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130
Secondary Tales of the two Great Epics
names are often inserted in the genealogies under the disguise of eponymous ancestors... Thus Puru, Anu, Druhyu, Yadu, Turvasha are the eponymous ancestors of the five allied tribes of the Rigveda. There is nothing in the Rigveda to indicate any blood relation between these tribes... But for the time being those five tribes were in confederacy against the powerful Bharatas. Probably this fact accounts for the statement in the Purāṇas that the five eponymous heroes were brothers, being the sons of the mythical king Yayāti". 215 But, "how can we accept the common descent of Puru, Yadu, Turvasha. Anu and Druhyu from Yajāti, who is as mythical or as historical as Vaivaswata Manu ?”?216 The name, Yayati' itself points to the tale being mythical. Derived from the duplicative form of the root ✓ya-'go, move', the word 'Yayāti' probably indicates the nomadic character of the Aryan tribes. Someone has also tried to show some Tantrik symbolism in the words like Sukra, Devayāni, Śarmistha, Yayāti, even Vịşaparvan, and so on.
Again, the very sub-title "Uttara-yāyātam" (Cp. The title "Uttarakānda" of RM VII) of the third part betrays its later composition. The contents, mainly concerning eschatology, also underline its fictitious nature.
Thus the entire story-cycle of Yayāti is mythical, symbolic, fictitious, and there is no point in insisting upon the historicity of its characters. The tale itself is indeed an interpolation in the epic. But how even these tales are subjected to further interpolations within themselves is interesting to note, On Adip. 87.5, the editor of the AdiP remarks : "This stanza, which seems to make a fresh beginning to the conversation between Yayāti and his grandsons, seems to link up directly with the end of adhyā. 83; the intervening eschatologial discourse between Yayāti and Aştaka which is in part most obscure and incoherent, and so clumsily worded as to be almost unintelligible, has all the appearance of being an old interpolation."217 This will show how varied are the stages by which interpolations have poured into the great epic.
One might as well question the propriety of discussing these two stories : that of Śakuntalā and of Yayāti in the section of the birth-stories. Well, if the author of AdiP can include them in the Sambhava-parvan, why can't we put them under the group of the birth-stories ?
Adhyāya 89 and 90 give us again two geoealogies which are interesting in many ways. One of the two is in the usual śloka metre but the other is in Brāhmaṇical prose. Apart from some deviations in the chronological details, the following genealogy, given in Adhyâya 89, is rather curious.
215 The Aryanisation of India, Nripendra Kumar Dutt, Calcutta, 2nd Edition, 1971. pp. 105-106 216 ibid. p. 140. 217 Adiparvan, BORI, Poona. p. 992.
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