The Kanyakubja Chronicles IV

Kannauj: the capital of Aryavarta (836 – 1019 AD)

For Kannauj, the period spanning almost two hundred years after the death of King Harsha was one of continuous wars and short-lived monarchies by the rival dynasties of the region, who were perpetually at battle with each other in the attempt to consolidate their empire and probably once again fulfil the ideals of a Chakravartin Samrat of Aryavarta. Kannauj was already well established as the capital of North India from the time of Harsha and with Magadh, Pataliputra, Mathura and other cities fading in their prominence, Kannauj continued to be regarded as the heart of Aryavarta and the jewel in the crown most sought after by the kings at war. After Harsha and his immediate successor Yasovarma, the Ayudha dynasty captured Kannauj and ruled for about fifty years. During this time, the Chalukyas and even the King of Kashmir, Lalitaditya, is said to have attacked Kannauj with the desire to rule over this magnificent city.

However, by the end of the 8^th century, the power and politics of Aryavarta remained in the hands of three dynasties, who were forever at war with each other: the Gurjara-Pratiharas from Rajasthan, the Rashtrakutas from Maharashtra and parts of south-central; and the Palas of Bengal. All of them sought to keep Kannauj under their clamp, as the city strongly signified power and control over Aryavarta. The chequered history of war-torn Kannauj during these periods and tales of the battles and coups forged by the Pratihara, Rashtrakuta and Pala kings over a hundred years is, on one hand fascinating yet on the other, dark and of betrayals and bloodshed.

It was also during this turbulent period that Kannauj once again rose to a commendable height of glory under the Pratihara King, Mihir Bhoja in 836 AD. Though not immediately comparable to the Kannauj under Harsha, Mihir Bhoja ensured that he rebuilt the city’s war affected zones and added further magnificence. Learning and culture surged in Kannauj and once again the traditions of Brahmanical Hinduism were glorified under the Kanyakubja Brahmins, who now had acquired the cult tag of ‘Kannaujia Brahmin’, one that was set to stay for many more centuries to come. A devout follower of Lord Vishnu, Mihir Bhoja built many temples across his kingdom and patronised the Brahmins extensively, as bearers and keepers of traditional Brahminical Hindu faith who propagated the Vedic rituals, culture and literature.

Mihir Bhoja’s kingdom ranged from the Sutlej River in the North-west to the foothills of Himalayas in the North and from Bengal in the East to Gujarat in the West, while the Narmada River made up for the border in the South. Kannauj was the illustrious capital of his expansive empire and a very prosperous one at that, as we read from the works of Sulaiman, the Arab traveller who visited India during this time. Mihir Bhoja also successfully repulsed several Arab invasions on the North-west borders of his kingdom (present day Sindh in Pakistan) and ensured that he united Aryavarta under Kannuj once again, till 885 AD.

Mihir Bhoja’s successors, though defended their kingdom for a few more generations, were steadily losing parts of their territories to other kings. They lost some parts of the Punjab to the King of Kashmir, while the Rashtrakutas in the south were posing a fierce threat yet again against the weakened Pratiharas. It was during the initial years of the reign of Mahipala, 913 AD to be exact, that the Rashtrakuta King, Indra III, attacked Kannauj and ransacked the city mercilessly. Mahipala had to flee and Kannauj passed on to the hands of the Rashtrakutas for the next three years. Kannauj had hitherto not seen such a bloody war and pillage of its wealth and magnificence as it saw at the hands of the Rashtrakuta king Indra III; however then, little did the city know that it would have to face an even more merciless ransacking, killing and looting within the turn of the same century at the hands of the first Muslim invaders.

Mahipala was however able to return to his capital and overthrow the Rashtrakuta vassals in Kannauj and take the city back for the Pratiharas by 916 AD. Barring the singular blot of the ‘ransacking of Kannauj’ by Indra III, Mahipala is credited with the attributes of a valiant ruler and warrior who maintained his kingdom and subjects well. The Arab chronicler, ‘Al-Masudi’ writes about him:

"The ruler has four armies according to the four quarters of the wind. Each of these number 700,000 or 900,000 men. He has large armies in the garrisons in the north and in the south; in the east and in the west, for he is surrounded on all sides by warlike rulers."

Thus in the fight for the control of Aryavarta and pursuit of keeping suzerainty over Kannauj as the capital of Aryavarta, the Pratiharas had overall emerged victorious against their rivals the Rashtrakutas and the Palas. However, constant wars and break down of kingdoms over this period actually worked against the interests of Aryavarta, for after Mihir Bhoja there was no king who could unite Aryavarta again and build a formidable force. The powers of the Palas in Bengal were limited, while that of the later Pratiharas and the Rashtrakutas got weakened. Their vassals rebelled against them and broke away from the kingdoms to form smaller kingdoms of their own. Thus by 1000 AD, Aryavarta had disintegrated into a disjoined and fragmented structure of many states and kingdoms with independent rulers, mostly still fighting against themselves. This paved the way easily for the successful raids into India by Mahmud of Ghazni, which began in 1001 AD.

The first Muslim conquest of Kannauj (1018 AD)

It was in 1018 AD that the tremors of the pounding hoofs of the troops of horsemen of Mahmud of Ghazni’s ferocious army were felt on the soil of Kannauj, heralding the most ominous and dreaded of the battles that the magnificent city had ever witnessed. Stories of Mahmud’s fearsome invasions and battles on the plains of the Indus and Sutlej had by then spread all across Aryavarta (northern India), as the burly Sultan had already invaded the country at least ten times and indiscriminately killed and looted in the towns and cities that fell in his way.

What started as a battle for territorial supremacy between the Ghaznavids and the Hindu Shahi kings of Kabul in 1000 AD, in no time broke down the barriers of the rugged North-western frontier and opened the doors to India for Mahmud. The Hindu Shahi King Jayapaladeva of Kabul was defeated by Mahmud in the first battle in 1000 AD, but Mahmud returned within a year with a larger force to capture Kabul and then furthered his intention to loot and fill his Ghaznavid capital with the riches of Hindustan, as he chased the Hindu Shahi forces further down. By 1006 AD, he had defeated Jayapaladeva and his son and successor King Anandapala repeatedly and ransacked the cities of Purushapura (modern Peshawar in Pakistan), Udabhandapura (modern Und in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan – which was the later capital of the Hindu Shahi kings once Kabul was taken), Bhera (modern Bhira in Pakistan-Punjab) and Mulasthanam (modern Multan in Pakistan). Making it a sport and easy exploit, Mahmud continued his series of infamous raids to India and emboldened by each lavish victory, he soon swooped down onto the heartland of north India.

Having deposed the Hindu Shahi Kings from Kabul and North-west of India, over the next decade Mahmud continued to plague the country with his raids, ransacking and looting. While Peshawar and Multan were repeatedly sacked, Mahmud’s fury did not spare the Nandana, the last capital city of the Hindu Shahi Kings - after Mahmud destroyed and annexed Udabhandapura (Und). Nandana was a picturesque town nestled in the verdant valleys of the Salt Range of the Indus valley, and King Anandapala had chosen to name it Nandana, after the celestial garden of Lord Indra. (In modern day, the only remains of Nandana city are the ruins of the Shiva temple built by Anandapala, which still stands atop a hill in the Salt Range of Pakistan; the city has been completely decimated, destroyed and has over time slipped into oblivion).

