The Kanyakubja Chronicles - II

For an extended period of time in the mythological period, especially during the time span between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the story of Kanyakubja is quite blurred and there seems to be no significant mention of it, until the period of the Mahabharata.

The Mahabharata times (3rd Century BC, during the Dwapar Yuga) –

In ancient India, from the 6^th to 4^th century BC, there existed sixteen Mahajanapadas, kingdoms or oligarchic republics, ranging from Kamboja (modern day Kabul) and Gandhara (modern day Qandahar) in the North-west to Anga (modern day Bengal) in the eastern part. Two of them were ‘ganas’ or republics while the others were ruled over by monarchs. Of these, Panchal Pradesh was a notable one, which also carries historic importance for us.

Spread across the Gangetic basin, Panchal Pradesh was criss-crossed by five rivers, viz., Ganga, Yamuna, Kosi, Kali and Chambal. The kingdom was divided by the Ganga into two parts: North Panchal and South Panchal, with capitals at Ahichchhatra and Kampilya respectively. During the time of the Mahabharata, King Drupad was the monarch of Panchal and Kampilya was his capital. Among other smaller territories governed by sub-lords, Kanyakubja too was a part of South Panchal kingdom, the city being located a mere thirty miles away from the capital Kampilya.

As the Mahabharata legend goes, the guru of the Kauravas and Pandavas, Dronacharya, sent his pupil Arjun to avenge him and put Drupad in his rightful place. Arjun defeated Drupad, annexed his kingdom and brought him bound to Dronacharya. In the truce that followed, ending the bitter rivalry between the erstwhile closely bonded friends, Dronacharya took away the North Panchal part of Drupad’s kingdom and aligned the same to Hastinapur (capital of the Kuru kingdom) while giving back the South Panchal portion to Drupad to retain. Dronacharya then stayed in Ahichchhatra for some time before returning to Hastinapur and leaving his son Ashwathama as ruler of North Panchal, under subjugation of the Hastinapur kingdom.

It was also in Kampilya, the shining capital of South Panchal kingdom, that the famous swayamvara ceremony of Princess Draupadi (Panchali) was held where Arjun won the hand of the Princess of Panchal. During this period, the Pandavas are said to have extensively travelled through the South Panchal kingdom, staying in places like Kanyakubja, which is spoken of as a thriving city and a great seat of culture, education and Vedic religion, in the references found in the Mahabharata.

To put the geography in modern day perspective, Kampilya still remains as a small town called Kampil in Farukhabad in Uttar Pradesh. Out of the North Panchal area which was annexed to Hastinapur, the Kauravas gave away a part of Ahhichchatra to Guru Dronacharya and his family – which today can be identified as modern Haryana as Gurgaon or ‘Gurugram’, truly as the name suggests. Kanyakubja, as we already know, came to be the modern day Kannauj, eighty kilometres away from Kanpur city.

Ancient history of India – later Vedic era, Maurya and Gupta, periods (1200 BC – 550 AD)

If Panchal Pradesh as one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas had an important place in the mythological references, there was yet another Mahajanapada which proclaims to have changed the course of Indian history. It is the Magadha kingdom, the existence and references of which we find in Vedic texts and Epics, in time much earlier than 600 BC. According to the Brahmanda Purana references we come to know of Brihadratha who is said to be the first king of Magadha, in the post Vedic period.

Brihadratha’s dynasty was followed by a quick succession of dynasties between 600 and 322 BC. Magadha saw its first expansion under the Haryanka dynasty kings, notably Bimbisara and Ajatsatru, the latter being the contemporary of Lord Buddha. Ajatsatru had his capital at Girivraja, which he renamed to Rajagiri (modern-day Rajgir, in the state of Bihar). The Shishunaga dynasty overthrew the Haryankas in 413 BC and ruled for less than hundred years. They were overthrown by Mahapadma Nanda Ugrasena, who founded the Nanda dynasty in 345 BC. It was during the reign of the last Nanda king, Dhana Nanda, in 326 BC, that Alexander the Great invaded India. However, their armies did not meet for a battle, as Alexander’s armies were exhausted and had mutinied in the region of the Beas River in the northwest province forcing Alexander to turn back.

