The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.124

v1.c17.124

Further east of the Kuru-Pañchāla realm lay the territories of Kosala and Videha, which were, however, not allied in any so close a manner as the Kurus and the Pañchālas. Para, son of Aṭṇāra, their greatest king who celebrated the horse-sacrifice, is however spoken of as a king of Videha as well as a king of Kosala, showing that the kingdoms were sometimes united under one sovereign. A well-known legend in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa recognises that Videha received Vedic civilisation later than Kosala, for it tells how Māthava the Videgha, whose name shows the older form of the word Videha, passed from the Sarasvatī, the seat of Vedic culture, to the land of Videha, crossing the Sadānīrā; this perennial stream, as its name denotes, formed the boundary of Kosala on the east and, with some plausibility, has been identified with the modern Gandak, which rising in Nepāl joins the Ganges near Patna. Kāçī and Videha are also connected in the Kaushītaki Upanishad; and a late text preserves the record that Jala Jātūkarṇya was the Purohita of the Kosalas, Videhas, and Kāçis at one time, proving a temporary league. Of other kings we hear of the Kosalan Hiraṇyanābha, of the Videhan Namī Sāpya, and beyond all of Janaka of Videha, whose fame leads him to play the part of the father of Sītā, the heroine of the Rāmāyaṇa, the second of India’s great epics. Janaka appears himself as a king ever anxious to seek for the wisdom of the Brāhmans; and among his contemporaries are mentioned the great Yājñavalkya, and Çvetaketu. His contemporary was Ajātaçatru of Kāçī, whom one account indeed refers to as of Kāçī or Videha, and it is a natural suggestion that in this name we have a chronological fact of value. It is suggested that in this Ajātaçatru we have the Ajātasattu of the Buddhist texts, who was a contemporary of the Buddha and who therefore reigned in the sixth century b.c.¹ But the suggestion is not a happy one. In the Buddhist text Ajātasattu never appears as king of any other place than Magadha, and the name is merely an epithet, ‘he who has no foe,’ which could be applied to any king, though it may well be that the Ajātasattu of Magadha gladly borrowed an epithet which a king of Kāçī had made famous. Other kings of Kāçī were Dhṛitarāshṭra, whose defeat by a Bharata has been mentioned above, and Bhadrasena, a descendant of Ajātaçatru.