Rajput 07: Foundations of States and Cities by the different tribes A
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Rajput 07: Foundations of States and Cities by the different tribes A
Ayodhya
Ayodhya 2 was the first city founded by the race of Surya. Like other capitals, its importance must have risen by
1 Egyptian, under Misraim, 2188 b.c. ; Assyrian, 2059 ; Chinese, 2207. [The first Egyptian dynasty is now dated 5500 B.C. ; Chinese, 2852 B.C. ; Babylonian, 2300 B.C. Any attempt to establish an Indian chronology from the materials used by the Author does not promise to be successful.]
2 The picture drawn by Valmild of the capital of the Solar race is so highly coloured that Ayodhya might stand for Utopia, and it would be difficult to find such a catalogue of metropolitan embellishments in this, the iron age of Oudh. " On the banks of the Surayu is a large country called Kosala, in which is Ayodhya, built by Mann, twelve yojans (forty eight miles) in extent, with streets regular and well watered. It was filled with merchants, beautified by gardens, ornamented with stately gates and high-arched porticoes, furnished v/ith arms, crowded with chariots, elephants, and horses, and with ambassadors from foreign lands ; embellisbed with palaces whose domes resembled the mountain tops, dwellings of equal height, resounding with the delightful music of the tabor, the flute, and the harp.
slow degrees ; yet making every allowance for exaggeration, it must have attained great splendour long anterior to Rama. Its site is well known at this day under the contracted name of Oudh, which also designates the country appertaining to the titular wazir of the Mogul empire ; which country, twenty-five years ago, nearly marked the limits of Kosala, the pristine kingdom of the Surya race. Overgrown greatness characterized all the ancient Asiatic capitals, and that of Ayodhya was immense. Lucknow, the present capital, is traditionally asserted to have been one of the suburbs of ancient Oudh, and so named by Rama, in compliment to his brother Lakshman.
Mithila
Nearly coeval in point of. time with Ayodhya was Mithila,1 the capital of a country of the same name, founded by Mithila, the grandson of Ikshwaku. The name of .Janaka,2 son of Mithila, eclipsed that of the founder and became the patronymic of this branch of the Solar race.
Other Kingdoms
These are the two chief capitals of the kingdoms of the Solar line described in [39] this early age : though there were others of a minor order, such as Rohtas, Champapura,3 etc., all founded previously to Rama.
By the numerous dynasties of the Lunar race of Budha many kingdoms were founded. Much has been said of the antiquity of Prayag ; yet the first capital of the Indu or Lunar race appears
It was surrounded by an impassable moat, and guarded by archers. Dasa- ratha was its king, a mighty charioteer. There were no atheists. The affections of the men were in their consorts. The women were chaste and obedient to their lords, endowed with beauty, wit, sweetness, prudence, and industry, with bright ornaments and fair apparel ; the men devoted to truth and hospitality, regardful of their superiors, their ancestors, and their gods.
"There were eight councillors ; two chosen priests profoimd in the law, besides another inferior council of six. Of subdued appetites, disinterested, forbearing, pleasant, patient ; not avaricious ; well acquainted with their duties and popular customs ; attentive to the army, the treasury ; im partially awarding punishment even on their own sons ; never oppressing even an enemy ; not arrogant ; comely in dress ; never confident about doubtful matters ; devoted to the sovereign."
1 Mithila, the modern Tirhut in Bengal [including the modern districts of Darbhanga, Champaran, and Muzaffarpur]. 2 Kusadhwaja, father of Sita (spouse of Rama), is also called Janaka ; a name common in this line, and borne by the third prince in succession after Suvarna Roma, the ' golden-haired ' chief Mithila. 3 [Rohtas in the modern Shahabad district ; Champapura in Bhagalpur.] to have been founded by Sahasra Arjuna, of the Haihaya tribe.
