Epic-Puranic royal genealogies Quotes

“It is absurd to suppose that the elaborate royal genealogies were all merely figments of imagination or a tissue of falsehoods.”

“Wikipedia: Epic-Puranic royal genealogies”

“If the Puranic genealogies from the time of the Buddha onward are almost faultless, the presumption naturally is that the earlier genealogies too are not mere figments of the imagination.”

“The Puranic records are far more trustworthy than has hitherto been assumed. They are the distillate of countless generations of remembered knowledge, especially knowledge concerning the vicissitudes of royal houses.”

“There is nothing in them, as far as I am aware, really inconsistent with the most ancient book we possess, namely, the Rigveda, and they throw much light thereon, and on all problems concerning ancient India.”

“But that has never kept [these scholars] from treating the Vedas as the only source of ancient Indian history, to the neglect of the legitimate history books, the Itihasa-Purana literature, i.e. the Epics and the Puranas. It is like ignoring the historical Bible books (Exodus, Joshua, Chronicles, Kings) to draw ancient Israelite history exclusively from the Psalms, or like ignoring the historians Livius, Tacitus and Suetonius to do Roman history on the basis of the poet Virgil. What would be dismissed as “utterly ridiculous” in Western history is standard practice in Indian history.”

“True, the tradition, which is found in Epics, Puránas and astronomers, which knows nothing of an invasion but, on the contrary, has the IAs spreading out with their culture in all directions, and which places the R V (its arrangement) just before 3102, appears to be late, within, say, 1st-6th centuries CE. But we must not ignore the weighty evidence of the classical sources (the Megasthenes report c 312- 280 BC) giving related chronologies. Arrian (Indika 1, 9), Pliny (VI, 21, 4) and Solinus (52, 5)—all give dates of 6000+ for Indian royal genealogies: so this aspect of the tradition is at the very latest of the 4th century BC. I am not claiming here that the tradition is necessarily correct in all (though it could be in most of) its aspects but only that it is not as late as it seems at first sight.”

“We have three versions of a statement by Megasthenes...
Pliny (VI. xxl.4-5) reports about the Indians: "From the days of Father Bacchus to Alexander the Great, their kings are reckoned at 154, whose reigns extend over 6451 years and 3 months."
Solinus (52.5) says: "Father Bacchus was the first who invaded India, and was the first of all who triumphed over the vanquished Indians. From him to Alexander the Great 6451 years are reckoned with 3 months additional, the calculation being made by counting the kings, who reigned in the intermediate period, to the number of 153."
Arrian (Indica, I. ix.) observes: "From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians counted 153 kings and a period of 6042 years, but among these a republic was thrice established... and another to 300 years, and another to 120 years. The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked..."”