ (Dor. γᾶ), that which produces all things (from γάω, genero); the earth.—Jones’s Dictionary.

ΓΆΛΑ, Milk. Gaola, Herdsman, in Sanskrit. Γαλατικοῖ, Κέλτοι, Galatians, or Gauls, and Celts (allowed to be the same) would be the shepherd races, the pastoral invaders of Europe [?].

Footnote 2.2.8:

Maheswar, on the Nerbudda River.

Footnote 2.2.9:

Hindustan abounds with Brahmans, who make excellent soldiers, as far as bravery is a virtue; but our officers are cautious, from experience, of admitting too many into a troop or company, for they still retain their intriguing habits. I have seen nearly as many of the Brahmans as of military in some companies; a dangerous error [realized in the Great Mutiny].

Footnote 2.2.10:

The Brahman Vasishtha possessed a cow named Savala, so fruitful that with her assistance he could accomplish whatever he desired. By her aid he entertained King Vishvamitra and his army. It is evident that this cow denotes some tract of country which the priest held (bearing in mind that gao, prithivi, signify ‘the earth,’ as well as ‘cow’): a grant, beyond doubt, by some of Vishvamitra’s unwise ancestors, and which he wished to resume. From her were supplied "the oblations to the gods and the pitrideva (father-gods, or ancestors), the perpetual sacrificial fire, the burnt-offerings and sacrifices." This was “the fountain of devotional acts”; this was the Savala for which the king offered “a hundred thousand cows”; this was "the jewel of which a king only should be proprietor."—The subjects of the Brahman appeared not to relish such transfer, and by “the lowing of the cow Savala” obtained numerous foreign auxiliaries, which enabled the Brahman to set his sovereign at defiance. Of these “the Pahlavi (Persian) kings, the dreadful Sakas (Sakai), and Yavanas (Greeks), with scymitars and gold armour, the Kambojas,” etc., were each in turn created by the all-producing cow. The armies of the Pahlavi kings were cut to pieces by Vishvamitra; who at last, by continual reinforcements, was overpowered by the Brahman’s levies. These reinforcements would appear to have been the ancient Persians, the Sacae, the Greeks, the inhabitants of Assam and Southern India, and various races out of the pale of the Hindu religion; all classed under the term Mlechchha, equivalents the ‘barbarian’ of the Greeks and Romans.

The King Vishvamitra, defeated and disgraced by this powerful priest, “like a serpent with his teeth broken, like the sun robbed by the eclipse of its splendour, was filled with perturbation. Deprived of his sons and array, stripped of his pride and confidence, he was left without resource as a bird bereft of his wings.” He abandoned his kingdom to his son, and like all Hindu princes in distress, determined, by penitential rites and austerities, “to obtain Brahmanhood.” He took up his abode at the sacred Pushkar, living on fruits and roots, and fixing his mind, said, “I will become a Brahman.” By these penances he attained such spiritual power that he was enabled to usurp the Brahman’s office. The theocrats caution Vishvamitra, thus determined to become a Brahman by austerity, that “the divine books are to be observed with care only by those acquainted with their evidence; nor does it become thee (Vishvamitra) to subvert the order of things established by the ancients.” The history of his wanderings, austerities, and the temptations thrown in his way is related. The celestial fair were commissioned to break in upon his meditations. The mother of love herself descended; while Indra, joining the cause of the Brahmans, took the shape of the kokila, and added the melody of his notes to the allurements of Rambha, and the perfumed zephyrs which assailed the royal saint in the wilderness. He was proof against all temptation, and condemned the fair to become a pillar of stone. He persevered “till every passion was subdued,” till “not a tincture of sin appeared in him,” and gave such alarm to the whole priesthood, that they dreaded lest his excessive sanctity should be fatal to them: they feared “mankind would become atheists.” “The gods and Brahma at their head were obliged to grant his desire of Brahmanhood; and Vashishtha, conciliated by the gods, acquiesced in their wish, and formed a friendship with Vishvamitra” [Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, Part i. (1858), 75 ff.].

Footnote 2.2.11:

Kanauj, the ancient capital of the present race of Marwar. [This is a myth.]

Footnote 2.2.12:

See translation of this epic, by Messrs. Carey and Marshman [in verse, by R. T. H. Griffith].

Footnote 2.2.13:

Hari-Kula.

Footnote 2.2.14:

It is a very curious circumstance that Hindu legend gives to two of their most celebrated authors, whom they have invested with a sacred character, a descent from the aboriginal and impure tribes of India: Vyasa from a fisherman, and Valmiki, the author of the other grand epic the Ramayana, from a Baddhik or robber, an associate of the Bhil tribe at Abu. The conversion of Valmiki (said to have been miraculous, when in the act of robbing the shrine of the deity) is worked into a story of considerable effect, in the works of Chand, from olden authority.

Footnote 2.2.15:

The reason for this name is thus given. One of these daughters being by a slave, it was necessary to ascertain which: a difficult matter, from the seclusion in which they were kept. It was therefore left to Vyasa to discover the pure of birth, who determined that nobility of blood would show itself, and commanded that the princesses should walk uncovered before him. The elder, from shame, closed her eyes, and from her was born the blind Dhritarashtra, sovereign of Hastinapura; the second, from the same feeling, covered herself with yellow ochre, called pandu, and henceforth she bore the name of Pandya, and her son was called Pandu; while the third stepped forth unabashed. She was adjudged not of gentle blood, and her issue was Vidura.

Footnote 2.2.16:

A generic term for the sovereigns of the race of Hari, used by Arrian as a proper name [?]. A section of the Mahabharata is devoted to the history of the Harikula, of which race was Vyasa.

Arrian notices the similarity of the Theban and the Hindu Hercules, and cites as authority the ambassador of Seleucus, Megasthenes, who says: “This Herakles is held in special honour by the Sourasenoi, an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora and Cleisobora.... But the dress which this Herakles wore, Megasthenes tells us, resembled that of the Theban Herakles, as the Indians themselves admit.” [Arrian, Indika, viii., Methora is Mathura; Growse (Mathura, 3rd ed. 279) suggests that Cleisobora is Krishnapura, ‘city of Krishna.’]

Diodorus has the same legend, with some variety. He says: "Hercules was born amongst the Indians, and like the Greeks they furnish him with a club and lion’s hide. In strength (bala) he excelled all men, and cleared the sea and land of monsters and wild beasts. He had many sons, but only one daughter. It is said that he built Palibothra, and divided his kingdom amongst his sons (the Balika-putras, sons of Bali). They never colonized; but in time most of the cities assumed a democratical form of government (though some were monarchical) till Alexander’s time." The combats of Hercules, to which Diodorus alludes, are those in the legendary haunts of the Harikulas, during their twelve years’ exile from the seats of their forefathers.

How invaluable such remnants of the ancient race of Harikula! How refreshing to the mind yet to discover, amidst the ruins on the Yamuna, Hercules (Baldeva, god of strength) retaining his club and lion’s hide, standing on his pedestal at Baldeo, and yet worshipped by the Suraseni! This name was given to a large tract of country round Mathura, or rather round Surpura, the ancient capital founded by Surasena, the grandfather of the Indian brother-deities, Krishna and Baldeva, Apollo and Hercules. The title would apply to either; though Baldeva has the attributes of the ‘god of strength.’ Both are es (lords) of the race (kula) of Hari (Hari-kul-es), of which the Greeks might have made the compound Hercules. Might not a colony after the Great War have migrated westward? The period of the return of the Heraclidae, the descendants of Atreus (Atri is progenitor of the Harikula), would answer: it was about half a century after the Great War. [These speculations are worthless.]

It is unfortunate that Alexander’s historians were unable to penetrate into the arcana of the Hindus, as Herodotus appears to have done with those of the Egyptians. The shortness of Alexander’s stay, the unknown language in which their science and religion were hid, presented an insuperable difficulty. They could have made very little progress in the study of the language without discovering its analogy to their own.

Footnote 2.2.17:

Arrian generally exercises his judgment in these matters, and is the reverse of credulous. On this point he says, “Now to me it seems that even if Herakles could have done a thing so marvellous, he could have made himself longer-lived, in order to have intercourse with his daughter when she was of mature age” [Indika, ix.].

Sandrocottus is mentioned by Arrian to be of this line; and we can have no hesitation, therefore, in giving him a place in the dynasty of Puru, the second son of Yayati, whence the patronymic used by the race now extinct, as was Yadu, the elder brother of Puru. Hence Sandrocottus, if not a Puru himself, is connected with the chain of which the links are Jarasandha (a hero of the Bharat), Ripunjaya, the twenty-third in descent, when a new race, headed by Sanaka and Sheshnag, about six hundred years before Christ, usurped the seat of the lineal descendants of Puru; in which line of usurpation is Chandragupta, of the tribe Maurya, the Sandrocottus of Alexander, a branch of this Sheshnag, Takshak, or Snake race, a race which, stripped of its allegory, will afford room for subsequent dissertation. The Prasioi of Arrian would be the stock of Puru; Prayag is claimed in the annals yet existing as the cradle of their race. This is the modern Allahabad; and the Eranaboas must be the Jumna, and the point of junction with the Ganges, where we must place the capital of the Prasioi. [For Sandrokottos or Chandragupta Maurya see Smith, EHI, 42 ff. He certainly did not belong to the ‘Snake Race.’ The Erannoboas (Skr. Hiranyavaha, ‘gold-bearing’) is the river Son. The Prasioi (Skr. Prāchyās, ‘dwellers in the east’) had their capital at Pātaliputra, the modern Patna (McCrindle, Alexander, 365 f.).]

Footnote 2.2.18:

Analogous to the maire du palais of the first races of the Franks.

Footnote 2.2.19:

His daughter’s son. This is not the first or only instance of the Salic law of India being set aside. There are two in the history of the sovereigns of Anhilwara Patan. In all adoptions of this nature, when the child ‘binds round his head the turban’ of his adopted father, he is finally severed from the stock whence he had his birth. [For the early history of Delhi see Smith, EHI, 386 ff.]

Footnote 2.2.20:

The khil, or iron pillar of the Pandus, is mentioned in the poems of Chand. An infidel Tuar prince wished to prove the truth of the tradition of its depth of foundation: "blood gushed up from the earth’s centre, the pillar became loose (dhili)," as did the fortune of the house from such impiety. This is the origin of Delhi. [The inscription on the pillar proves the falsity of the legend, and the name Delhi is older than the Tuar dynasty (IGI, xi. 233).]

Footnote 2.2.21:

I doubt if Shahpur is yet known. I traced its extent from the remains of a tower between Humayun’s tomb and the grand column, the Kutb. In 1809 I resided four months at the mausoleum of Safdar Jang, the ancestor of the present [late] King of Oudh, amidst the ruins of Indraprastha, several miles from inhabited Delhi, but with which these ruins forms detached links of connexion. I went to that retirement with a friend now no more, Lieutenant Macartney, a name well known and honoured. We had both been employed in surveying the canals which had their sources in common from the head of the Jumna, where this river leaves its rocky barriers, the Siwalik chain, and issues into the plains of Hindustan. These canals on each side, fed by the parent stream, returned the waters again into it; one through the city of Delhi, the other on the opposite side. [Cunningham (ASR, i. 207 ff.) proved that the true site of the ancient city, Siri, was the old ruined fort to the north-east of Rāī Pithora’s stronghold, which is at present called Shāhpur. This identification has been disputed by C. J. Campbell (JASB, 1866, p. 206). But Cunningham gives good reasons for maintaining his opinion. The place took its name from Sher Shāh and his son Islām or Salīm Shāh. See also Carr Stephens, Archaeological and Monumental Remains of Delhi (1876), pp. 87 f., 190.]

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Chapter 3

=Princes of the Solar Line.=—Vyasa gives but fifty-seven princes of the Solar line, from Vaivaswata Manu to Rama; and no list which has come under my observation exhibits more than fifty-eight, for the same period, of the Lunar race. How different from the Egyptian priesthood, who, according to Herodotus, gave a list up to that period of three hundred and thirty[2.3.1] sovereigns from their first prince, also the ‘sun-born[2.3.2] Menes!’

Ikshwaku was the son of Manu, and the first who moved to the eastward, and founded Ayodhya.

Budha (Mercury) founded the Lunar line; but we are not told who established their first capital, Prayag,[2.3.3] though we are authorized to infer that it was founded by Puru, the sixth in descent from Budha [33].

A succession of fifty-seven princes occupied Ayodhya from Ikshwaku to Rama. From Yäyati’s sons the Lunar races descend in unequal lengths. The lines from Yadu,[2.3.4] concluding with Krishna and his cousin Kansa, exhibit fifty-seven and fifty-nine descents from Yayati; while Yudhishthira,[2.3.5] Salya,[2.3.6] Jarasandha,[2.3.7] and Vahurita,[2.3.8] all contemporaries of Krishna and Kansa, are fifty-one, forty-six, and forty-seven generations respectively, from the common ancestor Yayati.

=Solar and Lunar Genealogies.=—There is a wide difference between the Solar and the Yadu branches of the Lunar lines; yet is that now given fuller than any I have met with. Sir William Jones’s lists of the Solar line give fifty-six, and of the Lunar (Budha to Yudhishthira) forty-six, being one less in each than in the tables now presented; nor has he given the important branch terminating with Krishna. So close an affinity between lists, derived from such different authorities as this distinguished character and myself had access to, shows that there was some general source entitled to credit.

Mr. Bentley’s[2.3.9] lists agree with Sir William Jones’s, exhibiting fifty-six and forty-six respectively for the last-mentioned Solar and Lunar races. But, on a close comparison, he has either copied them or taken from the same original source; afterwards transposing names which, though aiding a likely hypothesis, will not accord with their historical belief.

Colonel Wilford’s[2.3.10] Solar list is of no use; but his two dynasties of Puru and Yadu of the Lunar race are excellent, that part of the line of Puru, from Jarasandha to Chandragupta, being the only correct one in print.

It is surprising Wilford did not make use of Sir William Jones’s Solar chronology; but he appears to have dreaded bringing down Rama to the period of Krishna, as he is known to have preceded by four generations ‘the Great War’ of the Yadu races.

It is evident that the Lunar line has reached us defective. It is supposed so by their genealogists; and Wilford would have increased the error by taking it as the standard, and reducing the Solar to conform thereto.

Mr. Bentley’s method is therefore preferable; namely, to suppose eleven princes omitted in the Lunar between Janmejaya and Prachinvat. But as there is no [34] authority for this, the Lunar princes are distributed in the tables collaterally with the Solar, preserving contemporaneous affinity where synchronisms will authorise. By this means all hypothesis will be avoided, and the genealogies will speak for themselves.

There is very little difference between Sir William Jones’s and Colonel Wilford’s lists, in that main branch of the Lunar race, of which Puru, Hastin, Ajamidha, Kuru, Santanu, and Yudhishthira are the most distinguished links. The coincidence is so near as to warrant a supposition of identity of source; but close inspection shows Wilford to have had a fuller supply, for he produces new branches, both of Hastin’s and Kuru’s progeny. He has also one name (Bhimasena) towards the close, which is in my lists, but not in Sir William Jones’s; and immediately following Bhimasena, both these lists exhibit Dilipa, wanting in my copy of the Bhagavat, though contained in the Agni Purana: proofs of the diversity of the sources of supply, and highly gratifying when the remoteness of those sources is considered. There is also in my lists Tansu, the nineteenth from Budha, who is not in the lists either of Sir William Jones or Wilford. Again; Wilford has a Suhotra preceding Hastin, who is not in Sir William Jones’s genealogies.[2.3.11]

Again; Jahnu is made the successor to Kuru; whereas the Purana (whence my extracts) makes Parikshit the successor, who adopts the son of Jahnu. This son is Viduratha, who has a place in all three. Other variations are merely orthographical.

A comparison of Sir William Jones’s Solar genealogies with my tables will yield nearly the same satisfactory result as to original authenticity. I say Sir William Jones’s list, because there is no other efficient one. We first differ at the fourth from Ikshwaku. In my list this is Am-Prithu, of which he makes two names, Anenas and Prithu. Thence to Purukutsa, the eighteenth, the difference is only in orthography. To Irisuaka, the twenty-third in mine, the twenty-sixth in Sir William Jones’s list, one name is above accounted for; but here are two wanting in mine, Trasadasyu and Haryaswa. There is, also, considerable difference in the orthography of those names which we have in common. Again; we differ as to the successors of Champa, the twenty-seventh, the founder of Champapur in Bihar. In Sir William’s, Sadeva succeeds, and he is followed by Vijaya; but my authorities state these both to be sons of Champa, and that Vijaya, the [35] younger, was his successor, as the elder, Sadeva, took to religious austerity. The thirty-third and thirty-sixth, Kesi and Dilipa, are not noticed by Sir William Jones; but there is a much more important person than either of these omitted, who is a grand link of connexion, and affording a good synchronism of the earliest history. This is Ambarisha, the fortieth, the contemporary of Gadhi, who was the founder of Gadhipura or Kanauj. Nala, Sarura, and Dilipa (Nos. 44, 45, 54 of my lists) are all omitted by Sir William Jones.

This comparative analysis of the chronologies of both these grand races cannot fail to be satisfactory. Those which I furnish are from the sacred genealogies in the library of a prince who claims common origin with them, and are less liable to interpolation. There is scarcely a chief of character for knowledge who cannot repeat the genealogy of his line. The Prince of Mewar has a peculiarly retentive memory in this way. The professed genealogists, the Bhats, must have them graven on their memory, and the Charanas (the encomiasts) ought to be well versed therein.

The first table exhibits two dynasties of the Solar race of Princes of Ayodhya and Mithila Des, or Tirhut, which latter I have seen nowhere else. It also exhibits four great and three lesser dynasties of the Lunar race; and an eighth line is added, of the race of Yadu, from the annals of the Bhatti tribe at Jaisalmer.

Ere quitting this halting-place in the genealogical history of the ancient races, where the celebrated names of Rama, Krishna, and Yudhishthira close the brazen age of India, and whose issue introduce the present iron age, or Kali Yuga, I shall shortly refer to the few synchronic points which the various authorities admit.

Of periods so remote, approximations to truth are the utmost to be looked for; and it is from the Ramayana and the Puranas these synchronisms are hazarded.

=Harischandra.=—The first commences with a celebrated name of the Solar line, Harischandra, son of Trisanku, still proverbial for his humility.[2.3.12] He is the twenty-fourth,[2.3.13] and declared contemporary of Parasurama, who slew the celebrated Sahasra-Arjuna[2.3.14] of [36] the Haihaya (Lunar) race, Prince of Mahishmati on the Nerbudda. This is confirmed by the Ramayana, which details the destruction of the military class and assumption of political power by the Brahmans, under their chief Parasurama, marking the period when the military class ‘lost the umbrella of royalty,’ and, as the Brahmans ridiculously assert, their purity of blood. This last, however, their own books sufficiently contradict, as the next synchronism will show.

=Sagara.=—This synchronism we have in Sagara, the thirty-second prince of the Solar line, the contemporary of Talajangha, of the Lunar line, the sixth in descent from Sahasra Arjuna, who had five sons preserved from the general slaughter of the military class by Parasurama, whose names are given in the Bhavishya Purana.

Wars were constantly carried on between these great rival races, Surya and Indu, recorded in the Puranas and Ramayana. The Bhavishya describes that between Sagara and Talajangha “to resemble that of their ancestors, in which the Haihayas suffered as severely as before.” But that they had recovered all their power since Parasurama is evident from their having completely retaliated on the Suryas, and expelled the father[2.3.15] of Sagara from his capital of Ayodhya. Sagara and Talajangha appear to have been contemporary with Hastin of Hastinapura, and with Anga, descended from Budha, the founder of Angadesa,[2.3.16] or Ongdesa, and the Anga race.

