Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c3.s2.t2.13

c3.s2.t2.13

There is a very remarkable evidence, as regards the family or dynastic connections of the Pañcāla kings named in the Jātakas, which has not gained the prominence it deserves. As will be seen, most of the Pañcāla kings are connected with, what seems to be their family title, Brahmadatta. And a Brahmadatta is a famous king of south Pañcāla in the Purāṇas.³ Now, to co-ordinate various other facts, two gāthās, at least, in our Jātaka book,⁴ preserve a dim recollection of the dynastic descent of the Pañcāla kings from the Bhāratas of old, as the epithets Bharatūsabha and Bhārata given to these kings clearly show. This latter fact lends valuable confirmation to the Vedic⁵ Epic⁶ and Paurāṇic⁷ evidence.⁸ Thus it seems legitimate to infer that the Brahmadatta Dynasty of Pañcāla was of Bhārata-descent. Then again, as pointed out by Dr. Raychaudhury,⁹ a king of Kāsī named Dhataraṭṭha is represented as a Bhārata prince in the Mahāgovinda Suttanta of the Dīgha Nikāya. "The Bhārata dynasty of Kāsī," adds the learned scholar, "seems to have been supplanted by a new line of Kings who had the family name Brahmadatta and were probably of Videha origin."¹⁰ We may or may no place any great reliance on the solitary reference about the Bhārata connectiot with Kāsī. But as regards Brahmadatta being a family name of the Kān monarchs, our Jātakas are quite explicit, as will appear¹¹. A questionsī naturally arises: had this Brahmadatta dynasty of Kāsī anything to do with the similarly named one of Pañcāla? This is a subtle and an interesting question. Some of the Jātaka passages, as will be shown later on, have led Dr. Raychaudhury,¹² to assign a Videhan origin for the Brahmadattas of Kāśī. Stray, and therefore insufficient, as these references are to warrant such a conclusion,¹ they are not altogether untenable. What is more, as it seems to us, Videha must have acted as a mediator between the two kingdoms of Pañcāla and Kāśī in supplying the title *Brahmadatta* to the latter from the former. By a mysterious process of alliances, unknown to us, the Brahmadatta kings of Pañcāla, very probably through the medium of Videha, transferred, and perpetuated, their dear title to the kings of Benares.²