Dāśarājña Recontextualized: Part 1

History is an art. Artifacts of the past talk to us in silence, and we fill the empty spaces with narratives that are presumably rational, reasonable and well-substantiated. When this is done well, we arrive at what looks like an elegant story, a ‘real picture’ of what really happened. Sometimes these artifacts, and ensuing narratives, congeal around a singular or group of events, such that we derive information about a significant arc of history. One such congealing node is the Dāśarājña, better known as the ‘Battle of Ten Kings.’

The Dāśarājña is an account of a historical battle of ten kings, found in some sūktas of the Ṛgveda. To philologists such as Michael Witzel, it is a “battle of ten kings of the five peoples of the Panjab (Yadu, Turvaśa, Anu, Druhyu, Pūru) against the Bharata king Sudās.” To historians such as Michel Danino, who points out that dāśarājña only means ‘ten kings,’ and the ‘battle of’ is an addition in English, “anyone expecting a workable, even partial or ‘poetic’ narrative of this event, on which so much historical reconstruction has been attempted, will be disappointed.”

The general view of Dāśarājña is expressed in a survey by Stuhrmann, who writes that “historical events can be detected in the poetry of the mighty wordsmith, Vasiṣṭha.” In his model, the Pūru-Bhārata ruler Sudās invades the Indian subcontinent from the west, crosses the Sindhu river, and faces his enemies along the banks of the Parūṣṇī (modern Ravi river). Stuhrmann identifies the enemies as a hydraulic civilization, clearly the Harappan. A variety of other claims and narratives find place alongside analyses of the Dāśarājña account:

• That in it we find a great rivalry between the mahāṛṣis Vasiṣṭha and Viśvāmitra.
• That it depicts the incoming Aryans in conflict with native Indians of their time- the veritable Aryan invasion/migration.
• Conversely, it contains clinching evidence in favor of an out-of-India model of Indo-European linguistic origins and dispersals.
• It contains the core events that formed the basis of inspiration for a later story, the Mahābhārata. This is expressed by Witzel:

(dāśarājña) celebrates the victory of Sudās in the Battle of the Ten Kings, which once and for all established Bharata supremacy in the Panjab, and set the stage for the formation of the first South Asian ‘state’ under the Kuru tribe.

In this essay we examine the above and other claims around the Dāśarājña through a thorough primary study into the Ṛgvedic sūktas of relevance. We will ask some basic questions- like who were these ‘ten kings’ in question, and examine major claims- such as the rivalry between Vasiṣṭha and Viśvāmitra. Our study will show that Witzel’s characterization quoted above is in severe need of correction, for in reality the dāśarājña:

Celebrates the victories of Sudās in his battles against ten kings, which once and for all established Bharata supremacy in northern India, ushered in Mature Harappan, triggered the dispersal of Eastern IE languages, and set the stage for the formation of proto-Bhāratavarṣa.

The study uses 5 translations of the Ṛgveda. The base is the Jamison-Brereton (henceforth, JB) version in English, which is supplemented by Wilson and Griffith’s translations. Geldner’s German translation and Trivedi’s Hindi translation are also used. All of this is done under a specific paradigm for Indo-European (IE) dispersals and the Mature Harappan Civilisation, as established by Talageri and Tonoyan-Belyayev (henceforth, TB). The exercise will reveal that the Dāśarājña sūktas can be read as an account of political consolidation of Mature Harappan, and of IE dispersals out-of-India theory (OIT, where India was the PIE homeland).

A - Framework 1 : Mature Harappan and IE Dispersals

The proto-Indo-European (PIE) homeland question is a scholastic field too vast to succinctly discuss here. The overall landscape is well covered by Mallory-Adams, and the Indian view of this is given decent consideration by Bryant. It bears reiteration that dogmatic (or ignorant) dismissals of the PIE question are untenable. Whether one appeals to a wave-theory of language evolution, or to the archaic nature of Saṃskṛtam, the linguistically validated existence of a hypothetical PIE is taken as established in this essay. A few periodizations are important in this context, beginning with Kenoyer’s periods of the Indus-Sarasvatī Civilization (ISC):

1. Early Harappan (3300-2600 BC) - this is also considered the last sub-period of an era of ISC regionalization.
2. Mature Harappan (2600-1900 BC) - this is the integration era, when different preceding and regionalized sub-cultures coalesce through a common system of weights and measures, town planning, agricultural kits and other artifacts of cultural unification.
3. Late Harappan (1900-1300 BC) - this is also called the localization era, and it blends at places with Cemetery H and Ochre-Coloured Pottery (OCP) Cultures. But new archaeological finds in Atranjikhera, Lal Qila, Nasirpur and other places compel placement of OCP in the latter half of 3rd millennium BC.

