The Ninth Skandha with 24 chapters and 964 verses deals with Vamsha and Vamshanucharita—the genealogy of the great kingly and priestly lines and accounts of the eminent ones among them. It is one of the ten themes to be treated in all Puranas. More of this will come in the 12th Skandha also. From the point of view of the modern reader, this Skandha forms the most dreary of all the sections of the Srimad Bhagavatam - a parched desert occasionally brightened by an oasis here and there of very inspiring accounts of some eminent devotees like Ambarisha, Parashurama, Khatvanga, Ranti Deva, Bhagiratha, etc., and of the Sri Rama incarnation.
The rest of it, apart from brief dissertations on some more persons, consists of long and endless lists of kings in their order of succession with some details about a few of them- there is no way of understanding from these descriptions anything about their dates beyond a vague idea of the Yuga in which they lived, about where most of them ruled, whether they ruled at all, or what type of persons they were. Perhaps it is impossible to give all this information because their number is so vast.
The cumulative effect of it on the reader is not an enrichment of his informedness of the past, but the promotion of a hazy sense of the vastness of the bygone times. And this perhaps is the main object of the author of a Purana like the Srimad Bhagavatam which claims that not a word is said in it which is not related to the Lord and the cultivation of devotion towards Him- This is made plain in the following verses of the text (X 11.3. 14—1 5):
"I have narrated to you the stories of these great men have spread their names in the three worlds, and then passed away. All this literary effort is only to generate in you discrimination and knowledge (by bringing home to you the very transitoriness of human greatness and worldly achievements). They have no relation to any abiding reality."
Attempts are being made today by some modem Indian historians to reconstruct a sort of India's ancient history from these bewildering genealogical lists of the Puranas and the brief accounts of certain kings they give. British historians in the past recognised Indian history proper as starting from the time of Alexander's invasion (325 B.C.E) and left all the ancient past of India as a blank. This, however, is a very undesirable position, as it gives a very imperfect background of India and its culture. so, utilising the Pauranika material to fill up the lacuna is very desirable, provided one keeps its limitation also in mind. That material is vague, imperfect in chronology, mostly bare lists without details, devoid of evidence by contemporary records, archaeology, historical concordance, etc., which are insisted on by history in the modem sense. They are traditions where no other source of information of an exact nature exists. It is valuable in spite of its imperfections, as even having some vague information is better than having none.
A very creditable attempt has been made to work in this field, on what may be called the proto-history of India, in the book “History the Pre-Kaliyuga India” by R. Siddhanta Sastri, published by the Inter-India Publications, Delhi. Pre-Kaliyuga means the time anterior to the demise of Sri Krishna, which took place in 3102 B.C. The author should be given great credit for the original study he has made. He has collated the genealogies of princely lines given the Srimad Bhagavatam. Vishnu Purana, Matsyapurana and Mahabharata, and tried to arrive at a consensus of rulers from the time of Swayambhuva Manu, the first of the Manus, to that of Vaivaswata, the seventh and the current Manu. He has, however, used much imagination in the process and discarded the Pauranika conception of time, in order to accommodate these lists of kings into the pattern of modern history.
The Pauranika history of the present Kalpa called Shwetavaraha Kalpa and Padma Kalpa, begins with Swaayambhuva Manu. His two sons, Uttanapada and Priyavrata, became the lords of the world. Uttanapada's line produced some distinguished rulers like the famous Dhruva, the tyrant Vena. the great emperor Prithu, Shishti, Ripu and Chakshusha, the last of whom became, much later, the sixth Manu. Priyavrata's line was of much longer duration. Some of the noted kings of his line were Nabhi, Rishabha, Bharata, Gaya, etc. Some forty-two kings are listed in Sri Siddhanta Sastri’s work. It is to be noted that if we take the Pauranika chronology, obviously all these kings are supposed to have ruled during six Manvantras, that is from that of Swayabhuva to the end of Chakshusha. which will cover a period of 25,920.000 years. Prof. Sastri chooses to ignore the Pauranika time scale but does not show what other system of chronology he fits the rule of all these ancient kings. This is an unavoidable difficulty that all who distil history from the Puranas have to face. All these details form the subject matter of earlier Skandhas.
