Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c20.24

c20.24

There are allusions to the ages sometimes in the genealogies, and these (when without the elaboration of the ages which will be noticed) appear to be sometimes right, and tend to show that there was in kṣatriya tradition some memory of the chronological position of certain important events. Thus king Bāhu of Ayodhyā lived in the Dharma (Kṛta) age,¹ which agrees with the position, No. 39, determined for him. Karandhama of the Vaiśāla dynasty reigned at the beginning of the Tretā age,² and his twelfth successor Tṛṇabindu reigned at the third mouth of that age,³ which appears to mean the beginning of the third quarter of it: and the positions, Nos. 38 and 52, determined for them practically agree with the approximate limits assigned to that age above. But most such allusions occur in stories and discourses, often brahmanic, and are sometimes right but more often wrong.⁴ There is an inclination to assign events to the Tretā age,⁵ and the expression Tretā-yuga⁶ means at times little or nothing more than ‘once upon a time’. Such statements are generally worthless for chronological purposes.