Chandragupta Maurya, who overthrew the Nanda dynasty, established the Maurya Empire in 321 BC. The capital of the Maurya Empire was Pataliputra (modern-day Patna). The Maurya Empire reached its zenith under his grandson Ashoka and extended from the eastern borders of Persia (modern-day Iran) till the southern borders of Burma. The Mauryan period professed Buddhism as the state religion and propagated it throughout the empire. The Mauryan Empire went into decline by 180 BC and was followed by few other local rulers who took control of Magadha and the capital Pataliputra.  

While much of the action was happening in the Indo-Gangetic plains with Magadha assuming all the importance and limelight, Panchal Pradesh in the post Vedic period was having a quiet run with its series of local rulers having consolidated the kingdom. With the decline of power and resultant threat from the Kuru kingdom (Mahajanapada) and its capital Indraprastha (modern-day Delhi – legacy left behind by the Pandavas), the Panchala Kings were able to regain back most of their original kingdom, including the northern important town of Ahichchhatra. Kanyakubja continued with its journey of Vedic learning through the breed of the Kanyakubja Brahmins, however, their agenda of propagating the Hindu scriptures had significantly diminished in the wake of the surge of Buddhism across the country at that period of time.

It was during the reign of the fiery Mahapadma Nanda of the Nanda dynasty that Panchal Pradesh along with many other Mahajanapadas was won over and annexed to the expanding Magadha kingdom. This was consolidated firmly during the Mauryan period as the entire country from the north-west to the south-east borders was won over by Chandragupta Maurya and his worthy descendants, and the concept of separate Mahajanapadas of the later Vedic times was dissolved to give way to a unified India and provincial heads or capitals therein. The resultant wide spread of Buddhism and the Pali language and their Prakrits used extensively during the Mauryan period, forced Hinduism to take a back seat and classical Sanskrit as the language of Vedic literature to be down forced. Thus centres of Hindu scriptural and Vedic learning, like Kanyakubja, Takshashila and Girivraja were affected by the upsurge of Buddhism and later Jainism.

Kanyakubja had a milder effect in the changed era, in comparison to the other two of its sibling cities Takshashila (modern Taxila – in North Pakistan) and Girivraja (modern Rajgir – in Bihar). This could be attributed to the fact that Kanyakubja was not as popular and had not been adequately patronised by its Panchala rulers as a seat of learning and could neither boast of accomplished faculty nor attract students from afar. The city, though lived up to its potential of Vedic and scriptural learning in Sanskrit and of being staunchly proud of its Brahminical Hindu roots and traditions, albeit in a very contained and captive manner. The Kanyakubja Brahmins continued to be the mainstay of the learning and tradition being upheld, but they remained quite focussed internally turning their faces away from the political, social and religious change that was sweeping across the country over these centuries.

Takshashila (Taxila), revered till date to have been one of the oldest universities of the world, became not only a provincial capital for the Maurya emperors, but also an important seat of the Mahayana Buddhist preaching and learning. Ashoka, the great propagator of Buddhism, was a patron of the Taxila centre and had erected a lot of Buddhist statues and icons in the city. However, even before the surge of Buddhism and during the initiation of the Maurya Empire, Taxila had been credited as being the abode of the famous Chanakya (Kautilya) who is said to have composed his treatise Arthshastra in Taxila. The city even finds reference in the Mahabharata in that the first recital of the Indian epic was done by sage Vaisampayan to King Janmejaya (of the Kuru royal lineage) at Taxila.

Girivraja (Rajgir) had the next famous seat of learning after Taxila during this period: the Nalanda University. Even though the Mauryas had their capital at Pataliputra, Nalanda was a very important location for them as a centre for preaching and teaching Buddhism. With Taxila and Nalanda, strategically placed in the north-west and eastern parts of the kingdom respectively, the Maurya period saw the significant rise of these centres of learning. Even though the earlier Vedic and Sanskrit literature was taught in both these places, the tide of time had turned the focus to be predominantly Buddhist literature and the medium to be the Pali and Prakrit language. In the whole scheme of things, Kanyakubja (for reasons mentioned earlier) fell into a shadow area and continued its low-profile existence.

