Tribes in Ancient India c31.72

c31.72

Brahmadatta was probably the dynastic name of the kings of Benares; for instance, in the *Gaṅgamāla Jātaka* (J., III, 452) Udaya, king of Benares, is addressed as Brahmadatta. Elsewhere in the *Jātaka* (III, pp. 406ff.), we read that a certain prince Brahmadatta became king of Benares. He married the exquisitely beautiful daughter of the king of Kośala, and made her his chief queen. He held a parasol festival, and the whole city was decorated so splendidly as to seem like a city of the gods. The king went around the city in procession, and then mounted his throne on the dais in the palace. The throne was surmounted by a white parasol. Brahmadatta looked down on all the persons who stood in attendance, ‘on one side the ministers, on another the Brahmins and householders resplendent in the beauty of varied apparel, on another the townspeople with various gifts in their hands, on another troupes of dancing girls to the number of sixteen thousand, like a gathering of the nymphs of heaven in full apparel’, and reflected that all his splendour was due to ‘an alms-gift of four portions of gruel given to four paccekabuddhas’.