Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c10.29

c10.29

First, it confused different persons of the same name. Preliminary confusion between two different persons, Bali, the Ānava king of the Eastern region, and Bali Vairocana, the demon king, is found in the story of the former,¹ where three Puranas call him Dānava and Vairocana,² in spite of the fact that they give his genealogy as Aṇava and make no mention of any Virocana among his ancestors. Further confusion is seen in the allusions to ‘king Janaka’, for Janaka was the family name of the kings of Videha and various Janakas are distinguished in epic and Puranic tradition,³ but in brahmanic literature Janaka is regarded as one king.⁴ Similarly rishis of the same name were confused: thus the first Viśvāmitra is wrongly called Bharata-ṛṣabha in the story of Śunaḥśepa (p. 10); and this term really belonged to one of his descendants long afterwards, probably the Viśvāmitra who was priest to Sudās, i. e. Sudāsa, king of north Pañcāla, who was descended from Bharata.⁵ Two other brahmanical books⁶ confuse the two Viśvāmitras by reversing the blunder, in styling the descendant ‘Gāthi’s son’, who was the first Viśvāmitra. Again, the Rāmāyaṇa wrongly identifies the Viśvāmitra of Rāma’s time with the first Viśvāmitra,⁷ and naïvely makes Śatānanda narrate in ‘Viśvāmitra’s’ presence the fable of the first Viśvāmitra’s discomfiture by Vasiṣṭha.⁸ Similarly, the Vasiṣṭhas, of whom there were many, as will be shown in chapter XVIII, were often confused, until at length they were all regarded as one,⁹ who was cirajīvin: and so also all the Mārkaṇḍeyas were reckoned as only one,¹⁰ and the Bṛhaspatis are confused.¹¹