The Beginning of the Solar Dynasty
Maitreya had heard the whole order of duty by now, the nitya and the naimittika rites, the dharma of the varnas and the dharma of the ashramas, and what he wanted next were the kings who had carried it. “Now I wish to hear the account of the royal dynasties,” he said. “Describe them.” Parashara answered him. “Hear the account of the line of Manu, whose first person is Brahma himself, a line adorned by kings who poured out great yajnas, by heroes, and by men who held steady. Hear it in order, and it will destroy every sin of your own line. The cause of the whole world is Bhagavan Vishnu, without beginning, who is the Rik, the Yajus, and the Saman in one body. Of that Vishnu, who is Brahman itself, the first embodied form to appear was Hiranyagarbha, Bhagavan Brahma. From Brahma’s right thumb came Daksha Prajapati; from Daksha, Aditi; from Aditi, Vivasvan the sun; and from Vivasvan, Manu. Manu had ten sons: Ikshvaku, Nriga, Dhrishta, Sharyati, Narishyanta, Pranshu, Nabhaga, Dishta, Karusha, and Prishadhra.”
Manu wanted a son, and he began a yajna to the two devas Mitra and Varuna. Everything in such a rite turns on the resolve the hota holds while he pours, and this hota formed the opposite resolve, so the fire gave back a daughter, a girl named Ila. By the grace of Mitra and Varuna that same Ila became a son of Manu, named Sudyumna. Then Mahadeva’s anger fell on him as a curse, and he was a woman a second time, wandering near the ashrama of Budha, the son of Chandrama. Budha was drawn to her and begot on her a son, Pururava. After Pururava’s birth the great rishis, wishing Sudyumna a man again, worshiped in due form Bhagavan the yajna-purusha, who is the rite itself and the four Vedas, mind and knowledge and food, and who stands beyond all of them, and by his grace Ila was Sudyumna once more. Sudyumna had three sons, Utkala, Gaya, and Vinata. Because he had once been a woman he received no share of the kingdom; at Vasishtha’s word his father gave him the city of Pratishthana, and Sudyumna gave it to Pururava, whose descendants spread as kshatriyas in every direction. Far down the line of Manu’s son Dishta, after Avikshit, came Marutta, the chakravarti of whom two shlokas are still sung: “Whose yajna on this earth was like Marutta’s? Every vessel of his rite was of gold, and beautiful. In that yajna Indra was satisfied with soma and the Brahmins with dakshina; the Maruts were the servers, and the devas sat as the members of the assembly.”
Manu’s son Sharyati had a daughter, Sukanya, who was married to the rishi Chyavana, and a righteous son, Anarta. Anarta’s son Revata lived in the city of Kushasthali and ruled the country of Anarta, and Revata’s son was Raivata Kakudmi, the eldest of a hundred brothers. Raivata had a daughter named Revati, and no man he could think of seemed worth her, so he took the girl up to Brahmaloka to ask Brahma himself which groom she was suited to. When they arrived, two gandharvas named Haha and Huhu were singing before Brahma, a divine song, and Raivata stood and listened, and while he listened several cycles of the four yugas went by, and to him it was one muhurta. When the song ended he bowed and asked, and at Brahma’s word he named the grooms he favored and asked which of them Brahma preferred. Brahma bent his head a little and smiled. “Of the men you favor, none now has even a son or a grandson or any descendant left on the earth. While you stood here listening to the gandharvas, many chaturyugas have passed. On earth the twenty-eighth chaturyuga of this Manu is nearly finished and the Kali yuga is about to begin. You are left alone of your kind. Your sons, your friends, your wife, your ministers, your servants, your kin, your army, your treasury, all of it has ceased to be. Give this jewel of a girl to some other groom.” Raivata, badly frightened, bowed again. “If it is so, to whom shall I give her now?” Then Brahma, the guru of all the worlds, bent his head, joined his hands, and spoke of Vishnu. “Of that unborn, all-pervading Parameshvara we know no beginning, no middle, no end, no form, no nature, no essence. Time, with its kalas and muhurtas, cannot change him. By Achyuta’s grace I am the creator of beings; from his anger rose Rudra, the destroyer; between them he himself appears as Vishnu the sustainer. Unborn, he takes my form to create, sustains as the Purusha, devours the world as Rudra, and bears it as Ananta; he is Agni and earth and Indra, the sun and the moon that break the darkness, the breath that moves every creature, the water and food that satisfy it, the akasha that gives it room. Being the creator, he creates himself; he protects and is protected; he destroys and is destroyed; and he is the imperishable Self apart from all three. That Vishnu, Svayambhu, the source of all beings, the world itself and resting in it, has come down to the earth with a portion of himself. Your old city Kushasthali is now Dvarakapuri, like Amaravati, and in it sits Baladeva, a portion of Keshava. Give this girl as wife to that Baladeva, who wears the appearance of a man. He is praised through the whole world and your daughter is a jewel among women; the match is fitting in every way.” Raivata came down to the earth and found that men had grown short, ugly, and weak, with little vigor and little judgment, and his Kushasthali changed past knowing. He gave his daughter to Haladhara, whose chest is like a crystal mountain. Revati towered over him; Baladeva pressed her down with the tip of his plow, and at once she was the size of the other women of that time. He married her with due rites, and Raivata, his daughter given, went to the Himalaya with a one-pointed mind to do tapas.
