Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c3.s1.t2.76

c3.s1.t2.76

Let us turn finally to the last prose passage in the *Jātaka*. It informs us that the five sons of King Upacara founded five different kingdoms on the advice of the same old Kapila.⁷ This fact is corroborated by the evidence furnished by the *Mahābhārata*,⁸ and the *Purāṇas*,⁹ which also give the names of those five sons not remembered by the *Jātaka*. They were Bṛhadratha, Pratyagraha, Kuśāmba surnamed Maṇivāhana, Yadu or Lalittha or Matsya and Māvella.¹⁰ According to the *Jātaka*, the five sons founded respectively the five cities, viz., Hatthipura in the East, Assapura in the South, Sihapura in the West, Uttarapañcāla in the North and Daddarapura in the North-West. We cannot ascertain how much truth there is in the account. It is also difficult to identify correctly the places mentioned. Hatthipura may however be taken to represent Hastināpura traditionally identified with an old town in Mawāṇā tahsil, Meerut.¹¹ Sihapura may represent the Seng-ho-pu-lo or Singhapura of Yuan Chwang, situated at 117 miles to the east of Taxila.¹² Assapura, again, may possibly be the same as mentioned in the *Majjhima Nikāya*¹³ and the *Mahābhārata*.¹ Uttarapañcāla is of course well-known, corresponding roughly to Bareilly, Budaon, Farrukhābād and the adjoining districts of the United Provinces.² Daddarapura may be taken to represent a place somewhere in the present Dārdistān as we have tried to show elsewhere.³ If these identifications be correct, they would seem to refer to the kingdoms of Kuru, Gandhāra, Aṅga, Pañcāla and Nāga kingdom,⁴ respectively. According to the Paurāṇic account, Bṛhadratha took Magadha, and founded the famous Bṛhadratha dynasty, Kuśāmba had Kauśāmbī, Pratyagraha may have taken Cedi, and Yādava Karūṣa while the fifth kingdom was probably Matsya.⁵ Whatever the difference, due credit must be paid to the *Jātaka* for preserving, though in a mythical garb, faint traces of traditional recollection about Vasu Caidya Uparicara and the founding of different kingdoms by his sons. Its ignorance of real fact may only prove the antiquity of the happenings of the remote past.