=Ambarisha.=—The Ramayana affords another synchronism; namely, that Ambarisha of Ayodhya, the fortieth prince of the Solar line, was the contemporary of Gadhi, the founder of Kanauj, and of Lomapada the Prince of Angadesa.

=Krishna.=—The last synchronism is that of Krishna and Yudhishthira, which terminates the [37] brazen, and introduces the Kali Yuga or iron age. But this is in the Lunar line; nor have we any guide by which the difference can be adjusted between the appearance of Rama of the Solar and Krishna of the Lunar races.

Thus of the race of Krostu we have Kansa, Prince of Mathura, the fifty-ninth, and his cousin Krishna, the fifty-eighth from Budha; while of the line of Puru, descending through Ajamidha and Dvimidha, we have Salya, Jarasandha, and Yudhishthira, the fifty-first, fifty-third, and fifty-fourth respectively.

The race of Anga gives Prithusena as one of the actors and survivors of the Mahabharata, and the fifty-third from Budha.

Thus, taking an average of the whole, we may consider fifty-five princes to be the number of descents from Budha to Krishna and Yudhishthira; and, admitting an average of twenty years for each reign, a period of eleven hundred years; which being added to a like period calculated from thence to Vikramaditya, who reigned fifty-six years before Christ, I venture to place the establishment in India Proper of these two grand races, distinctively called those of Surya and Chandra, at about 2256 years before the Christian era; at which period, though somewhat later, the Egyptian, Chinese, and Assyrian monarchies are generally stated to have been established,[2.3.17] and about a century and a half after that great event, the Flood.

Though a passage in the Agni Purana indicates that the line of Surya, of which Ikshwaku was the head, was the first colony which entered India from Central Asia, yet we are compelled to place the patriarch Budha as his contemporary, he being stated to have come from a distant region, and married to Ila, the sister of Ikshwaku.

Ere we proceed to make any remarks on the descendants of Krishna and Arjuna, who carry on the Lunar line, or of the Kushites and Lavites, from Kusa and Lava, the sons of Rama, who carry on that of the Sun, a few observations on the chief kingdoms established by their progenitors on the continent of India will be hazarded in the ensuing Chapter [38].

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Footnote 2.3.1:

Herodotus ii. 99, 100.

Footnote 2.3.2:

The Egyptians claim the sun, also, as the first founder of the kingdom of Egypt.

Footnote 2.3.3:

The Jaisalmer annals give in succession Prayag, Mathura, Kusasthala, Dwaraka, as capitals of the Indu or Lunar race, in the ages preceding the Bharat or Great War. Hastinapur was founded twenty generations after these, by Hastin, from whom ramified the three grand Sakha, viz. Ajamidha, Vimidha, and Purumidha, which diversified the Yadu race.

Footnote 2.3.4:

See Table I. [not reprinted].

Footnote 2.3.5:

Of Delhi—Indraprastha.

Footnote 2.3.6:

Salya, the founder of Aror on the Indus, a capital I had the good fortune to discover. Salya is the Siharas of Abu-l Fazl. [Āīn, ii. 343.]

Footnote 2.3.7:

Jarasandha of Bihar.

Footnote 2.3.8:

Vahoorita, unknown yet. [? Bahuratha.]

Footnote 2.3.9:

Asiatic Researches, vol. v. p. 341.

Footnote 2.3.10:

Ibid. vol. v. p. 241.

Footnote 2.3.11:

I find them, however, in the Agni Purana.

Footnote 2.3.12:

[The tragical story of Harischandra is told by J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, i. 88 ff.]

Footnote 2.3.13:

Sahyadri Khanda of the Skanda Purana.

Footnote 2.3.14:

In the Bhavishya Purana this prince, Sahasra-Arjuna, is termed a Chakravartin, or paramount sovereign. It is said that he conquered Karkotaka of the Takshak, Turushka, or Snake race, and brought with him the population of Mahishmati, and founded Hemanagara in the north of India, on his expulsion from his dominions on the Nerbudda. Traditionary legends yet remain of this prince on the Nerbudda, where he is styled Sahasrabahu, or ‘with a thousand arms,’ figurative of his numerous progeny. The Takshak, or Snake race, here alluded to, will hereafter engage our attention. The names of animals in early times, planets, and things inanimate, all furnished symbolic appellations for the various races. In Scripture we have the fly, the bee, the ram to describe the princes of Egypt, Assyria, and Macedonia; here we have the snake, horse, monkey, etc. The Snake or Takshak race was one of the most extensive and earliest of Higher Asia, and celebrated in all its extent, and to which I shall have to recur hereafter. [By the Takshak race, so often referred to, the author seems to mean a body of Scythian snake-worshippers. There are instances of a serpent barrow, and of the use of the snake as a form of ornament among the Scythians; but beyond this the evidence of worship of the serpent is scanty (E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, 328 f., 66 note, 294, 318, 323, etc.). It was really the Takka, a Panjāb tribe (Beal, Si-yu-ki, i. 165 ff.; Cunningham, Ancient Geography of India, 148 ff.; Stein, Rājatarangini, i. 204 f.).]

In the Ramayana it is stated that the sacrificial horse was stolen by “a serpent (Takshak) assuming the form of Ananta.”

Footnote 2.3.15:

“Asita, the father of Sagara, expelled by hostile kings of the Haihayas, the Talajanghas, and the Sasa-vindus, fled to the Himavat mountains, where he died, leaving his wives pregnant, and from one of these Sagara was born” (Ramayana, i. 41). It was to preserve the Solar race from the destruction which threatened it from the prolific Lunar race, that the Brahman Parasurama armed: evidently proving that the Brahmanical faith was held by the Solar race; while the religion of Budha, the great progenitor of the Lunar, still governed his descendants. This strengthened the opposition of the sages of the Solar line to Vishvamitra’s (of Budha’s or the Lunar line) obtaining Brahmanhood. That Krishna, of Lunar stock, prior to founding a new sect, worshipped Budha, is susceptible of proof.

Footnote 2.3.16:

Angdes, Ongdes, or Undes adjoins Tibet. The inhabitants call themselves Hungias, and appear to be the Hong-niu of the Chinese authors, the Huns (Hūns) of Europe and India, which prove this Tartar race to be Lunar, and of Budha. [Anga, the modern Bhāgalpur, is confounded with Hundes or Tibet.]

Footnote 2.3.17:

Egyptian, under Misraim, 2188 B.C.; Assyrian, 2059; Chinese, 2207. [The first Egyptian dynasty is now dated 5500 B.C.; Chinese, 2852 B.C.; Babylonian, 2300 B.C. Any attempt to establish an Indian chronology from the materials used by the Author does not promise to be successful.]

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Chapter 4

=Ayodhya.=—Ayodhya[2.4.1] was the first city founded by the race of Surya. Like other capitals, its importance must have risen by slow degrees; yet making every allowance for exaggeration, it must have attained great splendour long anterior to Rama. Its site is well known at this day under the contracted name of Oudh, which also designates the country appertaining to the titular wazir of the Mogul empire; which country, twenty-five years ago, nearly marked the limits of Kosala, the pristine kingdom of the Surya race. Overgrown greatness characterized all the ancient Asiatic capitals, and that of Ayodhya was immense. Lucknow, the present capital, is traditionally asserted to have been one of the suburbs of ancient Oudh, and so named by Rama, in compliment to his brother Lakshman.

=Mithila.=—Nearly coeval in point of time with Ayodhya was Mithila,[2.4.2] the capital of a country of the same name, founded by Mithila, the grandson of Ikshwaku.

The name of Janaka,[2.4.3] son of Mithila, eclipsed that of the founder and became the patronymic of this branch of the Solar race.

=Other Kingdoms.=—These are the two chief capitals of the kingdoms of the Solar line described in [39] this early age; though there were others of a minor order, such as Rohtas, Champapura,[2.4.4] etc., all founded previously to Rama.

By the numerous dynasties of the Lunar race of Budha many kingdoms were founded. Much has been said of the antiquity of Prayag; yet the first capital of the Indu or Lunar race appears to have been founded by Sahasra Arjuna, of the Haihaya tribe. This was Mahishmati on the Nerbudda, still existing in Maheswar.[2.4.5] The rivalry between the Lunar race and that of the Suryas of Ayodhya, in whose aid the priesthood armed, and expelled Sahasra Arjuna from Mahishmati, has been mentioned. A small branch of these ancient Haihayas[2.4.6] yet exist in the line of the Nerbudda, near the very top of the valley at Sohagpur, in Baghelkhand, aware of their ancient lineage; and, though few in number, are still celebrated for their valour.[2.4.7]

=Dwarka.=—Kusasthali Dwarka, the capital of Krishna, was founded prior to Prayag, to Surpur, or Mathura. The Bhagavat attributes the foundation of the city to Anrita, the brother of Ikshwaku, of the Solar race, but states not how or when the Yadus became possessed thereof.

The ancient annals of the Jaisalmer family of the Yadu stock give the priority of foundation to Prayag, next to Mathura, and last to Dwarka. All these cities are too well known to require description; especially Prayag, at the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges. The Prasioi were the descendants of Puru[2.4.8] of Prayag, visited by Megasthenes, ambassador of Seleucus, and the principal city of the Yadus, ere it sent forth the four branches from Satwata. At Prayag resided the celebrated Bharat, the son of Sakuntala.

In the Ramayana the Sasavindus[2.4.9] (another Yadu race) are inscribed as allied with the Haihayas in the wars with the race of Surya; and of this race was Sisupal[2.4.10] (the founder of Chedi[2.4.11]), one of the foes of Krishna [40].

=Surpur.=—We are assured by Alexander’s historians that the country and people round Mathura, when he invaded India, were termed Surasenoi. There are two princes of the name of Sursen in the immediate ancestry of Krishna; one his grandfather, the other eight generations anterior. Which of these founded the capital Surpur,[2.4.12] whence the country and inhabitants had their appellation, we cannot say. Mathura and Cleisobara are mentioned by the historians of Alexander as the chief cities of the Surasenoi. Though the Greeks sadly disfigure names, we cannot trace any affinity between Cleisobara and Surpur.

=Hastinapura.=—The city of Hastinapura was built by Hastin a name celebrated in the Lunar dynasties. The name of this city is still preserved on the Ganges, about forty miles south of Hardwar,[2.4.13] where the Ganges breaks through the Siwalik mountains and enters the plains of India. This mighty stream, rolling its masses of waters from the glaciers of the Himalaya, and joined by many auxiliary streams, frequently carries destruction before it. In one night a column of thirty feet in perpendicular height has been known to bear away all within its sweep, and to such an occurrence the capital of Hastin is said to have owed its ruin.[2.4.14] As it existed, however, long after the Mahabharata, it is surprising it is not mentioned by the historians of Alexander, who invaded India probably about eight centuries after that event. In this abode of the sons of Puru resided Porus, one of the two princes of that name, opponents of Alexander, and probably Bindusara the son of Chandragupta, surmised to be the Abisares[2.4.15] and Sandrakottos of Grecian authorities. Of the two princes named Porus mentioned by Alexander’s [41] historians, one resided in the very cradle of the Puru dynasties; the abode of the other bordered on the Panjab: warranting an assertion that the Pori of Alexander were of the Lunar race, and destroying all the claims various authors[2.4.16] have advanced on behalf of the princes of Mewar.[2.4.17]

Hastin sent forth three grand branches, Ajamidha, Dvimidha, and Purumidha. Of the two last we lose sight altogether; but Ajamidha’s progeny spread over all the northern parts of India, in the Panjab and across the Indus. The period, probably one thousand six hundred years before Christ.

From Ajamidha,[2.4.18] in the fourth generation, was Bajaswa, who obtained possessions towards the Indus, and whose five sons gave their name, Panchala, to the Panjab, or space watered by the five rivers. The capital founded by the younger brother, Kampila, was named Kampilnagara.[2.4.19]

The descendants of Ajamidha by his second wife, Kesini, founded another kingdom and dynasty, celebrated in the heroic history of Northern India. This is the Kausika dynasty.

=Kanauj.=—Kusa had four sons, two of whom, Kusanabha and Kusamba, are well known to traditional history, and by the still surviving cities founded by them. Kusanabha founded the city of Mahodaya on the Ganges, afterwards changed to Kanyakubja, or Kanauj, which maintained its celebrity until the Muhammadan invasion of Shihabu-d-din (A.D. 1193), when this overgrown city was laid prostrate for ever. It was not unfrequently called Gadhipura, or the ‘city of Gadhi.’ This practice of multiplying names of cities in the east is very destructive to history. Abu-l Fazl has taken from Hindu authorities an account of Kanauj; and could we admit the authority of a poet on such subjects, Chand, the bard of Prithwiraja,[2.4.20] would afford materials. Ferishta states it in the early ages to have been twenty-five coss [42] (thirty-five miles) in circumference, and that there were thirty thousand shops for the sale of the areca or beetle-nut only;[2.4.21] and this in the sixth century, at which period the Rathor dynasty, which terminated with Jaichand, in the twelfth, had been in possession from the end of the fifth century.

Kusamba also founded a city, called after his own name Kausambi.[2.4.22] The name was in existence in the eleventh century; and ruins might yet exist, if search were made on the shores of the Ganges, from Kanauj southward.

The other sons built two capitals, Dharmaranya and Vasumati; but of neither have we any correct knowledge.

Kuru had two sons, Sudhanush and Parikhshita. The descendants of the former terminated with Jarasandha, whose capital was Rajagriha (the modern Rajmahal) on the Ganges, in the province of Bihar.[2.4.23] From Parikhshita descended the monarchs Santanu and Balaka: the first producing the rivals of the Great War, Yudhishthira and Duryodhana; the other the Balakaputras.

Duryodhana, the successor to the throne of Kuru, resided at the ancient capital, Hastinapura; while the junior branch, Yudhishthira, founded Indraprastha, on the Yamuna or Jumna, which name in the eighth century was changed to Delhi.

The sons of Balaka founded two kingdoms: Palibothra, on the lower Ganges; and Aror,[2.4.24] on the eastern bank of the Indus, founded by Sahl [43].

One great arm of the tree of Yayati remains unnoticed, that of Uru or Urvasu, written by others Turvasu. Uru was the father of a line of kings who founded several empires. Virupa, the eighth prince from Uru, had eight sons, two of whom are particularly mentioned as sending forth two grand shoots, Druhyu and Bhabru. From Druhyu a dynasty was established in the north. Aradwat, with his son Gandhara, is stated to have founded a State: Prachetas is said to have become king of Mlecchhades, or the barbarous regions. This line terminated with Dushyanta, the husband of the celebrated Sakuntala, father of Bharat, and who, labouring under the displeasure of some offended deity, is said by the Hindus to have been the cause of all the woes which subsequently befell the race. The four grandsons of Dushyanta, Kalanjar, Keral, Pand, and Chaul, gave their names to countries.

=Kalanjar.=—Kalanjar is the celebrated fortress in Bundelkhand, so well known for its antiquities, which have claimed considerable notice.

=Kerala.=—Of the second, Kerala, it is only known that in the list of the thirty-six royal races in the twelfth century, the Kerala makes one, but the capital is unknown.[2.4.25]

=Pandya.=—The kingdom founded by Pand may be that on the coast of Malabar, the Pandu-Mandal of the Hindus, the Regia Pandiona of the geographers of the west, and of which, probably, Tanjore is the modern capital.[2.4.26]

=Chaul.=—Chaul[2.4.27] is in the Saurashtra peninsula, and on the coast, towards Jagat Khunt, ‘the world’s end,’ and still retains its appellation.

=Anga.=—The other shoot from Bhabru became celebrated. The thirty-fourth prince, Anga, founded the kingdom of Angadesa, of which Champapuri[2.4.28] was the [44] capital, established about the same time with Kanauj, probably fifteen hundred years before Christ. With him the patronymic was changed, and the Anga race became famous in ancient Hindu history; and to this day Un-des still designates the Alpine regions of Tibet bordering on Chinese Tartary.

Prithusena terminates the line of Anga; and as he survived the disasters of the Great War, his race probably multiplied in those regions, where caste appears never to have been introduced.

=Recapitulation.=—Thus have we rapidly reviewed the dynasties of Surya and Chandra, from Manu and Budha to Rama, Krishna, Yudhishthira, and Jarasandha; establishing, it is hoped, some new points, and perhaps adding to the credibility of the whole.

The wrecks of almost all the vast cities founded by them are yet to be traced in ruins. The city of Ikshwaku and Rama, on the Sarju; Indraprastha, Mathura, Surpura, Prayag on the Yamuna; Hastinapura, Kanyakubja, Rajagriha on the Ganges; Maheswar on the Nerbudda; Aror on the Indus; and Kusasthali Dwarka on the shore of the Indian Ocean. Each has left some memorial of former grandeur: research may discover others.

There is yet an unexplored region in Panchala; Kampilanagara its capital, and those cities established west of the Indus by the sons of Bajaswa.

Traces of the early Indo-Scythic nations may possibly reward the search of some adventurous traveller who may penetrate into Transoxiana, on the sites of Cyropolis, and the most northern Alexandria; in Balkh, and amidst the caves of Bamian.

The plains of India retain yet many ancient cities, from whose ruins somewhat may be gleaned to add a mite to knowledge; and where inscriptions may be found in a character which, though yet unintelligible, will not always remain so in this age of discovery. For such let the search be general, and when once a key is obtained, they will enlighten each other. Wherever the races of Kuru, Uru, and Yadu have swayed, have been found ancient and yet undeciphered characters.

Much would reward him who would make a better digest of the historical and geographical matter in the Puranas. But we must discard the idea that the history of Rama, the Mahabharata of Krishna and the five Pandava[2.4.29] brothers, are [45] mere allegory: an idea supported by some, although their races, their cities, and their coins still exist. Let us master the characters on the columns of Indraprastha, of Prayag and Mewar, on the rocks of Junagarh,[2.4.30] at Bijolli, on the Aravalli, and in the Jain temples scattered over India, and then we shall be able to arrive at just and satisfactory conclusions.

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Footnote 2.4.1:

The picture drawn by Valmiki of the capital of the Solar race is so highly coloured that Ayodhya might stand for Utopia, and it would be difficult to find such a catalogue of metropolitan embellishments in this, the iron age of Oudh. "On the banks of the Surayu is a large country called Kosala, in which is Ayodhya, built by Manu, twelve yojans (forty-eight miles) in extent, with streets regular and well watered. It was filled with merchants, beautified by gardens, ornamented with stately gates and high-arched porticoes, furnished with arms, crowded with chariots, elephants, and horses, and with ambassadors from foreign lands; embellished with palaces whose domes resembled the mountain tops, dwellings of equal height, resounding with the delightful music of the tabor, the flute, and the harp. It was surrounded by an impassable moat, and guarded by archers. Dasaratha was its king, a mighty charioteer. There were no atheists. The affections of the men were in their consorts. The women were chaste and obedient to their lords, endowed with beauty, wit, sweetness, prudence, and industry, with bright ornaments and fair apparel; the men devoted to truth and hospitality, regardful of their superiors, their ancestors, and their gods.

“There were eight councillors; two chosen priests profound in the law, besides another inferior council of six. Of subdued appetites, disinterested, forbearing, pleasant, patient; not avaricious; well acquainted with their duties and popular customs; attentive to the army, the treasury; impartially awarding punishment even on their own sons; never oppressing even an enemy; not arrogant; comely in dress; never confident about doubtful matters; devoted to the sovereign.”

