Tribes in Ancient India c11.26

c11.26

From the *Kāliṅga-Bodhi Jātaka* we observe that even a prince of the royal house of Kāliṅga in the far east sought the hand of a princess of the Madra country. A daughter was born to the king of Madra in the city of Sāgala. It was foretold that the girl should live as an ascetic but that her son would be universal monarch. The kings of India heard of this prediction and surrounded the city with the object of seeking the princess’s hand. The king of Madra could not give his daughter in marriage to any one of them without incurring the wrath of the others. So he fled to a forest with his wife and daughter. The prince of Kāliṅga, who was also in the forest, happened to meet the Madra princess, and fell in love with her. Learning that she was a Kṣatriya like himself, he obtained her parents’ consent to their marriage, and a matrimonial alliance was thus established between the royal houses of Madra and Kāliṅga.² In the *Chaddanta Jātaka*, we find that the royal houses of Benares and Madra were allied with each other through matrimony³ (see also *Jātaka*, Vol. VI, p. 1). The great Ceylonese chronicle (*Mahāvaṃsa*, 8, 7) records an alliance between a Madra princess and a prince of Eastern India.