Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c14.s1.9

c14.s1.9

The error probably arose out of Rigveda iii, 53, 12, which, referring to king Sudās, says ‘this prayer of Viśvāmitra safeguards the Bhārata folk’; and Aitareya Brāhmaṇa vii, 3, 5 and Śaṅkhāyana Śrauta Sūtra xv, 25, where Viśvāmitra is called Bharata-ṛṣabha, ‘leader of the Bharatas’. Sudās, or Sudāsa as he is called in the genealogy, was a king of the North Pañcāla dynasty, which was descended from Ajamīḍha and Bharata.¹ He and his dynasty were therefore Bharatas or Bhāratas, for the name Pañcāla (p. 75) had not come into approved use then.² One of Viśvāmitra’s descendants, called by his gotra name merely Viśvāmitra, was his priest, as the hymn shows, and therefore the religious guardian and leader of these Bharatas or Bhāratas. Afterwards misunderstanding began. That Viśvāmitra might, not inappropriately, be styled a Bharata-ṛṣabha, the term used in the Brāhmaṇa and Sūtra. These books however, through the brahmanical lack of the historical sense, confused him with his ancestor, the first Viśvāmitra, and applied this term to the first Viśvāmitra. It thus became wholly erroneous as mentioned above, and the Bharatas did not come into existence till after his time. Further, this term might be taken to imply that he was himself a Bhārata, and, as the brahmans were not learned in kṣatriya genealogies, or perhaps considered the above allusions as authoritative, it was so understood, with the result that Viśvāmitra was held to be a descendant of Bharata.³ Consequently it was necessary to introduce him and his well-known ancestor Jahnu into the Paurava genealogy somewhere after Bharata; and, as Ajamīḍha had three sons who ruled the separate kingdoms of Hastināpura and North and South Pañcāla, it was easy to assign Jahnu of the Kānyakubja kingdom¹ as another son to him, especially as Jahnu and Ajamīḍha had near ancestors named Suhotra. Connected with this mistake is the alteration which the Brahma and Harivaṃśa make in the ancestral name Paurorava (i.e. Paurūrava) applied rightly to Viśvāmitra in the Vāyu, namely, changing it to Paurava.²