In his invasions of 1011 Mahmud had come as far as Delhi and sacked Thaneswar, and in 1015 he had successfully pillaged the formidable city of Lohkot (modern Lahore in Pakistan). He completely overthrew the Hindu Shahi kingdom and forced its last ruler Trilochanapala to flee. Trilochanapala was given refuge by the king of Kalinjar. Having conquered and subjugated the kingdoms in the North-west provinces, it was but expected that in his next adventure the ferocious Sultan would come charging down on the cities that lay further deep in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, the opulence of which were not unknown to him by then.

When Mahmud attacked Mathura and Mahaban in 1018, he was met by armies of some of the regional kings but they were hardly a match to the ferocity of the invading Ghaznavid army under Mahmud. Mathura and Mahaban fell after a fierce battle in 1018 and were completely ransacked post which the Sultan turned his attention to Kannauj, as he intruded further down the plains. The ruling Pratihara king of Kannauj at that time was Rajyapala who was terrified at the prospect of facing Mahmud’s army with the almost certainty of defeat and bloodshed in the capital. Rajyapala had been part of the Hindu confederacy (the joint armies of Ujjain, Gwalior, Kalinjar, Kannauj, Delhi and Ajmer) which had earlier fought in support of the Hindu Shahi kingdom and had opposed Mahmud between Und and Peshawar and had been completely routed by the invading forces. Faced with the daunting task of fighting Mahmud’s army alone, Rajyapala chose not to engage in battle with the Sultan and Kannauj was surrendered without a fight. This however did not stop the greedy Sultan from ransacking the city and he proceeded to destroy many important Hindu temples and Buddhist stupas in Kannauj. The holy shrines were desecrated and the temple wealth was looted indiscriminately.

As the pillage and plundering in Kannauj went on at the hands of Mahmud’s army, among the subjects the worst fate probably befell the Kanyakubja (Kannaujia) Brahmins. On the pretext of jihad, the Muslim invaders fanatically crushed the Hindu centres of worship and learning, burning Vedic and Sanskrit texts and scriptures wherever they could find them. They were aware that the Brahmins were the keepers of the religious culture and traditions as well as the temple wealth, and hence the wrath fell on them. The Brahmin houses were invaded, destroyed and looted and the priests and scholars were mercilessly tortured, their books and belongings being burnt in front of their eyes. The king had already surrendered and remained a mute spectator as the once glorious city of Kannauj was brought to its knees and its wealth forcibly taken away.

Mahumd of Ghazni left a burning and destroyed Kannauj, and if that wasn’t enough, within a year Kannauj was attacked by the neighbouring Chandelas. The rage of the Chandela King was directed against Rajyapala for having meekly surrendered to Mahmud without a fight and for allowing the destruction, arson and looting of his city, but the Chandel soldiers ensured that they also had their share of looting as they ravaged through the already broken city. Rajyapala was killed by the Chandelas and that marked the end of the Pratihara dynasty, leaving Kannauj in a total state of anarchy and political chaos, by the end of 1019 AD.

Coming Soon …. Kanyakubja Chronicles V

In the next article, we shall read about the revival of Kannauj and the restoration of its glory under the lineage of the Gahadavala Kings, until the final decimation of the city and its Hindu Brahminical culture, in the second Muslim conquest at the hands of Muhammad Ghori. Kannauj thereafter came under Islamic rulers, an influence which relegated all Hindu culture and learning to minimal relevance, thus forcing large sections of the remaining Kanyakubja Brahmins to desert the city to escape forced conversion and attempt safekeeping of the remnants of Vedic scriptures and traditions that were miraculously saved.

The Kanyakubja Chronicles - III

Kanyakubja as the capital of King Harsha’s empire (606 – 647 AD)

Kanyakubja enjoyed its most glorious time during the reign of King Harsha from 606 to 647 AD, and was the capital of his empire which ranged from the North-west frontiers to the outer borders of Gauda (Bengal) in the east. Much about Harsha’s reign and life is told in the Harshacharita composed by his court poet Banabhatta. Apart from being the biography of King Harsha, the Harshacharita is important for a few more reasons as well. It is the first historical poetic work to be composed in Sanskrit, in the court of Kanyakubja. It is also the first historical biography written in Sanskrit language. In the Harshacharita, Banabhatta gives an ornate account of life in Harsha’s kingdom, his capital Kanyakubja and even the rural areas. Kanyakubja is portrayed in the most glorified manner as a capital city un-paralleled in its time and of flaunting a deeply rich cultural exchange of literature, religious discourses and practices, surge of Vedic and Sanskrit language and composition of great poetic works. The city is also described to be an important centre of trade and commerce and a destination for many travellers not only from the nearby locations, but also from foreign countries.

The accounts of the famous Chinese pilgrim, Hieuen Tsang, (a.k.a Xuanzang) form an important and precious source of information of Harsha’s empire and Kanyakubja as his capital city in those times. Hieuen Tsang, being a highly acclaimed Buddhist monk, spent fourteen years in India, travelling to all the sacred places connected with Buddha’s life, of which he spent seven years in Kanyakubja, under King Harsha’s patronage and hospitality. His accounts acquaint us with the political, religious, economic and social conditions of Kanyakubja in those days. According to Hieuen Tsang, at the time of his visit, he found Nalanda to be on the decline and Kanyakubja and Prayag (modern day Allahabad) to be the emerging and vibrant cities. It was exactly in these two places that King Harsha had conducted his two major Religious Assemblies during the period of Hieuen Tsang’s stay in his kingdom. Hieuen Tsang, in his accounts, writes in great detail about the benevolence and magnanimity of King Harsha as a ruler and refers to him by the name ‘King Shiladitya’ throughout his writings.

The religious beliefs of King Harsha’s family is a metaphorical representation of the religious beliefs of the citizens of his empire during those times. Pushyabhuti, the founder of Harsha’s dynasty was a devotee of Lord Shiva, while Harsha’s father, Prabhakara Vardhana used to daily worship Surya, the Sun god, with a bunch of red lotuses. Harsha’s brother Rajyavardhana and sister Rajyasri were deeply attached to the Hinayana practices of Buddhism, while Harsha himself was a staunch Shaivite in the early part of his reign as King of Kanyakubja.

He personally followed the Puranic Hindu religious practices and beliefs and thus the Vedic Brahmins enjoyed positions of importance and great patronage from the King for spreading their religious doctrines, scriptures and faith. However, in the latter part of his reign, King Harsha was greatly influenced by the Buddhist monk Hieuen Tsang and though he did not denounce Hinduism, he accorded immense importance to the Mahayana form of Buddhism (preached by Hieuen Tsang) and undertook extensive and pompous efforts to spread the religion.

Hinduism and Buddhism, and the various inherent cults of the two religions, were so near to each other, that the people accepted them with intense devotion. During the most glorious period of King Harsha’s reign, his empire was an excellent example of the synthesis of religious ideas being adopted with a broad spiritual outlook. By his time, Puranic Hinduism was sweeping over the country in full force and the Hindu gods and goddesses had come to dominate the religious faith of the common people. Buddha’s images were also worshipped by Hindus alongside their own gods and goddesses. Hieuen Tsang, though a devout Buddhist himself, was impressed to see the predominance of Brahminical Hinduism in the country and the stature and patronage accorded to the Kanyakubja Brahmins by Harsha in his court and empire. Within Puranic Hinduism there were many sects, however, Vishnu, Shiva and Surya were the prominent Hindu gods to be worshipped. Buddhism, even though seemed to be heading towards a decline, held its power in the imagination of the people, while Jainism was concentrated only in a few places like Vaishali and its former holy centres.

