Maharaja Mandhatri

Mandhatri (also written Mandhata) is a king of the Solar dynasty, the son of Yuvanashva, and one of the great conquerors of the epics. The Puranas give him three sons and fifty daughters. Monier-Williams names him as the author of Rigveda 10.134, and the Buddhists tell his story as the Mandhatu Jataka.

His birth is the best-known part of his story. In the Vishnu Purana [IV.2] Yuvanashva had no son, and the sages prepared water at a sacrifice for his queen. The king drank it unknowingly. A child formed in his body and was born through his right side, and the king did not die. Indra offered to be the child's nurse, and the Purana explains the name Mandhatri from the words "mam dhasyati". The Mahabharata (Vana, Drona and Shanti Parvas) has the king drink sacrificial butter during a hunt, with the Ashvins delivering the child and Indra letting him suck milk from his fingers.

Why a king is named in a pravara. A pravara lists the sages whose line a family invokes. Mandhatri was a king, and the Vedic tradition still counts him as a seer through the hymn of Rigveda 10.134. His descendants through Ambarisha, Yuvanashva and Harita became the Angirasa Haritas, Kshatriyas by birth who became Brahmins of the family of Angiras [Vishnu Purana IV.3]. The 1900 pravara manual Gotra Pravar Nibandh Kadambam gives one Harita pravara as Mandhatra, Ambarisha, Yauvanashva, and the other as Angirasa, Ambarisha, Yauvanashva. The Kutsa and Kautsa gotras on this site also name Mandhatri in their pravara, after Angirasa.

The sources differ on his sons. The Puranas name three, Purukutsa, Ambarisha and Muchukunda, and give him a wife Vindumati (Bindumati), daughter of Shashabindu of the Yadu line. The Ramayana [Bala Kanda 70] gives his son and successor as Susandhi, whose sons are Dhruvasandhi and Prasenajit.

1. The birth from his father's side: he is born from the right side of Yuvanashva after the king drinks the sanctified water, and Indra nurses him [Vishnu Purana IV.2].
2. Conqueror and sacrificer: the Mahabharata says he conquered the earth and performed a hundred horse sacrifices and a hundred rajasuyas, with large gifts to Brahmins.
3. The fifty daughters: the sage Saubhari asks for one of his daughters and marries all fifty. They bear him a hundred and fifty sons, and he later gives up worldly life and turns to Vishnu [Vishnu Purana IV.2 and IV.3].
4. Purukutsa, Ambarisha and Muchukunda: his sons found several branches of the Solar dynasty. Ambarisha's line gives the Angirasa Haritas.
5. The Mandhatu Jataka: in the Buddhist telling, he is the Buddha-to-be, a universal ruler to whom Indra gives half of heaven. His greed for the rest makes him fall to earth, and he dies after a last lesson on desire.

• Ayodhya: the seat of the Ikshvaku kings, where the Ramayana lists him.
• The sacrificial ground: where the sages prepared the water for his father.
• Indra's heaven: where he reigns beside Indra in the Jataka.