
| 
1922 ] ~ Madra. 259 
Madda king is married to the ugly prince Kusa, son and heir of 
the Malla king Okkaka, who is said to be the “chief king in. 
all India,’ while in the Kalinga-Bodhi' and Vessantara 
Jatakas* similar alliances are reported with Kalinga and Sivi 
kingdoms respectively. It is curious that in all these mar- 
riages the Maddas always supply the brides—a fact borne out 
by the Great Epic and the Mahavamsa. Inthe former princess 
Madri is married to Pindu of the House of the Kurus and in the 
latter the queen of Sumitta king of Lala (Radha) is the daughter 
of a certain Madra king.’ According to a Buddhist tradition 
one of the principal queens of Bimbisara king of Magadha was 
Khema a Madra princess.*+ The reason why the Madra princesses 
were in such great demand in the royal families of India was 
probably their exquisite beauty. The demand for ideal beauty 
of a Kusa could only be satisfied by a baer te Se the land 
of the Maddas. Pabhavati was said to be so fair that from 
her person ‘‘ Stream forth rays of light as it were of the newly 
risen sun. When it is dark in her closes measuring four cubits 
there is no need of any lamp, the whole chamber is one blaze 
of light. 6 In the Mahatharata Madra women are mentioned 
as gauri,i.e. faircoloured,® while in the Mah@vastu Avadana’ 
the daughter of a Madr aka king is described as one who in 
beauty had no He in the whole of Jambudvipa. In the 
Harivamsga (11.50. 2) we are told that the Madra princess 
Lakshana was the sixth of the eight Pattanayikah or chief 
queens amongst the 16,000 wives of Sri-Kris shna. 
Madra has no place in. the ‘stereotyped’ list of the Solasa 
mahajanapada, i.e. Sixteen Great Couutries which occurs in no 
less than four places of the Angultara Nikaya,’ or in the slightly 
different list of the Jaina Bhagavati Sitra.* ‘The early custom 
or employing the name of the people to denote the country 
Pieri is in evidence in the list of the mahajanapadas in the 




1 IV, 479, 2 VI, 547. 
’ Mbh, I, 113; P.T.S. Trans by Geiger; p. a Lila is sometimes 
taken ‘to correspond to Lata ie Gujarat. See The Cambridge History of 
India, Vol. I, p. 606. But Radha seems to better sane with the geogra- 
phical data contained in 
rans. p, 38n nite mother a rete of 
; The Jataka Vol. V, pp. 
6 Mbh VIII, 44, 16-18. Madra women are still reget for the 
i, ci of their features and comparatives a of c 
T Le 

ahavastu, Senart, II, 441 et seq. e the carious statement 
is made that a Madraka king ruled in the city of atau in the na 
Janapada. It isp , however, that there w Kanauj in the 
extended their sway or it might as well be that the Sidrasena territories 
had oxi nded so far as to include andi uj. 
3 I, 213. IV, 252, 266, 260. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, p. 23 
» Hoernle Uvasagadasao Vol. II, App. pp. 6-7. 
