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1. Political history of ancient India has so far been a comparatively
neglected subject. In early days the normal assumption by the Western historians
and their Indian supporters was that the history of ancient India starts with the
invasion of India by the Greek king Alexander. Later it was modified to some
extent by declaring that the ancient period began with 16 Mahajanapadas and
Bimbisara, Mahasena Pradyota, Shatanika and Prasenajit were the rulers of
Magadha, Avanti, Vatsa and Koshala respectively and Buddha and Mahavira were
their contemporaries. This obviously meant to convey the message that prior to
this India was a stateless country without any power structure and these empires
emerged from the blue.
2. Many scholars‐ both Indians and Western, have attempted to fill in this vacuum
by utilizing the material available in Vedic literature, Puranas, Buddhist and Jain
texts, classical literature, Archaeological reports etc While efforts were made by
some scholars to critically examine the post Mbh war dynasties, the pre War
dynasties were more or less ignored for research. Very few historians attempted
to fill in the gap but with little success the reason being that each scholar tried to
present the political history of India based on the information available in one
source or the other with out a critical scrutiny of the material contained therein.
In fact many scholars selected a Purana of their choice and arrived at conflicting
conclusions. Efforts to write the political history of ancient India based on the
Vedic literature whose authenticity is not denied even by the Western historians,
had to given up for lack of information as these texts were not meant to be a
store house of historical material. The most surprising feature, however, was the
refusal of the Western scholars to accept the material contained in the Puranas
on the ground that Vedic texts do not certify its authenticity. They ignored the
fact that most of the kings mentioned in the Vedic literature appear in the
Puranas.
3. The other objection against utilization of the Puranic material for writing the
history of ancient India is that (a) superficial and distorted material linked with
mythology has crept into the Puranas (b) sometimes individual Puranas conflict
with others (c) sometimes the same Purana makes contradictory statements (d)
sometimes one dynasty is tacked on to another dynasty (e) sometimes collateral
successions are described as lineal (f) sometimes the order of succession is
Ancient Indian Dynasties © V. S. Misra
2
reversed (g) sometimes synchronisms are misplaced due to similarity or near
similarity of the names (h) sometimes even divergent synchronisms have been
recorded and (j) sometimes incorrect origins have been assigned to dynasties.
4. The main conclusions emerging from the research done so far are as follows:
a. It is possible to eliminate the divergence between the dynastic lists as
appearing in different Puranas.
b. Almost all Puranas present each dynastic list as a continuous
line of successions despite existence of adequate evidence to prove that
these lists comprise a mixture of several branch lines some of which are
even collateral. It is feasible to spot such aberrations and eliminate them.
c. It is not too difficult to identify instances where a dynasty came to an end
and another dynasty took over but the Puranas merged the two and
presented a lineal succession of the original dynasty. In some cases
the original dynasty itself was revived after a gap by a descendant of the
last king of the original dynasty.
d. It is not impossible to reconcile the differences between the accounts
appearing in the Puranas on the one hand and Vedic, Buddhist, Jain and
classical Sanskrit literature on the other.
Major findings are listed in the succeeding paragraphs.
5. After rationalizing the dynastic lists of the Puranas, it is possible to synchronize
them with the testimony of Vedic, Buddhist, Jain and classical Sanskrit literature
after carrying out necessary adjustments since the latter also suffer from identical
aberrations caused by the same environment and conditions which affected the
Puranas.
6. The number of successions between Manu Vaivasvata and Bharata Battle in
Aikshvaku dynasty would be approximately 50 as against 91 mentioned in the
existing Puranic texts. Rectified Aila dynasties‐ Purus, Bharatas and Yadus and
Kurus also indicate almost the same number of successions.
7. The dates of Nirvana of Buddha and Mahavira which have been the subject of
controversy for centuries, have been worked out in a manner which satisfies
Puranic, Buddhist and Jain traditions as also the Archaeological evidence. These
revised dates are 514 B.C. and 527 B.C respectively.
8. After rationalizing the post Bharata War reign periods of the kings of Barhdratha
dynasty of Magadha and keeping in mind the dates of Nirvana of Buddha and
coronation of Ashok Maurya, the date of Bharata War has been worked out as
1157 B. C.
9. A weak point of the Puranic texts is the lack of chronological data with solitary
exception of post war Barhadratha dynasty which also suffers from inaccuracies.
While the dates of pre war Barhadrathas and some other important kings have
been tentatively mentioned, further research is being done to settle the dates of
most of the dynasties appearing in the Puranas and it is hoped that use of
sophisticated methodology and additional evidence would produce credible
chronological charts of as many dynasties as possible.
10.More than 30 major synchronisms have been identified on the basis of evidence
contained in the Puranas, Vedas, Buddhist and Jain texts and classical Sanskrit
literature to help reconstruction of the political history of ancient India.