India was again unified and saw resurgent glorious times under the Gupta Empire (240 AD to 550 AD) and the rise of Brahminical Hinduism was observed during this time. This period is also known as the age of Classical Sanskrit literature. As we have read from the accounts of the Chinese travellers, notably Fa Hien in the Mauryan period and Hiuen Tsang in the post-Gupta era, along with Taxila, Nalanda and Kanyakubja, other towns such as Mathura, Sarnath, Ujjain, Vidisha and Sravasti were developing as fantastic centres of learning and architecture.

As Taxila was for the Uttarapath (Noth-west frontier) and Nalanda for the Magadha region, Mathura and Kanyakubja were the key town for the Madhyadesh region. Under the Gupta kings, these cities rose to the pinnacle of glory as centres of administration, culture, diverse religions, architecture and celebration of the Classical Sanskrit knowledge. This golden age of the Classical Sanskrit renaissance produced famous litterateurs like Kalidasa, Bharavi, Sriharsha and Magha who wrote the five ‘Mahakavyas’. Scholars and writers like Banabhatta, Bhartrihari and Vatsyayana also composed their famous works Kadambari, the three Shatakas and the Kama Sutra respectively during this time. Further, the Hindu Puranas are stated to be composed and refined during this age.

However, in the post-Gupta era (570 AD – 650 AD, Mathura gave way to Kanyakubja, as the latter became important for political reasons and rose to become the capital of King Harsha’s undivided Indian empire.

The later Ancient history of India – Maukhari, and Vardhana periods (550 AD – 647 AD)

The Maukharis were the vassals of the Gupta kings and were governing the Madhyadesh region from Kanyakubja. King Isha Varman asserted his independence from the weakening Gupta Empire (which was already breaking up) in 550 AD and established Kanyakubja as the capital of Madhyadesha which he declared as a separate and independent kingdom. Over their little-above-fifty-years of rule, they rapidly consolidated their kingdom and developed Mathura as the second important city after the capital Kanyakubja. However, they were engaged in constant skirmishes with the Later Guptas of Magadha and other neighbouring kingdoms.

King Isha Varman was defeated by Kumaragupta of Magadha in 554 AD, but his son Sharva Varman soon defeated the Guptas and reclaimed his kingdom and capital of Kanyakubja. By the time of 605 AD, the power of the Later Gupta rulers had also diminished with many other kingdoms asserting their independence and establishing separate ruling dynasties. These kingdoms, viz., Madhyadesh ruled by the Maukhari Varmans, Magadha ruled by the Later Guptas, Malwa ruled by Devagupta, Gauda (Bengal) ruled by Shashanka, were always at war with each other in the attempt to expand their territories and loot wealth from the other kingdoms.

One such dynasty was the Pushyabhuti dynasty founded by Prabhakar Vardhana with their capital in Thaneswar (modern day Haryana). Prabhakar Vardhan left behind two sons Rajya Vardhan and Harsha Vardhan and a daughter Rajyasri. Rajya Vardhan ascended the throne and ruled from Thanesar while his younger brother Harshavardhan took up the charge of expanding the kingdom by conquering other territories. Their sister Rajyasri was married to Graha Varman, the Maukhari king of Kanyakubja.

A few years after the matrimonial alliance, Devagupta, the King of Malwa attacked Kanyakubja and defeated and killed Graha Varman, taking the city and his queen Rajyasri captive in her own palace. Rajya Vardhan, the king of Thanesar and Rajyasri’s elder brother immediately rushed to Kanyakubja in support of his sister. He succeeded in defeating and killing Devagupta in Kanyakubja and freed his sister Rajyasri from captivity. But at this point, King Shashanka, the ruler of Gauda (Bengal) and an ally of Devagupta of Malwa entered Kanyakubja to avenge the death of his friend.

Shashanka treacherously murdered Rajya Vardhan in Kanyakubja, and was planning to annex the kingdom when the news of Rajya Vardhan’s death reached his younger brother Harsha. Wasting no time and in furious anger, Harshavardhan marched on to Kanyakubja and defeated Shashanka and his Gauda army.