Footnote 2.4.2:

Mithila, the modern Tirhut in Bengal [including the modern districts of Darbhanga, Champāran, and Muzaffarpur].

Footnote 2.4.3:

Kusadhwaja, father of Sita (spouse of Rama), is also called Janaka; a name common in this line, and borne by the third prince in succession after Suvarna Roma, the ‘golden-haired’ chief Mithila.

Footnote 2.4.4:

[Rohtās in the modern Shāhābād district; Champapura in Bhāgalpur.]

Footnote 2.4.5:

Familiarly designated as Sahasra Bahu ki Basti, or ‘the town of the thousand-armed.’ [In Indore State (IGI, xvii. 8).]

Footnote 2.4.6:

The Haihaya race, of the line of Budha, may claim affinity with the Chinese race which first gave monarchs to China [?].

Footnote 2.4.7:

Of this I have heard the most romantic proofs in very recent times.

Footnote 2.4.8:

Puru became the patronymic of this branch of the Lunar race. Of this Alexander’s historians made Porus. The Suraseni of Methoras (descendants of the Sursen of Mathura) were all Purus, the Prasioi of Megasthenes [see p. 37, n.]. Allahabad yet retains its Hindu name of Prayag, pronounced Prag.

Footnote 2.4.9:

The Hares. Sesodia is said to have the same derivation. [From Sesoda in Mewār.]

Footnote 2.4.10:

The princes of Ranthambhor, expelled by Prithwiraja of Delhi, were of this race.

Footnote 2.4.11:

The modern Chanderi [in the Gwalior State, IGI, x. 163 f.] is said to be this capital, and one of the few to which no Englishman has obtained entrance, though I tried hard in 1807. Doubtless it would afford food for curiosity; for, being out of the path of armies in the days of conquest and revolution, it may, and I believe does, retain much worthy of research. [The capital of the Chedi or Kalachuri dynasty was Tripura or Karanbel, near Jabalpur (IGI, x. 12).]

Footnote 2.4.12:

I had the pleasure, in 1814, of discovering a remnant of this city, which the Yamuna has overwhelmed. [The ancient Sūryapura was near Batesar, 40 miles south-east of Agra city. Sir H. Elliot (Supplemental Glossary, 187) remarks that it is strange that the Author so often claims the credit of discovery when its position is fixed in a set of familiar verses. For Sūryapura see A. Führer, Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions, 69.] The sacred place of pilgrimage, Batesar, stands on part of it. My discovery of it was doubly gratifying, for while I found out the Surasenoi of the Greeks, I obtained a medal of the little known Apollodotus, who carried his arms to the mouths of the Indus, and possibly to the centre of the land of the Yadus. He is not included by Bayer in his lists of the kings of Bactria, but we have only an imperfect knowledge of the extent of that dynasty. The Bhagavat Purana asserts thirteen Yavan or Ionian princes to have ruled in Balichdes [?] or Bactria, in which they mention Pushpamitra Dvimitra. We are justified in asserting this to be Demetrius, the son of Euthydemus, but who did not succeed his father, as Menander intervened. Of this last conqueror I also possess a medal, obtained amongst the Surasenoi, and struck in commemoration of victory, as the winged messenger of heavenly peace extends the palm branch from her hand. These two will fill up a chasm in the Bactrian annals, for Menander is well known to them. Apollodotus would have perished but for Arrian, who wrote the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the second century, while commercial agent at Broach, or classically Brigukachchha, the Barugaza of the Greeks. [The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was written by an unknown Greek merchant of first century A.D. (McCrindle, Commerce and Navigation, Introd. p. 1).]

Without the notice this writer has afforded us, my Apollodotus would have lost half its value. Since my arrival in Europe I have also been made acquainted with the existence of a medal of Demetrius, discovered in Bokhara, and on which an essay has been written by a savant at St. Petersburg.

Footnote 2.4.13:

The portal of Hari or Hara, whose trisula or trident is there.

Footnote 2.4.14:

Wilford says this event is mentioned in two Puranas as occurring in the sixth or eighth generation of the Great War. Those who have travelled in the Duab must have remarked where both the Ganges and Jumna have shifted their beds.

Footnote 2.4.15:

[Abisares is Abhisāra in the modern Kashmīr State (Smith, EHI, 59).]

Footnote 2.4.16:

Sir Thomas Roe; Sir Thomas Herbert; the Holstein ambassador (by Olearius); Della Valle; Churchill, in his collection: and borrowing from these, D’Anville, Bayer, Orme, Rennell, etc.

Footnote 2.4.17:

The ignorance of the family of Mewar of the fact would by no means be a conclusive argument against it, could it be otherwise substantiated; but the race of Surya was completely eclipsed at that period by the Lunar and new races which soon poured in from the west of the Indus, and in time displaced them all.

Footnote 2.4.18:

Ajamidha, by his wife Nila, had five sons, who spread their branches (Sakha) on both sides the Indus. Regarding three the Puranas are silent, which implies their migration to distant regions. Is it possible they might be the origin of the Medes? These Medes are descendants of Yayati, third son of the patriarch Manu; and Madai, founder of the Medes, was of Japhet’s line. Ajamidha, the patronymic of the branch of Bajaswa, is from Aja, ‘a goat.’ The Assyrian Mede, in Scripture, is typified by the goat. [These speculations are worthless.]

Footnote 2.4.19:

Of this house was Draupadi, the wife, in common, of the five Pandava brothers: manners peculiar to Scythia.

Footnote 2.4.20:

King of Delhi.

Footnote 2.4.21:

[Briggs i. 57. The accounts of the size of the city are extravagant (Elphinstone, HI, 332 note; Cunningham, ASR, i. 279 ff.).]

Footnote 2.4.22:

An inscription was discovered at Kara on the Ganges, in which Yaspal is mentioned as prince of the realm of Kausambi (As. Res. vol. ix. p. 440). Wilford, in his Essay on the Geography of the Purans, says “Causambi, near Alluhabad” (As. Res. vol. xiv.). [The site is uncertain (Smith, EHI, 293, note).]

Footnote 2.4.23:

[Rājgīr in Patna District.]

Footnote 2.4.24:

Aror, or Alor, was the capital of Sind in remote antiquity: a bridge over the stream which branched from the Indus, near Dara, is almost the sole vestige of this capital of the Sogdoi of Alexander. On its site the shepherds of the desert have established an extensive hamlet; it is placed on a ridge of siliceous rock, seven miles east of the insular Bakhar, and free from the inundations of the Indus. The Sodha tribe, a powerful branch of the Pramara race, has ruled in these countries from remote antiquity, and to a very late period they were lords of Umarkot and Umrasumra, in which divisions was Aror. Sahl and his capital were known to Abu-l Fazl, though he was ignorant of its position, which he transferred to Debal, or Dewal, the modern Tatta. This indefatigable historian thus describes it: “In ancient times there lived a raja named Siharas (Sahl), whose capital was Alor, and his dominions extended north to Kashmīr and south to the ocean” [Āīn, ii. 343]. Sahl, or Sahr, became a titular appellation of the country, its princes, and its inhabitants, the Sehraes. [See p. 21 above.] Alor appears to have been the capital of the kingdom of Sigerdis, conquered by Menander of Bactria. Ibn Haukal, the Arabian geographer, mentions it; but a superfluous point in writing has changed Aror into Azor, or Azour, as translated by Sir W. Ouseley. The illustrious D’Anville mentions it; but, in ignorance of its position, quoting Abulfeda. says, in grandeur “Azour est presque comparable à Mooltan.” I have to claim the discovery of several ancient capital cities in the north of India: Surpur, on the Jumna, the capital of the Yadus; Alor, on the Indus, the capital of the Sodhas; Mandodri, capital of the Pariharas; Chandravati, at the foot of the Aravalli mountains; and Valabhipura, in Gujarat, capital of the Balaka-raes, the Balharas of Arab travellers. The Bala Rajput of Saurashtra may have given the name to Valabhipura, as descendants of Balaka, from Sahl of Aror. The blessing of the bard to them is yet, Tatta Multān ka Rāo (‘lord of Tatta and Multan,’ the seats of the Balaka-putras): nor is it improbable that a branch of these under the Indian Hercules, Balaram, who left India after the Great War, may have founded Balich, or Balkh, emphatically called the ‘mother of cities.’ The Jaisalmer annals assert that the Yadu and Balaka branches of the Indu race ruled Khorasan after the Great War, the Indo-Scythic races of Grecian authors. Besides the Balakas, and the numerous branches of the Indo-Medes, many of the sons of Kuru dispersed over these regions: amongst whom we may place Uttara Kuru (Northern Kurus) of the Puranas, the Ottorokorrhai of the Greek authors. Both the Indu and Surya races were eternally sending their superfluous population to those distant regions, when probably the same primeval religion governed the races east and west of the Indus. [Much of this is incorrect.]

Footnote 2.4.25:

[The Chera or Kerala kingdom comprised the Southern Konkans or Malabar coast, the present Malabar district with Travancore and Cochin, the dynasty being in existence early in the Christian era (Smith, EHI, 447; IGI, x. 192 f.).]

Footnote 2.4.26:

[The Pāndya kingdom included the Madura and Tinnevelly districts, with parts of Trichinopoly, and sometimes Travancore, its capitals being Madura, or Kūdal, and Korkai (Smith, op. cit. 449 f.; IGI, xix. 394 f.).]

Footnote 2.4.27:

From Chaul on the coast, in journeying towards Junagarh, and about seven miles from the former, are the remains of an ancient city.

Footnote 2.4.28:

From the description in the Ramayana of King Dasaratha proceeding to Champamalina, the capital of Lomapada, king of Anga (sixth in descent from the founder), it is evident that it was a very mountainous region, and the deep forests and large rivers presented serious obstructions to his journey. From this I should imagine it impossible that Angadesa should apply to a portion of Bengal, in which there is a Champamalina, described by Colonel Francklin in his Essay on Palibothra. [The Anga kingdom, with its capital at Champapuri, near Bhāgalpur, corresponded to the modern districts of North Monghyr, North Bhāgalpur, and Purnea west of the Mahananda river (IGI, v. 373).]

Footnote 2.4.29:

The history and exploits of the Pandavas and Harikulas are best known in the most remote parts of India: amidst the forest-covered mountains of Saurashtra, the deep woods and caves of Hidimba and Virat (still the shelter of the savage Bhil and Koli), or on the craggy banks of the Charmanvati (Chambal). In each, tradition has localized the shelter of these heroes when exiled from the Yamuna; and colossal figures cut from the mountain, ancient temples and caves inscribed with characters yet unknown, attributed to the Pandavas, confirm the legendary tale.

Footnote 2.4.30:

The ‘ancient city,’ par eminence, is the only name this old capital, at the foot of, and guarding, the sacred mount Girnar, is known by. Abu-l Fazl says it had long remained desolate and unknown, and was discovered by mere accident. [Āīn, ii. 245. For a description of the place see BG, viii. 487; E. C. Bayley, Local Muhammadan Dynasties, Gujarāt, 182 ff.] Tradition even being silent, they gave it the emphatic appellation of Juna (old) Garh (fortress). I have little doubt that it is the Asaldurga, or Asalgarh, of the Guhilot annals; where it is said that prince Asal raised a fortress, called after him, near to Girnar, by the consent of the Dabhi prince, his uncle.

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Chapter 5

Having investigated the line from Ikshwaku to Rama, and that from Budha (the parent and first emigrant of the Indu[2.5.1] race, from Saka Dwipa, or Scythia, to Hindustan) to Krishna and Yudhishthira, a period of twelve hundred years, we proceed to the second division and second table of the genealogies.

=The Suryavansa or Solar Line.=—From Rama all the tribes termed Suryavansa, or ‘Race of the Sun,’ claim descent, as the present princes of Mewar, Jaipur, Marwar, Bikaner, and their numerous clans; while from the Lunar (Indu) line of Budha and Krishna, the families of Jaisalmer and Cutch (the Bhatti[2.5.2] and Jareja races), extending throughout the Indian desert from the Sutlej to the ocean, deduce their pedigrees.

Rama preceded Krishna: but as their historians, Valmiki and Vyasa, who wrote the events they witnessed, were contemporaries, it could not have been by many years [46].

The present table contains the dynasties which succeeded these great beacons of the Solar and Lunar races, and are three in number.[2.5.3]

1. The Suryavansa, descendants of Rama.

2. The Induvansa, descendants of Pandu through Yudhishthira.

3. The Induvansa, descendants of Jarasandha, monarch of Rajagriha.

The Bhagavat and Agni Puranas are the authorities for the lines from Rama and Jarasandha; while that of Pandu is from the Raja Tarangini and Rajavali.

The existing Rajput tribes of the Solar race claim descent from Lava and Kusa, the two elder sons of Rama; nor do I believe any existing tribes trace their ancestry to his other children, or to his brothers.

From the eldest son, Lava, the Ranas of Mewar claim descent: so do the Bargujar tribe, formerly powerful within the confines of the present Amber, whose representative now dwells at Anupshahr on the Ganges.

From Kusa descend the Kachhwaha[2.5.4] princes of Narwar and Amber, and their numerous clans. Amber, though the first in power, is but a scion of Narwar, transplanted about one thousand years back, whose chief, the representative of the celebrated Prince Nala, enjoys but a sorry district[2.5.5] of all his ancient possessions.

The house of Marwar also claims descent from this stem, which appears to originate in an error of the genealogists, confounding the race of Kusa with the Kausika of Kanauj and Kausambi. Nor do the Solar genealogists admit this assumed pedigree.

The Amber prince in his genealogies traces the descent of the Mewar[2.5.6] family from Rama to Sumitra, through Lava, the eldest brother, and not through Kusa,[2.5.7] as in some copies of the Puranas, and in that whence Sir William Jones had his lists [47].

Mr. Bentley, taking this genealogy from the same authority as Sir William Jones, has mutilated it by a transposition, for which his reasons are insufficient, and militate against every opinion of the Hindus. Finding the names Vrihadbala and Vridasura, declared to be princes contemporary with Yudhishthira, he transposes the whole ten princes of his list intervening between Takshak[2.5.8] and Bahuman.[2.5.9]

Bahuman,[2.5.10] or ‘the man with arms’ (Darazdasht or Longimanus) is the thirty-fourth prince from Rama; and his reign must be placed nearly intermediate between Rama and Sumitra, or his contemporary Vikrama, and in the sixth century from either.

Sumitra concludes the line of Surya or Rama from the Bhagavat Purana. Thence it is connected with the present line of Mewar, by Jai Singh’s authorities; which list has been compared with various others, chiefly Jain, as will be related in the annals of Mewar.

It will be seen that the line of Surya exhibits fifty-six princes, from Lava, the son of Rama, to Sumitra, the last prince given in the Puranas. Sir William Jones exhibits fifty-seven.

To these fifty-six reigns I should be willing to allow the average of twenty years, which would give 1120 from Rama to Sumitra, who preceded by a short period Vikramaditya; and as 1100 have been already calculated to have preceded the era of Rama and Yudhishthira, the inference is, that 2200 years elapsed from Ikshwaku, the founder of the Solar line, to Sumitra.

=Chandravansa or the Lunar Line.=—From the Raja Tarangini and Rajavali the Induvansa family (descendants of Pandu through Yudhishthira) is supplied. These works, celebrated in Rajwara as collections of genealogies and historical facts, by the Pandits Vidyadhara and Raghunath, were compiled under the eye of the most learned prince of his period, Sawai Jai Singh of Amber, and give the various dynasties which ruled at Indraprastha, or Delhi, from Yudhishthira to Vikramaditya; and although barren of events, may be considered of value in filling up a period of entire darkness [48].

The Tarangini commences with Adinath[2.5.11] or Rishabhdeva,[2.5.12] being the Jain[2.5.13] theogony. Rapidly noticing the leading princes of the dynasties discussed, they pass to the birth of the kings Dhritarashtra and Pandu, and their offspring, detailing the causes of their civil strife, to that conflict termed the Mahabharata or Great War.

=The Pandava Family.=—The origin of every family, whether of east or west, is involved in fable. That of the Pandu[2.5.14] is entitled to as much credence as the birth of Romulus, or other founders of a race.

Such traditions[2.5.15] were probably invented to cover some great disgrace in the Pandu family, and have relation to the story already related of Vyasa, and the debasement of this branch of the Harikulas. Accordingly, on the death of Pandu, Duryodhana, nephew of Pandu (son of Dhritarashtra, who from blindness could not inherit), asserted their illegitimacy before the assembled kin at Hastinapura. With the aid, however, of the priesthood, and the blind Dhritarashtra, his nephew, Yudhishthira, elder son of Pandu, was invested by him with the seal of royalty, in the capital, Hastinapura.

Duryodhana’s plots against the Pandu and his partisans were so numerous that the five brothers determined to leave for a while their ancestral abodes on the Ganges. They sought shelter in foreign countries about the Indus, and were first protected by Drupada, king of Panchala, at whose capital, Kampilanagara, the surrounding princes had arrived as suitors for the hand of his daughter, Draupadi.[2.5.16] But the prize was destined for the exiled Pandu, and the skill of Arjuna in archery obtained him the fair, who “threw round his neck the (barmala) garland of marriage.” The disappointed princes indulged their resentment against the exile; but by Arjuna’s bow they suffered the fate of Penelope’s suitors, and the Pandu brought home his bride, who became the wife in common of the five brothers: manners[2.5.17] decisively Scythic [49].

The deeds of the brothers abroad were bruited in Hastinapura and the blind Dhritarashtra’s influence effected their recall. To stop, however, their intestine feuds, he partitioned the Pandu sovereignty; and while his son, Duryodhana, retained Hastinapura, Yudhishthira founded the new capital of Indraprastha; but shortly after the Mahabharata he abdicated in favour of his grand-nephew, Parikshita, introducing a new era, called after himself, which existed for eleven hundred years, when it was overturned, and Indraprastha was conquered by Vikramaditya Tuar of Ujjain, of the same race, who established an era of his own.

On the division of the Pandu sovereignty, the new kingdom of Indraprastha eclipsed that of Hastinapura. The brothers reduced to obedience the surrounding[2.5.18] nations, and compelled their princes to sign tributary engagements (paenama).[2.5.19]

Yudhishthira, firmly seated on his throne, determined to signalize his reign and paramount sovereignty, by the imposing and solemn rites of Asvamedha[2.5.20] and Rajasuya.

=The Asvamedha.=—In these magnificent ceremonies, in which princes alone officiate, every duty, down to that of porter, is performed by royalty.

The ‘Steed of Sacrifice’ was liberated under Arjuna’s care, having wandered whither he listed for twelve months; and none daring to accept this challenge of supremacy, he was reconducted to Indraprastha, where, in the meanwhile, the hall of sacrifice was prepared, and all the princes of the land were summoned to attend.

The hearts of the Kurus[2.5.21] burned with envy at the assumption of supremacy by the Pandus, for the Prince of Hastinapura’s office was to serve out the sacred food [50].

The rivalry between the races burst forth afresh; but Duryodhana, who so often failed in his schemes against the safety of his antagonists, determined to make the virtue of Yudhishthira the instrument of his success. He availed himself of the national propensity for play, in which the Rajput continues to preserve his Scythic[2.5.22] resemblance. Yudhishthira fell into the snare prepared for him. He lost his kingdom, his wife, and even his personal liberty and that of his brothers, for twelve years, and became an exile from the plains of the Yamuna.