TB maps a chronology of Vedic development to the above periodization. Against this, waves of IE dispersals, OIT, are given in brackets.

1. Early Harappan - the period where only separate Ṛgvedic sūktas or shorter blocks of mantras existed. TB uses the expression ‘_Period of the First Hymns_’ and also sees it as the Varuṇa-Dyaus-Agni period. There was no widespread worship of Indra, and the cult of Soma was still in the process of development (Dispersal of Western IE languages).
2. Mature Harappan - the classical Ṛgvedic period which TB also calls the Indra-Agni-Soma period. The Ṛgveda came into being as a collection in this period, and the other three Vedas might have begun to exist regionally (Dispersal of Eastern IE languages).
3. Late Harappan - the Brāhmaṇa or Prajāpati-Viṣṇu-Agni period, also one of various recensions of the Vedas. To TB, this period also saw the core events that constitute the Mahābhārata, which lines up with Pargiter’s genealogy.

The above lists establish a temporal connection between ISC and the Ṛgveda, but there’s the matter of spatial connection. It implies asserting that northern India was the original PIE homeland. We’re told that the primary reasons why India cannot be the homeland are:

1. The use of linguistic paleontology to rule India out as the PIE homeland. Witzel does this by finding evidence for a temperate climate that knows the wolf and snow in reconstructed PIE. Linguistic paleontology, though alluring, is highly suspect. And Bryant shows that it can be used to support any PIE homeland theory. Mallory-Adams’ take is more conclusive:

The picture provided by the reconstructed lexicon is not very informative concerning the physical environment of the speakers of the ancestral language, although there have been scholars enough who have tried to press the slender evidence into revealing the precise location (or type of location) inhabited by the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

That linguistic paleontology can be pressed in any way is exemplified in the case of lion, tiger and elephant. These typical Indian exotica are not found in reconstructed PIE, which leads some to assert that the homeland was outside India. But this logic is flawed, for if people migrated out of India, why would they retain words for flora and fauna they no longer encountered? Linguistic paleontology works with knowledge gaps, filling it with a priori paradigms, and is rejected as a rationale to rule India out.

2. The absence of Dravidian loanwords in reconstructed PIE, though they appear in Indo-Aryan. This is used to assert that the homeland was outside India, and only Indo-Aryan came in contact with Dravidian, when the Aryans invaded/migrated to India. TB challenges this by finding evidence of Dravidian influence in reconstructed PIE, and the emergent picture here is only a few years old. Bryant declares this to be the most compelling argument against an Indian PIE homeland, but as TB’s work develops this picture will change.

A flaw in this argument is the logic that’s used for evidence of Indo-Aryan influence in Finno-Ugric languages. This evidence is taken to mean that the Indo-Aryans occupied space next to the Finno-Ugric for some period, presumably prior to their entry to India. But the relationship is one way, and no Finno-Ugric influence is found in Indo-Aryan. Talageri asserts, rightly, that this can happen only when some Indo-Aryans are in touch with Finno-Ugrics, but so far away from the original homeland that no Finno-Ugric influence travels back.

If the Dravidian logic is used in the Finno-Ugric case, the Steppe is ruled out as the PIE homeland. If it was, then Indo-Aryan should have shown Finno-Ugric influence. Talageri argues that Dravidian influence is in the later layers of the Ṛgveda, and Bryant confesses how the influence can in any case be an adstratum, not a substratum—a scenario which allows for Indo-Aryan to be in contact with Dravidian while the remaining IE dialects are not.

3. The apparent differences between ISC and Vedic cultures. This is a flawed argument on many counts, and relies primarily on argumentum ex silentios. For example, the absence of iṣṭakā in the Ṛgveda is taken as evidence that the Vedic people did not know Harappan cities. But invasionist/migrationist models have no problem imagining Indo-Aryans (or their linguistic ancestors) spending some time in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) before making their entry into India. BMAC is a monumental civilization that knew bricks and temples. The absence of iṣṭakā in the Ṛgveda does not prevent associating Indo-Aryans with BMAC, so why should it prevent associating Indo-Aryans with ISC?

4. Mutually exclusive chronologies for Mature Harappan and Indo-Aryan arrival. This has the Indo-Aryans arrive in India in the 2nd millennium BC, where they compose the Ṛgveda 1500-1200 BC. Since this is long after the Mature Harappan phase, it’s never been considered in the mainstream that the two could be aspects of the same civilization. But here too argumentum ex silentios have led the way. Iron Age was previously thought to commence in north India in the early 1st millennium BC, and since it is absent in the Ṛgveda, this lent a terminus ante quem for its composition.

