Jayasree Saranathan: Ikshvaku king-list from Rama to Mahabharata shows 2000-year gap.

One of the five lakshana-s of the Purana-s is to list down the lineage of kings of different dynasties. The list of kings coming after Rama of Ikshvaku dynasty is found in many Purana-s. I compiled the list from three Purana-s namely, Vishnu Purana (4-22), Vayu Purana (2-26) and Bhagavata Purana (9-12). Most of the names are the same in all the three though some of them are missing or found jumbled. Bhagavata Purana mentions that these names are the most important ones, thereby implying that some names were left out.

The interesting feature is that the list starting from Kusa, the son of Rama goes up to the Mahabharata period. The 31^st king coming after Rama in the Vishnu Purana list had taken part in the Mahabharata war. He sided with the Kaurava-s and was killed by Abhimanyu. The same information is found in the other two Purana-s also. His name was Brihadbala.

This is crucial information in the face of the version in the other Purana-s that Rama was born in the 24^th Catur Maha yuga which when counted from now (28^th Catur Maha Yuga) will place Rama some 1.77 crore years ago. With Mahabharata war having taken place 5160 years ago (3136 BCE), the king list from Rama indicates that there was not a huge gap between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

The list shows that there was a minimum of 30 kings from Rama to Brihadbala (who died in the Mahabharata War), but the real numbers could not have run into thousands or even hundreds. Only a few names of kings could have been left out in view of insignificant contribution by them.

There is another crucial piece of evidence hidden in the list of kings after Rama and before Rama. I am furnishing the list of kings before Rama as given by Vasishtha Maharishi at the time of marriage of Rama with Sita in Valmiki Ramayana (1-70). Of the 40 kings starting from Brahma, given by Vasishtha, the 17^th was one Dhruvasandhi while the 40^th was Rama.

Dhruvasandhi means the junction between two Dhruva-s (pole stars). The same name appears later in the lineage as the 21^st king after Rama.

The compilation of the lineage of Chola kings given in Rajendra Chola’s Tiruvalangadu copper plates giving the segmentation of the lineage into Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali Yuga, when compared with the parent lineage (as claimed by the Chola-s) from the Ikshvaku-s places Dhruvasandhi of pre-Rama times at the end of Krita Yuga! After him, Bharata, the son of Dushyanta appears in Rama’s lineage, who is mentioned as the father of the first Chola, by name Chola Varman who founded the Chola dynasty in Pumpukar.

The name Dhruvasandhi seems to contain a clue on the time-period between the kings of the list coming before Rama and after Rama. To understand this, let me first explain the list of northern pole stars given in Vedic texts.

Northern pole stars in Shishumara

There are only three pole stars that repeat endlessly. This is because the Vedic concept of equinox doesn’t talk about precession but postulates to and fro movement of the equinox. The vernal equinox moves 27° on either side of the zero-degree sidereal Mesha (zero-degree Asvini). This will be seen as the movement of the equinoctial Sun for 54° on one side and 54° on the other.

Correspondingly, the earth’s axis will be seen to move across the northern sky to an extent of 54° forward and backward. This path traces the extent of the constellation called Shishumara (means Gangetic porpoise) according to texts. When we check this, we find that this exactly matches with Ursa Minor.

The stars in two extremes and at the mid-point of the Ursa Minor are the three pole stars mentioned as Kashyapa (or Prajapati), Indragni (mid-point) and Dhruva, the son of Uttanapada.

Though Dhruva is a generic name to indicate any pole star, Dhruva as such refers to a specific star, i.e., Dhruva who was elevated into a star. It corresponds to the star Polaris which is the northern pole star of the current times. Scriptures say that Dhruva is the brightest of all which is true when we look at the Shishumara (Ursa Minor) constellation. The constellation is produced below with the names of the three pole stars.

Indragni was the pole star during the Mahabharata time as it coincided with zero-degree Mesha. Dhruva (Polaris) is the pole star at current times and during Rama’s times also because (1) there is a verse saying so in Valmiki Ramayana (6-4-49) and (2) Rama’s times occurred in the precious cycle from exactly where we are now. (Each cycle has 7200 years with the equinox moving for 3600 years on each side).

The above diagram shows the position of the three pole stars with the arrow marks in blue showing the junction between two pole stars. In other words, they point to the Dhruva sandhi. Since the entire stretch is covered in 3600 years, I have apportioned it into four to determine the length between a pole star and the sandhi. That comes to 900 years.

How to interpret the two Dhruvasandhi-s coming before and after Rama?

First, let us determine where we are in this diagram.

Look at Indragni, the pole star of the Mahabharata period. The year was 3101 BCE (when Krishna left his mortal coils). From there time moved in anti-clockwise direction to Kashyapa in 1800 years (900+900). There was a Dhruvasandhi which came after Mahabharata. There is no mention of this Dhruvasandhi. On reaching Kashyapa (around 1301 BCE) the axis of the earth turned towards Dhruva. It travelled to one full length for 3600 years to be where we are now (looking at Dhruva / Polaris). This works to 1800 + 3600 = 5400 years. (We have not yet reached the 5400-year limit which means another 275 years are there before the equinox turns forward. The current developments such as the earth’s inner core turning in the opposite direction, the earth’s axis having already turned towards the opposite direction and the extreme weather and volcanic events are caused by this turn-around only.

Now looking at the period before the Mahabharata time (Indragni in 3101 BCE), Rama was in the period of Dhruva as the pole star. That was roughly 7200 years before present or in 5114 BCE. Nine hundred years before Indragni (towards the side of Dhruva) a Dhruvasandhi occurred. That was Dhruvasandhi who came after Rama (21^st in the Puranic list). Nine hundred years before that Rama lived. He saw Dhruva, the son of Uttanapada, as the pole star of his time.

This gives 900 + 900 = 1800 years between the Mahabharata and the Ramayana!

The king list of 30+ odd (un-documented) had lived through 1800 years only.

Suppose we take the 30 kings alone, each ruled approximately for 60 years.

If we assume that 40 kings lived between Rama and Brihadbala, the average period of rule is 45 years. Both sound reasonable concurring with the Puranic list.

Now let us identify the Dhruvasandhi coming before Rama who happened to be the 17^th king in Vasishtha’s list and who marked the end of Krita Yuga in the list of Chola-s!

To know this, we turn backward of Dhruva (of Rama’s time) and 900 years before Rama we reach Dhruva sandhi!

This gives approximately 1000 years only before the period of Rama for Krita Yuga to end.

That Dhruvasandhi could even be the one between Indragni and Kashyapa too which requires us to add 1800 years to 900 years. That puts the end of Krita yuga 2700 years before Rama. Added to the period of Rama (about 7200 years ago), this comes to 9990 years ago. That was almost the time the current period of Holocene started after tens of thousands of years of Ice age conditions. The bottom-line is that the Treta, Dvapara and Kali Yuga found in Tiruvalangadu copper plates have occurred in the current period of Holocene. Details are there in my Mahabharata book. I will write them in Tamil in my next blog.

For now I am posting two lists – one the Puranic list of the Ikshvaku kings from Rama to the Mahabharata time which shows only 31 kings, thereby establishing a maximum number of 2000 years between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata; another list compares the Ikshvaku list given by Vasishtha with the Chola lineage given in Tiruvalangadu plates with specific reference to yuga-s indicating that our ancestors until 1000 years ago (Rajendra Chola’s time who issued these plates) followed a smaller Yuga scale and not the yuga of lakhs of years which was used only while making Sankalpa to worship a deity. More about it in my next blog.

The Puranic list: