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TRIBES IN ANCIENT INDIA stories are recited about this King Udena of the Vamsas (Pāli) or Udayana of the Vatsas (Sanskrit). His capital is mentioned as Kosambi or Kaušāmbi respectively, so evidently the Vamśas and Vatsas are identical. In the Jaina books the same people are spoken of as Vacchas.1
The country of the Vamśas or Vatsas must therefore have been located round about Kausāmbī, the position of which has been identified by Cunningham with Kosām, not very far from Allahabad. According to the Byhatsamhitā, the land of the Vatsas was in the middle region. It probably lay to the north-east of Avanti along the bank of the Jumna, southwards from Košala 2 and to the west of Allahabad.3 The Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Tsang, who speaks of the land of the Vatsas as the Kaušāmbi country, says that it was about 6,000 li in circuit.4
The Mahābhārata contains certain items of traditional information regarding the Vatsa-bhūmi or land of the Vatsas. In one passage, we are told that, prior to the Rājasūya sacrifice performed by Yudhisthira, Bhīmasena led an expedition towards the east and conquered the Vatsa-bhūmi; while in the Vanaparvan, it is stated that Vatsa was conquered by Karņa. Elsewhere? we read that the Haihayas of the Cedi country seized the capital of the Vatsas after killing Haryaśva who must have been a king of Vatsa. In the Bhīsmaparvan, it is said that in the Kuruksetra war, the Vatsa army took the side of the Pāņdavas. Nakula and Sahadeva along with the Vatsas and others guarded the left side of the Pāndava army.
According to the tradition in the Harivamśa, the Vatsa-bhumi was founded by a royal prince of Kāśī, while, according to the Mahābhārata proper, its capital Kaušāmbi was founded by the Cedi prince Kusamba. The Pāli tradition in the Mahāvamsa Commentary suggests that fourteen pre-Ikşvāku kings of the Solar dynasty, headed by Baladatta, ruled the Vatsa kingdom with their capital at Kaušāmbi.
The Purāņas tell us that after Hastināpura was carried away by the Ganges, Nicaksu who was the fifth in descent from the Puru prince Pariksit, grandson of Arjuna, transferred his capital to Kauśāmbi where altogether twenty-five Puru kings, 10 from Nicaksu to
1 Uvāsagadasão, Hoernle, Vol. II, Appendix I, p. 7. 2 Buddhist India, p. 3. 3 N. L. Dey, Geographical Dictionary, p. 100. 4 Watters, On Yuan Chwang, Vol. I, p. 365. 5 Chap. 30, pp. 241-2.
6 Chap. 253, pp. 513-14. 7 Anušāsanaparvan, Chap. 30, p. 1899.
8 Chap. 50, p. 924. 9 Vamsatthappakāsini, I, pp. 128, 120.
10 Rhys Davids (Camb. Hist., I, p. 308) says: 'The later list contains the names of 29 Puru kings who lived after the war. They reigned first at Hastināpura, the