This was Mahishmati on the Nerbudda, still existing in Mahes war.1 The rivalry between the Lunar race and that of the Suryas of Ayodhya, in whose aid the priesthood armed, and expelled Sahasra Arjuna from Mahishmati, has been mentioned. A small branch of these ancient Haihayas 2 yet exist in the line of the Nerbudda, near the very top of the valley at Sohagpur, in Baghel- khand, aware of their ancient lineage ; and, though few in number, are still celebrated for their valour.3
Dwarka
Kusasthali Dwarka, the capital of Krishna, was founded prior to Prayag, to Surpur, or Mathura. The Bhagavat attributes the foundation of the city to Anrita, the brother of Ikshwaku, of the Solar race, but states not how or when the Yadus became possessed thereof.
The ancient annals of the Jaisalmer family of the Yadu stock give the priority of foundation to Prayag, next to Mathura, and last to Dwarka. All these cities are too well known to require description ; especially Prayag, at the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges. The Prasioi were the descendants of Puru 4 of Prayag, visited by Megasthenes, ambassador of Seleucus, and the principal city of the Yadus, ere it sent forth the four branches from Satwata. At Prayag resided the celebrated Bharat, the son of Sakuntala.
In the Ramayana the Sasavindus 5 (another Yadu race) are inscribed as allied with the Haihayas in the wars with the race of Surya ; and of this race was Sisupal 6 (the founder of Chedi 7), one of the foes of Krishna [40].
1 Familiarly designated as Sahasra Bahu ki Basti, or ' the town of the thousand-armed.' [In Indore State (IGI, xvii. 8).] 2 The Haihaya race, of the line of Budha, may claim affinity with the Chinese race which first gave monarchs to China [?]. 3 Of this I have heard the most romantic proofs in very recent times. 4 Puru became the patronymic of this branch of the Lunar race. Of this Alexander's historians made Porus. The Suraseni of Methoras (descendants of the Sursen of Mathura) were all Purus, the Prasioi of Megasthenes [see p. .37, n.]. Allahabad yet retains its Hindu name of Prayag, pronounced Prag. 5 The Hares. Sesodia is said to have the same derivation. [From Sesoda in Mewar.] 6 The princes of Ranthambhor, expelled by Prithwiraja of Delhi, were of this race. 7 The modern Chanderi [in the Gwalior State, IGI, x. 163 f.] is said to be
Surpur
We are assured by Alexander's historians that the country and people round Mathura, when he invaded India, were termed Surasenoi. There are two princes of the name of Sursen in the immediate ancestry of Krishna ; one his grandfather, the other eight generations anterior Which of these founded the capital Surpur,1 whence the country and inhabitants had their appellation, we cannot say Mathura and Cleisobara are men- tioned by the historians of Alexander as the chief cities of the Surasenoi. Though the Greeks sadly disfigure names, we cannot trace any affinity between Cleisobara and Surpur.
this capital, and one of the few to which no Englishman has obtained entrance, though I tried hard in 1807. Doubtless it would afford food for curiosity ; for, being out of the path of armies in the days of conquest and revolution, it may, and I believe does, retain much worthy of research. [The capital of the Chedi or Kalachuri dynasty was Tripura or Karanbel, near Jabalpur (IGI, x. 12).]
1 I had the pleasure, in 1814, of discovering a remnant of this city, which the Yamuna has overwhelmed. [The ancient Suryapura was near Batesar, 40 miles south-east of Agra city. Sir H. Elliot (Supplemental Glossary, 187) remarks that it is strange that the Author so often claims the credit of dis covery when its position is fixed in a set of familiar verses. For Suryapura see A. Fiihrer, Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions, 69.] The sacred place of pilgrimage, Batesar, stands on part of it. My discovery of it was doubly gratifying, for while I found out the Surasenoi of the Greeks, I obtained a medal of the little known Apollodotus, who carried his arms to the mouths of the Indus, and possibly to the centre of the land of the Yadus.