From Ikshvaku to Kakutstha
When Manu sneezed, Ikshvaku was born from his nostril. Of Ikshvaku’s hundred sons three were chief, Vikukshi, Nimi, and Danda; fifty of the rest, led by Shakuni, became rulers of the Uttarapatha, and forty-eight ruled the Dakshinapatha. Once, beginning the ashtaka shraddha that feeds the fathers, Ikshvaku sent Vikukshi out with an order: bring back meat fit for the shraddha. Vikukshi took the order on his head, took up bow and arrows, and killed deer in the forest all day. By evening he was worn through and so hungry that he ate one of the hares he had taken, then carried the rest of the meat home and laid it before his father. Meat for the fathers must be sprinkled before it goes to them, and when Vasishtha, the family priest of Ikshvaku’s line, was asked to sprinkle it, he looked at it and refused. “What need is there of this impure meat? Your wicked son has defiled it; he has eaten a hare out of it.” At the guru’s word Vikukshi was named Shashada, the hare-eater, and his father abandoned him; and still, when Ikshvaku died, it was Shashada who ruled the earth after him, and ruled it by dharma. Shashada’s son was Puranjaya, who earned a second name. In the Treta yuga there had been a terrible war between the devas and the asuras, and the devas, beaten by the strong daityas, worshiped Vishnu. Narayana, without beginning or end, the sustainer of the whole world, was pleased with them. “I know what you desire. The rajarshi Shashada has a son named Puranjaya; I will enter his body with a portion of myself and destroy all those daityas. Prepare Puranjaya to slay them.” The devas bowed and came to Puranjaya. “We want your help in killing our enemies. We have come to you as guests; do not refuse us.” Puranjaya named his terms. “If Shatakratu, the lord of the three worlds, your Indra, lets me ride on his shoulder and fight your enemies from there, I can be your helper.” The devas and Indra said very well. So Indra took the form of a bull, and Puranjaya, riding on his back and filled with the tejas of Achyuta, killed every daitya in that war in his anger. Because he sat on the kakud, the hump of the bull, and destroyed the daitya army from there, he was named Kakutstha.
Mandhata, Born of a Drink of Water
Kakutstha’s son was Anena; Anena’s, Prithu; Prithu’s, Vishtarashva; his, Chandra Yuvanashva; and his son Shavasta founded the city of Shravasti. Shavasta’s son was Brihadashva, and Brihadashva’s son Kuvalashva, filled with the tejas of Vishnu, went with his twenty-one thousand sons against the daitya Dhundhu, who had been tormenting the maharshi Udaka, and killed him, and was called Dhundhumara for it; the fire of breath from Dhundhu’s mouth burned all his sons to death except three, Dridhashva, Chandrashva, and Kapilashva. From Dridhashva the line ran through Haryashva, Nikumbha, Amitashva, Krishashva, and Prasenajit to Yuvanashva, a king with no son, who had left his own palace to live sadly in the ashramas of munis. The munis, melted by his sorrow, performed a yajna so that a son might be born to him. It was complete at midnight, and they set a pitcher of water purified by mantras in the middle of the vedi and lay down to sleep. The king came in later, very thirsty; the rishis were asleep and he would not wake them, so he drank the water in the pitcher, water of immeasurable power. When the rishis woke they asked who had drunk it. “Yuvanashva’s wife would have borne a son of great strength and valor by drinking it.” The king told them that he had drunk it himself, without knowing. So the embryo was set in Yuvanashva’s own belly, and there it grew, and in due time the child came out tearing open the king’s right side, and the king did not die of it. “What will this child suck, to live?” the munis asked, and at that moment Indra, the king of the devas, arrived and answered them. “He will live depending on me.” Mam dhasyati, he said, and from those words the child was named Mandhata. Indra put his forefinger in the boy’s mouth, and he drank, and tasting that nectar-flowing finger he grew up in a single day. Mandhata became chakravarti and ruled the earth of seven dvipas, and of him this shloka is told: “From where the sun rises to where it sets, all of it is the field of Mandhata, son of Yuvanashva.” He married Bindumati, the daughter of Shatabindu, and by her he had three sons, Purukutsa, Ambarisha, and Muchukunda, and fifty daughters.