The traditional history of these wanderers during the term of probation, their many lurking places now sacred, the return to their ancestral abodes, and the grand battle (Mahabharata) which ensued, form highly interesting episodes in the legends of Hindu antiquity.

To decide this civil strife, every tribe and chief of fame, from the Caucasus to the ocean, assembled on Kurukshetra, the field on which the empire of India has since more than once been contested[2.5.23] and lost.

This combat was fatal to the dominant influence of the “fifty-six tribes of Yadu.” On each of its eighteen days’ combat, myriads were slain; for “the father knew not the son, nor the disciple his preceptor.”

Victory brought no happiness to Yudhishthira. The slaughter of his friends disgusted him with the world, and he determined to withdraw from it; previously performing, at Hastinapura, funeral rites for Duryodhana (slain by the hands of Bhima), whose ambition and bad faith had originated this exterminating war. “Having regained his kingdom, he proclaimed a new era, and placing on the throne of Indraprastha, Parikshita, grandson to Arjuna, retired to Dwarka with Krishna and Baldeva: and since the war to the period of writing, 4636 years have elapsed.”[2.5.24]

Yudhishthira, Baldeva, and Krishna, having retired with the wreck of this ill-fated struggle to Dwarka, the two former had soon to lament the death of Krishna, slain by one of the aboriginal tribes of Bhils; against whom, from their shattered condition, they were unable to contend. After this event, Yudhishthira, with [51] Baldeva and a few followers, entirely withdrew from India, and emigrating northwards, by Sind, to the Himalayan mountains, are there abandoned by Hindu traditional history, and are supposed to have perished in the snows.[2.5.25]

From Parikshita, who succeeded Yudhishthira, to Vikramaditya, four[2.5.26] dynasties are given in a continuous chain, exhibiting sixty-six princes to Rajpal, who, invading Kumaon, was slain by Sukwanti. The Kumaun conqueror seized upon Delhi, but was soon dispossessed by Vikramaditya, who transferred the seat of imperial power from Indraprastha to Avanti, or Ujjain, from which time it became the first meridian of the Hindu astronomy.

Indraprastha ceased to be a regal abode for eight centuries, when it was re-established by Anangpal,[2.5.27] the founder of the Tuar race, claiming descent from the Pandus. Then the name of Delhi superseded that of Indraprastha.

"Sukwanti, a prince from the northern mountains of Kumaun, ruled fourteen [52] years, when he was slain by Vikramaditya;[2.5.28] and from the Bharat to this period 2915 years have elapsed."[2.5.29]

Such a period asserted to have elapsed while sixty-six princes occupied the throne, gives an average of forty-four years to each; which is incredible, if not absolutely impossible.

In another passage the compiler says: “I have read many books (shastras), and all agreed to make one hundred princes, all of Khatri[2.5.30] race, occupy the throne of Delhi from Yudhishthira to Prithwiraja, a period of 4100 years,[2.5.31] after which the Ravad[2.5.32] race succeeded.”

It is fortunate for these remnants of historical data that they have only extended the duration of reigns, and not added more heads. Sixty-six links are quite sufficient to connect Yudhishthira and Vikramaditya.

We cannot object to the “one hundred princes” who fill the space assigned from Yudhishthira to Prithwiraja, though there is no proportion between the number which precedes and that which follows Vikramaditya, the former being sixty-six, the latter only thirty-four princes, although the period cannot differ half a century.

Let us apply a test to these one hundred kings, from Yudhishthira to Prithwiraja: the result will be 2250 years.

This test is derived from the average rate of reigns of the chief dynasties of Rajasthan, during a period of 633[2.5.33] to 663[2.5.34] years, or from Prithwiraja to the present date.

Of Mewar 34[2.5.35] princes, or 19 years to each reign.

Of Marwar 28 princes, or 23¼ ” ”

Of Amber 29 princes, or 22½ ” ”

Of Jaisalmer 28 princes, or 23¼ ” ”

giving an average of twenty-two years for each reign [53].

It would not be proper to ascribe a longer period to each reign, and it were perhaps better to give the minimum, nineteen, to extended dynasties; and to the sixty-six princes from Yudhishthira and Vikramaditya not even so much, four revolutions[2.5.36] and usurpations marking this period.

=Jarasandha.=—The remaining line, that of Jarasandha, taken from the Bhagavat, is of considerable importance, and will afford scope for further speculation.

Jarasandha was the monarch of Rajagriha,[2.5.37] or Bihar, whose son Sahadeva, and grandson Marjari, are declared to have been contemporaries of the Mahabharata, and consequently coeval with Parikshita, the Delhi sovereign.

The direct line of Jarasandha terminates in twenty-three descents with Ripunjaya, who was slain, and his throne assumed by his minister, Sanaka, whose dynasty terminated in the fifth generation with Nandivardandhana. Sanaka derived no personal advantage from his usurpation, as he immediately placed his son, Pradyota, on the throne. To these five princes one hundred and thirty-eight years are assigned.

A new race entered Hindustan, led by a conqueror termed Sheshnag, from Sheshnagdesa,[2.5.38] who ascended the Pandu throne, and whose line terminates in ten descents with Mahanandin, of spurious birth. This last prince, who was also named Baikyat, carried on an exterminating warfare against the ancient Rajput princes of pure blood, the Puranas declaring that since the dynasty of Sheshnag the princes were Sudras. Three hundred and sixty years are allotted to these ten princes.

=Chandragupta Maurya.=—A fourth dynasty commenced with Chandragupta Maurya, of the same Takshak race.[2.5.39] The Maurya dynasty consisted of ten princes, who are stated to have passed away in one hundred and thirty-seven years. [322-185 B.C.]

=Sunga, Kanva Dynasties.=—The fifth dynasty of eight princes were from Sringides, and are said to have ruled one hundred and twelve years, when a prince of Kanvades deprived the last of life and kingdom. Of these eight princes, four were of pure blood, when Kistna, by a Sudra woman, succeeded. The dynasty of Kanvades terminates in twenty-three generations with Susarman[2.5.40] [54].

=Recapitulation.=—Thus from the Great War six successive dynasties are given, presenting a continuous chain of eighty-two princes, reckoning from Sahadeva, the successor of Jarasandha, to Susarman.

To some of the short dynasties periods are assigned of moderate length: but as the first and last are without such data, the test already decided on must be applied; which will yield 1704 years, being six hundred and four after Vikramaditya, whose contemporary will thus be Basdeva, the fifty-fifth prince from Sahadeva of the sixth dynasty, said to be a conqueror from the country of Katehr [or Rohilkhand]. If these calculations possess any value, the genealogies of the Bhagavat are brought down to the close of the fifth century following Vikramaditya. As we cannot admit the gift of prophecy to the compilers of these books, we may infer that they remodelled their ancient chronicles during the reign of Susarman, about the year of Vikrama 600, or A.D. 546.

With regard to calculations already adduced, as to the average number of years for the reigns of the foregoing dynasties, a comparison with those which history affords of other parts of the world will supply the best criterion of the correctness of the assumed data.

From the revolt of the ten tribes against Rehoboam[2.5.41] to the capture of Jerusalem, a period of three hundred and eighty-seven years, twenty kings sat on the throne of Judah, making each reign nineteen and a half years; but if we include the three anterior reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon, prior to the revolt, the result will be twenty-six and a half years each.

From the dismemberment of the Assyrian[2.5.42] empire under Sardanapalus, nearly nine hundred years before Christ, the three consequent confluent dynasties of Babylonia, Assyria, and Media afford very different results for comparison.

The Assyrian preserves the medium, while the Babylonish and Median run into extremes. Of the nine princes who swayed Babylon, from the period of its separation from, till its reunion to Assyria, a space of fifty-two years, Darius, who ruled Media sixty [thirty-six] years [55], outlived the whole. Of the line of Darius there were but six princes, from the separation of the kingdoms to their reunion under Cyrus, a period of one hundred and seventy-four years, or twenty-nine to each reign.

The Assyrian reigns form a juster medium. From Nebuchadnezzar to Sardanapalus we have twenty-two years to a reign; but from thence to the extinction of this dynasty, eighteen.

The first eleven kings, the Heraclidae of Lacedaemon, commencing with Eurysthenes (1078 before Christ), average thirty-two years; while in republican Athens, nearly contemporary, from the first perpetual archon until the office became decennial in the seventh Olympiad, the reigns of the twelve chief magistrates average twenty-eight years and a half.

Thus we have three periods, Jewish, Spartan, and Athenian, each commencing about eleven hundred years before Christ, not half a century remote from the Mahabharata; with those of Babylonia, Assyria, and Media, commencing where we quit the Grecian, in the eighth century before the Christian era, the Jewish ending in the sixth century.

However short, compared with our Solar and Lunar dynasties, yet these, combined with the average reigns of existing Hindu dynasties, will aid the judgment in estimating the periods to be assigned to the lines thus afforded, instead of following the improbable value attached by the Brahmans.

From such data, longevity appears in unison with climate and simplicity of life: the Spartan yielding the maximum of thirty-two to a reign, while the more luxurious Athens gives twenty-eight and a half. The Jews, from Saul to their exile “to the waters of Babylon,” twenty-six and a half. The Medes equal the Lacedaemonians, and in all history can only be paralleled by the princes of Anhilwara, one of whom, Chawand, almost equalled Darius.[2.5.43]

Of the separated ten tribes, from the revolt to the captivity, twenty kings of Israel passed away in two centuries, or ten years each.

The Spartan and Assyrian present the extremes of thirty-two and eighteen, giving a medium of twenty-five years to a reign.

The average result of our four Hindu dynasties, in a period of nearly seven hundred years, is twenty-two years.

From all which data, I would presume to assign from twenty to twenty-two years to each reign in lines of fifty princes [56].

If the value thus obtained be satisfactory, and the lines of dynasties derived from so many authorities correct, we shall arrive at the same conclusion with Mr. Bentley; who, by the more philosophical process of astronomical and genealogical combination, places Yudhishthira’s era in the year 2825 of the world; which being taken from 4004 (the world’s age at the birth of Christ) will leave 1179 before Christ for Yudhishthira’s era, or 1123 before Vikramaditya.[2.5.44]

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Footnote 2.5.1:

Indu, Som, Chandra, in Sanskrit ‘the moon’; hence the Lunar race is termed the Chandravansa, Somvansa, or Induvansa, most probably the root of Hindu. [Pers. hindū, Skr. sindhu.]

Footnote 2.5.2:

The isolated and now dependent chieftainship of Dhat, of which Umarkot is the capital, separates the Bhattis from the Jarejas. Dhat is now amalgamated with Sind; its prince, of Pramara race and Sodha tribe, ancient lords of all Sind.

Footnote 2.5.3:

A fourth and fifth might have been given, but imperfect. First the descendants of Kusa, second son of Rama, from whence the princes of Narwar and Amber: secondly, the descendants of Krishna, from whom the princes of Jaisalmer.

Footnote 2.5.4:

In modern times always written and pronounced Kutchwāha.

Footnote 2.5.5:

It is in the plateau of Central India, near Shahabad.

Footnote 2.5.6:

Whatever dignity attaches to this pedigree, whether true or false, every prince, and every Hindu of learning, admit the claims of the princes of Mewar as heir to ‘the chair of Rama’; and a degree of reverence has consequently attached, not only to his person, but to the seat of his power. When Mahadaji Sindhia was called by the Rana to reduce a traitorous noble in Chitor, such was the reverence which actuated that (in other respects) little scrupulous chieftain, that he could not be prevailed on to point his cannon on the walls within which consent established ‘the throne of Rama.’ The Rana himself, then a youth, had to break the ice, and fired a cannon against his own ancient abode.

Footnote 2.5.7:

Bryant, in his Analysis, mentions that the children of the Cushite Ham used his name in salutation as a mark of recognition. ‘Ram, Ram,’ is the common salutation in these Hindu countries; the respondent often joining Sita’s name with that of her consort Rama, ‘Sita Ram.’

Footnote 2.5.8:

Twenty-eighth prince from Rama in Mr. Bentley’s list, and twenty-fifth in mine.

Footnote 2.5.9:

Thirty-seventh in Mr. Bentley’s list and thirty-fourth in mine; but the intervening names being made to follow Rama, Bahuman (written by him Banumat) follows Takshak.

Footnote 2.5.10:

The period of time, also, would allow of their grafting the son of Artaxerxes and father of Darius, the worshipper of Mithras, on the stem of the adorers of Surya, while a curious notice of the Raja Jai Singh’s on a subsequent name on this list which he calls Naushirwan, strengthens the coincidence. Bahuman (see article ‘Bahaman,’ D’Herbelot’s Bibl. Orient.) actually carried his arms into India, and invaded the kingdoms of the Solar race of Mithila and Magadha. The time is appropriate to the first Darius and his father; and Herodotus [iii. 94] tells us that the richest and best of the satrapies of his empire was the Hindu.

Footnote 2.5.11:

First lord.

Footnote 2.5.12:

Lord of the Bull.

Footnote 2.5.13:

Vidhyadhar was a Jain.

Footnote 2.5.14:

Pandu not being blessed with progeny, his queen made use of a charm by which she enticed the deities from their spheres. To Dharma Raj (Minos) she bore Yudhishthira; by Pavan (Aeolus) she had Bhima; by Indra (Jupiter Coelus) she had Arjuna, who was taught by his sire the use of the bow, so fatal in the Great War; and Nakula and Sahadeva owed their birth to Aswini Kumar (Aesculapius) the physician of the gods.

Footnote 2.5.15:

We must not disregard the intellect of the Amber prince, who allowed these ancient traditions to be incorporated with the genealogy compiled under his eye. The prince who obtained De Silva from Emmanuel III. of Portugal, who combined the astronomical tables of Europe and Asia, and raised these monuments of his scientific genius in his favourite pursuit (astronomy) in all the capital cities of India, while engrossed in war and politics, requires neither eulogy nor defence.

Footnote 2.5.16:

Drupada was of the Aswa race, being descended from Bajaswa (or Hyaswa) of the line of Ajamidha.

Footnote 2.5.17:

This marriage, so inconsistent with Hindu delicacy, is glossed over. Admitting the polyandry, but in ignorance of its being a national custom, puerile reasons are interpolated. In the early annals of the same race, predecessors of the Jaisalmer family, the younger son is made to succeed: also Scythic or Tatar. The manners of the Scythae described by Herodotus are found still to exist among their descendants: “a pair of slippers at the wife’s door” is a signal well understood by all Eimauk husbands (Elphinstone’s Caubul, vol. ii. p. 251).

Footnote 2.5.18:

Tarangini.

Footnote 2.5.19:

Paenama is a [Persian] word peculiarly expressive of subserviency to paramount authority, whether the engagement be in money or service: from pae, ‘the foot.’

Footnote 2.5.20:

Sacrifice of the horse to the sun, of which a full description is given hereafter.

Footnote 2.5.21:

Duryodhana, as the elder branch, retained his title as head of the Kurus; while the junior, Yudhishthira, on the separation of authority, adopted his father’s name, Pandu, as the patronymic of his new dynasty. The site of the great conflict (or Mahabharata) between these rival clans, is called Kurukshetra, or ‘Field of the Kurus.’

Footnote 2.5.22:

Herodotus describes the ruinous passion for play amongst the Scythic hordes, and which may have been carried west by Odin into Scandinavia and Germany. Tacitus tells us that the Germans, like the Pandus, staked even personal liberty, and were sold as slaves by the winner [Germania, 24].

Footnote 2.5.23:

On it the last Hindu monarch, Prithwiraja, lost his kingdom, his liberty, and life.

Footnote 2.5.24:

Rajatarangini. The period of writing was A.D. 1740.

Footnote 2.5.25:

Having ventured to surmise analogies between the Hercules of the east and west, I shall carry them a point further. Amidst the snows of Caucasus, Hindu legend abandons the Harikulas, under their leaders Yudhishthira and Baldeva: yet if Alexander established his altars in Panchala, amongst the sons of Puru and the Harikulas, what physical impossibility exists that a colony of them, under Yudhishthira and Baldeva, eight centuries anterior, should have penetrated to Greece? Comparatively far advanced in science and arms, the conquest would have been easy. When Alexander attacked the ‘free cities’ of Panchala, the Purus and Harikulas who opposed him evinced the recollections of their ancestor, in carrying the figure of Hercules as their standard. Comparison proves a common origin to Hindu and Grecian mythology; and Plato says the Greeks had theirs from Egypt and the East. May not this colony of the Harikulas be the Heraclidae, who penetrated into the Peloponnesus (according to Volney) 1078 years before Christ, sufficiently near our calculated period of the Great War? The Heraclidae claimed from Atreus: the Harikulas claim from Atri. Eurysthenes was the first king of the Heraclidae: Yudhishthira has sufficient affinity in name to the first Spartan king not to startle the etymologist, the d and r being always permutable in Sanskrit. The Greeks or Ionians are descended from Yavan, or Javan, the seventh from Japhet. The Harikulas are also Yavans claiming from Javan or Yavan, the thirteenth in descent from Yayati, the third son of the primeval patriarch. The ancient Heraclidae of Greece asserted they were as old as the sun, and older than the moon. May not this boast conceal the fact that the Heliadae (or Suryavansa) of Greece had settled there anterior to the colony of the Indu (Lunar) race of Harikula? In all that relates to the mythological history of the Indian demi-gods, Baldeva (Hercules), Krishna or Kanhaiya (Apollo), and Budha (Mercury), a powerful and almost perfect resemblance can be traced between those of Hindu legend, Greece, and Egypt. Baldeva (the god of strength) Harikula, is still worshipped as in the days of Alexander; his shrine at Baldeo in Vraj (the Surasenoi of the Greeks), his club a ploughshare, and a lion’s skin his covering. A Hindu intaglio of rare value represents Hercules exactly as described by Arrian, with a monogram consisting of two ancient characters now unknown, but which I have found wherever tradition assigns a spot to the Harikulas; especially in Saurashtra, where they were long concealed on their exile from Delhi. This we may at once decide to be the exact figure of Hercules which Arrian describes his descendants to have carried as their standard, when Porus opposed Alexander. The intaglio will appear in the Trans. R.A.S. [The speculations in this note have no authority.]

Footnote 2.5.26:

The twenty-eighth prince, Khemraj, was the last in lineal descent from Parikshita, the grand-nephew of Yudhishthira. The first dynasty lasted 1864 years. The second dynasty was of Visarwa, and consisted of fourteen princes; this lasted five hundred years. The third dynasty was headed by Mahraj, and terminated by Antinai, the fifteenth prince. The fourth dynasty was headed by Dudhsen, and terminated by Rajpal, the ninth and last king (Rajatarangini).

Footnote 2.5.27:

The Rajatarangini gives the date A.V. 848, or A.D. 792, for this; and adds: “Princes from Siwalik, or northern hills, held it during this time, and it long continued desolate until the Tuars.”

Footnote 2.5.28:

56 B.C. [Cunningham remarks that the defeat of Rāja Pāl of Delhi by Sukwanti, Sukdati, or Sukāditya, Rāja of Kumaun, must be assigned to A.D. 79: but he has little confidence in such traditions, unless supported by independent evidence (ASR, i. 138).]

Footnote 2.5.29:

Raghunath.

Footnote 2.5.30:

Rājput, or Kshatriya.

Footnote 2.5.31:

This period of 4100 years may have been arrived at by the compiler taking for granted the number of years mentioned by Raghunath as having elapsed from the Mahabharata to Vikramaditya, namely 2915, and adding thereto the well-authenticated period of Prithwiraja, who was born in Samvat 1215: for if 2915 be subtracted from 4100, it leaves 1185, the period within thirty years of the birth of Prithwiraja, according to the Chauhan chronicles.

