Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c20.50

c20.50

The memory of the country of Muḷaka is perhaps not entirely effaced from the Purāṇic tradition. In the genealogy of the race of Ikṣvāku, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (IV, 4) assigns a son named Aśmaka to Kalmāṣapāda. Aśmaka’s son and successor was Muḷaka, surnamed Nārikavaca, because some women hid and saved him at the time of the general massacre of the Kṣatriyas. Aśmaka is clearly an eponymous hero, the eponym of the country of Aśmaka, the ‘Stony’ territory (aśman=‘stone’), situated to the south of Avanti and closely connected with it. Cf. Avanty-Aśmakāḥ in the Gaṇapāṭha under the Kārta-Kaujap-ādayaḥ Gaṇa and Aśmak-Avanti in the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya episode of Koṭikarṇa. The Mūlasarvāstivādin Vinaya has Aśm-Aparāntaka which Cowell and Neil wrongly read: *asmāt parāntaka*.¹ The relation between Aśmaka and Muḷaka so clearly expressed in the *Pārāyaṇa* (*so Assakassa visaye Muḷakassa samāsane*, v. 2 ) suggests that the filiation indicated in the Purāṇa between king Aśmaka and king Muḷaka interprets a geographical relation by the genealogy.