Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c10.91

c10.91

Here genuine genealogy is mixed up with mythology, and the whole of this vamśa of the Pitṛ-kanyās arose out of a misunderstanding of this word. The genealogies say that Nahuṣa’s sons were born of pitṛ-kanyā Virajā,¹ connect a pitṛ-kanyā with Viśvamahat,² and call Kṛtvī a pitṛ-kanyā.³ There can be no doubt that the word meant ‘father’s daughter’, that is ‘sister’, for union between brother and sister was not unknown, as Rigveda x, 10 about Yama and Yamī shows. Nahuṣa and Viśvamahat married their sisters or half-sisters, and the same may be presumed of Purukutsa and probably of Śukra and Suka. But the brahmans misunderstood or perverted the word to mean ‘daughter of the Pitṛs’⁴ (and therefore ‘mind-born’), thus mythologizing it, and extended its use. Satyavatī, as a queen and great grandmother of the Pāṇḍavas, was ennobled by the kṣatriyas in the fable making her the offspring of Vasu, king of Cedi;⁵ and, as mother of the great Vyāsa, by the brahmans in the additional fable that she was a daughter of the Pitṛs.⁶ Menā was purely mythological, but Ekaparṇā and Ekapāṭalā⁷ were mistakenly conjoined with Aparṇā-Umā, probably through some similarity in names, much as in the case of Tapatī discussed above.