Footnote 2.5.32:

Solar.

Footnote 2.5.33:

From S. 1250, or A.D. 1194, captivity and dethronement of Prithwiraja.

Footnote 2.5.34:

From S. 1212, A.D. 1516, the founding of Jaisalmer by Jaisal, to the accession of Gaj Singh, the present prince, in S. 1876, or A.D. 1820.

Footnote 2.5.35:

Many of its early princes were killed in battle; and the present prince’s father succeeded his own nephew, which was retrograding.

Footnote 2.5.36:

The historians sanction the propriety of these changes, in their remarks, that the deposed were “deficient in [capacity for] the cares and duties of government.”

Footnote 2.5.37:

Rajagriha, or Rajmahal, capital of Magadhades, or Bihar. [In Patna district, IGI, xxi. 72.]

Footnote 2.5.38:

Figuratively, the country of the ‘head of the Snakes’; Nag, Tak, or Takshak, being synonymous: and which I conclude to be the abode of the ancient Scythic Tachari of Strabo, the Tak-i-uks of the Chinese, the Tajiks of the present day of Turkistan. This race appears to be the same with that of the Turushka (of the Puranas), who ruled on the Arvarma (the Araxes), in Sakadwipa, or Scythia. [This is a confused reference to the Saisunāga dynasty, which took its name from its founder, Sisunāga, and comprised roughly the present Patna and Gaya districts, its capital being Rājagriha; the modern Rājgīr-Sisunāga means ‘a young elephant,’ and has no connexion with Sheshnāg, the serpent king (Vishnu Purana, 466 f.; Smith, EHI, 31).]

Footnote 2.5.39:

[Chandragupta Maurya was certainly not a “Takshak”: he was probably “an illegitimate scion of the Nanda family” (Smith, EHI, 42).]

Footnote 2.5.40:

Mr. Bentley (‘On the Hindu System of Astronomy,’ As. Res. vol. viii. pp. 236-7) states that the astronomer, Brahmagupta, flourished about A.D. 527, or of Vikrama 583, shortly preceding the reign of Susarman; that he was the founder of the system called the Kalpa of Brahma, on which the present Hindu chronology is founded, and to which Mr. Bentley says their historical data was transferred. This would strengthen my calculations; but the weight of Mr. Bentley’s authority has been much weakened by his unwarrantable attack on Mr. Colebrooke, whose extent of knowledge is of double value from his entire aversion to hypothesis. [The Sunga dynasty, founded by Pushyamitra, about 185 B.C., lasted till about 73 B.C., when the tenth king, Devabhūti, was slain by his Brāhman minister, Vasudeva, who founded the Kānva dynasty. He was followed by three kings, and the dynasty lasted only forty-five years, the last member of it being slain, about 28 B.C., by a king of the Andhra or Sātāvahana dynasty, then reigning in the Deccan. For the scanty details see Smith, EHI, 198 ff.]

Footnote 2.5.41:

987 years before Christ.

Footnote 2.5.42:

For these and the following dates I am indebted to Goguet’s chronological tables in his Origin of Laws.

Footnote 2.5.43:

[It is not clear to whom the author refers: Chāmunda Chāvada (A.D. 880-908): or Chāmunda Chaulukya (A.D. 997-1010), (BG, i. Part i. 154, 162).]

Footnote 2.5.44:

[The evidence quoted in this chapter by which the author endeavours to frame a chronology for this early period, is untrustworthy. Mr. Pargiter tentatively dates the great Bhārata battle about 1000 B.C., but the evidence is very uncertain (JRAS, January 1910, p. 56; April 1914, p. 294).]

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Chapter 6

=Rajputs and Mongols.=—Having thus brought down the genealogical history of the ancient martial races of India, from the earliest period to Yudhishthira and Krishna, and thence to Vikramaditya and the present day, a few observations on the races invading India during that time, and now ranked amongst the thirty-six royal races of Rajasthan, affording scope for some curious analogies, may not be inopportune.

The tribes here alluded to are the Haihaya or Aswa, the Takshak, and the Jat or Getae; the similitude of whose theogony, names in their early genealogies, and many other points, with the Chinese, Tatar, Mogul, Hindu, and Scythic races, would appear to warrant the assertion of one common origin.

Though the periods of the passage of these tribes into India cannot be stated with exactitude, the regions whence they migrated may more easily be ascertained.

=Mongol Origin.=—Let us compare the origin of the Tatars and Moguls, as given by their historian, Abulghazi, with the races we have been treating of from the Puranas.

Mogol was the name of the Tatarian patriarch. His son was Aghuz,[2.6.1] the founder of all the races of those northern regions, called Tatars and Mogol [57]. Aghuz had six sons.[2.6.2] First, Kun,[2.6.3] ‘the sun,’ the Surya of the Puranas; secondly, Ai,[2.6.4] ‘the moon,’ the Indu of the Puranas. In the latter, Ai, we have even the same name [Ayus] as in the Puranas for the Lunar ancestor. The Tatars all claim from Ai, ‘the moon,’ the Indus of the Puranas. Hence with them, as with the German tribes, the moon was always a male deity. The Tatar Ai had a son, Yulduz. His son was Hyu, from whom[2.6.5] came the first race of the kings of China. The Puranic Ayus had a son, Yadu (pronounced Jadon); from whose third son, Haya, the Hindu genealogist deduces no line, and from whom the Chinese may claim their Indu[2.6.5] origin. Il Khan (ninth from Ai) had two sons: first, Kian; and secondly, Nagas; whose descendants peopled all Tatary. From Kian, Jenghiz Khan claimed descent.[2.6.6] Nagas was probably the founder of the Takshak, or Snake race[2.6.7] of the Puranas and Tatar genealogists, the Tak-i-uk Moguls of De Guignes.

Such are the comparative genealogical origins of the three races. Let us compare their theogony, the fabulous birth assigned by each for the founder of the Indu race.

=Mongol and Hindu Traditions.=—1. The Puranic. “Ila (the earth), daughter of the sun-born Ikshwaku, while wandering in the forests was encountered by Budha (Mercury), and from the rape of Ila sprung the Indu race.”

2. The Chinese account of the birth of Yu (Ayu), their first monarch. “A star[2.6.8] (Mercury or Fo) struck his mother while journeying. She conceived, and gave to the world Yu, the founder of the first dynasty which reigned in China. Yu divided China into nine provinces, and began to reign 2207[2.6.9] years before Christ” [58].

Thus the Ai of the Tatars, the Yu of the Chinese, and the Ayus of the Puranas, evidently indicate the great Indu (Lunar) progenitor of the three races. Budha (Mercury), the son of Indu (the moon), became the patriarchal and spiritual leader; as Fo, in China; Woden and Teutates,[2.6.10] of the tribes migrating to Europe. Hence it follows that the religion of Buddha must be coeval with the existence of these nations; that it was brought into India Proper by them, and guided them until the schism of Krishna and the Suryas, worshippers of Bal, in time depressed them, when the Buddha religion was modified into its present mild form, the Jain.[2.6.11]

=Scythian Traditions.=—Let us contrast with these the origin of the Scythic nations, as related by Diodorus;[2.6.12] when it will be observed the same legends were known to him which have been handed down by the Puranas and Abulghazi.

"The Scythians had their first abodes on the Araxes.[2.6.13] Their origin was from a virgin born of the earth[2.6.14] of the shape of a woman from the waist upwards, and below a serpent (symbol of Budha or Mercury); that Jupiter had a son by her, named Scythes,[2.6.15] whose name the nation adopted. Scythes had two sons, Palas and Napas (qu. the Nagas, or Snake race, of the Tatar genealogy?), who were celebrated for their great actions, and who divided the countries; and the nations were called after them, the Palians (qu. Pali?)[2.6.16] and Napians. They led their forces as far as the Nile on Egypt, and subdued many nations. They enlarged the empire of the Scythians as far as the Eastern ocean, and to the Caspian and lake Moeotis. The nation had many kings, from whom the Sacans (Sakae), the Massagetae (Getae or Jats), the Ari-aspians (Aswas of Aria), and many other races. They overran Assyria and Media[2.6.17] [59], overturning the empire, and transplanting the inhabitants to the Araxes under the name of Sauro-Matians."[2.6.18]

As the Sakae, Getae, Aswa, and Takshak are names which have crept in amongst our thirty-six royal races, common with others also to early civilization in Europe, let us seek further ancient authority on the original abodes.

Strabo[2.6.19] says: "All the tribes east of the Caspian are called Scythic. The Dahae[2.6.20] next the sea, the Massagetae (great Gete) and Sakae more eastward; but every tribe has a particular name. All are nomadic: but of these nomads the best-known are the Asii,[2.6.21] the Pasiani, Tochari, Sacarauli, who took Bactria from the Greeks. The Sakae[2.6.22] (‘races’) have made in Asia irruptions similar to those of the Cimmerians; thus they have been seen to possess themselves of Bactria, and the best district of Armenia, called after them Sakasenae."[2.6.23]

Which of the tribes of Rajasthan are the offspring of the Aswa and Medes, of Indu race, returned under new appellations, we shall not now stop to inquire, limiting our hypothesis to the fact of invasions, and adducing some evidence of such being simultaneous with migrations of the same bands into Europe. Hence the inference of a common origin between the Rajput and early races of Europe; to support which, a similar mythology, martial manners and poetry, language, and even music and architectural ornaments, may be adduced.[2.6.24]

Of the first migrations of the Indu-Scythic Getae, Takshak, and Asii, into India, that of Sheshnag (Takshak), from Sheshnagdes (Tocharistan?) or Sheshnag, six centuries, by calculation, before Christ, is the first noticed by the Puranas.[2.6.25] About this period a grand irruption of the same races conquered Asia Minor, and [60] eventually Scandinavia; and not long after the Asii and Tochari overturned the Greek kingdom of Bactria, the Romans felt the power of the Asi,[2.6.26] the Chatti, and Cimbri, from the Baltic shore.

“If we can show the Germans to have been originally Scythae or Goths (Getes or Jits), a wide field of curiosity and inquiry is open to the origin of government, manners, etc.; all the antiquities of Europe will assume a new appearance, and, instead of being traced to the bands of Germany, as Montesquieu and the greatest writers have hitherto done, may be followed through long descriptions of the manners of the Scythians, etc., as given by Herodotus. Scandinavia was occupied by the Scythae five hundred years before Christ. These Scythians worshipped Mercury (Budha), Woden or Odin, and believed themselves his progeny. The Gothic mythology, by parallel, might be shown to be Grecian, whose gods were the progeny of Coelus and Terra (Budha and Ella).[2.6.27] Dryads, satyrs, fairies, and all the Greek and Roman superstition, may be found in the Scandinavian creed. The Goths consulted the heart of victims, had oracles, had sibyls, had a Venus in Freya, and Parcae in the Valkyrie.”[2.6.28]

=The Scythian Descent of the Rajputs.=—Ere we proceed to trace these mythological resemblances, let us adduce further opinions in proof of the position assumed of a common origin of the tribes of early Europe and the Scythic Rajput.

The translator of Abulghazi, in his preface, observes: "Our contempt for the Tatars would lessen did we consider how nearly we stand related to them, and that our ancestors originally came from the north of Asia, and that our customs, laws, and way of living were formerly the same as theirs. In short, that we are no other than a colony of Tatars.

"It was from Tatary those people came, who, under the successive names of Cymbrians,[2.6.29] Kelts, and Gauls, possessed all the northern part of Europe. What were the Goths, Huns, Alans, Swedes, Vandals, Franks, but swarms of the same hive? The Swedish chronicles bring the Swedes[2.6.30] from Cashgar, and [61] the affinity between the Saxon language and Kipchak is great; and the Keltick language still subsisting in Britany and Wales is a demonstration that the inhabitants are descended from Tatar nations."

From between the parallels of 30° and 50° of north latitude, and from 75° to 95° of east longitude, the highlands of Central Asia, alike removed from the fires of the equator and the cold of the arctic circle, migrated the races which passed into Europe and within the Indus. We must therefore voyage up the Indus, cross the Paropanisos, to the Oxus or Jihun, to Sakatai[2.6.31] or Sakadwipa, and from thence and the Dasht-i Kipchak conduct the Takshaks, the Getae, the Kamari, the Chatti, and the Huns, into the plains of Hindustan.

We have much to learn in these unexplored regions, the abode of ancient civilisation, and which, so late as Jenghiz Khan’s invasion, abounded with large cities. It is an error to suppose that the nations of Higher Asia were merely pastoral; and De Guignes, from original authorities, informs us that when the Su invaded the Yueh-chi or Jats, they found upwards of a hundred cities containing the merchandise of India, and with the currency bearing the effigies of the prince.

Such was the state of Central Asia long before the Christian era, though now depopulated and rendered desert by desolating wars, which have raged in these countries, and to which Europe can exhibit no parallel. Timur’s wars, in more modern times, against the Getic nation, will illustrate the paths of his ambitious predecessors in the career of destruction.

If we examine the political limits of the great Getic nation in the time of Cyrus, six centuries before Christ, we shall find them little circumscribed in power on the rise of Timur, though twenty centuries had elapsed [62].

=Jāts and Getae.=—At this period (A.D. 1330), under the last prince of Getic race, Tughlak Timur Khan, the kingdom of Chagatai[2.6.32] was bounded on the west by the Dasht-i Kipchak, and on the south by the Jihun, on which river the Getic Khan, like Tomyris, had his capital. Kokhand, Tashkent, Utrar,[2.6.33] Cyropolis, and the most northern of the Alexandrias, were within the bounds of Chagatai.

The Getae, Jut, or Jat, and Takshak races, which occupy places amongst the thirty-six royal races of India, are all from the region of Sakatai. Regarding their earliest migrations, we shall endeavour to make the Puranas contribute; but of their invasions in more modern times the histories of Mahmud of Ghazni, and Timur abundantly acquaint us.

From the mountains of Jud[2.6.34] to the shores of Makran,[2.6.35] and along the Ganges, the Jat is widely spread; while the Takshak name is now confined to inscriptions or old writings.

Inquiries in their original haunts, and among tribes now under different names, might doubtless bring to light their original designation, now best known within the Indus; while the Takshak or Takiuk may probably be discovered in the Tajik, still in his ancient haunts, the Transoxiana and Chorasmia of classic authors; the Mawaru-n-nahr of the Persians; the Turan, Turkistan, or Tocharistan of native geography; the abode of the Tochari, Takshak, or Turushka invaders of India, described in the Puranas and existing inscriptions.

The Getae had long maintained their independence when Tomyris defended their liberty against Cyrus. Driven in successive wars across the Sutlej, we shall elsewhere show them preserving their ancient habits, as desultory cavaliers, under the Jat leader of Lahore, in pastoral communities in Bikaner, the Indian desert and elsewhere, though they have lost sight of their early history. The transition from pastoral to agricultural pursuits is but short, and the descendant of the nomadic Getae of Transoxiana is now the best husbandman on the plains of Hindustan[2.6.36] [63].

The invasion of these Indu-Scythic tribes, Getae, Takshaks, Asii, Chatti, Rajpali,[2.6.37] Huns, Kamari, introduced the worship of Budha, the founder of the Indu or Lunar race.

Herodotus says the Getae were theists,[2.6.38] and held the tenets of the soul’s immortality; so with the Buddhists.

Before, however, touching on points of religious resemblance between the Asii, Getae, or Jut of Scandinavia (who gave his name to the Cimbric Chersonese) and the Getae of Scythia and India, let us make a few remarks on the Asii or Aswa.

=The Aswa.=—To the Indu race of Aswa (the descendants of Dvimidha and Bajaswa), spread over the countries on both sides the Indus, do we probably owe the distinctive appellation of Asia. Herodotus[2.6.39] says the Greeks denominated Asia from the wife of Prometheus; while others deduce it from a grandson of Manes, indicating the Aswa descendants of the patriarch Manu. Asa,[2.6.40] Sakambhari,[2.6.41] Mata,[2.6.42] is the divinity Hope, ‘mother-protectress of the Sakha,’ or races. Every Rajput adores Asapurna, ‘the fulfiller of desire’; or, as Sakambhari Devi (goddess protectress), she is invoked previous to any undertaking.

The Aswas were chiefly of the Indu race; yet a branch of the Suryas also bore this designation. It appears to indicate their celebrity as horsemen.[2.6.43] All of them worshipped the horse, which they sacrificed to the sun. This grand rite, the Asvamedha, on the festival of the winter solstice, would alone go far to exemplify their common Scythic origin with the Getic Saka, authorising the inference of Pinkerton, “that a grand Scythic nation extended from the Caspian to the Ganges.”

=The Asvamedha.=—The Asvamedha was practised on the Ganges and Sarju by the Solar princes [64], twelve hundred years before Christ, as by the Getae in the time of Cyrus; “deeming it right,” says Herodotus [i. 216] “to offer the swiftest of created to the chief of uncreated beings”: and this worship and sacrifice of the horse has been handed down to the Rajput of the present day. A description of this grand ceremony shall close these analogies.

The Getic Asii carried this veneration for the steed, symbolic of their chief deity the sun, into Scandinavia: equally so of all the early German tribes, the Su, Suevi, Chatti, Sucimbri, Getae, in the forests of Germany, and on the banks of the Elbe and Weser. The milk-white steed was supposed to be the organ of the gods, from whose neighing they calculated future events; notions possessed also by the Aswa, sons of Budha (Woden), on the Yamuna and Ganges, when the rocks of Scandinavia and the shores of the Baltic were yet untrod by man. It was this omen which gave Darius Hystaspes[2.6.44] (hinsna, ‘to neigh,’ aspa, ‘a horse’) a crown. The bard Chand makes it the omen of death to his principal heroes. The steed of the Scandinavian god of battle was kept in the temple of Upsala, and always “found foaming and sweating after battle.” “Money,” says Tacitus, “was only acceptable to the German when bearing the effigies of the horse.”[2.6.45]

In the Edda we are informed that the Getae, or Jats, who entered Scandinavia, were termed Asi, and their first settlement As-gard.[2.6.46]

Pinkerton rejects the authority of the Edda and follows Torfaeus, who “from Icelandic chronicles and genealogies concludes Odin to have come into Scandinavia in the time of Darius Hystaspes, five hundred years before Christ.”

This is the period of the last Buddha, or Mahavira, whose era is four hundred and seventy-seven years before Vikrama, or five hundred and thirty-three before Christ.

The successor of Odin in Scandinavia was Gotama; and Gautama was the successor of the last Buddha, Mahavira,[2.6.47] who as Gotama, or Gaudama, is still adored from the Straits of Malacca to the Caspian Sea.

“Other antiquaries,” says Pinkerton, “assert another Odin, who was put as the supreme deity one thousand years before Christ” [65].

Mallet admits two Odins, but Mr. Pinkerton wishes he had abided by that of Torfaeus, in 500 A.C.

It is a singular fact that the periods of both the Scandinavian Odins should assimilate with the twenty-second Buddha [Jain Tirthakara], Neminath, and twenty-fourth and last, Mahavira; the first the contemporary of Krishna, about 1000 or 1100 years, the last 533, before Christ. The Asii, Getae, etc., of Europe worshipped Mercury as founder of their line, as did the Eastern Asi, Takshaks, and Getae. The Chinese and Tatar historians also say Buddha, or Fo, appeared 1027 years before Christ. “The Yuchi, established in Bactria and along the Jihun, eventually bore the name of Jeta or Yetan,[2.6.48] that is to say, Getae. Their empire subsisted a long time in this part of Asia, and extended even into India. These are the people whom the Greeks knew under the name of Indo-Scythes. Their manners are the same as those of the Turks.[2.6.49] Revolutions occurred in the very heart of the East, whose consequences were felt afar.”[2.6.50]

The period allowed by all these authorities for the migration of these Scythic hordes into Europe is also that for their entry into India.

