giving an average of twenty-two years for each reign [53].
It would not be proper to ascribe a longer period to each reign, and it were perhaps better to give the minimum, nineteen, to extended dynasties; and to the sixty-six princes from Yudhishthira and Vikramaditya not even so much, four revolutions[[36]] and usurpations marking this period.
Jarasandha.
Jarasandha was the monarch of Rajagriha,[[37]] or Bihar, whose son Sahadeva, and grandson Marjari, are declared to have been contemporaries of the Mahabharata, and consequently coeval with Parikshita, the Delhi sovereign.
The direct line of Jarasandha terminates in twenty-three descents with Ripunjaya, who was slain, and his throne assumed by his minister, Sanaka, whose dynasty terminated in the fifth generation with Nandivardandhana. Sanaka derived no personal advantage from his usurpation, as he immediately placed his son, Pradyota, on the throne. To these five princes one hundred and thirty-eight years are assigned.
A new race entered Hindustan, led by a conqueror termed Sheshnag, from Sheshnagdesa,[[38]] who ascended the Pandu throne, and whose line terminates in ten descents with Mahanandin, of spurious birth. This last prince, who was also named Baikyat, carried on an exterminating warfare against the ancient Rajput princes of pure blood, the Puranas declaring that since the dynasty of Sheshnag the princes were Sudras. Three hundred and sixty years are allotted to these ten princes.
Chandragupta Maurya.
Sunga, Kanva Dynasties.
Recapitulation.
To some of the short dynasties periods are assigned of moderate length: but as the first and last are without such data, the test already decided on must be applied; which will yield 1704 years, being six hundred and four after Vikramaditya, whose contemporary will thus be Basdeva, the fifty-fifth prince from Sahadeva of the sixth dynasty, said to be a conqueror from the country of Katehr [or Rohilkhand]. If these calculations possess any value, the genealogies of the Bhagavat are brought down to the close of the fifth century following Vikramaditya. As we cannot admit the gift of prophecy to the compilers of these books, we may infer that they remodelled their ancient chronicles during the reign of Susarman, about the year of Vikrama 600, or A.D. 546.