LUNAR RACES. The Rajput races of India, who trace their descent or origin from the moon, Soma, or Chandra, through Yadu or Jadu, are called Yadava. It has eight branches, of which the Jhareja and Bhatti in Cutch and Jeysulmir are the most powerful. The dynasties which succeeded the great beacons of the Solar and Lunar races, are three in number,—lst, The Suryavansa, descendants of Rama The Indu vansa, descendants of Pandit through•Yudishthra ; 3d, The Induvansa, descendants of Jarasandha, monarch of Rajgraha. The Bhagavat and Agni Purana are the authorities for the lines from Rama and Jarasandha ; while that of Panda is from the Raj - Taringini and Rajao. The descendants of Krishna and Arjuna carried down the Lunar line of Indian chieftains, as the Cushites and Lavites from Cush and Lava, sons of Rama, carried down that of the Sun.
The earliest settlement of the Aryan race in India lay probably in that portion of the Panjab which surrounds the upper waters of the Sarsuti or Saraswati river. In the Doab they founded the famous city of Hastinapur, the capital of the Lunar race, who also ruled at Muttra, Kasi or Benares, Magadha, and Behar. The Solar race, on the other hand, gave princes to Ayodhya in Southern Oudh, and founded colonies in many parts of the North - Western Provinces. The Vedas show us the Aryan settlements as almost confined to the upper basin of the Ganges and the Jumua, with a few outlying branches in Tirhut, Western Bengal, the Vindbyan Hills, and the Nerbadda valley ; while the south of the Peninsula still remained almost entirely in the hands of the Dravidians. Throughout the whole
historical period, the Upper Gangetic valley re tained its position as the chief seat of the Aryan supremacy in India, and afterwards the centre of the Moghul empire at Dehli or Agra.
The earliest traditions of the North -Western Provinces cluster round the city of Hastinapur, on the Ganges, in Meerut district, the ancient metropolis of the Pan davas. Only a few shape less mounds now mark the site where lived the children of the moon, the descendants of Bharata, whose great war is chronicled in the Hindu epic of the Mahabharata. The poem deals chiefly with the conflict between the five Pandavas, sons of Pandu, and founders of Indraprastha (see Dehli City), and the Kauravas, who held the older capital of Hastinapur. These events, if not ab solutely mythical, may be assigned to the 15th century n.c. But the earliest empire in this portion of Upper India of which any certain monuments remain, was that of the Buddhist dynasty of Magadha. The founder of the Buddh ist creed, Sakya Muni, was born at Kapila in B.C. 598, and died at Kassia in Gorakhpur dis trict in 543. After his death, the creed which he had preached spread rapidly over Hindustan, and became for many centuries the dominant religion of the Aryan race. See Rajput ; Solar Race.