The sixth century is that calculated for the Takshak from Sheshnagdesa; and it is on this event and reign that the Puranas declare, that from this period “no prince of pure blood would be found, but that the Sudra, the Turushka, and the Yavan, would prevail.”

All these Indu-Scythic invaders held the religion of Buddha: and hence the conformity of manners and mythology between the Scandinavian or German tribes and the Rajputs increased by comparing their martial poetry.

Similarity of religious manners affords stronger proofs of original identity than language. Language is eternally changing—so are manners; but an exploded custom or rite traced to its source, and maintained in opposition to climate, is a testimony not to be rejected.

=Personal Habits, Dress.=—When Tacitus informs us that the first act of a German on rising was ablution, it will be conceded this habit was not acquired in [66] the cold climate of Germany, but must have been of eastern[2.6.51] origin; as were “the loose flowing robe; the long and braided hair, tied in a knot at the top of the head”; with many other customs, personal habits, and superstitions of the Scythic Cimbri, Juts, Chatti, Suevi, analogous to the Getic nations of the same name, as described by Herodotus, Justin, and Strabo, and which yet obtain amongst the Rajput Sakhae of the present day.

Let us contrast what history affords of resemblance in religion or manners. First, as to religion.

=Theogony.=—Tuisto (Mercury) and Ertha (the earth) were the chief divinities of the early German tribes. Tuisto[2.6.52] was born of the Earth (Ila) and Manus (Manu). He is often confounded with Odin, or Woden, the Budha of the eastern tribes, though they are the Mars and Mercury of these nations.

=Religious Rites.=—The Suiones or Suevi, the most powerful Getic nation of Scandinavia, were divided into many tribes, one of whom, the Su (Yueh-chi or Jat), made human sacrifices in their consecrated groves[2.6.53] to Ertha (Ila), whom all worshipped, and whose chariot was drawn by a cow.[2.6.54] The Suevi worshipped Isis (Isa, Gauri, the Isis and Ceres of Rajasthan), in whose rites the figure of a ship is introduced; “symbolic,” observes Tacitus, “of its foreign origin.”[2.6.55] The festival of Isa, or Gauri, wife of Iswara, at Udaipur, is performed on the lake, and appears to be exactly that of Isis and Osiris in Egypt, as described by Herodotus. On this occasion Iswara (Osiris), who is secondary to his wife, has a stalk of the onion in blossom in his hand; a root detested by the Hindus generally, though adored by the Egyptians.

=Customs of War.=—They sung hymns in praise of Hercules, as well as Tuisto or Odin, whose banners and images they carried to the field; and fought in clans, using the feram or javelin, both in close and distant combat. In all maintaining [67] the resemblance to the Harikula, descendants of Budha, and the Aswa, offspring of Bajaswa, who peopled those regions west of the Indus, and whose redundant population spread both east and west.

The Suevi, or Suiones, erected the celebrated temple of Upsala, in which they placed the statues of Thor, Woden, and Freya, the triple divinity of the Scandinavian Asii, the Trimurti of the Solar and Lunar races. The first (Thor, the thunderer, or god of war) is Hara, or Mahadeva, the destroyer; the second (Woden) is Budha,[2.6.56] the preserver; and the third (Freya) is Uma, the creative power.

The grand festival to Freya was in spring, when all nature revived; then boars were offered to her by the Scandinavians, and even boars of paste were made and swallowed by the peasantry.

As Vasanti, or spring personified, the consort of Hara is worshipped by the Rajput, who opens the season with a grand hunt,[2.6.57] led by the prince and his vassal chiefs, when they chase, slay, and eat the boar. Personal danger is disregarded on this day, as want of success is ominous that the Great Mother will refuse all petitions throughout the year.

Pinkerton, quoting Ptolemy (who was fifty years after Tacitus), says there were six nations in Yeutland or Jutland, the country of the Juts, of whom were the Sablingii (Suevi,[2.6.58] or Suiones), the Chatti and Hermandri, who extended to the estuary of the Elbe and Weser. There they erected the pillar Irmansul to “the god of war,” regarding which Sammes[2.6.59] observes: “some will have it to be Mars his pillar, others Hermes Saul, or the pillar of Hermes or Mercury”; and he naturally asks, “how did the Saxons come to be acquainted with the Greek name of Mercury?”

Sacrificial pillars are termed Sula in Sanskrit; which, conjoined with Hara,[2.6.60] the Indian god of war, would be Harsula. The Rajput warrior invokes Hara with his trident (trisula) to help him in battle, while his battle-shout is ‘mar! mar!’ The Cimbri, one of the most celebrated of the six tribes of Yeutland, derive their name from their fame as warriors [68].[2.6.61]

Kumara[2.6.62] is the Rajput god of war. He is represented with seven heads in the Hindu mythology: the Saxon god of war has six.[2.6.63] The six-headed Mars of the Cimbri Chersonese, to whom was raised the Irmansul on the Weser, was worshipped by the Sakasenae, the Chatti, the Siebi or Suevi, the Jotae or Getae, and the Cimbri, evincing in name, as in religious rites, a common origin with the martial warriors of Hindustan.

=Rajput Religion.=—The religion of the martial Rajput, and the rites of Hara, the god of battle, are little analogous to those of the meek Hindus, the followers of the pastoral divinity, the worshippers of kine, and feeders on fruits, herbs, and water. The Rajput delights in blood: his offerings to the god of battle are sanguinary, blood and wine. The cup (kharpara) of libation is the human skull. He loves them because they are emblematic of the deity he worships; and he is taught to believe that Hara loves them, who in war is represented with the skull to drink the foeman’s blood, and in peace is the patron of wine and women. With Parbati on his knee, his eyes rolling from the juice of the phul (ardent spirits) and opium, such is this Bacchanalian divinity of war. Is this Hinduism, acquired on the burning plains of India? Is it not rather a perfect picture of the manners of the Scandinavian heroes?

The Rajput slays buffaloes, hunts and eats the boar and deer, and shoots ducks and wild fowl (kukkut); he worships his horse, his sword, and the sun, and attends more to the martial song of the bard than to the litany of the Brahman. In the martial mythology and warlike poetry of the Scandinavians a wide field exists for assimilation, and a comparison of the poetical remains of the Asi of the east and west would alone suffice to suggest a common origin.

=Bards.=—In the sacred Bardai of the Rajput we have the bard of our Saxon ancestry; those reciters of warlike poetry, of whom Tacitus says, “with their barbarous strains, they influence their minds in the day of battle with a chorus of military virtue.”

A comparison, in so extensive a field, would include the whole of their manners and religious opinions, and must be reserved for a distinct work.[2.6.64] The Valkyrie [69], or fatal sisters of the Suevi or Siebi, would be the twin sisters of the Apsaras, who summon the Rajput warrior from the field of battle, and bear him to “the mansion of the sun,” equally the object of attainment with the children of Odin in Scandinavia, and of Budha and Surya in the plains of Scythia and on the Ganges, like the Elysium[2.6.65] of the Heliadae of Greece.

In the day of battle we should see in each the same excitements to glory and contempt of death, and the dramatis personae of the field, both celestial and terrestrial, move and act alike. We should see Thor, the thunderer, leading the Siebi, and Hara (Siva) the Indian Jove, his own worshippers (Sivseva); in which Freya, or Bhavani, and even the preserver (Krishna) himself, not unfrequently mingle.

=War Chariots.=—The war chariot is peculiar to the Indu-Scythic nations, from Dasaratha,[2.6.66] and the heroes of the Mahabharata, to the conquest of Hindustan by the Muhammadans, when it was laid aside. On the plains of Kurukshetra, Krishna became charioteer to his friend Arjun; and the Getic hordes of the Jaxartes, when they aided Xerxes in Greece, and Darius on the plains of Arbela,[2.6.67] had their chief strength in the war chariot.

The war chariot continued to be used later in the south-west of India than elsewhere, and the Kathi,[2.6.68] Khuman, Kumari of Saurashtra have to recent times retained their Scythic habits, as their monumental stones testify, expressing their being slain from their cars [70].

=Position of Women.=—In no point does resemblance more attach between the ancient German and Scandinavian tribes, and the martial Rajput or ancient Getae, than in their delicacy towards females.

“The Germans,” says Tacitus [Germania, viii.], “deemed the advice of a woman in periods of exigence oracular.” So does the Rajput, as the bard Chand often exemplifies; and hence they append to her name the epithet Devi (or contracted De), ‘god-like.’ “To a German mind,” says Tacitus, “the idea of a woman led into captivity is insupportable”; and to prevent this the Rajput raises the poignard against the heart which beats only for him, though never to survive the dire necessity. It is then they perform the sacrifice ‘johar,’ when every sakha (branch) is cut off: and hence the Rajput glories in the title of Sakha-band, from having performed the sakha; an awful rite, and with every appearance of being the sacaea of the Scythic Getae, as described by Strabo.[2.6.69]

=Gaming.=—In passion for play at games of chance, its extent and dire consequences, the Rajput, from the earliest times, has evinced a predilection, and will stand comparison with the Scythian and his German offspring. The German staked his personal liberty, became a slave, and was sold as the property of the winner. To this vice the Pandavas owed the loss of their sovereignty and personal liberty, involving at last the destruction of all the Indu [71] races; nor has the passion abated. Religion even consecrates the vice; and once a year, on ‘the Festival of Lamps’ (Diwali), all propitiate the goddess of wealth and fortune (Lakshmi) by offering at her shrine.

Destitute of mental pursuits, the martial Rajput is often slothful or attached to sensual pleasures, and when roused, reckless on what he may wreak a fit of energy. Yet when order and discipline prevail in a wealthy chieftainship, there is much of that patriarchal mode of life, with its amusements, alike suited to the Rajput, the Getae of the Jihun, or Scandinavian.

=Omens, Auguries.=—Divination by lots, auguries, and omens by flights of birds, as practised by the Getic nations described by Herodotus, and amongst the Germans by Tacitus, will be found amongst the Rajputs, from whose works[2.6.70] on this subject might have been supplied the whole of the Augurs and Aruspices, German or Roman.

=Love of Strong Drink.=—Love of liquor, and indulgence in it to excess, were deep-rooted in the Scandinavian Asi and German tribes, and in which they showed their Getic origin; nor is the Rajput behind his brethren either of Scythia or Europe. It is the free use of this and similar indulgences, prohibited by ordinances which govern the ordinary Hindu, that first induced me to believe that these warlike races were little indebted to India.

The Rajput welcomes his guest with the munawwar piyala, or ‘cup of request,’ in which they drown ancient enmities. The heroes of Odin never relished a cup of mead more than the Rajput his madhu;[2.6.71] and the bards of Scandinavia and Rajwara are alike eloquent in the praise of the bowl, on which the Bardai exhausts every metaphor, and calls it ambrosial, immortal.[2.6.72] “The bard, as he sipped the ambrosia, in which sparkled the ruby seed of the pomegranate, rehearsed the glory of the race of the fearless.[2.6.73] May the king live for ever, alike bounteous in gifts to the bard and the foe!” Even in the heaven of Indra, the Hindu warrior’s paradise, akin to Valhalla [72], the Rajput has his cup, which is served by the Apsaras, the twin sister of the celestial Hebe of Scania. “I shall quaff full goblets amongst the gods,” says the dying Getic warrior;[2.6.74] “I die laughing”: sentiments which would be appreciated by a Rajput.

A Rajput inebriated is a rare sight: but a more destructive and recent vice has usurped much of the honours of the ‘invitation cup,’ which has been degraded from the pure ‘flower’[2.6.75] to an infusion of the poppy, destructive of every quality. Of this pernicious habit we may use the words which the historian of German manners applies to the tribes of the Weser and Elbe, in respect to their love of strong drink: “Indulge it, and you need not employ the terror of your arms; their own vices will subdue them.”

The cup of the Scandinavian worshippers of Thor, the god of battle, was a human skull, that of the foe, in which they showed their thirst of blood; also borrowed from the chief of the Hindu Triad, Hara, the god of battle, who leads his heroes in the ‘red field of slaughter’ with the khopra[2.6.76] in his hand, with which he gorges on the blood of the slain.

Hara is the patron of all who love war and strong drink, and is especially the object of the Rajput warrior’s devotion: accordingly blood and wine form the chief oblations to the great god of the Indus. The Gosains,[2.6.77] the peculiar priests of Hara, or Bal, the sun, all indulge in intoxicating drugs, herbs, and drinks. Seated on their lion, leopard, or deer skins, their bodies covered with ashes, their hair matted and braided, with iron tongs to feed the penitential fires, their savage appearance makes them fit organs for the commands of the blood and slaughter. Contrary, likewise, to general practice, the minister of Hara, the god of war, at his death is committed to the earth, and a circular tumulus is raised over him; and with some classes of Gosains, small tumuli, whose form is the frustrum of a cone, with lateral steps, the apex crowned with a cylindrical stone [73].[2.6.78]

=Funeral Ceremonies.=—In the last rites for the dead, comparison will yield proofs of original similarity. The funeral ceremonies of Scandinavia have distinguished the national eras, and the ‘age of fire’ and ‘the age of hills,’[2.6.79] designated the periods when the warrior was committed to mother earth or consumed on the pyre.

Odin (Budha) introduced the latter custom, and the raising of tumuli over the ashes when the body was burned; as also the practice of the wife burning with her deceased lord. These manners were carried from Sakadwipa, or Saka Scythia, “where the Geta,” says Herodotus [v. 5], “was consumed on the pyre or burned alive with her lord.” With the Getae, the Siebi or Suevi of Scandinavia, if the deceased had more than one wife, the elder claimed the privilege of burning.[2.6.80] Thus, “Nanna was consumed in the same fire with the body of her husband, Balder, one of Odin’s companions.” But the Scandinavians were anxious to forget this mark of their Asiatic origin, and were not always willing to burn, or to make “so cruel and absurd a sacrifice to the manes of their husbands, the idea of which had been picked up by their Scythian ancestors, when they inhabited the warmer climates of Asia, where they had their first abodes.”[2.6.81]

“The Scythic Geta,” says Herodotus [iv. 71], “had his horse sacrificed on his funeral pyre; and the Scandinavian Geta had his horse and arms buried with him, as they could not approach Odin on foot.”[2.6.82] The Rajput warrior is carried to his final abode armed at all points as when alive, his shield on his back and brand in hand; while his steed, though not sacrificed, is often presented to the deity, and becomes a perquisite of the priest.

=Sati.=—The burning of the dead warrior, and female immolation, or Sati, are well-known rites, though the magnificent cenotaphs raised on the spot of sacrifice are little known or visited by Europeans; than which there are no better memorials of the rise and decline of the States of the Rajput heptarchy. It is the son who raises the mausoleum to the memory of his father; which last token of respect, or laudable vanity, is only limited by the means of the treasury. It is commemorative [74] of the splendour of his reign that the dome of his father should eclipse that of his predecessor. In every principality of Rajwara, the remark is applicable to chieftains as well as princes.

Each sacred spot, termed ‘the place of great sacrifice’ (Mahasati), is the haunted ground of legendary lore. Amongst the altars on which have burned the beauteous and the brave, the harpy[2.6.83] takes up her abode, and stalks forth to devour the hearts of her victims. The Rajput never enters these places of silence but to perform stated rites, or anniversary offerings of flowers and water to the manes (pitri-deva[2.6.84]) of his ancestors.

Odin[2.6.85] guarded his warriors’ final abode from rapine by means of “wandering fires which played around the tombs”; and the tenth chapter of the Salic law is on punishments against “carrying off the boards or carpets of the tombs.” Fire and water are interdicted to such sacrilegious spoliators.

The shihaba,[2.6.86] or wandering meteoric fires, on fields of battle and in the places of ‘great sacrifice,’ produce a pleasing yet melancholy effect; and are the source of superstitious dread and reverence to the Hindu, having their origin in the same natural cause as the ‘wandering fires of Odin’; the phosphorescent salts produced from animal decomposition.

The Scandinavian reared the tumulus over the ashes of the dead; so did the Geta of the Jaxartes, and the officiating priests of Hara, the Hindu god of battle.

The noble picture drawn by Gibbon of the sepulture of the Getic Alaric is paralleled by that of the great Jenghiz Khan. When the lofty mound was raised, extensive forests were planted, to exclude for ever the footsteps of man from his remains.

The tumulus, the cairn, or the pillar, still rises over the Rajput who falls in [75] battle; and throughout Rajwara these sacrificial monuments are found, where are seen carved in relief the warrior on his steed, armed at all points; his faithful wife (Sati) beside him, denoting a sacrifice, and the sun and moon on either side, emblematic of never-dying fame.

=Cairns, Pillars.=—In Saurashtra, amidst the Kathi, Khuman, Bala, and others of Scythic descent, the Paliya, or Jujhar (sacrificial pillars), are conspicuous under the walls of every town, in lines, irregular groups, and circles. On each is displayed in rude relief the warrior, with the manner of his death, lance in hand, generally on horseback, though sometimes in his car; and on the coast ‘the pirates of Budha’[2.6.87] are depicted boarding from the shrouds. Amidst the Khuman of Tatary the Jesuits found stone circles, similar to those met with wherever the Celtic rites prevailed; and it would require no great ingenuity to prove an analogy, if not a common origin, between Druidic circles and the Indo-Scythic monumental remains. The trilithon, or seat, in the centre of the judicial circle, is formed by a number sacred to Hara, Bal, or the sun, whose priest expounds the law.

=Worship of Arms. The Sword.=—The devotion of the Rajput is still paid to his arms, as to his horse. He swears ‘by the steel,’ and prostrates himself before his defensive buckler, his lance, his sword, or his dagger.

The worship of the sword (asi) may divide with that of the horse (aswa) the honour of giving a name to the continent of Asia. It prevailed amongst the Scythic Getae, and is described exactly by Herodotus [iv. 62]. To Dacia and Thrace it was carried by Getic colonies from the Jaxartes, and fostered by these lovers of liberty when their hordes overran Europe.

The worship of the sword in the Acropolis of Athens by the Getic Attila, with all the accompaniments of pomp and place, forms an admirable episode in the history of the decline and fall of Rome; and had Gibbon witnessed the worship of the double-edged sword (khanda) by the prince of Mewar and all his chivalry, he might even have embellished his animated account of the adoration of the scymitar, the symbol of Mars.

=Initiation to Arms.=—Initiation to military fame was the same with the [76] German as with the Rajput, when the youthful candidate was presented with the lance, or buckled with the sword; a ceremony which will be noticed when their feudal manners are described; many other traits of character will then be depicted. It would be easy to swell the list of analogous customs, which even to the objects of dislike in food[2.6.88] would furnish comparison between the ancient Celt and Rajput; but they shall close with the detail of the most ancient of rites.

=Asvamedha, the Horse Sacrifice.=—There are some things, animate and inanimate, which have been common objects of adoration amongst the nations of the earth, the sun, the moon, and all the host of heaven; the sword; reptiles, as the serpent; animals, as the noblest, the horse. This last was not worshipped as an abstract object of devotion, but as a type of that glorious orb which has had reverence from every child of nature. The plains of Tatary, the sands of Libya, the rocks of Persia, the valley of the Ganges, and the wilds of Orinoco, have each yielded votaries alike ardent in devotion to his effulgence:

Of this great world both eye and soul.

