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equally their subjects, were called Kâsis.' Though at first a masculine appellation, Kâśi, as applied to the city so styled, is feminine.2 An exact parallel to this hypothetical evolution is not far to seek. The name of King Champa, femininized, became that of the metropolis of Anga, Champâ.3

The term Kâśi, denominating, if not a city, a people

1 Kâsi's successors were likewise known as Kâśyas and as Kâsikas. These terms are, all, actually employed. The last is, also, applied to persons or things pertaining to Kâśi.

• Kuntî, a woman, was so called from Kunti, a man.

Kâsî, according to the Vishnu-purána,—see the English translalation, Vol. IV., p. 159,—was the name of the wife of Bhîmasena. The reading is, however, erroneous, most probably. I find, as a variant, Kâseyi. This, like the corresponding Kâśyâ of the Mahdbharata, Adi-parvan, él. 3829, is a derivative of Kâsi.

See the English Vishnu-purána, Vol. IV., p. 125.

I am not unaware of the gana on Pâṇini, IV., II., 82.

"In the Mahabharata, frequent mention of Kâsî occurs," according to Professor Wilson, as quoted in Benares Illustrated, p. 8. I should be much surprised to find Kâsî mentioned even once in the Mahábhárata.

Not till medieval times, it seems, do we read of the city of Kâsî. To the authority, on this behalf, of the Purâņas may be added that of an inscription which I have deciphered and published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for 1862, pp. 14, 15. The document in question, a land-grant, was issued by Vinayakapâla, Raja of Mahodaya or Kanauj, about the middle of the eleventh century, it may be. Kâsî is there indirectly described as in the vishaya of Vârâṇasî, in the bhukti of Pratishthâna. For Pratishthâna, vide infra, p. xxv., note 1.

It is, in my judgment, very doubtful indeed that Ptolemy's Kaooida metamorphoses Kâsi, as has been confidently asserted by Colonel Wilford and very many others. See the Asiatic Researches, Vol. III., p. 410; Vol. IX., p. 73.

Fă Hian may have intended to reproduce Kásirajya, "kingdom of the Kâsis," in his words rendered by "le royaume de Kia chi." Vide infra, p. xxviii., note 1.

and its chieftains, occurs repeatedly in Sanskrit works of all but the highest antiquity.' Of Kâśi, in whatever sense of the word, we cannot, however, collect, from indigenous records, materials from which to con

The expression aged actuaï, in the Daśa-kumâra-charita, means "Vârâṇasî, a city of the Kâsis." In the subjoined verse, from the Ramayana, Uttara-káṇḍa, XXXVIII., VI., 17, Vârâṇasî is qualified by an expression meaning, the commentator says, "a city in the country of the Kâsis:"

तद्भवानद्य काशेयपुरीं वाराणसीं व्रज ।

Finally, in the Mahâbhârata, Ádi-parvan, śl. 4083, 4084, we read of the king of the Kâsis as dwelling in the city of Vârâṇasî.

1 The oldest among them, probably, is Pâņini, IV., II., 116; with which compare IV., II., 113. Then come the Satapatha-brahmana, the Brihad-aranyaka and Kaushitaki-brahmana Upanishads, etc., etc. In some of these works, the substantive is involved in the adjective Kâśya. This word, like Kâśika, for which see the Mahábhârata, Udyoga-parvan, sl. 5907,-means, etymologically, Káśian. But commentators on old writings explain it, and rightly, to signify 'king of the Kâśis." Kâśirâja and Kâśya are used of the same person in the Bhagavad-gìtá, I., 5, 17.

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The Rigveda affords no warrant for connecting with the Kâśis any person whom it mentions. It speaks of Divodâsa, and it speaks of Pratardana; but only in later literature are they called father and son, and rulers of the Kâsis; and, where Kâtyâyana, in his Rigvedánukramaniká, characterizes the latter as Kásirája, he may have expressed himself metachronically, under the influence of a modern tradition which he and his contemporaries accepted. As to the former, we find, indeed, in post-vaidik books, two Divodâsas; into whom a single personage seems to have been parted. One of them is son of Badhryaśwa, as in the Rigveda; but it is the other, the son of Bhîmaratha, and father of Pratardana, that is called king of the Kâsis. It may be added, that there is no ground for considering Badhryaśwa and Bhîmaratha to be two names of one and the same person. See the English Vishnu-purána, Vol. IV., pp. 33, and 145, 146. Badhryaśwa, not Bahwaśwa, is the reading of the Vishnu-purána. Correct accordingly Professor Wilson's translation of the Rigveda, Vol. III., p. 504, note 1. See, further, the Mahabharata, Anuśásana-parvan, Chapter XXX.

struct anything approaching a history. The kingdom of the Kâsis, and its rulers, as is evinced by the frequency of reference to them, enjoyed, from distant ages, more or less of notoriety; and this is, substantially, all that the Hindu memorials teach us.

