History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c8.s1.23

v1.c8.s1.23

We shall discuss the origin of each of the Rajput families in India in our next volume. Here it is, however, necessary to state that Mr. Bhandarkar has attached too much weight and importance to the legends about the progenitors of many families given in inscriptions or in traditions. The legends of Kshatriyas being born of fire or of Lakshmana brother of Rama, or of the Mānavya Ṛiśi are all imaginary and very little historical information is derivable from these stories. Mr. Bhandarkar's treating the Chālukyas and Kadambas as of priestly origin is indeed ridiculous. Because in one inscription Mānavya Ṛiśi is said to be the progenitor of the Kadambas it does not follow that the Kadambas were at any time Brahmins, for the progenitors of all castes or peoples in India are believed to be Ṛiśis especially the seven Ṛiśis. But this origin is imaginary. Again Manu is also looked upon as the progenitor of all human beings and hence it cannot be argued that all peoples were Kshatriyas in origin. In short, it is strange that Mr. Bhandarkar should seek to derive any historical inference from these imaginary legends about the progenitors of peoples. Such legends are important only as traditions and if traditions are long current they may be treated as proof of race. The Chālukyas of the Deccan looked upon themselves in their oldest documents as born of the Mānavya gotra and hence they should be looked upon as Aryan in race. The Kadambas also thought they were born of the same gotra and hence they also might be looked upon as Kshatriyas and allied in race to the Chālukyas. The Sindas looked upon themselves as born of Sesha and hence they may be looked upon as Dravidians by race. Mr. Bhandarkar admits that the Sindas were a class of the Nāga tribe and yet begins a para (p. 27 ditto) with the sentence: "Another foreign tribe which came from the north to the south is Sindas." The word foreign plainly means foreign to India and cannot therefore fitly be applied to the Sindas nor does any thing show that the Sindas came from the north. Mr. Bhandarkar seems so far obsessed by his theory of foreign origin of noted peoples of India that even Brahmins if mentioned as coming from Ahicchatra in the north appear to him to be foreigners. If Chāhumāns and Padhihars and Paramars and Chālukyas are said to have come from Ahichhatra they appear to him to be foreigners. But Ahichhatra was a famous centre of Aryan settlement and civilization being the capital of the Pāñchālas so well-known in the Vedic literature and it is not at all strange that Kshatriyas and Brahmins should represent themselves as coming from Ahichhatra. One fails to see, however, how this tradition of coming from Ahichhatra can make any people foreigners. One is constrained to set down Mr. R. D. Bhandarkar's theory especially about the Gujars as absurd and there is, to sum up, nothing in history to show that Gujars were foreigners or Khazars, or that they came into India from outside along with the Huns of the fifth or sixth century A. D. Their anthropometrical characteristics are purely Aryan, and history does not at all contradict this inference.