His symbolic worship and offerings varied with clime and habit; and while the altars of Bal in Asia, of Belenus among the Celts of Gaul and Britain, smoked with human sacrifices, the bull[2.6.89] bled to Mithras in Babylon, and the steed was the victim to Surya on the Jaxartes and Ganges.

The father of history says that the great Getae of Central Asia deemed it right to offer the swiftest of created to the swiftest of non-created beings. It is fair to infer that the sun’s festival with the Getae and Aswa nations of the Jaxartes, as with those of Scandinavia, was the winter solstice, the Sankrant of the Rajput and Hindu in general. Hi, Haya, Hywor, Aswa denote the steed in Sanskrit and its dialects. In Gothic, hyrsa; Teutonic, hors; Saxon, horse. The grand festival of the German tribes of the Baltic was the Hiul, or Hiel (already commented on), the Asvamedha[2.6.90] of the children of Surya, on the Ganges.

=The Asvamedha Ceremonies.=—The ceremonies of the Asvamedha are too expensive, and attended with too great risk, to be attempted by modern princes. Of its fatal results we have many historical records, from the first dawn of Indian history to the last of its princes, Prithwiraja. The Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the poems of Chand all illustrate this imposing rite and its effects.[2.6.91]

The Ramayana affords a magnificent picture of the Asvamedha. Dasaratha, monarch of Ayodhya, father of Rama, is represented as commanding the rite: “Let the sacrifice be prepared, and the horse[2.6.92] liberated from the north bank of the Sarju!”[2.6.93] A year being ended, and the horse having returned from his wanderings,[2.6.94] The sacrificial ground was prepared on the spot of liberation.

Invitations were sent to all surrounding monarchs to repair to Ayodhya: King Kaikeya,[2.6.95] the king of Kasi,[2.6.96] Lomapada of Angadesa,[2.6.97] Kosala of Magadhadesa,[2.6.98] with the kings of Sindhu,[2.6.99] Sauvira,[2.6.100] and Saurashtra [78].[2.6.101]

d

When the sacrificial pillars are erected, the rites commence. This portion of the ceremony, termed Yupochchraya, is thus minutely detailed: "There were twenty-one yupas, or pillars,[2.6.102] of octagonal shape, each twenty-one feet in height and four feet in diameter, the capitals bearing the figure of a man, an elephant, or a bull. They were of the various sorts of wood appropriated to holy rites, overlaid with plates of gold and ornamented cloth, and adorned with festoons of flowers. While the yupas were erecting, the Adhvaryu, receiving his instructions from the Hotri, or sacrificing priest, recited aloud the incantations.

"The sacrificial pits were in triple rows, eighteen in number, and arranged in the form of the eagle. Here were placed the victims for immolation; birds, aquatic animals, and the horse.

"Thrice was the steed of King Dasaratha led round the sacred fire by Kosala, and as the priests pronounced the incantations he was immolated[2.6.103] amidst shouts of joy.

"The king and queen, placed by the high priest near the horse, sat up all night watching the birds; and the officiating priest, having taken out the hearts, dressed them agreeably to the holy books. The sovereign of men smelled the smoke of the offered hearts, acknowledging his transgressions in the order in which they were committed.

"The sixteen sacrificing priests then placed (as commanded in the ordinances) on the fire the parts of the horse. The oblation of all the animals was made on wood, except that of the horse, which was on cane.

“The rite concluded with gifts of land to the sacrificing priests and augurs; but the holy men preferring gold, ten millions of jambunada[2.6.104] were bestowed on them” [79].

Such is the circumstantial account of the Asvamedha, the most imposing and the earliest heathen rite on record. It were superfluous to point out the analogy between it and similar rites of various nations, from the chosen people to the Auspex of Rome and the confessional rite of the Catholic church.

The Sankrant,[2.6.105] or Sivaratri (night of Siva), is the winter solstice. On it the horse bled to the sun, or Balnath.

The Scandinavians termed the longest night the ‘mother night,’[2.6.106] on which they held that the world was born. Hence the Beltane, the fires of Bal or Belenus; the Hiul of northern nations, the sacrificial fires on the Asvamedha, or worship of the sun, by the Suryas on the Ganges, and the Syrians (Σύροι) and Sauromatae on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The altars of the Phoenician Heliopolis, Balbee[2.6.107] or Tadmor,[2.6.108] were sacred to the same divinity as on the banks of Sarju, or Balpur, in Saurashtra, where "the horses of the sun ascended from his fountain (Surya-kund)," to carry its princes to conquest.

From Syria came the instructors of the Celtic Druids, who made human sacrifices, and set up the pillar of Belenus on the hills of Cambria and Caledonia.

When “Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill and under every tree,” the object was Bal, and the pillar (the lingam) was his symbol. It was on his altar they burned incense, and “sacrificed unto the calf on the fifteenth[2.6.109] day of the month” (the sacred Amavas of the Hindus). The calf of Israel is the bull (nandi) of Balkesar or Iswara; the Apis of the Egyptian Osiris [80].

=Sacred Trees.=—The ash was sacred to the sun-god in the west. The asvattha (or pipal)[2.6.110] is the ‘chief of trees,’ say the books sacred to Bal in the East: and death, or loss of limb, is incurred by the sacrilegious mutilator of his consecrated groves,[2.6.111] where a pillar is raised bearing the inhibitory edict.

We shall here conclude the analogy between the Indo-Scythic Rajput races and those of early Europe. Much more might be adduced; the old Runic characters of Scandinavia, the Celtic, and the Osci or Etruscan, might, by comparison with those found in the cave temples and rocks in Rajasthan and Saurashtra, yield yet more important evidence of original similarity; and the very name of German (from wer, bellum)[2.6.112] might be found to be derived from the feud (vair) and foe-man (vairi) of the Rajput.

If these coincidences are merely accidental, then has too much been already said; if not, authorities are here recorded, and hypotheses founded, for the assistance of others [81].

-----

Footnote 2.6.1:

Query, if from Mogol and Aghuz, compounded, we have not the Magog, son of Japhet, of Scripture?

Footnote 2.6.2:

The other four sons are the remaining elements, personified: whence the six races of Tatars. The Hindus had long but two races, till the four Agnikula made them also six, and now thirty-six!

Footnote 2.6.3:

In Tatar, according to Abulghazi, the sun and moon.

Footnote 2.6.4:

De Guignes.

Footnote 2.6.5:

Sir W. Jones says the Chinese assert their Hindu origin; but a comparison proves both these Indu races to be of Scythic origin. [Yadu was son of Yayāti, and Haya was Yadu’s grandson, not son. The comparison of Mongol with Hindu tradition is of no value.]

Footnote 2.6.6:

[For the Mongol genealogy see Howorth, History of the Mongols, Part i. 35. Abu-l Fazl (Akbarnāma, trans. H. Beveridge, i. 171 f.) gives the names as follows: Aghūz Khān, whose sons were—Kūn (Sun); Ai (Moon); Yūlduz (Star); Kok or Gok (Sky); Tāgh (Mountain); Tangīz (Sky)].

Footnote 2.6.7:

Naga and Takshak are Sanskrit names for a snake or serpent, the emblem of Budha or Mercury. The Naga race, so well known to India, the Takshaks or Takiuks of Scythia, invaded India about six centuries before Christ.

Footnote 2.6.8:

De Guignes, Sur les Dynasties des Huns, vol. i. p. 7.

Footnote 2.6.9:

Nearly the calculated period from the Puranas.

Footnote 2.6.10:

Tauth, ‘father’ in Sanskrit [? tāta]. Qu. Teuths, and Toth, the Mercury of Egypt?

Footnote 2.6.11:

[The author seems to confuse Budha (Mercury) with Gautama Buddha, the teacher. Buddhism arose in India, not in Central Asia, and Jainism was not a milder form of it, but an independent, and probably earlier, religion.]

Footnote 2.6.12:

Diodorus Siculus book ii.

Footnote 2.6.13:

The Arvarma of the Puranas; the Jaxartes or Sihun. The Puranas thus describe Sakadwipa or Scythia. Diodorus (lib. ii.) makes the Hemodus the boundary between Saka-Scythia and India Proper.

Footnote 2.6.14:

Ila, the mother of the Lunar race, is the earth personified. Ertha of the Saxons; ἔρα of the Greeks; ard in Hebrew [?].

Footnote 2.6.15:

Scythes, from Sakatai, ‘Sakadwipa,’ and is, ‘Lord’: Lord of Sakatai, or Scythia [?].

Footnote 2.6.16:

Qu. Whether the Scythic Pali may not be the shepherd invaders of Egypt [?]. The Pali character yet exists, and appears the same as ancient fragments of the Buddha inscriptions in my possession: many letters assimilate with the Coptic.

Footnote 2.6.17:

The three great branches of the Indu (Lunar) Aswa bore the epithet of Midia (pronounced Mede), viz. Urumidha, Ajamidha, and Dvimidha. Qu. The Aswa invaders of Assyria and Media, the sons of Bajaswa, expressly stated to have multiplied in the countries west of the Indus, emigrating from their paternal seats in Panchalaka? [Mīdha means ‘pouring out seed, prolific,’ and has no connexion with Mede, the Madai of Genesis x. 2; the Assyrian Mada.]

Footnote 2.6.18:

Sun-worshippers, the Suryavansa.

Footnote 2.6.19:

Strabo lib. xi. p. 511.

Footnote 2.6.20:

Dahya (one of the thirty-six tribes), now extinct.

Footnote 2.6.21:

The Asii and Tochari, the Aswa and Takshak, or Turushka races, of the Puranas, of Sakadwipa [?]. “C’est vraisemblablement d’après le nom de Tachari, que M. D’Anville aura cru devoir placer les tribus ainsi dénommées dans le territoire qui s’appelle aujourdhui Tokarist’han, situé, dit ce grand géographe, entre les montagnes et le Gihon ou Amou” (Note 3, liv. xi. p. 254, Strabon).

Footnote 2.6.22:

Once more I may state Sakha in Sanskrit has the aspirate: literally, the ‘branches’ or ‘races.’ [Saka and Sākha have no connexion; see Smith, EHI, 226.]

Footnote 2.6.23:

“La Sacasene étoit une contrée de l’Arménie sur les confins de l’Albanie ou du Shirvan” (Note 4, tome i. p. 191, Strabon). “The Sacasenae were the ancestors of the Saxons” (Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons).

Footnote 2.6.24:

Herodotus (iv. 12) says: “The Cimmerians, expelled by the Massagetae, migrated to the Crimea.” Here were the Thyssagetae, or western Getae [the lesser Getae, Herodotus iv. 22]; and thence both the Getae and Cimbri found their way to the Baltic. Rubruquis the Jesuit, describing the monuments of the Comani in the Dasht-i Kipchak, whence these tribes, says: “Their monuments and circles of stones are like our Celtic or Druidical remains” (Bell’s Collection). The Khumān are a branch of the Kāthi tribe of Saurashtra, whose paliyas, or funeral monumental pillars, are seen in groups at every town and village. The Chatti were one of the early German tribes. [Needless to say, the German Chatti had no connexion with the Kāthi of Gujarāt.]

Footnote 2.6.25:

[The reference, again, is to the Saisunāga dynasty, p. 64 above.]

Footnote 2.6.26:

Asi was the term applied to the Getes, Yeuts, or Juts, when they invaded Scandinavia and founded Yeutland or Jutland (see ‘Edda,’ Mallet’s Introduction).

Footnote 2.6.27:

Mercury and earth.

Footnote 2.6.28:

Pinkerton, On the Goths, vol. ii. p. 94. [All this is obsolete.]

Footnote 2.6.29:

Camari was one of the eight sons of Japhet, says Abulghazi: whence the Camari, Cimmerii, or Cimbri. Kamari is one of the tribes of Saurashtra. [Kymry = fellow-countrymen (Rhys, Celtic Britain, 116).]

Footnote 2.6.30:

The Suiones, Suevi, or Su. Now the Su, Yueh-chi, or Yuti, are Getes, according to De Guignes. Marco Polo calls Cashgar, where he was in the sixth century, the birthplace of the Swedes; and De la Croix adds, that in 1691 Sparvenfeldt, the Swedish ambassador at Paris, told him he had read in Swedish chronicles that Cashgar was their country. When the Huns were chased from the north of China, the greater part retired into the southern countries adjoining Europe. The rest passed directly to the Oxus and Jaxartes; thence they spread to the Caspian and Persian frontiers. In Mawaru-l-nahr (Transoxiana) they mixed with the Su, the Yueh-chi, or Getes, who were particularly powerful, and extended into Europe. One would be tempted to regard them as the ancestors of those Getes who were known in Europe. Some bands of Su might equally pass into the north of Europe, known as the Suevi. [The meaning of Suevi is uncertain, but the word has no connexion with that of any Central Asian tribe.]

Footnote 2.6.31:

Mr. Pinkerton’s research had discovered Sakatai, though he does not give his authority (D’Anville) for the Sakadwipa of the Puranas! “Sakitai, a region at the fountains of the Oxus and Jaxartes, styled Sakita from the Sacae” (D’Anville, Anc. Geog.). The Yadus of Jaisalmer, who ruled Zabulistan and founded Ghazni, claim the Chagatais as of their own Indu stock: a claim which, without deep reflection, appeared inadmissible; but which I now deem worthy of credit.

Footnote 2.6.32:

Chagatai, or Sakatai, the Sakadwipa of the Puranas (corrupted by the Greeks to Scythia), “whose inhabitants worship the sun and whence is the river Arvarma.” [For the Chagatai Mongols see Elias-Ross, History of the Moghuls of Central Asia, Introd. 28 ff.]

Footnote 2.6.33:

Utrar, probably the Uttarakuru of ancient geography: the uttara (northern) kuru (race); a branch of Indu stock.

Footnote 2.6.34:

Jadu ka dang, the Joudes of Rennell’s map; the Yadu hills high up in the Panjab, where a colony of the Yadu race dwelt when expelled Saurashtra. [The Salt Range in the Jhelum, Shāhpur, and Miānwāli districts of the Panjāb, was known to ancient historians as Koh-i-Jūd, or ‘the hills of Jūd,’ the name being applied by the Muhammadans to this range on account of its resemblance to Mount Al-Jūdi, or Ararat. The author constantly refers to it, and suggests that the name was connected with the Indian Yadu, or Yādava tribe (IGI, xxi. 412; Abu-l Fazl, Akbarnāma, i. 237; Elliot-Dowson, ii. 235, v. 561; Āīn, ii. 405; ASR, ii. 17; Hughes, Dict. of Islām, 23).]

Footnote 2.6.35:

The Numri, or Lumri (foxes) of Baluchistan, are Jats [?]. These are the Nomardies of Rennell. [They are believed to be aborigines (IGI, xvi. 146; Census Report, Baluchistan, 1911, i. 17).]

Footnote 2.6.36:

[There is no evidence, beyond resemblance of name, to connect the Jats with the Getae.]

Footnote 2.6.37:

Royal pastors [?]

Footnote 2.6.38:

[iv. 59.] The sun was their ‘great deity,’ though they had in Xamolxis a lord of terror, with affinity to Yama, or the Hindu Pluto. “The chief divinity of the Fenns, a Scythic race, was Yammalu” (Pinkerton’s Hist. of the Goths, vol. ii. p. 215).

Footnote 2.6.39:

iv. 45 [Asia probably means ‘land of the rising sun.’]

Footnote 2.6.40:

Āsa, ‘hope.’

Footnote 2.6.41:

Sakambhari: from sakham, the plural of sakha, ‘branch or race,’ and ambhar, ‘covering, protecting.’ [The word means ‘herb nourishing.’]

Footnote 2.6.42:

Mata, ‘mother.’

Footnote 2.6.43:

Aswa and haya are synonymous Sanskrit terms for ‘horse’; asp in Persian; and as applied by the prophet Ezekiel [xxxviii. 6] to the Getic invasion of Scythia, A.C. 600: “the sons of Togarmah riding on horses”; described by Diodorus, the period the same as the Takshak invasion of India.

Footnote 2.6.44:

[Hystaspes is from old Persian, Vishtāspa, ‘possessor of horses.’ The author derives it from a modern Hindi word hīnsna, ‘to neigh,’ possibly from recollection of the story in Herodotus iii. 85.]

Footnote 2.6.45:

[He possibly refers to the statement (Germania, v.), that their coins bore the impress of a two-horse chariot.]

Footnote 2.6.46:

Asirgarh, ‘fortress of the Asi’ [IGI, vi. 12].

Footnote 2.6.47:

The great (maha) warrior (vir). [Buddha lived 567-487 B.C.: Mahāvīra, founder of Jainism, died about 527 B.C.]

Footnote 2.6.48:

Yeutland was the name given to the whole Cimbric Chersonese, or Jutland (Pinkerton, On the Goths).

Footnote 2.6.49:

Turk, Turushka, Takshak, or ‘Taunak, fils de Turc’ (Abulghazi, History of the Tatars).

Footnote 2.6.50:

Histoire des Huns, vol. i. p. 42.

Footnote 2.6.51:

Though Tacitus calls the German tribes indigenous, it is evident he knew their claim to Asiatic origin, when he asks, “Who would leave the softer abodes of Asia for Germany, where Nature yields nothing but deformity?”

Footnote 2.6.52:

In an inscription of the Geta or Jat Prince of Salindrapur (Salpur) of the fifth century, he is styled “of the race of Tusta” (qu. Tuisto?). It is in that ancient nail-headed character used by the ancient Buddhists of India, and still the sacred character of the Tatar Lamas: in short, the Pali. All the ancient inscriptions I possess of the branches of the Agnikulas, as the Chauhan, Pramara, Solanki, and Parihara, are in this character. That of the Jat prince styles him “Jat Kathida” (qu. of (da) Cathay?). From Tuisto and Woden we have our Tuesday and Wednesday. In India, Wednesday is Budhwar (Dies Mercurii), and Tuesday Mangalwar (Dies Martis), the Mardi of the French.

Footnote 2.6.53:

Tacitus, Germania, xxxviii.

Footnote 2.6.54:

The gau, or cow, symbolic of Prithivi, the earth. On this see note, p. 33.

Footnote 2.6.55:

[Germania, ix.]

Footnote 2.6.56:

Krishna is the preserving deity of the Hindu triad. Krishna is of the Indu line of Budha, whom he worshipped prior to his own deification.

Footnote 2.6.57:

‘Mahurat ka shikar.’

Footnote 2.6.58:

The Siebi of Tacitus.

Footnote 2.6.59:

Sammes’s Saxon Antiquities.

Footnote 2.6.60:

Hara is the Thor of Scandinavia; Hari is Budha, Hermes, or Mercury.

Footnote 2.6.61:

Mallet derives it from kempfer, ‘to fight.’ [The name is said to mean ‘comrades’ (Rhys, Celtic Britain, 116). Irmansūl means ‘a colossus,’ and has no connexion with Skr. sūla (Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 115).]

Footnote 2.6.62:

Ku is a mere prefix, meaning ‘evil’; ‘the evil striker (Mar).’ Hence, probably, the Mars of Rome. The birth of Kumar, the general of the army of the gods, with the Hindus, is exactly that of the Grecians, born of the goddess Jahnavi (Juno) without sexual intercourse. Kumāra is always accompanied by the peacock, the bird of Juno. [Kumāra probably means ‘easily dying’; there is no connexion with Mars, originally a deity of vegetation.]