Saubhari’s Austerities in the Water
In those same days the maharshi Saubhari, a master of the Rig, lived under the water for twelve years. In that water lived a king of fishes named Sammada, long-bodied, with offspring past counting. His sons, his grandsons, and his daughters’ sons moved about him in front and behind, along his flanks, at his tail and at his head, full of joy, and played with him day and night; and he, made happy by the touch of all those bodies, played with them day and night before the eyes of the muni. Saubhari, standing in the water, let go of the one-pointed samadhi he had held for twelve years and watched the fish-king at play with his children and his children’s children, day after day, and thought: “Ah, how blessed this one is. Born into a birth as unwanted as this, and still he plays every hour with his sons and grandsons and his daughters’ sons, and the sight of it burns in my heart. I too will play like this with sons of my own.” Wanting that, he came up out of the water, and wishing now to enter the householder’s ashrama for the sake of children, he went to King Mandhata to ask for a maiden. The king heard that the muni had come, rose, and worshiped him with arghya and the rest, and Saubhari took a seat and spoke.
“I wish to take a maiden. Give me one, and do not break my request. No suppliant who comes with a need to the line of Kakutstha ever turns back empty-handed. Other kings have daughters too; it is this line of yours that holds firm to the vow of giving what suppliants ask. You have fifty daughters; give me just one. I am afraid now, with a great sorrow rising in me, that my request may be refused.” Mandhata looked at the body before him, worn to pieces by age; afraid of the curse and unwilling to refuse, he lowered his face and sat thinking. “Why do you worry?” Saubhari said. “I have asked nothing unbearable. A daughter has to be given away some day, and if by that we are fulfilled, what is there you cannot obtain?” Still in fear of the curse, the king answered humbly. “It is the custom of our family that a daughter is given to the groom of good family whom she herself likes. Your request lies beyond anything we wished for; I do not know how it has arisen, and I do not know what to do. That alone is my worry.” Saubhari heard the excuse for what it was: he is old, the king was telling himself, even grown women could never like him, let alone maidens. Very well, he thought, I will do exactly as he says. “If that is so,” he said, “order the guard of the antahpura to let me in. If any maiden wants me, I will take a wife; if none does, I have no purpose in this useless effort at my age.” He fell silent, and the king gave the order. Saubhari went in with the guard, and as he entered he made his form more charming than any siddha’s or gandharva’s. The guard gave the maidens their father’s message: this brahmarshi had come for a maiden, and whichever of them chose him, the king would not stand in the way of her choice. All fifty, full of love, chose him joyfully, as she-elephants choose the leader of the herd, each saying, “I alone, I alone choose him,” and then they turned on one another. “Sisters, why make this useless effort? I choose him; he is not suited to you. Vidhata himself has made him my husband and me his wife, so be calm. I chose him first, the moment I came in; why are you dying for him?” A great quarrel broke out among the princesses. The guard went humbly to the king and told him exactly what had happened, and the king was shaken. What is this he tells me? How did it happen? Why did I tell him to go in? Unwilling, he kept his word somehow, and after a fitting marriage the maharshi Saubhari took all fifty maidens to his ashrama.
There he summoned Vishvakarma, the master of every craft, a second Vidhata, and told him to build a separate palace for each maiden, with pools where lotuses bloomed and swans and karandavas sang, with fine cushions and beds and open ground around each, and Vishvakarma did all of it as ordered. Then, at Saubhari’s command, the great treasure named Anirvananda came to live in those palaces, and in all of them the princesses fed their guests and the servants who depended on them, day and night, with every kind of food that is chewed, eaten, or licked. One day King Mandhata, drawn by love for his daughters, came to the ashrama to see whether they were happy or unhappy, and found a row of palaces of crystal slabs, with gardens and pools, shining with spreading garlands of light. He went into the first, embraced his daughter, and sat down, and with his eyes filling he asked her, “Daughter, are you living happily here? Is there any trouble? Does the maharshi Saubhari love you? Do you remember our house at all?” The princess answered him. “Father, this palace is lovely and the gardens are charming; the lotuses bloom in the pools and the water birds call; food, unguents, clothes, ornaments, beds, and seats are all to my liking, and my household lacks for nothing. Yet who does not remember the house she was born in? By your grace all is well. I have one great sorrow, though. My husband the maharshi never leaves my house. Out of his great love he stays only by me, and he never goes to any of my sisters, so they must be very unhappy. That is the cause of my sorrow.” The king went to the second palace, embraced his daughter, and asked the same, and she, too, told him of every happiness of the place and of a husband who, out of great love, stayed only with her and went to none of her sisters. He went into each palace in turn, and all fifty gave him the same answer. At the last, overcome with joy and wonder, he came to Saubhari, who was sitting alone, worshiped him, and said, “I have seen the great power of your yoga-siddhi. I have never seen anyone else live in such splendor; all of this is the fruit of your tapas.” He stayed some time with the muni, enjoying the pleasures he wished for, and at last went back to his own city.