The citizens were free to follow and practise the faith of their choice, and a person could even be a believer in different faiths. There were religious controversies but no religious dogmatism or fanaticism. The King, himself being tolerant to different religious faiths, allowed for an atmosphere of congenial co-existence of the religions and strongly opposed imposing any single religion on any of his subjects. It is said that King Harsha was a devotee of Shiva, Surya and also the Buddha. It was undoubtedly a time of religious assimilation and spiritual synthesis.

Towards the latter years of his reign, King Harsha was profoundly impressed with the doctrines of Mahayana form of Buddhism and it could be attributed to the influence of Hieuen Tsang on the King. Hieuen Tsang was undoubtedly a vastly learned Buddhist monk and his exposition of the Mahayana Buddhism attracted the King and drove him to undertake more efforts to spread the religion. Accordingly, Harsha organised for religious conferences providing Hieuen Tsang the opportunity to preach Buddhism and also built many stupas in his kingdom in the honour of Lord Buddha.

Even though Harsha became devoted to Buddhism, he did not exit the fold of Hinduism completely. Hieuen Tsang’s detailed description of his ‘King Shiladitya’s’ religious practices show that Harsha (a.k.a Shiladitya) continued to pay deep devotion and respect to Hindu deities. His respect, understanding and tolerance of the different religious faiths was the most noteworthy feature of his reign. This was best demonstrated in the five-yearly religious conferences which Harsha organised in his kingdom and named them ‘Moksha’. We get to read about the details of two such grand conferences in the year 643 AD, from the descriptions of Hieuen Tsang, held at Kanyakubja and Prayag respectively.

The Kanyakubja Religious Assembly of 643 AD

King Harsha organised a grand religious conference in his capital city of Kanyakubja, on the western banks of the Ganges. The purpose of the assembly was to highlight the teachings of Buddha. On that occasion, Harsha also wanted to honour the Chinese ‘Master of the Law’, Hieuen Tsang. This grand function was attended by twenty tributary kings, including the kings of Kamarupa (modern-day Assam) Bhaskara Varman from the extreme east, and the King of Vallabhi (modern day Vallabhipur – near Bhavnagar, Gujarat) Dhruvasena from the extreme west. Three thousand Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhists, three thousand Brahmins and Jains, and one thousand Buddhist scholars from the University of Nalanda attended this assembly, which continued for long 23 days. Harsha himself proposed the name of Hieuen Tsang to preside over the assembly. The subject of discussion in the assembly related to Mahayana Buddhism.

From the accounts of Hieuen Tsang it is known that a splendid monastery with a shrine was constructed, on the bank of the Ganges for the purpose of the assembly. There, on the huge tower, one hundred feet high, a golden image of Buddha equal to the height of Harsha himself was kept for the view of the large gathering. A smaller image of Buddha, 3 feet in height was every day carried in a procession, joined by all the 20 kings, and with 300 elephants. In that procession, Harsha himself, dressed as the Hindu god Sakra (referred to as Indra), held the canopy on the image. The King of Kamarupa, dressed as the god Brahma, waved a white fly-whisk around the image.

As the procession progressed, Harsha scattered golden flowers, pearls and gems on all sides for showing honour to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. At the end of the procession every day, Harsha used to wash the image with his own hands at the altar, and carry it on his shoulders to be placed at the appropriate tower. There, the image was dressed in many silken robes, decorated with gems.

Harsha’s devotion to the image of Buddha in the Kanyakubja Assembly clearly proves his deep attachment to Mahayana Buddhism. The Hindu gods like Sakra and Brahma were shown as the attendants of Buddha in a symbolic way, since Buddha was considered to be an incarnation of Vishnu.

The Kanyakubja Assembly was marred by two unfortunate incidents. Those incidents also show that many in the assembly did not like Harsha’s extraordinary favours to the Chinese ‘Master of the Law’, and to the Mahayana faith. The first incident relates to a threat to the life of Hieuen Tsang. Coming to know of it, Harsha issued a proclamation to warn the intolerant group: “If anyone should touch or hurt the Master of the Law, he shall be forthwith executed, and who ever speaks against him, his tongue shall be cut off; but all those who desire to profit by his instructions, relying on my good will, need not fear this manifesto”.

The second incident relates to an attempt on the life of Harsha himself. One night the monastery on the site of the assembly suddenly caught fire, and Harsha himself came down to put it out. As he was coming down the steps of a stupa from where he had supervised the work, a fanatic with a dagger rushed towards the emperor, from behind the dark pillars, in an attempt to assassinate him.

The man was promptly caught, and he confessed that he had been sent to kill the king for his favour to Buddhism. Following an investigation into the matter, five hundred Brahmins were arrested and they admitted their hand in it. They were all exiled from the country for their act of treason against the King.

These incidents show that Harsha’s attempts to give a new vitality to Buddhism by being its royal patron, may not have actually carried much appeal to the Hindu mind in those declining days of Buddhism. Once the religion had come nearer to Hinduism both at intellectual and popular level, its exclusive predominance was out of question. Harsha could not have recalled the old spirit of Buddhism to the India of his time, despite his valiant attempts and proclamation.

Nine hundred years separated Harsha from Asoka. The latter, while patronising Buddhism, laid absolute emphasis on the ethical aspects of Buddha’s religion. Harsha, by championing the Mahayana Buddhism, laid emphasis on the worship of the image of Buddha. As Puranic Hinduism also accepted Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu, there was no novelty in the royal patronage of a decadent faith in India, even if it was in full vigour outside.

The Kanyakubja Assembly was followed by another spectacular assembly at Prayag in the same year. While the Kanyakubja Assembly was a religious assembly to highlight Mahayanism, the Prayag Assembly was an assembly of universal character for offerings of royal charities to all classes of people. It was known as the Maha Moksha Parishad. Harsha was at his best in the Prayag Assembly as a generous monarch and an admirer of all the major faiths of his country.

On the first day of the Prayag Assembly, an image of Buddha was worshipped amidst distribution of valuables. On the second day was worshipped the image of Surya. And, on the third day, the image of Shiva was worshipped. The Prayag Assembly finally closed after 75 days.

Soon after the Prayag Assembly, Hieuen Tsang left for home, and travelling through long distances, finally reached China in 645 A.D. Within the next two years, early in 647 A.D., Harsha Shiladitya died.

Kanyakubja post-Harsha ( 650 AD – 850 AD)

As Harsha’s empire gradually disintegrated after his death, the Gurjara-Pratiharas took control of most of Northern India and established the Pratihara Dynasty. Nagabhatta I, Nagabhatta II, Ramabhadra and Mihir Bhoja ruled in succession in the powerful Pratihara clan with Kanyakubja continuing to be the capital of their empire. They even proclaimed themselves with the title of ‘Maharajadhiraja of Aryavarta’ (Great King of Kings of India), having secured the major portion of Northern India under their control.

The Pratiharas were staunch Hindu kings and with the decline of Buddhism in the heartland of India after King Harsha’s demise, Brahminical Hinduism took centre stage as the predominant religious faith both for the state and its subjects. Kanyakubja and its clan of the ‘Kanyakubja Brahmins’ therefore continued to enjoy their status of prominence and importance during the next four centuries under the Pratihara and Bhoja kings.

However, gradually over time in the post-Harsha period, the city’s ancient name of ‘Kanyakubja’ gradually metamorphosed into the much-colloquial name ‘Kannauj’. How it exactly happened is not documented anywhere, but it is logical to assume that the shortening and rephrasing of the name would have been more due to localised and conversational influences.

The Pratiharas did not have a very peaceful reign as there were regular skirmishes with the neighbouring kings either to defend or extend the territories. Kannauj continued to be at the centre of a tripartite power struggle between the Pratiharas, the Rashtakutas of the South and the Palas of the East.