Harsha’s successful campaign in saving Kanyakubja also meant that the immediate threats to the kingdom had been quelled. The people of Kanyakubja praised Harsha and looked upon him as their saviour who had not only protected them but had also avenged the death of their earlier king Graha Varman. The council of priests, ministers and the representatives of the people at the Kanyakubja court requested Harsha to ascend the throne as their new King. Harshavardhan was therefore anointed as the new king of Madhyadesh at the palace in Kanyakubja in 606 AD. He was only sixteen years of age at that time.

In quick succession, he brought the other kingdoms around him to his subjugation and expanded his territories from the Northwest borders of India to Kamarupa (Assam) in the east and to the Narmada River in the south. King Harsha ruled for about forty years and it is said that not only under him was the last unified Hindu empire in the country, but also one of great glory and pomp, with Kanyakubja enjoying its most prominent time as its capital of King Harsha’s empire.

Coming Soon ….. Part 4

In the next article, we shall explore more on the glorious period of Kanyakubja under King Harsha, and then its history under the subsequent kings till the Muslim conquests and destruction of the city. The role of the Kanyakubja Brahmins also becomes more pronounced in this era as the age of the renaissance of classical Hinduism reaches its zenith.

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The Kanyakubja Chronicles I

For the starting point of my research of the history of our family lineage I decided to choose exactly that point of reference till which my grandfather had been able to trace the line into our previous generations, and that point of reference was where the first ever roots of the lineage hailed from: the ancient city of Kanyakubja!

Not that I was immediately successful in being able to trace a line of our forefathers in Kanyakubja, beyond the names already cited in my grandfather’s research, but what offered itself was a splendid tale of this ancient city, meandering leisurely in and out of history and mythology which was captivating enough that at some point the fine line separating the two seem to blur.

While I attempt in this section of my research article, to present the story of Kanyakubja, the revered city of my forefathers’, centuries ago, I do so with a caveat. My research in this area, for understandable reasons, have been totally bookish, the sources of which however remain well validated. I have gained most of the information from a few Sanskrit books (the Indian epic Ramayana, the Puranas and a few others) detailing the times and references to Kanyakubja in various eras and ruled by many kings, about whom we have read in both Indian mythology and history. These books, which I was very fortunate to stumble upon recently in the small library in our Calcutta home that my aunt Jharna had bequeathed to us, also had the Sanskrit paragraphs explained in Bengali alongside thus making it possible for me to understand from. For once while reading these books, as I became deeply engrossed in the mythological tale of Kanyakubja, I regretted not perhaps having taken up Sanskrit as my elective subject way back in college when I did have such an opportunity.

Coupled with my reading of the mythological references to Kanyakubja, I also found strong validated mentions and descriptions of the ancient city in some books on the ancient Indian history (periods from 180 BC through till 1019 AD). Thus, we now have the knowledge from where our family lineage was born and in what historical environs it developed over the centuries to come down to the time of 753 AD where it blends or joins with the specific line for our Gautama Baidik family as defined in my grandfather’s notes (refer my blog: The Search: Research Series Part 1).

We will take a detour here to speak about the history and mythological connections of Kanyakubja, as that has direct context and bearing to the mainstream line of the family we are out to investigate and establish.

The Ramayana times (10th Century BC, during the Treta Yuga) and before –

The coordinates of Kanyakubja as mentioned in many Indian mythological texts is briefly as follows:

Jamboodweep (Asia), Bharat Khand (India), Aryavarta desh (The land of the Aryans, mainly denoting the northern part of India), Vindhyachaley uttorey (to the north of the Vindhyachal mountains).

The Valmiki Ramayan, Bal-khand, Sargas 2 and 31 to 33, gives us a brief history of Kanyakubja and how the city came to get its name as such. When rishi Vishwamitra and Lord Ram reached the banks of the Son River near the ancient city of Girivraja, Lord Ram asked the rishi where they were, to which the great rishi told him about the location and history of the land:

One of Lord Brahma’s descendants was a King named Kusha, who had four sons by his wife Vaidarbhi, viz., Kushamba, Kushanabha, Asurtharaj and Vasu. King Kusha asked his sons, when they grew up, to rule like a true Kshatriya (warrior) ruler and for that they set up four cities in different parts of the kingdom. Kushamba’s city was named Kaushambi, Kushanabha built Mahodayapura, Asutharaj built the city Dharmaranya and Vasu called his city Girivraja. Amongst the lot, over course of time, only Kushanabha ruled according to the true Kshatriya practices and hence his city Mahodayapura flourished and soon many of his brothers’ cities also formed a part of his growing kingdom. The kingdom was mostly comprising of what we today can identify as the Indo-Gangetic plains.

