[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882) › c8.s3.166 # The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s3.166 The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s3.166 - **Language:** English ### [c8.s3.166.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c8.s3.166.1) great discrepancy between it and the Mâtsya and others. That there is very little agreement among them as regards the Andhrabhritya dynasty, I have already indicated above. The genesis of our Purânic literature seems to be this. Certain versified accounts of certain things, purporting to be narrated by a bard to Rishis assembled together at a sacrificial session, were handed down orally from generation to generation; and these were after some time committed to writing. The later Purânas, devoted to the exaltation of a particular deity and to the inculcation of certain doctrines, derived their accounts of these things from the earliest written Purânas and not from the oral tradition. Of the works of this class which I am going to compare for our present purpose, the oldest appears to me to be the Vâyu, and next to it the Mâtsya. The Vishnu is later, and the Bhâgavata, the latest. The text of the old Purânas gradually became corrupt, and the authors of the later ones were in some cases misled by their incorrect readings into putting forth statements at variance with the original account. Now the four Purânas just mentioned contain general statements about the several dynasties, giving the number of princes belonging to each and its duration in years, and also mention the names of those princes more particularly; while the Vâyu and the Mâtsya give in addition the number of years for which each reigned. ### [c8.s3.166.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c8.s3.166.2) Often there is a discrepancy between the general and the particular statements. The duration assigned by them all to the Maurya dynasty, founded by Chandragupta whose date as determined by his relations with the successors of Alexander the Great is justly characterised by Professor MaxMüller as the sheet-anchor of Indian chronology, is 137 years. The number of reigning princes given by the Vâyu is nine, and by the rest, ten; but the names actually enumerated in the Vishnu only are ten, while the Vâyu and the Bhâgavata give nine, and the Mâtsya, only four. The total of the years assigned to each prince by the Vâyu is 133 years; so that it is not unlikely that a short reign of four years may have dropped out from the text of that Purâna. Thus the general statement about ten princes and 137 years seems to be corroborated, and it appears pretty clear that the text of the Mâtsya in this case undergone a good deal of corruption. Thus, if with Dr. Kern we take B.C. 322 as the date of the foundation of the Maurya dynasty, its overthrow and the foundation of the next or the S'unga family must have occurred in the year B.C. 185. The S'ungas are generally stated in all the Purânas to have been ten and to have reigned for 112 years, though the expression used in the Bhâgavata is not "112 years," but "more than a hundred years." In the actual enumeration, the Mâtsya omits two, and the Bhâgavata, one; and the total of the years assigned to each prince in the Vâyu exceeds 112. ### [c8.s3.166.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c8.s3.166.3) There is evidently some mistake here; but if we take the general statement to be the correct tradition handed down, the dynasty became extinct in B.C. 73. The dynasty next mentioned is that of the Kânvas or Kânvâyanas. There were four princes of this line, and they reigned for forty-five years; though the Bhâgavata, through a mistake to be explained hereafter, makes the period to be 345 years. They were followed by the Andhrabhṛityas. But here, there is a statement in the Vâyu and the Mâtsya, the like of which does not occur in the account of the other dynasties. The founder of the Andhrabhṛityas, Sindhuka, according to the first Purâṇa, and Śiśuka, according to the other, is said to have uprooted not only the Kânvas, but "whatever was left of the power of the Śungas."\[1\] And the Kânvas are pointedly spoken of as Śungabhṛityas or "servants of the Śungas."\[2\] It, therefore, appears likely that when the princes of the Śunga family became weak, the Kânvas usurped the whole power and ruled like the Peshwas in modern times, not uprooting the dynasty of their masters but reducing them to the character of nominal sovereigns; and this supposition is strengthened by the fact that like the Peshwas they were Brâhmaṇs and not Kshatriyas. Thus then these dynasties reigned contemporaneously, and hence the 112 years that tradition assigns to the Śungas include the 45 assigned to the Kânvas. ### [c8.s3.166.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c8.s3.166.4) The Śungas and the Kânvas, therefore, were uprooted, and the family of the Andhrabhṛityas came to power in B.C. 73. In a general way, the number of princes belonging to this line is given as thirty in the Vâyu, the Viṣhṇu, and the Bhâgavata, and twenty-nine in the Mâtsya; and the total duration is stated to be 411 years in the first, 456 in the second and the third, and 460 in the fourth. The disagreement here is not great, wherefore the tradition as to thirty princes and about 456 years may be accepted as correct. But the discrepancy between this general statement and the more particular accounts that follow, as well as the disagreement between the several Purâṇas in this last, is very great. This will be apparent from the following table:— --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c8.s3.166](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c8.s3.166) · Pramāṇa