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370
TRIBES IN ANCIENT INDIA
also we find the Bhojas in company with the Andhakas, Vrsnis, Kukuras, Sriñjayas and Cedis. Again, when all the people in this confederacy of tribes were engaged in a deadly conflict among themselves, we find the Kukuras fighting with and exterminating their allies and friends, the Bhojas and Andhakas.2 The Kukuras, Andhakas, and all the tribes in the Union rushed at each other like maniacs run amuck, and brought about the destruction of their closest friends.
We have already seen that the kings among the Sātvatas or Sātvats were called Bhojas: Bhoja was the designation of the royal family of the Sātvatas in the days of the Aitareya Brāhmana, and afterwards the name Bhoja must have been extended to the whole Sātvat tribe. In the Mahābhārata we find the names Bhoja and Sātvata used indiscriminately to designate the same individual, e.g. in the case of Krtavarman, the Hārdikya or son of Hrdika. He was one of the greatest of the Bhojas, and was in the very front rank of the warriors of that warlike age. He led a complete Aksauhini or division of forces to the great Kuruksetra war 4 (on the Kuru side), and appears to have been the leader of the allied army of the BhojaAndhaka-Kukura-Vrsni confederacy, as we learn from the Udyogaparvan.5 Krtavarman appears to have been the official commander of the allied forces even before they came to the field of battle. He seems to have belonged to the city of Mrttikāvati, as we may gather from the Dronaparvan. When the young son of Subhadrā was making terrible slaughter in the Kuru army, and the Kuru heroes could not match him fighting singly according to the laws of honourable warfare, six of the leaders, Krtavarman amongst them, simultaneously made an onslaught against him.? Abhimanyu aimed a number of arrows at Bhoja Mārttikāvata, that is, the Bhoja from Mrttikāvati, who must have been Krtavarman.8
In various passages of the Mahābhārata,' Krtavarman is called either a Bhoja or a Sātvata, the two terms being used interchangeably. From a passage of the Karnaparvan (Mahābhārata, VIII, 7, 8) Kľtavarman's capital Mrttikāvati appears to have been
1 Mbh., Udyogaparvan, V, 28. 2 Mausala parvan, Chap. 5, verse 2. 8 Ibid., Chap. 3, pp. 40–3. 4 Rukmin is mentioned as leader of the Bhojas. 5 Mbh., Udyogaparvan, Chap. 19, pp. 17-18, 25.
6 Ibid., Chap. 7. 7 Mbh., Dronaparvan, Chap. 46, p. 4.
| 8 Ibid., 47, 8. 9 For example, Kịtavarman is mentioned as a Bhoja at Müh., Udyogaparvan, Chap. 57, p. 21; Chap. 165; Karna parvan, Chap. 2, etc.; and as a Sātvata in Chap. 143 (Udyogaparvan); Bhīşmaparvan, Chaps. 16, 51, 56, 81, 86, 95; Karnaparvan, Chap. 9, p. 80.
24B