In the course of time Saubhari had a hundred and fifty sons by the princesses, and as his affection for them grew day by day, his heart filled with mamata. Will these sons of mine speak sweetly, he would think, walk on their own feet, reach their youth? Will I see them married, and see them with sons and grandsons of their own? Then he saw the wishes growing with time, and he stopped and looked at them. “Ah, what a spread my delusion has. These wishes could not end in thousands and lakhs of years; when some are fulfilled, new ones rise in their place. My sons have walked, grown up, married, and had children, and I have seen all of it, and now my mind wants to see the birth of my grandsons’ sons. If I see that too, another wish will rise, and if that one is fulfilled, who can stop the next? I understand it well now: wishes do not end before death, and a mind attached to its wishes can never be fixed on the paramartha.” His samadhi, he saw, had been destroyed in a moment by the company of a fish, his neighbor in the water; from that company he had taken wives, wealth, and possessions, and from possessions his craving had grown. To take on a single body is itself great sorrow; by taking these princesses he had multiplied it fifty times over, the sons had multiplied it further, and it would go on multiplying through grandsons and their marriages; the bond of marriage, which is mamata in another form, was the root of great sorrow. The tapas he had done in the water had borne this wealth as its fruit, and the wealth was a hindrance to tapas; the attachment to sons that the fish had bred in his mind had cheated him. Non-attachment gives the yatis their liberation, and every fault rises from attachment; through attachment even yogis established in yoga fall, and what then of dull men? His mind was in the jaws of the crocodile of possession, and he would find the means by which, freed of his faults, he was never again made miserable by the sorrows of a family. “Now I will worship by tapas Bhagavan Vishnu, the creator of all, of inconceivable form, subtler than the subtle and greater than all. May my mind, freed of fault, stay unmoving in that all-formed, infinite Vishnu, so that I need not be born again. I take refuge in him, the guru above all gurus, without beginning, middle, or end, apart from whom there is nothing.” With this settled in him, the muni Saubhari left his sons, his houses, his seat, his possessions, and everything else, and went to the forest with all his wives. There he lived every rite of a vanaprastha, and when his sins were gone and his mind free of raga and dvesha he placed the ahavaniya and the other fires within himself and became a bhikshu; then, giving up all karma, he attained the Achyuta-pada, unborn, imperishable, beyond change and death, beyond the senses, infinite. Parashara closed the story of Mandhata’s daughters there: whoever remembers, hears, or teaches this account of Saubhari has for six births no bad offspring, no unrighteousness, no bent of speech or mind toward wrong paths, and no mamata toward anything.
Trishanku and Sagara
Of Mandhata’s sons, Ambarisha had a son Yuvanashva, and Yuvanashva a son Harita, from whom the Haritas of the Angirasa gotra descend. Purukutsa’s story begins under the earth. In Rasatala lived gandharvas called Mauneya, six crores of them, and they had seized the chief jewels of all the naga clans and every authority the nagas held. Humbled by their strength, the naga lords praised Bhagavan, the lord of all the devas, and at their praise his eyes opened like blooming lotuses and he woke from the sleep he lay in on the water. The nagas bowed. “How will this fear of ours, which comes from the gandharvas, be calmed?” Purushottama, without beginning or end, answered, “Mandhata, son of Yuvanashva, has a son named Purukutsa. I will enter him and destroy all those wicked gandharvas.” The naga lords bowed to the Lord lying on the water, went back to their own world, and sent Narmada, their sister and Purukutsa’s wife, to fetch him. Narmada brought Purukutsa down to Rasatala, and there, his strength swelled by the tejas of Bhagavan, he killed every gandharva and went home to his city. For this the naga lords gave Narmada a boon: whoever remembers her and speaks her name will have no fear of snake venom. On this there is a shloka: “Salutation to Narmada at dawn, salutation to Narmada at night. Narmada, salutation to you again and again; protect me from venom and from snakes.” Whoever says it, by day or by night, when he goes into the dark, is not bitten, and whoever remembers it while eating is not killed even by poisoned food. To Purukutsa the naga lords gave the boon that his line would never be cut off. Purukutsa begot Trasadasyu on Narmada; Trasadasyu’s son was Anaranya, whom Ravana killed during his conquest of the directions; and from Anaranya the line ran through Prishadashva, Haryashva, Hasta, Sumana, Tridhanva, and Trayyaruni to Satyavrata, who was later called Trishanku. This Trishanku had become a chandala. A drought came that lasted twelve years, and through all of it, to feed the wife and children of the muni Vishvamitra, and to free himself from his chandala state, he tied deer meat every day to a banyan on the bank of the Ganga. Vishvamitra, pleased, sent him to svarga in the body he stood in. From Trishanku came Harishchandra, and the line ran on through Rohitashva, Harita, Chanchu, Vijaya, Ruruka, and Vrika to Vrika’s son Bahu, who was defeated by the Haihaya and Talajangha kshatriyas and the others with them, and went to the forest with his chief queen, who was carrying a child.
