Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c11.s1.59

c11.s1.59

Ikshvâkus, Zimmer, p. 133, cf. p. 104 note. The later ages trace back the royal race of Eastern Hindostan to Ikshvâku; the race also, to which Buddha belonged, regarded itself as a race of Ikshvâkuidæ. If Ikshvâku stands outside the circle with which, according to our investigation, the Rik-Samhitâ otherwise deals, the mention of a mighty prince in this way would of itself scarcely be used against us as an instance opposed to our result. But the case itself is questionable: the “Çatapatha Brâhmana” (xiii, 5, 4, 5) knows Purukutsa as an Ikshvâkuid;* but Purukutsa was prince of the Pûrus (Zimmer, p. 123), whom no one will seek to identify with those eastern peoples (regarding the Pûrus see our remarks presently). Are we to suppose that the eastern stocks, when they came into closer contact with the Vedic culture, have appropriated to their most venerated kingly races ancestors of Vedic nobility, and that for that purpose the name of Ikshvâkuidæ, belonging correctly to the Pûrus, has been selected?