Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c20.16

c20.16

This division accords with what tradition says about the transition from one age to another. Kṛṣṇa lived at the time of the Bhārata battle and the close of the Dvāpara age.¹ Rāma Dāśarathi lived in the interval between the Tretā and Dvāpara ages.² To Rāma Jāmadagnya is assigned the same position, and the references say he lived in the Tretā age,³ and smote the kṣatriyas in the interval between the Tretā and Dvāpara ages.⁴ But this was Rāma Dāśarathi's position, and that particularization is clearly wrong, for Rāma Jāmadagnya was avowedly prior as shown by the synchronisms in chapter XIII, and the allegation that he destroyed all kṣatriyas off the earth twenty-one times (really the long-continued Haihaya devastations) is wholly incompatible with the story of Rāma Dāśarathi. It is obvious that Rāma Jāmadagnya belonged to the interval between the Kṛta and Tretā ages, when in fact the Haihayas had their dominion, and the references should be to the Kṛta age and that interval. The Kṛta age then ended with the destruction of the Haihayas; the Tretā began approximately with Sagara and ended with Rāma Dāśarathi's destruction of the Rākṣasas; and the Dvāpara began with his reinstatement at Ayodhyā and ended with the Bhārata battle: so that, taking the numbers in the table of genealogies, the division is approximately thus, the Kṛta Nos. 1–40, the Tretā Nos. 41–65, and the Dvāpara Nos. 66–95.