Coming Soon …. Part 5

In the next article, we shall detail more on the chequered path of war-torn Kannauj under the Pratihara and Bhoja kings till the Muslim conquests and destruction of the city in 1018 AD and beyond, an event which also forced a mass exodus of the Kanyakubja Brahmins to flee the city to escape death and the destruction of their Vedic scriptures and centres of learning.

[credit for this blog-post content goes to S. Priyadarshini, for her article on ‘2 Memorable Assemblies of Harsha’ in HistoryDiscussion.net, extracts of which have been reproduced here]

                                                                                ------------------------

The Kanyakubja Chronicles - II

For an extended period of time in the mythological period, especially during the time span between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the story of Kanyakubja is quite blurred and there seems to be no significant mention of it, until the period of the Mahabharata.

The Mahabharata times (3rd Century BC, during the Dwapar Yuga) –

In ancient India, from the 6^th to 4^th century BC, there existed sixteen Mahajanapadas, kingdoms or oligarchic republics, ranging from Kamboja (modern day Kabul) and Gandhara (modern day Qandahar) in the North-west to Anga (modern day Bengal) in the eastern part. Two of them were ‘ganas’ or republics while the others were ruled over by monarchs. Of these, Panchal Pradesh was a notable one, which also carries historic importance for us.

Spread across the Gangetic basin, Panchal Pradesh was criss-crossed by five rivers, viz., Ganga, Yamuna, Kosi, Kali and Chambal. The kingdom was divided by the Ganga into two parts: North Panchal and South Panchal, with capitals at Ahichchhatra and Kampilya respectively. During the time of the Mahabharata, King Drupad was the monarch of Panchal and Kampilya was his capital. Among other smaller territories governed by sub-lords, Kanyakubja too was a part of South Panchal kingdom, the city being located a mere thirty miles away from the capital Kampilya.

As the Mahabharata legend goes, the guru of the Kauravas and Pandavas, Dronacharya, sent his pupil Arjun to avenge him and put Drupad in his rightful place. Arjun defeated Drupad, annexed his kingdom and brought him bound to Dronacharya. In the truce that followed, ending the bitter rivalry between the erstwhile closely bonded friends, Dronacharya took away the North Panchal part of Drupad’s kingdom and aligned the same to Hastinapur (capital of the Kuru kingdom) while giving back the South Panchal portion to Drupad to retain. Dronacharya then stayed in Ahichchhatra for some time before returning to Hastinapur and leaving his son Ashwathama as ruler of North Panchal, under subjugation of the Hastinapur kingdom.

It was also in Kampilya, the shining capital of South Panchal kingdom, that the famous swayamvara ceremony of Princess Draupadi (Panchali) was held where Arjun won the hand of the Princess of Panchal. During this period, the Pandavas are said to have extensively travelled through the South Panchal kingdom, staying in places like Kanyakubja, which is spoken of as a thriving city and a great seat of culture, education and Vedic religion, in the references found in the Mahabharata.

To put the geography in modern day perspective, Kampilya still remains as a small town called Kampil in Farukhabad in Uttar Pradesh. Out of the North Panchal area which was annexed to Hastinapur, the Kauravas gave away a part of Ahhichchatra to Guru Dronacharya and his family – which today can be identified as modern Haryana as Gurgaon or ‘Gurugram’, truly as the name suggests. Kanyakubja, as we already know, came to be the modern day Kannauj, eighty kilometres away from Kanpur city.

Ancient history of India – later Vedic era, Maurya and Gupta, periods (1200 BC – 550 AD)

If Panchal Pradesh as one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas had an important place in the mythological references, there was yet another Mahajanapada which proclaims to have changed the course of Indian history. It is the Magadha kingdom, the existence and references of which we find in Vedic texts and Epics, in time much earlier than 600 BC. According to the Brahmanda Purana references we come to know of Brihadratha who is said to be the first king of Magadha, in the post Vedic period.

Brihadratha’s dynasty was followed by a quick succession of dynasties between 600 and 322 BC. Magadha saw its first expansion under the Haryanka dynasty kings, notably Bimbisara and Ajatsatru, the latter being the contemporary of Lord Buddha. Ajatsatru had his capital at Girivraja, which he renamed to Rajagiri (modern-day Rajgir, in the state of Bihar). The Shishunaga dynasty overthrew the Haryankas in 413 BC and ruled for less than hundred years. They were overthrown by Mahapadma Nanda Ugrasena, who founded the Nanda dynasty in 345 BC. It was during the reign of the last Nanda king, Dhana Nanda, in 326 BC, that Alexander the Great invaded India. However, their armies did not meet for a battle, as Alexander’s armies were exhausted and had mutinied in the region of the Beas River in the northwest province forcing Alexander to turn back.

Chandragupta Maurya, who overthrew the Nanda dynasty, established the Maurya Empire in 321 BC. The capital of the Maurya Empire was Pataliputra (modern-day Patna). The Maurya Empire reached its zenith under his grandson Ashoka and extended from the eastern borders of Persia (modern-day Iran) till the southern borders of Burma. The Mauryan period professed Buddhism as the state religion and propagated it throughout the empire. The Mauryan Empire went into decline by 180 BC and was followed by few other local rulers who took control of Magadha and the capital Pataliputra.  

While much of the action was happening in the Indo-Gangetic plains with Magadha assuming all the importance and limelight, Panchal Pradesh in the post Vedic period was having a quiet run with its series of local rulers having consolidated the kingdom. With the decline of power and resultant threat from the Kuru kingdom (Mahajanapada) and its capital Indraprastha (modern-day Delhi – legacy left behind by the Pandavas), the Panchala Kings were able to regain back most of their original kingdom, including the northern important town of Ahichchhatra. Kanyakubja continued with its journey of Vedic learning through the breed of the Kanyakubja Brahmins, however, their agenda of propagating the Hindu scriptures had significantly diminished in the wake of the surge of Buddhism across the country at that period of time.

It was during the reign of the fiery Mahapadma Nanda of the Nanda dynasty that Panchal Pradesh along with many other Mahajanapadas was won over and annexed to the expanding Magadha kingdom. This was consolidated firmly during the Mauryan period as the entire country from the north-west to the south-east borders was won over by Chandragupta Maurya and his worthy descendants, and the concept of separate Mahajanapadas of the later Vedic times was dissolved to give way to a unified India and provincial heads or capitals therein. The resultant wide spread of Buddhism and the Pali language and their Prakrits used extensively during the Mauryan period, forced Hinduism to take a back seat and classical Sanskrit as the language of Vedic literature to be down forced. Thus centres of Hindu scriptural and Vedic learning, like Kanyakubja, Takshashila and Girivraja were affected by the upsurge of Buddhism and later Jainism.

Kanyakubja had a milder effect in the changed era, in comparison to the other two of its sibling cities Takshashila (modern Taxila – in North Pakistan) and Girivraja (modern Rajgir – in Bihar). This could be attributed to the fact that Kanyakubja was not as popular and had not been adequately patronised by its Panchala rulers as a seat of learning and could neither boast of accomplished faculty nor attract students from afar. The city, though lived up to its potential of Vedic and scriptural learning in Sanskrit and of being staunchly proud of its Brahminical Hindu roots and traditions, albeit in a very contained and captive manner. The Kanyakubja Brahmins continued to be the mainstay of the learning and tradition being upheld, but they remained quite focussed internally turning their faces away from the political, social and religious change that was sweeping across the country over these centuries.