The 9th Skandha, however, is concerned only with the kings who ruled during the supremacy of the seventh Manu Vaivaswata, who in the previous Kalpa was King Satyavrata of the Dravida Country, to whom the Lord appeared as the Cosmic Fish (VIII. 16.10-24), and who was born in his next birth as the son of Vivaswan, the Sun-deity, under the name Sraddha Deva, known also as Vaivaswata after his father's name. The whole of the ninth Skandha is an attempt to trace the two famous royal dynasties of ancient India, the Solar Dynasty (Surya-Vamsha) to Vaivaswata Manu, the son of the Sun-deity, and the Lunar Dynasty (Chandra-Vamsha) to Soma the Moon-deity. Vaivaswata Manu had ten sons—lkshvaku, Nriga. Saryati, Dishti, Karüshaka, Narishya, Prishadhra, Nabhaga and Kavi. Of these, Ikshvaku was the ancestor of the kings of the Solar Dynasty, whose number as given in the Srimad Bhagavatam, is listed by Prof. Sastri as eighty-four. Among these are some kings very famous in the Indian tradition—kings like Kakutstha, Mandhata, and Ambarisha. Harischandra, Dilipa, Raghu, Aja, Dasaratha and, above all, Sri Rama, classified as a Divine Incarnation who has exercised an abiding influence on Indian culture. The dynasty ended with Brihadbala who died in the Mahabharata War. There were also other subsidiary families of the Solar Dynasty. all descended from the Manu and his sons. Some of them were the Mithila kings known as Videhas, the dynasty ruling at Vaishali, the Saryati family, the Nabhaga family, the Nriga family and the Narishyanta family. The second great kingly line, the Lunar Dynasty (Soma-Vamsha), was descended from the Moon-Deity who had Budha for his son. The Moon-Deity himself was born of the tears of Bliss flowing from the eyes of Rishi Atri, a mind-born offspring of Brahma.
Whether the Solar and Lunar Dynasties were parallel kingly lines is not clear from the Purana, but Prof. Sastri thinks that the Lunar Dynasty came into prominence after the Solar line had become decadent. But it is however known from the Purana that the last king of the Solar Dynasty, Brihadbala, was killed in the Mahabharata War.
The Lunar Dynasty is of special importance to the Srimad Bhagavatam because in that dynasty was born Sri Krishna, the description of whose glory forms the special theme of this Purana. Some of the illustrious kings of this line, famous in the Indian tradition, are Pururavas, Nahusha, Yayati, Puru, Dushyanta, Bharata, Hastin, Kuru, Santanu, Vichitravirya, Pandu and Yudhishthira. Seventy-six kings of this dynasty are listed. The line continued into Kali Yuga also until it decayed with the march of Kali.
The Lunar Dynasty had many branches, important among them being the Kshatravriddha family at Kashi, the kings of the Pänchala descended from Haryashwa, the rulers of the Ahicchatra family, the kings of Kaampilya. etc. But the most important branch of interest in the Srimad Bhagavatam is the one containing the descendants of King Yayati belonging to the main Lunar Dynasty. Yayati had five sons Yadu, Turvasu, Druhyu, Anu and Puru. As Puru alone was dutiful enough to the father to assume the father's old age and give him his own youth, Yayati, when he retired, made Puru the emperor and the other brothers subordinate governors without title to royal insignia. Of the brothers, Puru and Yadu are of special importance, because from the former (Puru) descended the Pandavas and Kauravas of Mahabharata fame, and from the latter (Yadu), the clans of Yadavas, Saattvatas. Srinjayas, etc. to whom Sri Krishna belonged. In the last two chapters of the Skandha, the details of the descendants of Yadu up to Sri Krishna are given. While all the genealogical details given in the 24 chapters of this Skandha may be of interest to historical researchers, the general reader will find them tedious and will be prone to skip them.
But here and there come chapters of high devotional and ethical import that the reader should take notice of. We are therefore giving below references to such important sections for selective reading:
2. Chaps. 8 and 9 on Sagara's Yajna and Bhagiratha's bringing of the Ganga to the earth.
3. Chaps. 10 and 11 on Sri Rama's incarnation.
4. Chaps. 15 and 16 for the story of Parashurama.
5. Chaps. 18 and 19 on King Yayati and his doings.
6. Chap. 20 on Dushyanta and Bharata.
7. Chap. 21 on Ranti Deva.
