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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1908.
quarrel which (like the wrath of Peleus' son) created the devastating war of the Mahabharata, and who consented to the polyandrous marriage of his daughter with the Pandavas. Pravahana Jaivali was a Pañchâla Kshattriya, who according to the Chhandogya Upanishad, silenced the Brahmanas and taught the Brâhmaņa Gautama. He even (V, iii, 7) claimed that his system of religions thought belonged to the Kshattriya class alone.
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At the time of the Mahabharata War, a tribe in close connection with these Pañchalas was that of the Sriñjayas. So far back as the period of the Atharva Véda, these people were noted as enemies of what was perhaps the most typical Brahmana tribe in India, that of Bhrigu. It was a descendant of Bhrigu, Parasu Rama, who is said to have wiped the Kshattriyas off the face of the earth.
In the eleventh khanda of the 5th prapathaka of the Chhandogya Upanishad just quoted, we come to the Kaikêya country in the Panjab, west of the Madhyadêsa. Five great theologians went to the Brahmana Uddâlaka with hard questions, which he could not answer; so he sent them on to Aévapati, the Kshattriya king of Kaikeya, and brother-in-law of Dasaratha7, and it was he who solved their difficulties. Nor were the doctrines of the Outland always considered as orthodox. The teaching of Svarjit of Gandhira is made short work of by the author of Sitapatha Brahmana, VIII, i, 4, 10, who contemptuously compares it to the words of a Kshattriya (Rajanya).
If we go further back to Vedic times, we see traces of the same contest between what was subsequently Brahmanical orthodoxy and Kshattriya unorthodoxy in the famous struggle between Vasishtha and Viśvâmitra for possession of the sacrificial gifts of king Sudâs. At this stage of history, the Aryans had not penetrated so far into India as they had at the time of the Mahabharata War, and the scene of the combat is hence further west, in the Panjâb, but the relative positions are noteworthy. Vasishtha, the Brahmana, was far to the west, while Visvamitra, the Kshattriya, came from the Gangetic Dôâb.
In later times, to the south of the Madhyadêsa, in the north of what is now Gujarat and Rajputâna, were the Yadavas, and we shall see that it was amongst them that the unorthodox Bhagavata Religion arose.
Putting accidental alliances and enmities to one side, any one who takes a general view of the Mahabharata War will recognize that here the same state of affairs is reproduced. On one side were the Kurus, inhabitants of the central Madhyadêsa, supported by the Brahmanical caste represented by Drôna. On the other side were the Pañchâlas, the Yadavas, and the Matsyas of the Southern Panjab. The protagonists on this side were the polyandrous Pândavas, whose chief hero won the decisive combat of the battle by inflicting a stroke which, to Kuru eyes, was against the rules of Aryan warfare.
I, viii, 1, and V, iii ff. Cf. Brihadaranyaka, VI, ii, 1 ff.
Valmiki, Ramayana, II, i, 2.
The anti-Brahmanist tendency of the Bhagavata Religion is well illustrated by the story of Ambarisha, as told by Priya-disa, the commentator of the Bhakta-måla. Durvisas, the Brihman, has insulted a Bhagavata Kahattriya (Ambarisha). He is pursued by Vishnu's discus, and after appealing without effect to Brahma and Siva, is constrained at length to appeal to Bhagavat (Vishnu). Vishnu tells him that he (Vishnu) had formerly three qualities, i. e., (1) that of protecting suppliants; (2) that of destroying distress, and (3) that of being the god of Brahmana-hood (Brahmanya-déva). "Now I no longer honour these qualities," says he, "for they have been put aside by my new quality of tenderness to bhaktas (bhakta-ratsalya)."
6 V, xix, 1.
Even so late as the 11th century A. D., the country inhabited by the Kurus was looked upon as the true home of Brahmanical orthodoxy. In the second act of the Prabidhachandridaya, we have the unorthodox Charvaka congratulating king Mahamoha that all the world has abandoned the Vêdas, and that even in the land of the Kurus nothing is to be feared from learning or knowledge. Tena kuru-kshetra-'dishu tavad dévéna svapné 'pi na vidyaprabodho-'dayah lankantya!.