Mahodayapura was the capital city of King Kushanabha and his glorious kingdom was called Madhyadesh (the central land). It was so named, chiefly because it occupied the central portion of the Aryavarta of the ancient times, with the Vindhyachal mountain range setting its barrier to the south, beyond which the Aryans had not ventured till that time.

King Kushanabha had a hundred daughters by his wife Ghritachi (also an apsara), and all of them were divinely beautiful. As they grew up to be exquisitely charming maidens, Vayu the wind god was infatuated by them but was rudely rejected by the maidens. In his anger and humiliation Vayu cursed the hundred daughters of King Kushanabha for their haughtiness, as a result of which the daughters developed hunches on their backs, thus deforming their once so praised physical beauty. Vayu told the King that the curse could only be lifted and the divine beauty of his daughters restored, if a Brahmin of upright character married them.

The news of the curse and the fate of the hundred princesses spread like wildfire in the city and across the kingdom. The city Mahodayapura soon became to be called “the city of the hunchback maidens” or ‘Kanyakubja’! (Kanya – daughter; kubja – hunchback). Thus was acquired the name which stayed on as long as the city stood in its glory across the centuries.

As the King went in frantic search of such a Brahmin, he heard of the sage Chooli who had set up his abode in the forests nearby and was meditating there. As the King approached the sage, he observed the sage’s son who was a young man and carried a certain halo about his persona. Upon meeting the sage, the King enquired if his son was married and when the sage replied in the negative, he promptly explained his predicament and proposed the marriage of his hundred daughters with the sage’s son Brahmadutt. Soon was the marriage was conducted and the moment Brahmadutt touched his hunch-backed wives, their hunches and deformity disappeared and their divine beauty was restored, thus ending the curse of Vayu. However, the name Kanyakubja stuck on and the city was thereafter always referred to by this name.

Rishi Vishwamitra though ended his story about the naming of Kanyakubja to Lord Ram, now surprised the exiled prince (Ram) by narrating his own connection and ancestry to the city of Kanyakubja.

King Kushanabha performed the ‘putrakamesti yajna’ in the hope of having a son who would be the future ruler, and was blessed with a son called Gadhi who, mythology states, was known to have qualities like Lord Indra, the King of Heaven and of the Gods. Some text versions in mythology also mention that Gadhi was an incarnation of Lord Indra himself who was mighty pleased with the devotion of King Kushanabha and was born to him as his son. Gadhi ruled the kingdom with great valour and pomp and had a daughter, Satyavati, and a son, Vishwarath. Vishwarath ruled in Kanyakubja after his father for some time as a powerful Kshatriya (warrior) king until he gave up his kingship and turned ascetic. Rishi Vishwamitra himself was none other than the erstwhile ruler of Kanyakubja, King Vishwarath, and the direct grandson of the mighty King Kushanabha.

On a related note, it is equally interesting to learn about the connection of Kanyakubja to another very famous mythological character of the same times, who traces his ancestry to the city and to the line of the Lunar Dynasty Kings. It is the story of the ancestry of Lord Parashurama, who is also believed to be the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu appearing in the Treta Yuga. King Gadhi’s daughter Satyavati was married to a Brahmin sage Richeek and their son was rishi Bhargava Jamadagni who, although a Brahmin sage by birth and vocation, had Kshatriya-like warrior qualities. Parashurama is the son of Bhargava Jamadagni and had inherited both the Brahmin-Kshatriya qualities from his father in abundance. Parashurama is famous as the slayer of the Kshatriyas and a master of the usage of the fearful Brahmastra (the most powerful and destructive weapon of Lord Brahma the creator, as described in Indian mythology).

