India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c8.s5.19

c8.s5.19

A second instance is *tripañchāśad-Gautamam* (Pat. I.499 on II.4.84), meaning that there were already counted fifty-three generations of the descendants of Gautamas. These numbers afford valuable chronological data for computing their time allowing 25 years to a generation. Thus the first Bhāradvāja should be dated to about five-hundred years earlier and the first Gautama to about thirteen hundred years earlier than the time when the two illustrations were adopted. It may be noted as a striking resemblance that the *Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad* also knows only of 57 generations of teachers. It may be surmised that perhaps this stock-example of fifty-three Gautamas dates from the time when the *Vaṁśa* lists were being compiled in the Brāhmaṇa period. We may also note that the Gautama family with which this example is connected was an important family famous for its learning as represented in its several descendants like Aruṇa, Uddālaka Āruṇi and his son Śvetaketu Āruṇeya in the Upanishads.