Takshashila (Taxila), revered till date to have been one of the oldest universities of the world, became not only a provincial capital for the Maurya emperors, but also an important seat of the Mahayana Buddhist preaching and learning. Ashoka, the great propagator of Buddhism, was a patron of the Taxila centre and had erected a lot of Buddhist statues and icons in the city. However, even before the surge of Buddhism and during the initiation of the Maurya Empire, Taxila had been credited as being the abode of the famous Chanakya (Kautilya) who is said to have composed his treatise Arthshastra in Taxila. The city even finds reference in the Mahabharata in that the first recital of the Indian epic was done by sage Vaisampayan to King Janmejaya (of the Kuru royal lineage) at Taxila.

Girivraja (Rajgir) had the next famous seat of learning after Taxila during this period: the Nalanda University. Even though the Mauryas had their capital at Pataliputra, Nalanda was a very important location for them as a centre for preaching and teaching Buddhism. With Taxila and Nalanda, strategically placed in the north-west and eastern parts of the kingdom respectively, the Maurya period saw the significant rise of these centres of learning. Even though the earlier Vedic and Sanskrit literature was taught in both these places, the tide of time had turned the focus to be predominantly Buddhist literature and the medium to be the Pali and Prakrit language. In the whole scheme of things, Kanyakubja (for reasons mentioned earlier) fell into a shadow area and continued its low-profile existence.

India was again unified and saw resurgent glorious times under the Gupta Empire (240 AD to 550 AD) and the rise of Brahminical Hinduism was observed during this time. This period is also known as the age of Classical Sanskrit literature. As we have read from the accounts of the Chinese travellers, notably Fa Hien in the Mauryan period and Hiuen Tsang in the post-Gupta era, along with Taxila, Nalanda and Kanyakubja, other towns such as Mathura, Sarnath, Ujjain, Vidisha and Sravasti were developing as fantastic centres of learning and architecture.

As Taxila was for the Uttarapath (Noth-west frontier) and Nalanda for the Magadha region, Mathura and Kanyakubja were the key town for the Madhyadesh region. Under the Gupta kings, these cities rose to the pinnacle of glory as centres of administration, culture, diverse religions, architecture and celebration of the Classical Sanskrit knowledge. This golden age of the Classical Sanskrit renaissance produced famous litterateurs like Kalidasa, Bharavi, Sriharsha and Magha who wrote the five ‘Mahakavyas’. Scholars and writers like Banabhatta, Bhartrihari and Vatsyayana also composed their famous works Kadambari, the three Shatakas and the Kama Sutra respectively during this time. Further, the Hindu Puranas are stated to be composed and refined during this age.

However, in the post-Gupta era (570 AD – 650 AD, Mathura gave way to Kanyakubja, as the latter became important for political reasons and rose to become the capital of King Harsha’s undivided Indian empire.

The later Ancient history of India – Maukhari, and Vardhana periods (550 AD – 647 AD)

The Maukharis were the vassals of the Gupta kings and were governing the Madhyadesh region from Kanyakubja. King Isha Varman asserted his independence from the weakening Gupta Empire (which was already breaking up) in 550 AD and established Kanyakubja as the capital of Madhyadesha which he declared as a separate and independent kingdom. Over their little-above-fifty-years of rule, they rapidly consolidated their kingdom and developed Mathura as the second important city after the capital Kanyakubja. However, they were engaged in constant skirmishes with the Later Guptas of Magadha and other neighbouring kingdoms.

King Isha Varman was defeated by Kumaragupta of Magadha in 554 AD, but his son Sharva Varman soon defeated the Guptas and reclaimed his kingdom and capital of Kanyakubja. By the time of 605 AD, the power of the Later Gupta rulers had also diminished with many other kingdoms asserting their independence and establishing separate ruling dynasties. These kingdoms, viz., Madhyadesh ruled by the Maukhari Varmans, Magadha ruled by the Later Guptas, Malwa ruled by Devagupta, Gauda (Bengal) ruled by Shashanka, were always at war with each other in the attempt to expand their territories and loot wealth from the other kingdoms.

One such dynasty was the Pushyabhuti dynasty founded by Prabhakar Vardhana with their capital in Thaneswar (modern day Haryana). Prabhakar Vardhan left behind two sons Rajya Vardhan and Harsha Vardhan and a daughter Rajyasri. Rajya Vardhan ascended the throne and ruled from Thanesar while his younger brother Harshavardhan took up the charge of expanding the kingdom by conquering other territories. Their sister Rajyasri was married to Graha Varman, the Maukhari king of Kanyakubja.

A few years after the matrimonial alliance, Devagupta, the King of Malwa attacked Kanyakubja and defeated and killed Graha Varman, taking the city and his queen Rajyasri captive in her own palace. Rajya Vardhan, the king of Thanesar and Rajyasri’s elder brother immediately rushed to Kanyakubja in support of his sister. He succeeded in defeating and killing Devagupta in Kanyakubja and freed his sister Rajyasri from captivity. But at this point, King Shashanka, the ruler of Gauda (Bengal) and an ally of Devagupta of Malwa entered Kanyakubja to avenge the death of his friend.

Shashanka treacherously murdered Rajya Vardhan in Kanyakubja, and was planning to annex the kingdom when the news of Rajya Vardhan’s death reached his younger brother Harsha. Wasting no time and in furious anger, Harshavardhan marched on to Kanyakubja and defeated Shashanka and his Gauda army.

Harsha’s successful campaign in saving Kanyakubja also meant that the immediate threats to the kingdom had been quelled. The people of Kanyakubja praised Harsha and looked upon him as their saviour who had not only protected them but had also avenged the death of their earlier king Graha Varman. The council of priests, ministers and the representatives of the people at the Kanyakubja court requested Harsha to ascend the throne as their new King. Harshavardhan was therefore anointed as the new king of Madhyadesh at the palace in Kanyakubja in 606 AD. He was only sixteen years of age at that time.

In quick succession, he brought the other kingdoms around him to his subjugation and expanded his territories from the Northwest borders of India to Kamarupa (Assam) in the east and to the Narmada River in the south. King Harsha ruled for about forty years and it is said that not only under him was the last unified Hindu empire in the country, but also one of great glory and pomp, with Kanyakubja enjoying its most prominent time as its capital of King Harsha’s empire.

Coming Soon ….. Part 4

In the next article, we shall explore more on the glorious period of Kanyakubja under King Harsha, and then its history under the subsequent kings till the Muslim conquests and destruction of the city. The role of the Kanyakubja Brahmins also becomes more pronounced in this era as the age of the renaissance of classical Hinduism reaches its zenith.

                                                                 -----------------------------

The Kanyakubja Chronicles I

For the starting point of my research of the history of our family lineage I decided to choose exactly that point of reference till which my grandfather had been able to trace the line into our previous generations, and that point of reference was where the first ever roots of the lineage hailed from: the ancient city of Kanyakubja!

Not that I was immediately successful in being able to trace a line of our forefathers in Kanyakubja, beyond the names already cited in my grandfather’s research, but what offered itself was a splendid tale of this ancient city, meandering leisurely in and out of history and mythology which was captivating enough that at some point the fine line separating the two seem to blur.