After Vishwamitra abdicated the throne of Kanyakubja, Astaka another son of Gadhi became King of Madhyadesh and ruled over Kanyakubja. The last reference in the mythological texts about Kanyakubja is the mention of King Lauhi, Astaka’s son who rules after his father in King Kushanabha’s line. Kanyakubja re-emerges significantly on the scene, later in the times of the Indian epic Mahabharata (10^th Century BC). In later historical references we find Kanyakubja described as a mighty city during times of the Gupta Empire (240 AD). During King Harshavardhan’s time (606 – 647 AD) the city had its most glorious period, standing as the capital of Harsha’s empire of undivided India.

We shall continue on the legends and history of Kanyakubja in the next article of our Research series as there is still much to know about this ancient city and its fate in the subsequent eras of history.

The Kanyakubja Brahmins –

The mythological texts and legends of the Vedic period say that the great Brahmin sage Brahmadutt continued to stay in Kanyakubja city and had many children by his hundred wives who were the daughters of King Kushanabha of Kanyakubja. Brahmadutt’s descendants were the original Kanyakubja Brahmins who started the lineage of resident Brahmins in Kanyakubja as over the years they stayed in the city glorifying it as an important seat of Vedic learning and preaching knowledge. These Brahmins and their next generations down the line we priests in the royal courts and temples and teachers of the Vedic texts in different educational institutions of the time. They were referred to as ‘Acharya’ and ‘Upadhyay’ as per the titles bestowed upon them by the Kings. The Kanyakubja Brahmins, as we shall see in our treatise on the later history of Kanyakubja, were the keepers of the Vedic knowledge and the mainstay in spreading Vedic education across the kingdom.

Therefore it would not be logically improper to assume that our forefathers came from this line of Kanyakubja Brahmins, though any chances of tracing a name beyond Jahnukar in the specific family lineage seem utterly impossible at this day.

The Brahmins developed the system of ‘Gotra’ meaning ‘lineage’ which is maintained patrilineal. Each gotra takes the name of a famous Rishi or sage from whom the lineage is said to have started in a patrilineal manner. Gotras are present for all people and not only for the Brahmins. However, in the earliest Vedic times, there were also instances of people attaching themselves to a particular Rishi or sage whose life and god-like qualities they had chosen to model themselves on. Thus a lineage (gotra) would have directly started from a Vedic rishi by ancestry or by adoption as in the case of a disciple adopting the name of his guru (the Vedic rishi) as his own ‘gotra’.

Whilst on one hand mythology states that the entire Kanyakubja Brahmin clan emanated from Brahmadutt on the paternal side and the hundred daughters of King Kushanabha of the Lunar Dynasty on the maternal side, there is no clear explanation of the allotment of the Gotras to the clan. However, we know that there are 26 Principal Gotras for the Kanyakubja Brahmins, which include direct and indirect lineages of the ‘Saptarshis’ (the seven sacred Rishis to whom the Vedas were first explained). These Saptarshi’s were:  Atri, Vasistha, Kashyap, Gautama, Bhrigu, Bharadwaja and Jamadagni. Later, Vishwamitra was added to the group when he was classified as ‘Brahmarshi’ (the superior-most attainment by a rishi in their levels of knowledge and penance) by Vasistha.  Therefore, based on the concept of Gotras and the fact that the Kanyakubja Brahmins were by generations the keepers of Vedic texts and learning, we can assume that they would have aligned their Gotras to their Vedic guru’s from whom the initial Vedic learning was derived. Thereafter the patrilineal concept of the ‘gotra’ would have followed in the respective families.

Why the question of Gotra becomes so important here and the quest for a logical answer to how the lineage derived the Gotra, is solely because our family lineage is classified as the ‘Gautama Baidik’ clan. This essentially means that our line owes its ‘gotra’ allegiance to Rishi Gautama, who was one of the Vedic Saptarshis. (Baidik being the localised version of Vedic). This explains the ‘Gautama gotra’ of the family which we still use today for all rituals and worship and that the lineage came from the Brahmins who studied and preached Vedic texts and knowledge in ancient Kanyakubja.

The tale and history of Kanyakubja intertwines multiple times with the lineage of our family forefathers and it was where their first abode was and it was from Kanyakubja that the family line historically originated.