But archaeology is finding increasing evidence of iron and iron metallurgy in the 2nd millennium BC, and the earliest evidence yet of iron is from Harappa in 2600 BC. This necessitates a reassessment of dates, and the Sanauli chariot of 1900 BC reiterates the point. There is also evidence of the Sarasvatī, which is generally thought to have dried up considerably by 1900 BC. Witzel challenges this date, and his notice of the Vipāś and Śutudrī meeting even in Sudās’ time is relevant. But there is currently significant multidisciplinary consensus that the Sarasvatī dried up completely by 1900 BC, in which case it’s unlikely that Ṛgvedic Āryas lived after this period.

5. Claims of high chronology for Vedic composition, which (allegedly) violate PIE and archaeological constraints. This may well be a valid critique, when referring to attempts to put the Ṛgveda prior to 4000 BC. Timelines for Ṛgvedic composition must account for PIE origin and IE dispersals. But these must deal with terminus ante quems, for it is not possible to timeline the knowledge-systems, practices and rituals embedded in the Ṛgveda.

There is the issue of archaeoastronomy, which Witzel rejects but Kazanas feels there’s a good case for—‘heavens don’t lie.’ It’s entirely possible that embedded in the Ṛgveda are astronomical timestamps from even prior to the Holocene, but linguistic and archaeological evidence make the dates of composition and assembly quite clear. Interestingly, Witzel’s forthcoming timelines for IE dispersal are strengthened through Paurāṇika evidence, which he rejects altogether.

To summarize—when the matter is examined to detail, and when all circular logic is removed, there is no strong case at all why India cannot be the PIE homeland.

Against this, the combined works of Talageri, TB, Kazanas, Semenenko and Elst make a convincing case for OIT—the scenario where India was the PIE homeland. A final constraint can be conceded to Witzel’s timeline for IE dispersals, which are mapped to the broad waves outlined by Talageri and TB:

1. 3000/2500 BC: Western IE languages leave the homeland. They possess ayas (copper/bronze) but no chariot yet. They know the wagon, driven by oxen, and all parts of the heavy, solid wheel. To Witzel, they also know the domesticated horse, but this is contested even at reconstructed PIE level. Consisting of proto-forms of Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Baltic and Slavic, this maps to dispersals in 3300-2600 BC in the OIT model. Occurring in the Early Harappan, this is TB’s Varuṇa-Dyaus-Agni period.

2. 2500/2000 BC: Eastern IE languages leave the homeland. They have satem characteristics, but still no chariots. Witzel notes the Lithuanian ratas to mean wheel, circle. In OIT, this is when proto-forms of Armenian, Greek, Albanian and Iranian leave the homeland in 2600-1900 BC, during the Mature Harappan. This is TB’s classic Ṛg Vedic period, of Indra-Agni-Soma. Talageri asserts that “the recorded evidence of the Ṛg Veda has the last 5 IE branches in Punjab, on the Paruṣṇī’s banks.” This is predicated on a reading of the Dāśarājña sūktas, but Witzel rejects Talageri’s conclusions even as he too reads a battle of ten kings.

B - Framework 2 : Chronology of Indian Lineages

There are many debates on whether to consider any historicity to the Purāṇas at all. Witzel favors discarding their authority altogether, and whether this is done or not, the Ṛgveda must be taken as a more reliable timestamp. But the baby need not be thrown out with the bath water, and the Purāṇas are surprisingly in note with archaeological, linguistic or other evidence—provided they are read a certain way.

Paurāṇika genealogies give the list of kings/rulers in two primary lines, descended from Vaivasvata Manu. While there are others, both genealogy and tradition closely follow the lines descended from Ilā and Ikṣvāku. Ilā’s descendants are thus called the Ailās, and from them descend Yadu, Turvaśa, Anu, Druhyu and Pūru tribes. Ikṣvāku’s descendants are the Aikṣvākus, or the legendary Sūryavaṃśa dynasty of Rāma Dāśarathi. When generations are counted between Vaivasvata Manu and those that fought in the Mahābhārata, the Ailā lines yield ~60 generations. But over the same period ~90 generations are found in the Aikṣvāku line.

Witzel points to Paurāṇika habit of assigning parallel dynasties sequentially, which combined with the above discrepancy presents the case to consider a shorter genealogy list altogether. But Pargiter argued to the contrary. To him the Aikṣvāku genealogy was better preserved, owed in part to its proximity to Magadha—the source of ancient India’s sūta-māgadha traditions. In his reconstruction, he assigned 94 generations between Vaivasvata Manu and Bṛhadbala, the Aikṣvāku that fought in the Mahābhārata. For the Ailā lines, he identified synchronisms to extend their genealogies over the same period.

