Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c23.61

c23.61

There is one certain fact, Parāśara, Śatayātu and ‘Vasiṣṭha’ were contemporaries of Sudās Paijavana.³ That Parāśara was Śakti’s son is well attested;⁴ and also that Śakti was killed;⁵ and it is said his widow Adṛśyantī bore Parāśara after his death,⁶ a statement that appears true, and otherwise there is no reason why it should have been made in the above stories, and it finds some support from the above Rigvedic passage which omits Śakti. Śatayātu then could not be Śakti and was probably another son of Vasiṣṭha.⁷ Thus Śakti lived in the time of Sudās of N. Pañcāla and not in that of Kalmāṣapāda Saudāsa of Ayodhyā; hence he has been wrongly introduced into the story of the latter king. It seems then most probable, that Kalmāṣapāda in his madness killed the sons of his priest ‘Vasiṣṭha’, and that Śakti alone, the son of Sudās’s priest ‘Vasiṣṭha’, was killed in Sudās’s reign. The Bṛhaddevatā has kept the two occurrences distinct in the passages cited above, but otherwise they have been confused, and the Mahābhārata and Liṅga, which know nothing of Sudās, have combined both occurrences into one story and transferred the whole of it to Kalmāṣapāda Saudāsa.¹