While I attempt in this section of my research article, to present the story of Kanyakubja, the revered city of my forefathers’, centuries ago, I do so with a caveat. My research in this area, for understandable reasons, have been totally bookish, the sources of which however remain well validated. I have gained most of the information from a few Sanskrit books (the Indian epic Ramayana, the Puranas and a few others) detailing the times and references to Kanyakubja in various eras and ruled by many kings, about whom we have read in both Indian mythology and history. These books, which I was very fortunate to stumble upon recently in the small library in our Calcutta home that my aunt Jharna had bequeathed to us, also had the Sanskrit paragraphs explained in Bengali alongside thus making it possible for me to understand from. For once while reading these books, as I became deeply engrossed in the mythological tale of Kanyakubja, I regretted not perhaps having taken up Sanskrit as my elective subject way back in college when I did have such an opportunity.

Coupled with my reading of the mythological references to Kanyakubja, I also found strong validated mentions and descriptions of the ancient city in some books on the ancient Indian history (periods from 180 BC through till 1019 AD). Thus, we now have the knowledge from where our family lineage was born and in what historical environs it developed over the centuries to come down to the time of 753 AD where it blends or joins with the specific line for our Gautama Baidik family as defined in my grandfather’s notes (refer my blog: The Search: Research Series Part 1).

We will take a detour here to speak about the history and mythological connections of Kanyakubja, as that has direct context and bearing to the mainstream line of the family we are out to investigate and establish.

The Ramayana times (10th Century BC, during the Treta Yuga) and before –

The coordinates of Kanyakubja as mentioned in many Indian mythological texts is briefly as follows:

Jamboodweep (Asia), Bharat Khand (India), Aryavarta desh (The land of the Aryans, mainly denoting the northern part of India), Vindhyachaley uttorey (to the north of the Vindhyachal mountains).

The Valmiki Ramayan, Bal-khand, Sargas 2 and 31 to 33, gives us a brief history of Kanyakubja and how the city came to get its name as such. When rishi Vishwamitra and Lord Ram reached the banks of the Son River near the ancient city of Girivraja, Lord Ram asked the rishi where they were, to which the great rishi told him about the location and history of the land:

One of Lord Brahma’s descendants was a King named Kusha, who had four sons by his wife Vaidarbhi, viz., Kushamba, Kushanabha, Asurtharaj and Vasu. King Kusha asked his sons, when they grew up, to rule like a true Kshatriya (warrior) ruler and for that they set up four cities in different parts of the kingdom. Kushamba’s city was named Kaushambi, Kushanabha built Mahodayapura, Asutharaj built the city Dharmaranya and Vasu called his city Girivraja. Amongst the lot, over course of time, only Kushanabha ruled according to the true Kshatriya practices and hence his city Mahodayapura flourished and soon many of his brothers’ cities also formed a part of his growing kingdom. The kingdom was mostly comprising of what we today can identify as the Indo-Gangetic plains.

Mahodayapura was the capital city of King Kushanabha and his glorious kingdom was called Madhyadesh (the central land). It was so named, chiefly because it occupied the central portion of the Aryavarta of the ancient times, with the Vindhyachal mountain range setting its barrier to the south, beyond which the Aryans had not ventured till that time.

King Kushanabha had a hundred daughters by his wife Ghritachi (also an apsara), and all of them were divinely beautiful. As they grew up to be exquisitely charming maidens, Vayu the wind god was infatuated by them but was rudely rejected by the maidens. In his anger and humiliation Vayu cursed the hundred daughters of King Kushanabha for their haughtiness, as a result of which the daughters developed hunches on their backs, thus deforming their once so praised physical beauty. Vayu told the King that the curse could only be lifted and the divine beauty of his daughters restored, if a Brahmin of upright character married them.

The news of the curse and the fate of the hundred princesses spread like wildfire in the city and across the kingdom. The city Mahodayapura soon became to be called “the city of the hunchback maidens” or ‘Kanyakubja’! (Kanya – daughter; kubja – hunchback). Thus was acquired the name which stayed on as long as the city stood in its glory across the centuries.

As the King went in frantic search of such a Brahmin, he heard of the sage Chooli who had set up his abode in the forests nearby and was meditating there. As the King approached the sage, he observed the sage’s son who was a young man and carried a certain halo about his persona. Upon meeting the sage, the King enquired if his son was married and when the sage replied in the negative, he promptly explained his predicament and proposed the marriage of his hundred daughters with the sage’s son Brahmadutt. Soon was the marriage was conducted and the moment Brahmadutt touched his hunch-backed wives, their hunches and deformity disappeared and their divine beauty was restored, thus ending the curse of Vayu. However, the name Kanyakubja stuck on and the city was thereafter always referred to by this name.

Rishi Vishwamitra though ended his story about the naming of Kanyakubja to Lord Ram, now surprised the exiled prince (Ram) by narrating his own connection and ancestry to the city of Kanyakubja.

King Kushanabha performed the ‘putrakamesti yajna’ in the hope of having a son who would be the future ruler, and was blessed with a son called Gadhi who, mythology states, was known to have qualities like Lord Indra, the King of Heaven and of the Gods. Some text versions in mythology also mention that Gadhi was an incarnation of Lord Indra himself who was mighty pleased with the devotion of King Kushanabha and was born to him as his son. Gadhi ruled the kingdom with great valour and pomp and had a daughter, Satyavati, and a son, Vishwarath. Vishwarath ruled in Kanyakubja after his father for some time as a powerful Kshatriya (warrior) king until he gave up his kingship and turned ascetic. Rishi Vishwamitra himself was none other than the erstwhile ruler of Kanyakubja, King Vishwarath, and the direct grandson of the mighty King Kushanabha.

On a related note, it is equally interesting to learn about the connection of Kanyakubja to another very famous mythological character of the same times, who traces his ancestry to the city and to the line of the Lunar Dynasty Kings. It is the story of the ancestry of Lord Parashurama, who is also believed to be the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu appearing in the Treta Yuga. King Gadhi’s daughter Satyavati was married to a Brahmin sage Richeek and their son was rishi Bhargava Jamadagni who, although a Brahmin sage by birth and vocation, had Kshatriya-like warrior qualities. Parashurama is the son of Bhargava Jamadagni and had inherited both the Brahmin-Kshatriya qualities from his father in abundance. Parashurama is famous as the slayer of the Kshatriyas and a master of the usage of the fearful Brahmastra (the most powerful and destructive weapon of Lord Brahma the creator, as described in Indian mythology).

After Vishwamitra abdicated the throne of Kanyakubja, Astaka another son of Gadhi became King of Madhyadesh and ruled over Kanyakubja. The last reference in the mythological texts about Kanyakubja is the mention of King Lauhi, Astaka’s son who rules after his father in King Kushanabha’s line. Kanyakubja re-emerges significantly on the scene, later in the times of the Indian epic Mahabharata (10^th Century BC). In later historical references we find Kanyakubja described as a mighty city during times of the Gupta Empire (240 AD). During King Harshavardhan’s time (606 – 647 AD) the city had its most glorious period, standing as the capital of Harsha’s empire of undivided India.

We shall continue on the legends and history of Kanyakubja in the next article of our Research series as there is still much to know about this ancient city and its fate in the subsequent eras of history.

The Kanyakubja Brahmins –

The mythological texts and legends of the Vedic period say that the great Brahmin sage Brahmadutt continued to stay in Kanyakubja city and had many children by his hundred wives who were the daughters of King Kushanabha of Kanyakubja. Brahmadutt’s descendants were the original Kanyakubja Brahmins who started the lineage of resident Brahmins in Kanyakubja as over the years they stayed in the city glorifying it as an important seat of Vedic learning and preaching knowledge. These Brahmins and their next generations down the line we priests in the royal courts and temples and teachers of the Vedic texts in different educational institutions of the time. They were referred to as ‘Acharya’ and ‘Upadhyay’ as per the titles bestowed upon them by the Kings. The Kanyakubja Brahmins, as we shall see in our treatise on the later history of Kanyakubja, were the keepers of the Vedic knowledge and the mainstay in spreading Vedic education across the kingdom.