Footnote 2.6.63:

For a drawing of the Scandinavian god of battle see Sammes.

Footnote 2.6.64:

I have in contemplation to give to the public a few of the sixty-nine books of the poems of Chand, the last great bard of the last Hindu emperor of India, Prithwiraja. They are entirely heroic: each book a relation of one of the exploits of this prince, the first warrior of his time. They will aid a comparison between the Rajput and Scandinavian bards, and show how far the Provençal Troubadour, the Neustrienne Trouveur, and Minnesinger of Germany, have anything in common with the Rajput Bardai. [For Rajput bards on horseback, drunk with opium, singing songs to arouse warriors’ courage, see Manucci ii. 437 f.]

Footnote 2.6.65:

Ἥλυσιος, from Ἥλιος, ‘the sun’; also a title of Apollo, the Hari of India. [The two words, from the accentuation, can have no connexion.]

Footnote 2.6.66:

This title of the father of Rama denotes a ‘charioteer’ [‘having ten chariots.’ Harsha (A.D. 612-647) discarded the chariot (Smith, EHI, 339)].

Footnote 2.6.67:

The Indian satrapy of Darius, says Herodotus [iii. 94], was the richest of all the Persian provinces, and yielded six hundred talents of gold. Arrian informs us that his Indo-Scythic subjects, in his wars with Alexander, were the élite of his army. Besides the Sakasenae, we find tribes in name similar to those included in the thirty-six Rajkula; especially the Dahae (Dahya, one of the thirty-six races). The Indo-Scythic contingent was two hundred war chariots and fifteen elephants, which were marshalled with the Parthii on the right, and also near Darius’s person. By this disposition they were opposed to the cohort commanded by Alexander in person. The chariots commenced the action, and prevented a manœuvre of Alexander to turn the left flank of the Persians. Of their horse, also, the most honourable mention is made; they penetrated into the division where Parmenio commanded, to whom Alexander was compelled to send reinforcements. The Grecian historian dwells with pleasure on Indo-Scythic valour: “there were no equestrian feats, no distant fighting with darts, but each fought as if victory depended on his sole arm.” They fought the Greeks hand to hand [Arrian, Anabasis, iii. 15].

But the loss of empire was decreed at Arbela, and the Sakae and Indo-Scythae had the honour of being slaughtered by the Yavans of Greece, far from their native land, in the aid of the king of kings.

Footnote 2.6.68:

The Kathi are celebrated in Alexander’s wars. The Kathiawar Kathi can be traced from Multan (the ancient abode) [mūlasthāna, ‘principal place’]. The Dahya (Dahae), Johya (the latter Hunnish), and Kathi are amongst the thirty-six races. All dwelt, six centuries ago, within the five streams and in the deserts south of the Ghara. The two last have left but a name.

Footnote 2.6.69:

The Sakae had invaded the inhabitants on the borders of the Pontic Sea: whilst engaged in dividing the booty, the Persian generals surprised them at night, and exterminated them. To eternize the remembrance of this event, the Persians heaped up the earth round a rock in the plain where the battle was fought, on which they erected two temples, one to the goddess Anaītis, the other to the divinities Omanus and Anandate, and then founded the annual festival called Sacaea, still celebrated by the possessors of Zela. Such is the account by some authors of the origin of Sacaea. According to others it dates from the reign of Cyrus only. This prince, they say, having carried the war into the country of the Sakae (Massagetae of Herodotus) lost a battle. Compelled to fall back on his magazines, abundantly stored with provisions, but especially wine, and having halted some time to refresh his army, he departed before the enemy, feigning a flight, and leaving his camp standing full of provisions. The Sakae, who pursued, reaching the abandoned camp stored with provisions, gave themselves up to debauch. Cyrus returned and surprised the inebriated and senseless barbarians. Some, buried in profound sleep, were easily massacred; others occupied in drinking and dancing, without defence, fell into the hands of armed foes: so that all perished. The conqueror, attributing his success to divine protection, consecrated this day to the goddess honoured in his country, and decreed it should be called ‘the day of the Sacaea.’ This is the battle related by Herodotus, to which Strabo alludes, between the Persian monarch and Tomyris, queen of the Getae. Amongst the Rajput Sakha, all grand battles attended with fatal results are termed sakha. When besieged, without hope of relief, in the last effort of despair, the females are immolated, and the warriors, decorated in saffron robes, rush on inevitable destruction. This is to perform sakha, where every branch (sakha) is cut off. Chitor has to boast of having thrice (and a half) suffered sakha. Chitor sakha ka pap, ‘by the sin of the sack of Chitor,’ the most solemn adjuration of the Guhilot Rajput. If such the origin of the festival from the slaughter of the Sakae of Tomyris, it will be allowed to strengthen the analogy contended for between the Sakae east and west the Indus. [For the Sacaea festival see Sir J. Frazer, The Golden Bough, The Dying God, 113 ff. It has no connexion with the Rajput Sākha, ‘a fight,’ which, again, is a different word from Sākha, ‘a branch, clan.’]

Footnote 2.6.70:

I presented a work on this subject to the Royal Asiatic Society, as well as another on Palmistry, etc.

Footnote 2.6.71:

Madhu is intoxicating drink, from madhu, ‘a bee,’ in Sanskrit [madhu, ‘anything sweet’]. It is well known that mead is from honey. It would be curious if the German mead was from the Indian madhu (bee): then both cup (kharpara) and beverage would be borrowed. [Madhu does not mean ‘a bee’ in Sanskrit.]

Footnote 2.6.72:

Amrita (immortal), from the initial privative and mrit, ‘death.’ Thus the Immurthal, or ‘vale of immortality,’ at Neufchatel, is as good Sanskrit as German [?].

Footnote 2.6.73:

Abhai Singh, ‘the fearless lion,’ prince of Marwar, whose bard makes this speech at the festal board, when the prince presented with his own hand the cup to the bard.

Footnote 2.6.74:

Regner Lodbrog, in his dying ode, when the destinies summon him.

Footnote 2.6.75:

Phūl, the flower of the mahua tree, the favourite drink of a Rajput. Classically, in Sanskrit it is madhūka, of the class Polyandria Monogynia [Bassia latifolia] (see As. Res. vol. i. p. 300).

Footnote 2.6.76:

A human skull; in the dialects pronounced khopar: Qu. cup in Saxon? [Cup, in Low Latin cuppa.]

Footnote 2.6.77:

The Kanphara [or Kanphata] Jogis, or Gosains, are in great bodies, often in many thousands, and are sought as allies, especially in defensive warfare. In the grand military festivals at Udaipur to the god of war, the scymitar, symbolic of Mars, worshipped by the Guhilots, is entrusted to them [IA, vii. 47 ff.; BG, ix. part i. 543].

Footnote 2.6.78:

An entire cemetery of these, besides many detached, I have seen, and also the sacred rites to their manes by the disciples occupying these abodes of austerity, when the flowers of the ak [Calatropis gigantea] and leaves of evergreen were strewed on the grave, and sprinkled with the pure element.

Footnote 2.6.79:

Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, chap. xii.

Footnote 2.6.80:

Mallet chap. xii. vol. i. p. 289.

Footnote 2.6.81:

Edda.

Footnote 2.6.82:

Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, chap. xii. The Celtic Franks had the same custom. The arms of Chilperic, and the bones of the horse on which he was to be presented to Odin, were found in his tomb.

Footnote 2.6.83:

The Dakini (the Jigarkhor of Sindh) is the genuine vampire [Āīn, ii. 338 f.]. Captain Waugh, after a long chase in the valley of Udaipur, speared a hyena, whose abode was the tombs, and well known as the steed on which the witch of Ar sallied forth at night. Evil was predicted: and a dangerous fall, subsequently, in chasing an elk, was attributed to his sacrilegious slaughter of the weird sister’s steed.

Footnote 2.6.84:

Pitri-deva, ‘Father-lords.’

Footnote 2.6.85:

Mallet chap. xii.

Footnote 2.6.86:

At Gwalior, on the east side of that famed fortress, where myriads of warriors have fattened the soil, these phosphorescent lights often present a singular appearance. I have, with friends whose eyes this will meet, marked the procession of these lambent night-fires, becoming extinguished at one place and rising at another, which, aided by the unequal locale, have been frequently mistaken for the Mahratta prince returning with his numerous torch-bearers from a distant day’s sport. I have dared as bold a Rajput as ever lived to approach them; whose sense of the levity of my desire was strongly depicted, both in speech and mien: “men he would encounter, but not the spirits of those erst slain in battle.” It was generally about the conclusion of the rains that these lights were observed, when evaporation took place from these marshy grounds impregnated with salts.

Footnote 2.6.87:

At Dwarka, the god of thieves is called Budha Trivikrama, or of triple energy: the Hermes Triplex, or three-headed Mercury of the Egyptians. [No such cult is mentioned in the account of Dwārka, BG, viii. 601.]

Footnote 2.6.88:

Caesar informs us that the Celts of Britain would not eat the hare, goose, or domestic fowl. The Rajput will hunt the first, but neither eats it, nor the goose, sacred to the god of battle (Hara). The Rajput of Mewar eats the jungle fowl, but rarely the domestic.

Footnote 2.6.89:

As he did also to Balnath (the god Bal) in the ancient times of India. The baldan, or gift of the bull to the sun, is well recorded. [Baldān, balidāna does not mean the offering of a bull: it is the daily presentation of a portion of the meat to Earth and other deities.] There are numerous temples in Rajasthan of Baalim [?]; and Balpur (Mahadeo) has several in Saurashtra. All represent the sun—

Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile. Paradise Lost, book i. 412 f. [77].

The temple of Solomon was to Bal, and all the idolaters of that day seem to have held to the grosser tenets of Hinduism.

Footnote 2.6.90:

In Aswa (medha signifies ‘to kill’) we have the derivation of the ancient races, sons of Bajaswa, who peopled the countries on both sides the Indus, and the probable etymon of Asia [?]. The Assakenoi, the Ariaspai of Alexander’s historians, and Aspasianae, to whom Arsaces fled from Seleucus, and whom Strabo terms a Getic race, have the same origin; hence Asigarh, ‘the fortress of the Asi’ (erroneously termed Hansi), and Asgard were the first settlements of the Getic Asi in Scandinavia. Alexander received the homage of all these Getic races at ‘the mother of cities,’ Balkh, ‘seat of Cathaian Khan’ (the Jat Kathida of my inscription), according to Marco Polo, from whom Milton took his geography.

Footnote 2.6.91:

The last was undertaken by the celebrated Sawai Jai Singh of Amber; but the milk-white steed of the sun, I believe, was not turned out, or assuredly the Rathors would have accepted the challenge.

Footnote 2.6.92:

A milk-white steed is selected with peculiar marks. On liberation, properly guarded, he wanders where he listeth. It is a virtual challenge. Arjuna guarded the steed liberated by Yudhishthira; but that sent round by Parikshita, his grandson, “was seized by the Takshak of the north.” The same fate occurred to Sagara, father of Dasaratha, which involved the loss of his kingdom.

Footnote 2.6.93:

The Sarju, or Gandak, from the Kumaun mountains, passes through Kosalades, the dominion of Dasaratha.

Footnote 2.6.94:

The horse’s return after a year evidently indicates an astronomical revolution, or the sun’s return to the same point in the ecliptic. This return from his southern declination must have been always a day of rejoicing to the Scythic and Scandinavian nations, who could not, says Gibbon, fancy a worse hell than a large abode open to the cold wind of the north. To the south they looked for the deity; and hence, with the Rajputs, a religious law forbids their doors being to the north.

Footnote 2.6.95:

Kaikeya is supposed by the translator, Dr. Carey, to be a king of Persia, the Kaivansa preceding Darius. The epithet Kai not unfrequently occurs in Hindu traditional couplets. One, which I remember, is connected with the ancient ruins of Abhaner in Jaipur, recording the marriage of one of its princes with a daughter of Kaikamb.

Tu beti Kaikamb ki, nam Parmala ho, etc. ‘Thou art the daughter of Kaikamb: thy name Fairy Garland.’ Kai was the epithet of one of the Persian dynasties. Qu. Kam-bakhsh, the Cambyses of the Greeks? [Cambyses, Kābuzīya or Kambūzīya, possibly ‘a bard’ (Rawlinson, Herodotus, iii. 543).]

Footnote 2.6.96:

Benares.

Footnote 2.6.97:

Tibet or Ava [N. Bengal]

Footnote 2.6.98:

Bihar.

Footnote 2.6.99:

Sind valley.

Footnote 2.6.100:

Unknown to me [W. and S. Panjab and its vicinity].

Footnote 2.6.101:

Peninsula of Kathiawar.

Footnote 2.6.102:

I have seen several of these sacrificial pillars of stone of very ancient date. Many years ago, when all the Rajput States were suffering from the thraldom of the Mahrattas, a most worthy and wealthy banker of Surat, known by the family name of Trivedi, who felt acutely for the woes inflicted by incessant predatory foes on the sons of Rama and Krishna, told me, with tears in his eyes, that the evils which afflicted Jaipur were to be attributed to the sacrilege of the prince, Jagat Singh, who had dared to abstract the gold plates of the sacrificial pillars, and send them to his treasury: worse than Rehoboam, who, when he took away from the temple “the shields of gold Solomon had made,” had the grace to substitute others of brass. Whether, when turned into currency, it went as a war contribution to the Mahrattas, or was applied to the less worthy use of his concubine queen, ‘the essence of camphor,’ it was of a piece with the rest of this prince’s unwise conduct. Jai Singh, who erected the pillars, did honour to his country, of which he was a second founder, and under whom it attained the height from which it has now fallen. [Some sacrificial pillars (yūpa) were recently found in the bed of the Jumna near Mathura, with inscriptions dated in the twenty-fourth year of Kanishka’s reign, about A.D. 102.]

Footnote 2.6.103:

On the Nauroz, or festival of the new year, the Great Mogul slays a camel with his own hand, which is distributed, and eaten by the court favourites. [A camel is sacrificed at the Īdu-l-azha festival (Hughes, Dict. Islām, 192 ff.).]

Footnote 2.6.104:

This was native gold, of a peculiarly dark and brilliant hue, which was compared to the fruit jambu (not unlike a damson). Everything forms an allegory with the Hindus; and the production of this metal is appropriated to the period of gestation of Jahnavi, the river-goddess (Ganges), when by Agni, or fire, she produced Kumara, the god of war, the commander of the army of the gods. This was when she left the place of her birth, the Himalaya mountain (the great storehouse of metallic substances), whose daughter she is: and doubtless this is in allusion to some very remote period, when, bursting her rock-bound bed, Ganga exposed from ‘her side’ veins of this precious metal.

Footnote 2.6.105:

Little bags of brocade, filled with seeds of the sesamum or cakes of the same, are distributed by the chiefs to friends on this occasion. While the author writes, he has before him two of these, sent to him by the young Mahratta prince, Holkar.

Footnote 2.6.106:

Sivaratri would be ‘father night’ [?]. Siva-Iswara is the ‘universal father.’

Footnote 2.6.107:

Ferishta, the compiler of the imperial history of India, gives us a Persian or Arabic derivation of this, from Bal, ‘the sun,’ and bec, ‘an idol.’ [This has not been traced in Dow or Briggs.]

Footnote 2.6.108:

Corrupted to Palmyra, the etymon of which, I believe, has never been given, which is a version of Tadmor. In Sanskrit, tal, or tar, is the ‘date-tree’; mor signifies ‘chief.’ We have more than one ‘city of palms’ (Talpur) in India; and the tribe ruling in Haidarabad, on the Indus, is called Talpuri, from the place whence they originated. [Tadmor is Semitic, probably meaning ‘abounding in palms.’ The suggested derivation is impossible.]

Footnote 2.6.109:

1 Kings xiv. 23.

Footnote 2.6.110:

Ficus religiosa. It presents a perfect resemblance to the popul (poplar) of Germany and Italy, a species of which is the aspen. [They belong to different orders.] So similar is it, that the specimen of the pipal from Carolina is called, in the Isola Bella of the Lago Maggiore, Populus angulata; and another, in the Jardin des Plantes at Toulon, is termed the Ficus populifolia, ou figuier à feuilles de peuplier. The aspen, or ash, held sacred by the Celtic priests, is said to be the mountain-ash. ‘The calf of Bal’ is generally placed under the pipal; and Hindu tradition sanctifies a never-dying stem, which marks the spot where the Hindu Apollo, Hari (the sun), was slain by the savage Bhil on the shores of Saurashtra. [This is known as the Prāchi Pīpal, and death rites are performed close to it (BG, viii. 271, note 2).]

Footnote 2.6.111:

The religious feelings of the Rajput, though outraged for centuries by Moguls and mercenary Pathans, will not permit him to see the axe applied to the noble pipal or umbrageous bar (Ficus indica), without execrating the destroyer. Unhappy the constitution of mind which knowingly wounds religious prejudices of such ancient date! Yet is it thus with our countrymen in the East, who treat all foreign prejudices with contempt, shoot the bird sacred to the Indian Mars, slay the calves of Bal, and fell the noble pipal before the eyes of the native without remorse. He is unphilosophic and unwise who treats such prejudices with contumely: prejudices beyond the reach of reason. He is uncharitable who does not respect them; impolitic, who does not use every means to prevent such offence by ignorance or levity. It is an abuse of our strength, and an ungenerous advantage over their weakness. Let us recollect who are the guardians of these fanes of Bal, his pipal, and sacred bird (the peacock); the children of Surya and Chandra, and the descendants of the sages of yore, they who fill the ranks of our army, and are attentive, though silent, observers of all our actions: the most attached, the most faithful, and the most obedient of mankind! Let us maintain them in duty, obedience, and attachment, by respecting their prejudices and conciliating their pride. On the fulfilment of this depends the maintenance of our sovereignty in India: but the last fifteen years have assuredly not increased their devotion to us. Let the question be put to the unprejudiced, whether their welfare has advanced in proportion to the dominion they have conquered for us, or if it has not been in the inverse ratio of this prosperity? Have not their allowances and comforts decreased? Does the same relative standard between the currency and conveniences of life exist as twenty years ago? Has not the first depreciated twenty-five per cent, as half-batta stations and duties have increased? For the good of ruler and servant, let these be rectified. With the utmost solemnity, I aver, I have but the welfare of all at heart in these observations. I loved the service, I loved the native soldier. I have proved what he will do, where devoted, when, in 1817, thirty-two firelocks of my guard attacked, defeated, and dispersed a camp of fifteen hundred men, slaying thrice their numbers.[2.6.111.A] Having quitted the scene for ever, I submit my opinion dispassionately for the welfare of the one, and with it the stability or reverse of the other.

Footnote 2.6.111.A:

What says the Thermopylae of India, Corygaum? Five hundred firelocks against twenty thousand men! Do the annals of Napoleon record a more brilliant exploit? Has a column been reared to the manes of the brave, European and native, of this memorable day, to excite to future achievement? What order decks the breast of the gallant Fitzgerald, for the exploit on the field of Nagpur? At another time and place his words, “At my peril be it! Charge!” would have crowned his crest! These things call for remedy! [Korēgāon in Poona District, where Captain Staunton defeated a large force of Mahrattas on January 1, 1818 (Wilson-Mill, Hist. of India, ii. (1846), 303 ff.).]

Footnote 2.6.112:

D’Anville’s derivation of German, from wer (bellum) and manus. [Possibly O. Irish, gair, ‘neighbour,’ or gairm, ‘battle-cry’ (New Eng. Dict. s.v.).]

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