Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c29.182

c29.182

All these events may be summed up thus. Arjuna Kārtavīrya and the Haihayas maltreated the Bhārgavas and killed Jamadagni. Rāma and the Bhārgavas (with probably the help of Kānyakubja and Ayodhyā) killed Arjuna and punished the Haihayas, who were then checked in their career of conquests.⁴ There the enmity between them ended.⁵ After Rāma’s time the Haihayas recovered their power and extended their conquests into N. India, making continual raids, overthrowing kingdoms, founding none, and devastating the countries, which were then overrun by tribes from the northwest also. The kṣatriyas must have perished by thousands. The Haihayas overwhelmed Kānyakubja and Ayodhyā, but were arrested by the Vaiśālī kings, and afterwards Sagara destroyed all those enemies, rescued India from those evils and re-established peace.¹ The carnage and ruin must have continued nearly a century, and the deplorable condition to which North India was reduced² may be imagined by that caused by the Marāṭhas and the Persian and Afghan invasions in the eighteenth century, for the Haihayas occupied the same region as the Marāṭhas and the two periods are strictly comparable and remarkably alike.