Therefore it would not be logically improper to assume that our forefathers came from this line of Kanyakubja Brahmins, though any chances of tracing a name beyond Jahnukar in the specific family lineage seem utterly impossible at this day.

The Brahmins developed the system of ‘Gotra’ meaning ‘lineage’ which is maintained patrilineal. Each gotra takes the name of a famous Rishi or sage from whom the lineage is said to have started in a patrilineal manner. Gotras are present for all people and not only for the Brahmins. However, in the earliest Vedic times, there were also instances of people attaching themselves to a particular Rishi or sage whose life and god-like qualities they had chosen to model themselves on. Thus a lineage (gotra) would have directly started from a Vedic rishi by ancestry or by adoption as in the case of a disciple adopting the name of his guru (the Vedic rishi) as his own ‘gotra’.

Whilst on one hand mythology states that the entire Kanyakubja Brahmin clan emanated from Brahmadutt on the paternal side and the hundred daughters of King Kushanabha of the Lunar Dynasty on the maternal side, there is no clear explanation of the allotment of the Gotras to the clan. However, we know that there are 26 Principal Gotras for the Kanyakubja Brahmins, which include direct and indirect lineages of the ‘Saptarshis’ (the seven sacred Rishis to whom the Vedas were first explained). These Saptarshi’s were:  Atri, Vasistha, Kashyap, Gautama, Bhrigu, Bharadwaja and Jamadagni. Later, Vishwamitra was added to the group when he was classified as ‘Brahmarshi’ (the superior-most attainment by a rishi in their levels of knowledge and penance) by Vasistha.  Therefore, based on the concept of Gotras and the fact that the Kanyakubja Brahmins were by generations the keepers of Vedic texts and learning, we can assume that they would have aligned their Gotras to their Vedic guru’s from whom the initial Vedic learning was derived. Thereafter the patrilineal concept of the ‘gotra’ would have followed in the respective families.

Why the question of Gotra becomes so important here and the quest for a logical answer to how the lineage derived the Gotra, is solely because our family lineage is classified as the ‘Gautama Baidik’ clan. This essentially means that our line owes its ‘gotra’ allegiance to Rishi Gautama, who was one of the Vedic Saptarshis. (Baidik being the localised version of Vedic). This explains the ‘Gautama gotra’ of the family which we still use today for all rituals and worship and that the lineage came from the Brahmins who studied and preached Vedic texts and knowledge in ancient Kanyakubja.

The tale and history of Kanyakubja intertwines multiple times with the lineage of our family forefathers and it was where their first abode was and it was from Kanyakubja that the family line historically originated.

Prequel (times from ages of mythological creation of India up to the 10th Century BC) –

The mythological references to King Kusa (father of King Kushanabha) states that he was the 10^th descendant generation of Pururavas, the first King of the ‘Somavansha’ or ‘Chandravansha’ - the Lunar Dynasty in the Aryavarta lineage. Pururavas was the son born to Ila, daughter of Vaivaswat Manu (son of Lord Brahma and the King of mankind) and the celestial god Budh (Mercury). Budh (Mercury) was the son of Soma (the Moon) as stated in mythology; therefore the Dynasty which Pururavas (grandson of Soma) started was the Lunar Dynasty. It was from the Manu that both Suryavansh (Solar Dynasty – through his son Ikshvaku) and Chandravansh (Lunar Dynasty – through his daughter Ila) emanated.

Pururavas and his wife Urvashi had 6 sons: Ayus, Dhiman, Amavasu, Viswavasu, Satayus and Srutayus. It is said that Pururavas ruled over the Prayag (modern day Allahabad) region. At his time, the kingdom was called ‘Pratisthana’. It was from Pururavas and his Lunar Dynasty lineage that the Kauravas and the Pandavas of the Indian epic Mahabharata descended. Pururavas’ Lunar Dynasty was prominently taken forward by two of his sons Ayus and Amavasu. Ayus continued to succeed his father and rule from Pratisthana while Amavasu moved away to settle in a new land closer to the northern belt of the Ganges.

It is Amavasu’s line that we will enumerate in our research, as the prime line of the Lunar Dynasty, and given below are the names of the Kings who succeeded their fathers in the Lunar Dynasty:

Amavasu > Bhima* > Kanchana > Suhotra > Jahnu** > Sumanta > Ajaka > Balakeshava > Kusa > Kushanabha*** > Gadhi > (Gadhi was succeeded by his son Viswarath or Vishwamitra briefly, and later by his other son Astaka, as we have seen in our earlier treatise)

[It was from King Kushanabha’s 100 daughters and fathered by the great brahmin Brahmadutt, that the Kanyakubja Brahmins had descended, to which line belonged our forefathers… Thus it can be said that our family line firmly belonged to the Somavanshi or Chandravanshi line - the Lunar Dynasty of Aryavarta, from the maternal side.]

It was from the time of King Kusa and later King Kushanabha that the concentration of the kingdom came by to Madhyadesh with Kanyakubja as its capital city.

Footnotes-

Bhima* - not to be confused with the Bhima of the Pandavas of Mahabharata. Probably the Pandava son was named after the former King Bhima of the Lunar Dynasty.

Jahnu** - There is a mythological legend about King Jahnu which goes as follows: King Jahnu was a benevolent king and very inclined to practising of knowledge and spirituality and spent much of his time in discussion with sages and taking part in holy ritualistic activities in their ashrams. It was during one such yajna (worshipping ritual) that King Jahnu was performing at a sage’s ashram when the River Ganges started flooding its banks and threatened to wash out the sage’s ashram. King Jahnu, enraged at the floods and the interruption to his yajna, is said to have drank up all the water of the Ganges and stopped the flood. However, upon frantic pleas from the Gods and other sages, he released the Ganges back from his body to flow into the river path. Coming from King Jahnu’s body, the River Ganges thus derived another name as ‘Jahnavi’.

It had been a common practice all over, to name new born children upon the illustrious people of the land or in the ancestry, and accordingly it would not be improper to assume that our forefather Jahnukar may have been named after the great King Jahnu of the Lunar Dynasty line.

Kushanabha*** - we have spoken in detail about King Kushanabha in our above treatise on the founding of the city of Kanyakubja. King Kushanabha is thus famous not only as the founder of the city but also as the grand sire of the maternal side of the line of the Kanyakubja Brahmins.

Coming Soon…. Research Series Part 3

In the next article of the Research Series, we trace the history of Kanyakubja during the times of the Mahabharata (3^rd Century BC) and then its later history from the Gupta Empire period (240 AD) till the Muslim conquest and destruction of the city in 1019 AD. We shall see how historical events had impacted the society in different eras and what finally happened to the Kanyakubja Brahmins and our family line amongst them.

                                                               -------------------------------

The Search [The Gautama Baidik Research Series Part 1]

It was a few years ago that we stumbled upon the document. An almost brittle, yellowish paper with the main text typed in using a typewriter and finally signed off at the end in style by the creator of the document. It emerged from a case full of papers, which had not been looked at for a few decades to say the least. However, the document was a startling revelation for it opened the doors to our past and aimed at connecting our family lineage to history and to times which we could only imagine of.

