Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c9.21

c9.21

As regards ‘the future’ there are these data. The Vāyu professes to have been narrated in the reign of Asīmakṛṣṇa or Adhisīmakṛṣṇa, the great grandson of that Janamejaya and the sixth in generation from Arjuna, in the Paurava line.⁴ The Matsya (50, 66) takes the same standpoint. Both definitely declare his successors to be future.⁵ Both treat Divākara, king of Ayodhyā, and Senājit, king of Magadha, as reigning contemporaneously with him, and say they were respectively the fifth and seventh in succession from Bṛhadbala and Sahadeva who were killed in the great battle. Both declare their successors to be future, and so also does the Vāyu’s counterpart, the Brahmāṇḍa.¹ These three Puranas thus start the ‘future’ kings in those three great dynasties with the sixth or seventh successors of those who took part in that battle; that is, they make ‘the future’ begin some five or six clear reigns after that battle, or about a century after it, if we put aside the extravagant lengths given to the reigns of Senājit’s predecessors in Magadha.² This point is more definitely discussed in chapter XV.