Pargiter’s reconstruction need not be taken as entirely correct, and a possibility of 50, 60 or 90 generations can be allowed for. Taking 25 years between each generation, a time period of 1200-2200 years is being referred to. This should not be confused to mean the duration of the entire Vedic period, for which TB’s chronology is clear. This essay takes Pargiter’s reconstruction as broadly correct, which places Sudās at generation 68.

What’s left is a date for the Mahābhārata. Archaeoastronomical readings that require extraordinary evidence, such as 5000 BC or prior, are rejected. As is a date around 3000 BC, both because it stems from a late astronomical reading by Āryabhaṭa, and also because it violates the Sarasvatī evidence.

Subhash Kak points to the actual options—2100, 1900 or 1500 BC. Benedetti favors 1500 BC, which yields 2150 BC as the era of Sudās. A date of 1900 BC places Sudās in 2550 BC. In other words, he falls squarely in 1- the Mature Harappan, and 2- the wave of Eastern IE dispersals.

C - The Ṛgveda and Maṇḍala 7

The Ṛgveda is a collection of 10 books, or Maṇḍalas, which each contain several hymns, or sūktas, that are made of verses, or mantras. To Indian tradition, the Ṛgvedic poets were not mantra-kārtas but mantra-dārṣṭas. This means they did not create or compose the sūktas, but perceived them through their evolved dṛṣṭi. This is why the Vedas are considered apauruṣeya—authorless, and anādi—eternal. Comparable situations are the law of gravitation, which existed before Newton described it, and the continent of North America, which existed long before Columbus discovered it.

But while the nature of what they discovered was eternal or prehistoric, both Newton and Columbus are historic personalities, with accepted placement in world chronology. This is why there can be a chronology of Ṛgvedic composition, while accepting the traditional view of Vedic knowledge as apauruṣeya and anādi. Some facts of Ṛgvedic internal chronology are well established since the work of Oldenberg. His extensive analysis of Ṛgvedic structure and assembly led him to conclude three broad stages:

1. Beginning at the center with Maṇḍalas 2-7, which are also called the family books.

2. Maṇḍalas 1 and 8 forming a second layer.

3. Maṇḍalas 9 and 10 forming the last layer, the latter considered “the great appendix to the Ṛgveda” by Witzel.

There are nuances and disagreements to this broad stroke, but the general fact accepted by most scholars is that the family books (2-7) represent an earlier stage than do the books 1, 8, 9 and 10. Further, Talageri quotes other linguists who look at Maṇḍala 5 as structurally (and temporally) closer to Maṇḍalas 1 and 8 than to the family books. Further technicalities need not be examined to understand that the family books and non-family books possess an internal chronology of, broadly, three layers.

The family books are so called because each of them contains sūktas from an exclusive ṛṣi-clan. Maṇḍala 2 is composed almost entirely by Gṛtsamada Bhārgava, Maṇḍala 3 by the Viśvāmitras, Maṇḍala 4 by Vāmadeva Gautama, Maṇḍala 5 by Atris, Maṇḍala 6 by Bharadvāja Bārhaspatya and his clan, and finally Maṇḍala 7 by Vasiṣṭha Maitrāvaruṇi. Though Witzel criticizes Talageri when the latter assigns chronology within the family books, he also asserts that Oldenberg’s analysis proves that Maṇḍala 3 was composed only a few years or months before Maṇḍala 7—which if nothing else means that there are indeed ways to an internal chronology for the family books.

Maṇḍala 7 is of interest to this essay, where the chief patron of Vasiṣṭha Maitrāvaruṇi’s sūktas is Sudās Paijavana. The identification of Sudās as a Tṛtsu Bharata, and of the Tṛtsus as the ruling sub-clan among Pūru-Bharatas, who are the figurative people of the book of the Ṛgveda, is well established by Talageri. To this is supplemented Paurāṇika evidence, which is not considered historical in the mainstream. Certainly, it should only be supplementary on the linguistic issue of PIE origins, or of IE dispersals.

The two frameworks detailed above- 1. Mature Harappan and IE Dispersals, and 2. Chronology of Indian Lineages, allow the temporal and spatial equation:

Sudās = Eastern IE Dispersal = Mature Harappan = 2500 BC.

With this equation established, the Dāśarājña data can now be examined. This shall be taken up in Part 2.

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