This case, belonged to my grandfather Satyen and he was the creator of the document. The yellow brittle pages held the trajectory of our lineage and the details of generations that had passed before us. We were surprised to see the amount of detail mentioned in the document titled ‘The Gautama Baidik clan’. Not only two or three generations before us, the document listed seventeen generations with the names of our forefathers! If that was not enough, there was even paragraphs with notes citing where the lineage came from in the years of old and how the same progressed over centuries to reach its present day form: both geographically and socially.

The document was signed by grandfather Satyen personally and dated in early 1975, within a few months of his return to England from his last trip to India. It was clear that during that trip, he must have spent good time in searching for these details and had the passion and wish to record the same in a single document pattern for the ease of knowledge and reference for the future generations of the family to come.

Once this document was discovered from his case in England, Atul Uncle (grandfather Satyen’s son and my uncle) and I started making enquiries and investigations into how grandfather had compiled such a precious data and how could the source be validated. While Atul Uncle investigated the enormous amount of information left behind by his father in his diaries, notes, letters and memos, in an attempt to gather more information towards this specific search, I commenced some enquiries locally in the family circles in Kolkata in the hope of gaining some clues into my grandfather’s research on the family lineage. We soon were able to deduce that during his last visit to the family home in Kolkata towards the end of 1974, he had collated all the information and had completed the missing links from his earlier bookish research.

My father provided the most important clue, in saying that on one occasion he had accompanied grandfather Satyen to a place called Harinavi, about 60 km south of Kolkata, and wherefrom the family hailed originally. (Well, so we had thought until we read grandfather Satyen’s research and learnt that Harinavi was not the original home of the family and that the lineage could be traced well beyond that, both in terms of time and location).

What we learnt was that grandfather had made enquiries and visited some people in Harinavi and taken lot of notes from books and records held with a family there. Apparently, there still exists a family-group amongst the Gautama Baidik clan in Harinavi, who maintain the records of the Gautama Baidik family tree and its branches. It however is the responsibility of each Gautama Baidik family to come back and update the main records with the details of the current generations in the family tree. This way, the entire book of records can be maintained and updated.

It was this family-group that grandfather Satyen met in Harinavi in 1974, and upon inspecting the book of the Gautama Baidik clan, was able to note and validate the details of our forefathers till seventeen generations before. Surprising as it was for us to imagine, someone like grandfather Satyen who had spent the major part of his life in faraway England, to have undertaken this research and assimilated the past threads and connections in one place for the entire family and to have recorded the lineage.

Alongside the names of our forefathers, the notes mentioned that the family had its original roots in the historic city of Kanyakubja in the region what was then called Aryavarta. The earliest available date mentioned was 753 AD, where the family lineage could be traced back to a Brahmin scholar named ‘Jahnukar’ who lived in Kanyakubja.

The other side notes state that in 1019 AD, around the time of Mahmud of Ghazni’s second attack on Kanyakubja, ransacking of the city along with destruction of the Hindu temples and institutions of learning, many Brahmin scholars fled the city carrying their books and scriptures, in an attempt to save them. Though grandfather’s research does not mention how many generations of the family lived in Kanyakubja before they fled from there along with the other Brahmin scholars of the time, we could make an assessment of that as the indicative time periods have been mentioned in the notes.

The family then escaped to the jungles of Orissa (then Kalinga) and set up temporary abode in ashramas (settlements) near the present-day Jajpur-Keonjhar area. They would have lived there for a few generations for sure (as indicated by the time period), and the temporary ashramas would have transformed into villages over time.

The next indication of flight is mentioned around 1570 – 1585 AD, when Mughal Emperor Akbar’s army invaded Orissa, after the conquest of Bihar and Bengal. The family, over this period of time relocated and took shelter in Jessore (in present-day Bangaldesh), where the Hindu King Pratapaditya was ruling at that time. The King magnanimously gave shelter and protection to all the Brahmin scholars who had traversed all the way from Orissa, Bihar and other parts of Bengal escaping the wrath of the Mughal army.

However, the stay of the family in Jessore was brief, as when King Pratapaditya was defeated and overthrown by the Mughal-Rajput general Raja Man Singh, during the reign of Emperor Jahangir, (time period : 1608-12 AD), they had to flee from the Mughal army once again as the Jessore fort lay conquered and ransacked. The family finally came to rest in a small village called Harinavi in south Bengal, the area being mostly shrouded by forests and being sparsely populated, was apparently a peaceful and unnoticed shelter.

From the history chronicles it is assumed that though entire Bengal at that time was under Mughal rule, smaller provinces within the region had been given as ‘jagirs’ to local Hindu Kings who ruled over the villages and smaller towns within the ‘jagirs’, paying tribute to the Mughal ‘subahdar’ (governor). The location of the Harinavi village suggests that it would have been a part of the ‘jagir’ given to Lakshmikanta Gangopadhyay, who was placed on the throne of Jessore by Raja Man Singh after Pratapaditya’s fall. Lakshmikanta was also accorded the titles of ‘Ray’ and ‘Choudhury’ in accordance as the de-facto administrator of the region, and his descendants later on assumed these titles as their family surname. This family is popularly known as the ‘Sabarna Roy Choudhury’ family and is closely linked to the founding history of Kolkata and the surrounding region.

It can well be assumed that under the benevolence of the local Hindu ‘jagirdars’, the Brahmin scholars could continue professing their knowledge and education in Sanskrit, and continue establishing and running schools (known as ‘tol’ in the-then colloquial Bengali) in the region. Our family forefathers also followed the same path and were in the forefront of running such ‘tol’s in Harinavi village.

This peaceful and settled life for the family in Harinavi village went on till about 1824, when one of our great-grandfathers, Hariprasad, was invited to become a teacher in the Government Sanskrit College being set up in the city of Calcutta. The tradition of teaching in the Sanskrit College continued for yet another generation, until Hariprasad’s grandson Heramba, himself a leading Sanskrit scholar of his times, decided to finally take up residence in Calcutta in 1888.

Heramba is 4 generations above me, and I can well recall the stories about these 4 generations in between, from my grandfather and grandmother in my childhood. The family has since stayed in Calcutta, though we have shifted residences a few times. Further in another logical development of the family branch, grandfather Satyen’s own family branch is now in England and very much like another arm of the family back in India.

While, the research done and recorded by my grandfather Satyen was certainly very revealing and went a long way in establishing the lineage and past of our family, it also intrigues us with questions which still remain unanswered.

To my mind, is there a further research we could do to throw light on the following areas: 

1. Where was Kanyakubja and how did the family begin in that ancient city? 
2. Is Jahnukar the first of our lineage, or can we still find his forefathers and trace our lineage further behind into history and the Vedic times? (After all, the clan is titled ‘Gautama Baidik’, which means it starts from Gautama rishi (sage) of the Vedic times!) 
3. Whilst we know the names of our forefathers onward from Jahnukar (753 AD) till present, is it possible to logically place them alongside the historical time-lines and events in Indian history?

That then would be my research, something that can further enrich the work done by grandfather Satyen in 1974-75, and provide a detailed historical chronicle of the family and our lineage.

Whilst I shall write more about my findings on the above questions in my next blog on this series, here’s a sneak-peek into the beginning:

Kanyakubja, from the ancient times, was a very prominent city in Northern India. Right through the ages of the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and even in Indian mythology we find worthy mentions of this city as capital of kingdoms, and a great seat of scholarly learning. Even the advent of the Kanyakubja Brahmins is a fine tale if we are to believe the mythological stories. History places Kanyakubja as the last Hindu capital of unified India, under King Harshavardhan (606 – 647 AD). Kanyakubja is present-day ‘Kannauj’, a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India on the western banks of the Ganges River.

Part 2 … coming soon!