He is not included by Bayer in his lists of the kings of Bactria, but we have only an imperfect knowledge of the extent of that dynasty. The Bhagavat Purana asserts thirteen Yavan or Ionian princes to have ruled in Balichdes [?] or Bactria, in which they mention Pushpamitra Dvimitra. We are justified in asserting this to be Demetrius, the son of Euthydemus, but who did not succeed his father, as Menander intervened. Of this last conqueror I also possess a medal, obtained amongst the Surasenoi, and struck in com memoration of victory, as the winged messenger of heavenly peace extends the palm branch from her hand. These two will fill up a chasm in the Bactrian annals, for Menander is well known to them. ApoUodotus would have perished but for Arrian, who wrote the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the second century, while commercial agent at Broach, or classically Brigukachchha, the Barugaza of the Greeks. [The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was written by an unknown Greek merchant of first century A.D. (McCrindlo, Commerce and Navigation, Introd. p. 1).]
Without the notice this writer has afforded us, my Apollodotus would have lost half its value. Since my arrival in Europe I have also been made acquainted with the existence of a medal of Demetrius, discovered in Bokhara, and on which an essay has been written by a savant at St. Petersburg.
Hastinapura
The city of Hastinapura was built by Hastin a name celebrated in the Lunar dynasties. The name of this city is still preserved on the Ganges, about forty miles south of Hardwar,1 where the Ganges breaks through the Siwalik moun- tains and enters the plains of India. This mighty stream, rolling its masses of waters from the glaciers of the Himalaya, and joined by many auxiliary streams, frequently carries destruction before it. In one night a column of thirty feet in perpendicular height has been known to bear away all within its sweep, and to such an occurrence the capital of Hastin is said to have owed its ruin.^ As it existed, however, long after the Mahabharata, it is surpris- ing it is not mentioned by the historians of Alexander, who in vaded India probably about eight centuries after that event. In this abode of the sons of Puru resided Porus, one of the two princes of that name, opponents of Alexander, and probably Bindusara the son of Chandragupta, surmised to be the Abisares 3 and Sandrakottos of Grecian authorities. Of the two princes named Porus mentioned by Alexander's [41] historians, one resided in the very cradle of the Puru dynasties ; the abode of the other bordered on the Panjab : warranting an assertion that the Pori of Alexander were of the Lunar race, and destroying all the claims various authors 4 have advanced on behalf of the princes of Mewar.5
Hastin sent forth three grand branches, Ajamidha, Dvimidha, and Purumidha. Of the two last we lose sight altogether ; but Ajamidha's progeny spread over all the northern parts of India, in the Panjab and across the Indus. The period, probably one thousand six hundred years before Christ.
1 The portal of Hari or Hara, whose trisula or trident is there. 2 Wilford says this event is mentioned in two Puranas as occurring in the sixth or eighth generation of the Great War. Those who have travelled in the Duab must have remarked where both the Ganges and Jumna have shifted their beds. 3 [Abisares is Abhisara in the modern Kashmir State (Smith, EHI, 59).] 4 Sir Thomas Roe ; Sir Thomas Herbert ; the Holstein ambassador (by Olearius) ; Delia Valle ; Churchill, in his collection : and borrowing from these, D'Anville, Bayer, Orme, Rennell, etc. 5 The ignorance of the family of Mewar of the fact would by no means be a conclusive argument against it, could it be otherwise substantiated ; but the race of Surya was completely eclipsed at that period by the Lunar and new races which soon poured in from the west of the Indu.s, and in time displaced them all.
From Ajamidha,1 in the fourth generation, was Bajaswa, who obtained possessions towards the Indus, and whose five sons gave their name, Panchala, to the Panjab, or space watered by the five rivers. The capital founded by the younger brother, Kam- pila, was named Kampilnagara.2
The descendants of Ajamidha by his second "wife, Kesini, founded another kingdom and dynasty, celebrated in the heroic history of Northern India. This is the Kausika dynasty.
