92 Bhoja Raja of Dhar and his Homonyms. [No. 2, 
The derivation of the word may be traced to the root bhuj ‘ to enjoy,’ 
and in that sense it has been used by the Brahmans from the remotest 
antiquity. In the third book of the Rig Veda Safhita (Chap. III. 
Varga 20, verse 7) it occurs for the first time as a generic term* to 
indicate the sacrifice-loving Kshetria sons of Sudasa, which fact argues 
the likelihood of some one of them having borne that word as his 
specific name. Subsequently we find it in the Mahdabharata,; many 
centuries before the commencement of the Christian era, as the title 
of a king who was the foster father of Kunti, the mother of the 
renowned Pandavas. He was a cousin (father’s sister’s son) of S/ura 
and generally known by the name of Kunti Bhoja. Sura, was the 
father of Vasudeva and Pritha ; and the latter when made over to her 
cousin-german assumed the name of Kunti. 
Immediately after him we meet with a Bhoja in Col. Wilford’s 
““Hssay on the sacred Isles in the West,”{ who was a vassal of 
Jarasandha. He invited the Magas to his dominion on the banks 
of the Ganges, and gave his daughter to one of them from whom 
descended the eighteen families of the Bhojakas. I cannot, however, 
find any mention of this prince in the Samba Purdna to which the 
Colonel refers his readers, and feel disposed, therefore, to attribute 
his origin to the imagination of the Colonel’s Panditas. His con- 
temporaneity to Jarésandha would make him a contemporary of 
Vasudeva and Pandu, and consequently of Kunti Bhoja, with whom 
he was most probably identical. His country is called Karae desa. 
The Colonel has a second prince of this name§ who was a relative 
and friend of Krishna and chief of the town of Bhojapura. This 
must have been either Kunti Bhoja himself, who was a cousin of 
Krishna’s father, or a descendant of his who assumed the patro- 
nymic of Bhoja. I feel disposed to take the latter alternative, as in 
the Mahabharata,|| a Bhoja of Bhojapura in Behar, not Kunti Bhoja, 
appears in the company of Aswatthamaé as a rival of the Pandava 
brothers for the hand of Draupadi, which would scarcely be probable 
* The words are Jme Bhojd digiraso virtipd, which Sayana explains by Ime 
jdgam kurvdndh Bhojah saudasah kshatriyah tesham ydjakah virdpa nana rupa 
Medhatithe prithitayo angirasascha. Max Miller, Vol. II. p. 928, 
+ Adi Parva, chapter III. Vol. I. p. 161, Calcutta edition. 
{ Asiatic Researches, Vol. XI. p. 82. 
§ Loe. cit. 
|| Adi Parva, Vol. II. p. 253, v. 6986. 
s 
BAMA FY WAY VawMwTaAsat | 
