Tribes in Ancient India c33.95

c33.95

Thus, from the employment of Kauśāmbeya as a local epithet of a person in the Brāhmaṇas, it may be safely inferred that the name Kauśāmbī was current as early as the Brāhmaṇa age. The Pāli canon abounds in references to Kauśāmbī as a well-known city in N. India, the capital of the Vatsa country of King Udayana. The high antiquity of Kauśāmbī as a royal city is equally proved by traditions not only in the two great Sanskrit Epics and the Purāṇas, but also in the Vamsatthappakāsinī (commentary on the Mahāvaṃsa). The Mahābhārata⁵ attributes the foundation of the city of Kauśāmbī to Prince Kuśāmba, third son of the Cedi king Uparicara Vasu. In the Rāmāyaṇa story, however, Prince Kuśāmba is described as the eldest son of an ancient king named Kuśa, who had four sons by his queen Vaidarbhī, the youngest of them being Vasu.¹ According to the *Matsyapurāṇa*, when Hastināpura was swept away by a Ganges flood, the Kuru or Bhārata king Nicakṣu, who was fifth in descent from Parikṣit, the grandson of Arjuna, abandoned Hastināpura and dwelt in Kauśāmbī.² There is, however, no suggestion made in the Purāṇa that Nicakṣu was himself the founder of the city. We are told in McCrindle’s *Ptolemy*³ that Kauśāmbī was a famous city on the river Jumna, which became the Pāṇḍu capital after Hastināpura had been swept away by the Ganges, and which was noted as the shrine of the most sacred of all the statues of the Buddha. Its fame began only with the reign of Cakra, the eighth in descent from Arjuna the Pāṇḍava.⁴ It is stated in the Purāṇas that the three sons of Adhisāmakṛṣṇa, named Nirvakta, Nemicakra and Vivakṣu, lived in Kauśāmbī after the destruction of Hastināpura by the inundation of the Ganges.⁵