Prequel (times from ages of mythological creation of India up to the 10th Century BC) –

The mythological references to King Kusa (father of King Kushanabha) states that he was the 10^th descendant generation of Pururavas, the first King of the ‘Somavansha’ or ‘Chandravansha’ - the Lunar Dynasty in the Aryavarta lineage. Pururavas was the son born to Ila, daughter of Vaivaswat Manu (son of Lord Brahma and the King of mankind) and the celestial god Budh (Mercury). Budh (Mercury) was the son of Soma (the Moon) as stated in mythology; therefore the Dynasty which Pururavas (grandson of Soma) started was the Lunar Dynasty. It was from the Manu that both Suryavansh (Solar Dynasty – through his son Ikshvaku) and Chandravansh (Lunar Dynasty – through his daughter Ila) emanated.

Pururavas and his wife Urvashi had 6 sons: Ayus, Dhiman, Amavasu, Viswavasu, Satayus and Srutayus. It is said that Pururavas ruled over the Prayag (modern day Allahabad) region. At his time, the kingdom was called ‘Pratisthana’. It was from Pururavas and his Lunar Dynasty lineage that the Kauravas and the Pandavas of the Indian epic Mahabharata descended. Pururavas’ Lunar Dynasty was prominently taken forward by two of his sons Ayus and Amavasu. Ayus continued to succeed his father and rule from Pratisthana while Amavasu moved away to settle in a new land closer to the northern belt of the Ganges.

It is Amavasu’s line that we will enumerate in our research, as the prime line of the Lunar Dynasty, and given below are the names of the Kings who succeeded their fathers in the Lunar Dynasty:

Amavasu > Bhima* > Kanchana > Suhotra > Jahnu** > Sumanta > Ajaka > Balakeshava > Kusa > Kushanabha*** > Gadhi > (Gadhi was succeeded by his son Viswarath or Vishwamitra briefly, and later by his other son Astaka, as we have seen in our earlier treatise)

[It was from King Kushanabha’s 100 daughters and fathered by the great brahmin Brahmadutt, that the Kanyakubja Brahmins had descended, to which line belonged our forefathers… Thus it can be said that our family line firmly belonged to the Somavanshi or Chandravanshi line - the Lunar Dynasty of Aryavarta, from the maternal side.]

It was from the time of King Kusa and later King Kushanabha that the concentration of the kingdom came by to Madhyadesh with Kanyakubja as its capital city.

Footnotes-

Bhima* - not to be confused with the Bhima of the Pandavas of Mahabharata. Probably the Pandava son was named after the former King Bhima of the Lunar Dynasty.

Jahnu** - There is a mythological legend about King Jahnu which goes as follows: King Jahnu was a benevolent king and very inclined to practising of knowledge and spirituality and spent much of his time in discussion with sages and taking part in holy ritualistic activities in their ashrams. It was during one such yajna (worshipping ritual) that King Jahnu was performing at a sage’s ashram when the River Ganges started flooding its banks and threatened to wash out the sage’s ashram. King Jahnu, enraged at the floods and the interruption to his yajna, is said to have drank up all the water of the Ganges and stopped the flood. However, upon frantic pleas from the Gods and other sages, he released the Ganges back from his body to flow into the river path. Coming from King Jahnu’s body, the River Ganges thus derived another name as ‘Jahnavi’.

It had been a common practice all over, to name new born children upon the illustrious people of the land or in the ancestry, and accordingly it would not be improper to assume that our forefather Jahnukar may have been named after the great King Jahnu of the Lunar Dynasty line.

Kushanabha*** - we have spoken in detail about King Kushanabha in our above treatise on the founding of the city of Kanyakubja. King Kushanabha is thus famous not only as the founder of the city but also as the grand sire of the maternal side of the line of the Kanyakubja Brahmins.

Coming Soon…. Research Series Part 3

In the next article of the Research Series, we trace the history of Kanyakubja during the times of the Mahabharata (3^rd Century BC) and then its later history from the Gupta Empire period (240 AD) till the Muslim conquest and destruction of the city in 1019 AD. We shall see how historical events had impacted the society in different eras and what finally happened to the Kanyakubja Brahmins and our family line amongst them.

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