Her co-wife had fed her poison to stop the birth, and by its power the embryo stayed in her womb for seven years. At last Bahu, grown old, died near the ashrama of the muni Aurva, and his queen built a pyre, laid his body on it, and resolved to become sati with him. Just then Aurva, who knows past, present, and future, came out of his ashrama. “Leave this useless obstinacy. In your womb is a chakravarti king, lord of the whole earth, strong and valiant, a performer of many yajnas and a destroyer of enemies. Do not make this rash attempt.” She stepped back from the fire, and Aurva took her to his ashrama, and there within a few days a radiant boy was born to her, and the poison came out with him. Aurva performed his birth rites and named him for it: Sagara, the one born with the poison. After his upanayana Aurva taught him the Vedas, the shastras, and the fire-weapons called Bhargava. When his understanding had grown the boy went to his mother. “Mother, tell me, why do we live in this tapovana, and where is my father?” She told him everything. He could not bear the seizure of his father’s kingdom; he vowed to destroy the Haihayas, the Talajanghas, and the other kshatriyas with them, and he destroyed almost all the Haihaya and Talajangha kings. Then the Shakas, the Yavanas, the Kambojas, the Paradas, and the Pahlavas, being slaughtered, took refuge with Vasishtha, the guru of Sagara’s house. Vasishtha made them living dead and said to Sagara, “Child, what use is it to pursue these living dead? See, to fulfill your vow I have stripped them of their own dharma and of all company with the twice-born.” The king said, “As the guru commands,” and changed their dress. He had the heads of the Yavanas shaved bare and the Shakas shaved by half; the Paradas he made wear their hair long and the Pahlavas their mustaches and beards; and these and other such kshatriyas he shut out from the study of the Veda, from the vashatkara, and from the rest. Having abandoned their own dharma they were abandoned by the Brahmins, and they became mlecchas. Then Sagara came home to his capital and ruled this whole earth of seven dvipas with an army nothing could stop.
Sagara’s Sixty Thousand Sons
Sagara had two wives, Sumati, the daughter of Kashyapa, and Keshini, the daughter of the king of Vidarbha. When the two of them worshiped Aurva for children in the deepest samadhi, his boon had a fork in it: one would bear a single son to carry the line, the other sixty thousand, and they could choose which. Keshini chose the one and bore Asamanjas; Sumati chose the sixty thousand and bore them. Asamanjas, whose own son was Amshuman, was ill-behaved from childhood, and when youth passed and his conduct had not changed his father cast him out; the sixty thousand took up his conduct and copied it, until the good path of yajna was cut off in the world and the devas went to Kapila, an amsha of Purushottama walking the earth, who told them these princes would all perish within a few days.
At that time Sagara began an ashvamedha. The horse went out under the guard of his sons, someone stole it from under them and went down into the earth, and following the marks of its hooves each of the sixty thousand dug his own yojana of ground until the digging reached Patala. There they found the horse wandering loose, and near it the paramarshi Kapila sitting with bowed head, lighting every direction like the autumn sun; they took him for the thief, ran at him with raised weapons, and at one slight change of his eyes fire broke from their own bodies and burned them all.
Sagara sent Amshuman, the son of Asamanjas, down the same path for the horse, and Amshuman bowed to Kapila and praised him, and asked for one boon only, svarga for his forefathers, whom the brahmadanda had killed and who were not fit for it now. Kapila gave his word that Amshuman’s grandson would bring the Ganga down from svarga, and that the moment her water touched the ashes of their bones all sixty thousand would rise. How that word was kept, through Dilipa and Bhagiratha, is told in full with the descent of the Ganga.
Source: the Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur).