Tribes in Ancient India c77.134

c77.134

Haihayas This family is referred to in Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra (p. 11). The Haihayas are said to have overthrown the Nāgas whose habitat was probably somewhere in the Narmadā region (cf. Nagpur). Five branches of the Haihayas are mentioned in the Matsyapurāṇa, namely, Vītihotras, Bhojas, Avantis, Kuṇḍikeras or Tuṇḍikeras and the Tālajaṅghas (43, 48-9). In the fourth century B.C. Avanti formed an integral part of the Magadhan empire. Thus Mahāpadma Nanda, the first Nanda king, is described in the Vāyu, Matsya and Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇas as ‘ekarāṭ’, or sole and undisputed monarch of the earth and ‘sarva Kṣatrāntaka’, that is, the destroyer of all kṣatriya families who ruled over the different parts of India along with the Saiśunāgas, viz. the Ikṣvākus, Kurus, Pañcālas, Kāśīs, Maithilas, Vītihotras, Haihayas, Kaliṅgas, Aśmakas, Sūrasenas and so on.³ It appears, therefore, that the Haihayas were one of the ruling Kṣatriya dynasties of ancient India. In the Mahābhārata (XIII, 30) Pratardana, king of Kāśī, is said to have crushed the power of Vitahavyas or Haihayas. According to E. J. Rapson,¹ the Haihayas, Aśmakas and Vītihotras, like the Sūrasenas, belonged to the great family of the descendants of Yadu who occupied the countries of the river Chambal in the north and the river Narbadā in the south, though it is difficult to identify with precision the kingdoms indicated by these different names. Haihaya is often used as a synonym of Yādava to denote the whole group of peoples and the Vītihotras are said to be a branch of the Haihayas. The Vītihotras and the Aśmakas are closely associated in literature with the Avantis of Western Mālwā, whose capital was Ujjain (Ujjayinī) on the river Siprā, a tributary of the Chambal (Charmanvatī). In the Puranic list of ruling dynasties the rulers of Ujjain are not mentioned. The obvious explanation for this, as Rapson points out, is that they are probably styled Haihayas in the Purāṇas.²