Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c22.108

c22.108

About the same time lived king Vītahavya (or Vītihotra, p. 155), whom a Bhṛgu rishi saved from Pratardana of Kāśī by impliedly asserting that he was a brahman, and who consequently became a brahman.¹ His descendants are set out for fifteen generations. His son was Gṛtsamada, whose eleventh descendant was Pramati, whose son was Ruru, whose son was Śunaka, from whom came the Śaunakas.² It is not said which family he was adopted into, but it was the Bhārgavas, because the last portion of that genealogy, with all the preceding ancestry omitted, is given in an account which makes Pramati to be son of Cyavana,³ and because Vītahavya, Gṛtsamada and the Śaunakas are named in the Bhārgava vaṃśa.⁴ It is however said elsewhere that a Śunaka and the Śaunakas were descended from a Gṛtsamada, a son of Sunahotra, son of Kṣatravṛddha, who founded the Kāśi dynasty⁵ (p. 86). Both these stories make a Gṛtsamada ancestor of the Śaunakas. On the other hand, it is said there was a Gṛtsamada, who was son of Sunahotra by birth, was (or became) an Āṅgirasa, and afterwards became a Bhārgava of the Śaunaka gotra.⁶ It is said in the first story that Vītahavya's son Gṛtsamada is mentioned in the Rigveda,⁷ but this is inconsistent, because the above comment on the Rigveda means that the Śaunakas were a Bhārgava gotra before this Gṛtsamada's time, and he became virtually a descendant of Śunaka by the adoption into the Śaunakas. It appears that there were two Gṛtsamadas and two Śunakas, and therefore two Śaunaka gotras; and the others will be found among the kṣatriyan brahmans in chapter XXIII; hence there were numberless ‘Śaunakas’.