The Purâņas specify but one dynasty of Kâśi kings; a goodly catalogue, beginning, in the most authoritative of those works, with the son of Kâśa.1 To Kâśa, by a lapse of perhaps two centuries, succeeded Divodâsa, in whose reign Buddhism seems to have been still acting on the aggressive.2 In this synchronism there is no discernible improbability; and, with some likelihood, it embodies an historic fact. A reflexion of actual events may, likewise, be afforded in the story of the burning of Vârânasî by the discus of Vishnu. Of the age of Ajâtaśatru, as of other very early leaders of the Kâśis, none but most vague indications have, as yet,

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1 A Kâśa is named in the gana on Pâņini, IV., I., 10. According to my five wretched copies of the Vâyu-purána, Kâśa was followed by Kâśaya (???), Râshṭra (??), Dîrghatapas, Dharma, Dhanwantari, Ketumat, Bhîmaratha, Divodâsa.

The Brahmanda-purana has, in one place, Kâśa and Kâsîya, as sire and son, and, a little further on, instead of them, Kâśika and Kâśeya. Kâśika, as evolving Kâśeya, must be considered as an optional elongation of Kâsi.

2 See the English Vishnu-purána, Vol. IV., pp. 30-40.

We read, in the Vayu-purdna:

दिवोदास इति ख्यातो वाराणस्यधिपो भवत् ।
एतस्मिन्नेव काले तु पुरीं वाराणसीं पुरा ।

शून्यां विवेशयामास क्षेमको नाम राक्षसः ॥

Then follows an account of the expulsion of Divodâsa from Vârâṇasî. So far as we know, he was the only king of the Kâśi family that had to do with that city.

3 See the Vishnu-purána, Book V., Chapter XXXIV.

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been discovered. Some of these personages ruled, not at Benares, but at Pratishthâna; and, at the time of the Muhammadan conquest, Benares and the surrounding country appertained to the throne of Kanauj.2

1 Its site was near Allahabad. Pûru's capital was Pratishthâna, in the kingdom of the Kâsis, according to the Ramayana, Uttarakanda, LIX., 18, 19 :

fafęd a nåt gin zenfatizendo: ||

पूरुञ्चकार तद्राज्यं धर्मेण महतावृतः ।

प्रतिष्ठाने पुरवरे काशिराज्ये महायशाः ॥

Before Pûru, his father, Yayâti, "lord of all the Kâsis," reigned at Pratishthâna. Mahabharata, Udyoga-parvan, sl. 3905 and 3918.

Purûravas received Pratishthâna in gift from his father Sudyumna. English Vishnu-purána, Vol. III., p. 237. Also see Burnouf's Bhagavata-purána, Vol. III., Preface, pp. XCVII.-XCIX.

Pratishthâna appears as a district of the kingdom of which Kanauj was the metropolis, in comparatively recent times. Vide supra, p. xxii., note 4.

Pratishthâna is the name of a kingdom, or of part of one, in the Katha-sarit-sagara, VI., 8.

2 Vide supra, p. xxii., note 4. Several Sanskrit land-grants have been published, two among them by myself,- from which it appears that the kings of the latest dynasty of Kanauj, from Madanapâla to the unfortunate Jayachandra, were masters of Benares, in succession to their predecessors; and that they were so is fully made out by the Muhammadan historians.

In the fifth volume of the Asiatic Researches is a professed transcript of a short inscription from a stone, now long disappeared from sight, which was exhumed near Benares, in 1794. We read, therein, of a king of Gauḍa, Mahîpâla, father of Sthirapâla and Vasantapâla; and, at the end, the date 1083. An easy credulity may accept these statements, no longer possible of verification; but there still remains the question as to the era of the year 1083, whether Vikramâditya's, or Salivâhana's — better, Sâtavâhana's,or Harsha's, or whose. Not only are the blunders in this inscription, as printed, so many and so gross that we are forbidden to suppose they were in the original; but they provoke the surmise that the interspersed patches of the record which read as if correct

Flagrant as is the exaggeration of the Hindus, it is surpassed by that of the Buddhists. The Brahmadatta who figures so largely, in their sacred writings, as king of Benares' very likely was not a mythe; 2 but there is no ground for crediting that Gautama ever governed that city at all, notwithstanding that they represent him to have reigned there during nineteen several states of existence. In a similar spirit, they assert, that, at the same capital ruled, in turn, eighty-four thousand monarchs descended from Asoka.* From these specimens it is manifest that the Buddhist scriptures are little to be trusted for throwing light on the history of Benares. That Buddhism, or any Buddhist king, ever dominated there is altogether problematical.

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Some relevant details, scant, but interesting as far as they go, are derivable from the itinerary of Hiouen Thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim from China, who visited

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may be, to a large extent, equally products of ignorant mistake and misrepresentation. A good deal of weight has been allowed to this inscription; and it has been, from time to time, honoured as a piece of genuine historic evidence. Uncritically enough, I once followed the herd, myself, in this respect: see the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for 1862, p. 8, first foot-note. It now appears to me rash to see, in it, proof that Benares was subordinate to Gauḍa, or anything else whatever claiming reliance.

1 Burnouf's Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien, Vol. I., p. 140; and Mr. R. S. Hardy's Manual of Budhism, p. 101.

2 Another king unknown to the Hindu records is spoken of by the Buddhists. His name is Bhimaśukla. See Der Buddhismus, translated from the Russian of Professor Wassiljew, Part I., p. 54. Mr. R. S. Hardy's Manual of Budhism, p. 134.

So states the Dipavamśa. See the Journal of the Asiatic Society

of Bengal, for 1838, p. 927.

5 Mémoires sur les Contrées Occidentales, Vol. I., pp. 353, et seq.

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