Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c18.64

c18.64

This story continues with Dīrghatamas.⁴ He lived in his paternal cousin’s hermitage, whom the Puranas apparently call Śaradvant, but indulged in gross immorality or misbehaved towards the wife of the younger Utathya⁵ (Aucathya). Hence he was expelled and set adrift in the Ganges. He was carried downstream to the Eastern Ānava kingdom and was there welcomed by king Bali. This incident finds support in the Rigveda (i, 158, 3, 5), where he speaks of having been delivered from bodily hurt and from danger in the rivers; and it is not improbable, because these Āṅgirasa rishis were living, as mentioned above, in the kingdom of Vaiśālī, so that he might easily have been put on a raft in the Ganges there and have drifted some seventy miles down to the Monghyr and Bhāgalpur country, which was the Ānava realm, and was soon afterwards called the Aṅga kingdom. There Dīrghatamas married the queen’s śūdra nurse and had Kakṣīvant and other sons;⁶ and at Bali’s desire begot of the queen Sudeṣṇā five sons, Aṅga, Vaṅga, Kaliṅga, Puṇḍra and Suhma, who were called the Bāleya kṣatra and also Bāleya brahmans. This is strange yet not improbable, for brahmans did render such services.¹ Afterwards he gained his sight,² and assumed the name Gotama or Gautama.³