The History of Indian Literature c8.318

c8.318

In the earlier books there are two passages in particular which give an indication of the period from which they date. The first of these exists only in the Káṇva recension, where it treats of the sacrifice at the consecration of the king. The text in the Mádhyamdina recension (ix. 40, x. 18) runs as follows: "This is your king, O ye So and So," where, instead of the name of the people, only the indefinite pronoun *amí* is used; whereas in the Káṇva recension we read (xi. 3. 3, 6. 3): "This is your king, O ye Kurus, O ye Pañchálas."(∗) The second passage occurs in connection with the horse sacrifice (xxiii. 18). The *mahishí*, or principal wife of the king, performing this sacrifice, must, in order to obtain a son, pass the night by the side of the horse that has been immolated, placing its *śiśna* on her *upastha*; with her fellow-wives, who are forced to accompany her, she pours forth her sorrow in this lament: "O Ambá, O Ambiká, O Ambáliká, no one takes me (by force to the horse); (but if I go not of myself), the (spiteful) horse will lie with (another, as) the (wicked) Subhadrá who dwells in Kámpíla."† Kámpíla is a town in the country of the Pañchálas. Subhadrá, therefore, would seem to be the wife of the king of that district,‡ and the benefits of the *aśvamedha* sacrifice are supposed to accrue to them, unless the *mahishí* consents voluntarily to give herself up to this revolting ceremony. If we are justified in regarding the *mahishí* as the consort of a king of the Kurus,—and the names Ambiká and Ambáliká actually appear in this connection in the Mahá-Bhárata, to wit, as the names of the mothers of Dhṛitaráshtra and Páṇḍu,—we might then with probability infer that there existed a hostile, jealous feeling on the part of the Kurus towards the Pañchálas, a feeling which was possibly at that time only smouldering, but which in the epic legend of the Mahá-Bhárata we find had burst out into the flame of open warfare. However this may be, the allusion to Kámpíla at all events betrays that the verse, or even the whole book (as well as the corresponding passages of the Taitt. Bráhmaṇa), originated in the region of the Pañchálas; and this inference holds good also for the eleventh book of the Káṇva recension.¹²⁹ We might further adduce in proof of it the use of the word *arjuna* in the Mádhyamdina, and of *phalguna* in the Káṇva recension, in a formula ¹³⁰ relating to the sacrifice at the consecration of the king (x. 21): "To obtain intrepidity, to obtain food(, I, the offerer, ascend) thee(, O chariot,) I, the inviolate Arjuna (Phalguna)," *i.e.*, Indra, Indra-like. For although we must take both these words in this latter sense, and not as proper names (see *I. St.*, i. 190), yet, at any rate, some connection must be assumed between this use and the later one, where they appear as the appellation of the chief hero of the Páṇḍus (or Pañchálas?); and this connection consists in the fact that the legend specially applied these names of Indra ∗ to that hero of the Páṇḍus (or Pañchálas?) who was pre-eminently regarded by it as an incarnation of Indra.