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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
It is a well-known fact that the Purāṇas have traced all the earliest Indo-Aryan dynasties from Manu Vaivasvata. One of the sons of Manu Vaivasvata was Ikṣvāku who is said to have founded a dynasty which ruled at Ayodhyā, while a son of his named Nimi is said to have founded the kingdom of Videha. The location by the Purāṇas of the earliest Aryan dynasties as far east as Kosala and Videha, however, goes totally against the evidence of the Ṛgveda and the later Vedic literature, according to which the Aryans were originally settled in the country called Saptasindhu and only later moved towards the east, the south, and the west. It was this serious conflict between the evidence of the Purāṇas and the Vedic literature which led Rapson to declare that it seems impossible to bring the Purāṇic genealogies into any satisfactory relation with the Vedic literature.
1 Cambridge History of India, I, ch. xiii.
2 The statement of Rapson that “Purukutsa and his son Trasadasyu in the Rigveda are Pūrus living on the Sarasvati” (Cambridge History of India, I, ch. xiii), is really surprising when we remember that the Ṛgveda connects Trasadasyu with the river Suvāstu, which is far off from the Sarasvatī.