1
SUMMARY: ANCIENT INDIAN DYNASTIES Author: V.S. MISRA Published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan 1. Political history of ancient India has so far been a comparatively neglected subject. In early days the normal assumption by the Western historians and their Indian supporters was that the history of ancient India starts with the invasion of India by the Greek king Alexander. Later it was modified to some extent by declaring that the ancient period began with 16 Mahajanapadas and Bimbisara, Mahasena Pradyota, Shatanika and Prasenajit were the rulers of Magadha, Avanti, Vatsa and Koshala respectively and Buddha and Mahavira were their contemporaries. This obviously meant to convey the message that prior to this India was a stateless country without any power structure and these empires emerged from the blue. 2. Many scholars‐ both Indians and Western, have attempted to fill in this vacuum by utilizing the material available in Vedic literature, Puranas, Buddhist and Jain texts, classical literature, Archaeological reports etc While efforts were made by some scholars to critically examine the post Mbh war dynasties, the pre War dynasties were more or less ignored for research. Very few historians attempted to fill in the gap but with little success the reason being that each scholar tried to present the political history of India based on the information available in one source or the other with out a critical scrutiny of the material contained therein. In fact many scholars selected a Purana of their choice and arrived at conflicting conclusions. Efforts to write the political history of ancient India based on the Vedic literature whose authenticity is not denied even by the Western historians, had to given up for lack of information as these texts were not meant to be a store house of historical material. The most surprising feature, however, was the refusal of the Western scholars to accept the material contained in the Puranas on the ground that Vedic texts do not certify its authenticity. They ignored the fact that most of the kings mentioned in the Vedic literature appear in the Puranas. 3. The other objection against utilization of the Puranic material for writing the history of ancient India is that (a) superficial and distorted material linked with mythology has crept into the Puranas (b) sometimes individual Puranas conflict with others (c) sometimes the same Purana makes contradictory statements (d) sometimes one dynasty is tacked on to another dynasty (e) sometimes collateral successions are described as lineal (f) sometimes the order of succession is Ancient Indian Dynasties
© V. S. Misra
2
reversed (g) sometimes synchronisms are misplaced due to similarity or near similarity of the names (h) sometimes even divergent synchronisms have been recorded and (j) sometimes incorrect origins have been assigned to dynasties. 4. The main conclusions emerging from the research done so far are as follows: a. It is possible to eliminate the divergence between the dynastic lists as appearing in different Puranas. b. Almost all Puranas present each dynastic list as a continuous line of successions despite existence of adequate evidence to prove that these lists comprise a mixture of several branch lines some of which are even collateral. It is feasible to spot such aberrations and eliminate them. c. It is not too difficult to identify instances where a dynasty came to an end and another dynasty took over but the Puranas merged the two and presented a lineal succession of the original dynasty. In some cases the original dynasty itself was revived after a gap by a descendant of the last king of the original dynasty. d. It is not impossible to reconcile the differences between the accounts appearing in the Puranas on the one hand and Vedic, Buddhist, Jain and classical Sanskrit literature on the other. Major findings are listed in the succeeding paragraphs. 5. After rationalizing the dynastic lists of the Puranas, it is possible to synchronize them with the testimony of Vedic, Buddhist, Jain and classical Sanskrit literature after carrying out necessary adjustments since the latter also suffer from identical aberrations caused by the same environment and conditions which affected the Puranas. 6. The number of successions between Manu Vaivasvata and Bharata Battle in Aikshvaku dynasty would be approximately 50 as against 91 mentioned in the existing Puranic texts. Rectified Aila dynasties‐ Purus, Bharatas and Yadus and Kurus also indicate almost the same number of successions. 7. The dates of Nirvana of Buddha and Mahavira which have been the subject of controversy for centuries, have been worked out in a manner which satisfies Ancient Indian Dynasties
© V. S. Misra
3
Puranic, Buddhist and Jain traditions as also the Archaeological evidence. These revised dates are 514 B.C. and 527 B.C respectively. 8. After rationalizing the post Bharata War reign periods of the kings of Barhdratha dynasty of Magadha and keeping in mind the dates of Nirvana of Buddha and coronation of Ashok Maurya, the date of Bharata War has been worked out as 1157 B. C. 9. A weak point of the Puranic texts is the lack of chronological data with solitary exception of post war Barhadratha dynasty which also suffers from inaccuracies. While the dates of pre war Barhadrathas and some other important kings have been tentatively mentioned, further research is being done to settle the dates of most of the dynasties appearing in the Puranas and it is hoped that use of sophisticated methodology and additional evidence would produce credible chronological charts of as many dynasties as possible. 10.More than 30 major synchronisms have been identified on the basis of evidence contained in the Puranas, Vedas, Buddhist and Jain texts and classical Sanskrit literature to help reconstruction of the political history of ancient India.
Ancient Indian Dynasties
© V. S. Misra