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The Beginning of the Solar Dynasty
Maitreya said, “Now I would hear the account of the dynasties of kings.” Parashara answered him. “Listen, Maitreya, to the story of the line of Manu, whose first father is Brahma himself, a line graced by many kings who kept their poise and offered great sacrifices. Vishnu is the origin of the whole world, and from him came his embodied form, Hiranyagarbha, who is Brahma. From the right thumb of Brahma was born Daksha Prajapati; from Daksha came Aditi; from Aditi came Vivasvan, the Sun; and from Vivasvan came Manu. Manu had ten sons, Ikshvaku foremost among them.
“Longing for a son, Manu performed a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna, but the officiating priest reversed the intention of the rite, and a daughter was born to him instead, a girl named Ila. By the grace of Mitra and Varuna that same Ila became a son named Sudyumna. Then, through the anger of Mahadeva, Sudyumna became a woman once more and wandered near the hermitage of Budha, son of the Moon. From Budha she had a son named Pururava, and when the great sages interceded on his behalf, the Lord restored Sudyumna’s manhood a second time. Farther down this line came the emperor Marutta, of whom men still sing that no one on this earth ever offered a sacrifice to equal his. Every vessel of his rite was fashioned of gold and beautiful beyond measure; at it Indra drank his fill of the soma juice and the brahmins were satisfied with their gifts; the Maruts themselves served the food, and the gods sat among the assembly.”
In one branch of this same dynasty was born Raivata Kakudmi, who traveled to the world of Brahma to ask which husband would be worthy of his daughter, Revati. Listening there to the songs of the gandharvas, he let many ages slip past, though to him it seemed no longer than a single muhurta. On his return, at Brahma’s own counsel, he gave Revati in marriage to Baladeva, a portion of Vishnu, who at that time was seated in his glory at Dwarka.
From Ikshvaku to Kakutstha
When Manu sneezed, Ikshvaku was born from his nostril. Among Ikshvaku’s hundred sons the foremost was Vikukshi. Once, for the ancestral rite of the Ashtaka, Ikshvaku sent Vikukshi into the forest to bring back meat. Tired and hungry among the trees, Vikukshi ate one of the hares he had taken, and the family priest, Vasishtha, declared the rest of the meat defiled. From this Vikukshi earned the name Shashada, the hare-eater, and his father cast him out. There is another story told of Shashada’s son, Puranjaya. In the Treta age, when the gods had been defeated in their war with the asuras, they prayed for help, and Vishnu answered that he would enter Puranjaya’s body with a portion of himself and destroy the asuras through him. Puranjaya set one condition: that Indra take the form of a bull and carry him into battle on his shoulders. Indra became the bull. Filled with the radiance of the Lord, Puranjaya mounted the great hump upon the animal’s shoulder and killed every one of the demons. For sitting upon that hump, the kakud, he was called Kakutstha.
Mandhata, Born of a Drink of Water
Later in this line came Yuvanashva, a king who grieved because he had no child. Kindly sages performed a sacrifice to grant him a son, and at midnight they set upon the altar a pitcher of water charged with mantras and lay down to sleep. Waking with a terrible thirst, and unwilling to rouse the sages, the king drank that very water himself. When the sages woke they understood what had happened: the water that would have given a son had the queen drunk it, the king had swallowed instead. In due time a boy came forth by splitting open the king’s right side, and yet the king did not die. “Whom will this child suckle?” they wondered aloud, and hearing the question Indra, lord of the gods, placed his forefinger in the infant’s mouth and said, “He shall drink from me.” So the child was named Mandhata, and sucking that finger full of nectar he grew to full size in a single day. In time this emperor Mandhata became lord of all seven continents. From his queen Bindumati he had three sons, Purukutsa, Ambarisha, and Muchukunda, and fifty daughters.
Saubhari’s Austerities in the Water
In those same days a great sage named Saubhari sat in austerity beneath the water for twelve years. In that water lived an enormous king of fishes named Sammada, who had a great many young. His sons, his grandsons, and his daughters’ sons sported with him day and night, and he too, delighting in the touch of their soft bodies, played on among them. Watching this, Saubhari let his meditation fall away and began to think. “How fortunate this fish is. Even in so wretched a form he lives in unbroken play with his children and grandchildren, and he stirs the same longing in my own heart. I too will know such tender play with children of my own.” Thinking this, he rose out of the water and, wishing now to become a householder, went to King Mandhata to ask for one of his daughters.
“King,” the sage said, “give me one of your daughters. Do not turn away my heartfelt request. No suppliant who comes to the house of Kakutstha has ever gone away with nothing.” Looking at Saubhari’s aged and worn body, the king dared not refuse for fear of a curse, and he fell to worrying in silence. Saubhari read his difficulty at once and spoke again. “If that is your trouble, then command that I be admitted to the inner apartments, and whichever daughter chooses me of her own will, her alone I shall take.” The moment he entered the women’s quarters, Saubhari made his form more enchanting than that of the siddhas and gandharvas. When the guard delivered his message, all fifty princesses were seized with longing, and each cried out, “I will marry him, I,” until they were quarreling among themselves. With no choice left, the king married every one of his daughters to the sage according to the proper rites.
