Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c3.s2.t2.78

c3.s2.t2.78

Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar⁴ has identified Vissasena, Udayabhadda⁵ and Bhallāṭiya of the Jātakas⁶ with the Paurāṇic kings Viśvaksena, Udakasena and Bhallāṭa respectively. The identification was based merely on the striking agreement in names, which is after all not a very convincing argument, and doubts as regards these have rightly been entertained.⁷ But several circumstances now tend to go in support of Prof. Bhandarkar's theory. First, the immediate predecessor of the Paurāṇic kings is Brahmadatta of South Pañcāla;⁸ secondly, Udaya of the Gaṅgamāla Jātaka,⁹ but not Udayabhadda of the Udaya Jātaka,¹⁰ as Prof. Bhandarkar has taken him to be, is called by the family name ‘Brahmadatta’¹¹; and thirdly, our above discussion on the relation between Brahamdatta and the Pañcālas results in favour of this identification. In view of this we may be inclined to hold that these three kings, whom the Jātakas regard, possibly through their usual obstinacy, as the kings of Kāsī, should be taken more correctly as kings of South Pañcāla in agreement with the Paurāṇic lists. But here a fresh difficulty faces us as regards Bhallāṭa. A single verse from the Mahābhārata,¹² which mentions the country of Bhallāṭa with the mountain Sūktimat, has been the basis of different theories with regard to the identification of this Sūktimt mountain. Dr. R. C. Majumdar¹³ identifies the mountain with the Sulaiman range and Bhallāṭa with the Ṛgvedic Bhalānas who lived, according to Zimmer, in east Kabulistan and after whom the Bolan pass was named. He is supported by Harit Krisna Deb and Jayaswal.¹⁴ But Dr. Raychaudhury,¹⁵ with good reasons, comes to a different conclusion. According to him the Bhallāṭa country and consequently Sūktimat were situated in Central India. "The evidence of the *Mahābhārata* points to some range between Indraprastha (Delhi) and Lauhitya (Brahmaputra) as the real Sūktimat"¹; and it also seems to locate Bhallāṭa before Kāsī and after Kuru, that is to say, in the region inhabited by the Pañcālas.²