Saubhari summoned Vishvakarma and had him build a separate palace for each of the wives, every one set with open lotuses, graceful swans, and clear pools of water. One day King Mandhata came to the hermitage to see whether his daughters were happy or unhappy. Each of them told him that she wanted for nothing, save one sorrow: that the sage stayed only with her and never went to any of her sisters, so that her sisters must surely be miserable. The king was astonished to hear it, for by the power of his yoga Saubhari was present in all the palaces at once, at the very same time.
In the course of time the princesses bore Saubhari one hundred and fifty sons, and with each passing day his love for them, and his sense of possession, grew deeper. Then he began to reflect. “What a vast reach my delusion has. Desires never end while life lasts, and a mind still bound to its desires can never fix itself on the highest good. My meditation in the water was destroyed by the company of a fish, and it was that same company that led me to gather up wives and wealth. To carry a single body is a great sorrow, and I have multiplied it fifty times over.” Thinking so, Saubhari renounced everything and went away into the forest, and at the last, laying down all his works and turning wholly toward the Supreme, he attained the imperishable state of the Lord.
Trishanku and Sagara
Mandhata’s son Purukutsa, filled with the radiance of the Lord, destroyed the Mauneya gandharvas who had been tormenting the nagas of the underworld. For this the naga kings granted a boon: that anyone who called to mind their sister, Narmada, would have nothing to fear from the venom of snakes. In Purukutsa’s line came Trasadasyu, then Anaranya and others, and after them Satyavrata, who was known as Trishanku. For some reason Trishanku had fallen into the condition of a chandala, an outcaste. During a twelve-year drought he brought the flesh of deer each day and tied it up on the bank of the Ganga, and by this the household of Vishvamitra was kept alive. Pleased with that kindness, Vishvamitra sent him up to heaven in his own body and freed him from his outcaste condition. From Trishanku came Harishchandra, and later in the same line came Bahu, who was defeated by the Haihaya and Talajangha warriors and went off into the forest with his pregnant queen.
There a rival wife’s poison held the queen’s child in the womb for seven years. When the aged Bahu died and the queen prepared to follow him onto the pyre, the sage Aurva stopped her, telling her that she carried an emperor in her womb. A few days later the boy was born together with the poison, and so he was named Sagara. Learning the Veda and a weapon called the Bhargava from Aurva, Sagara all but wiped out the Haihayas and Talajanghas. When the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Paradas, and Pahlavas took refuge with Vasishtha, Sagara, at Vasishtha’s word, let them live and changed the way they looked. He had the heads of the Yavanas shaved bare and the Shakas shaved halfway; he had the Paradas keep their hair long and the Pahlavas their beards, and he barred them all from study of the scriptures and from the utterance of the vashatkara. Having abandoned their own dharma, they became mlecchas, peoples outside the Vedic fold. After this Sagara ruled the earth of seven continents with an army no one could withstand. This story of Sagara is told in the Srimad Bhagavata as well, though the account in the Vishnu Purana has its own manner and is briefer.
Sagara’s Sixty Thousand Sons
Sagara had two wives, Keshini and Sumati. By a boon from Aurva, Keshini gave birth to a single son, Asamanjas, through whom the line would continue, while Sumati gave birth to sixty thousand sons. Asamanjas was cruel from his boyhood, and so his father cast him out. His own son, Amshuman, was gentle and good, but the sixty thousand took after Asamanjas in their conduct. Seeing the path of sacrifice and righteousness broken by their violence, the gods took refuge with Kapila, who was born as a portion of the Lord.
At that very time Sagara began an ashvamedha, a horse sacrifice. Someone stole the sacrificial horse and vanished with it into a hole in the earth. Following the marks of its hooves, the sixty thousand sons dug the earth away a yojana at a time, and reaching the underworld they saw the sage Kapila seated close by in deep meditation, with the horse grazing beside him. “Here is the one who has wronged us. Kill him,” they shouted, and raising their weapons they rushed at him. Kapila only shifted his gaze toward them, and at that instant every one of them burst into flame from a fire born of his own body and was burned to ashes.
Then Sagara sent Amshuman to bring back the horse. Going down the path that had been dug open, he praised Kapila with true devotion. Pleased, the Lord Kapila said to him, “Take this horse, my son, and ask for any boon you wish.” Amshuman answered, “Lord, grant me a boon that will win heaven for my forefathers, who were burned to ash by the power of Brahman.” The Lord replied, “Your grandson will bring the Ganga down from heaven to the earth, and the moment her water touches them, all of them will go to heaven. Such is the power of that water, which flows from the nail of Vishnu’s foot, that if it so much as touches a dead man’s bone or a single hair, he goes at once to heaven.” And so the sixty thousand sons of Sagara waited for the day when Ganga would come down and lift them free. But that story is for another time.
Source: the Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur).