Ikshvaku

Origin

From Kashyapa, through Aditi, Vivasvan was generated, and from him came Shraddhadeva Manu, who was born from the womb of Sanjna. Shraddhadeva's wife, Shraddha, gave birth to ten sons, including Ikshvaku and Nriga.

There has been debate on Ikshvaku's ethnolinguistic origin. Ikshvaku is first recorded in the Rigveda (10.60.4) in a position of high honour and being associated with the Pancha-jana or "Five Tribes". These Vedic tribes included the Anu, Druhyu, Puru, Turvaśa, and Yadu who were prominent in the Early Vedic Era and associated with the Lunar Dynasty, signifying an Aryan origin. According to E. J. Rapson in The Cambridge History of India, Ikshvaku, his lineage, and the Kingdom of Kosala were certainly Aryan. P. L. Bhargava agrees with the Aryan origin of the lineage presented by Rapson, however argues that Ikshvaku originated near the Saptasindhu in the Early Vedic Period, with the lineage later settling into the Indo-Gangetic Plain and ultimately Kosala following the conquests of the king Bhagiratha. The Sanskrit etymology of Ikshvaku derives from kshava or "sneeze", which relates to his mythological origin in Puranic literature of being born from Manu sneezing.

However other scholars have proposed alternative hypotheses of non-Aryan origin when interpreting the Atharvaveda.

"At the place of the ship's descent at the top of the Himalayas, there resides the vision of immortality from which the Kushta plant was born; which the Ikshwakus previously knew"

— Atharvaveda, 19.39.8–9

This may be a reference to a non-Aryan tribe, residing in the region prior to Manu settling. F. E. Pargiter has equated the Ikshvakus with the Dravidians. According to Franciscus Kuiper, Manfred Mayrhofer and Levman, the Iskvaku is derived from a Munda name:

The founder of the Sakya clan, King Ikṣvāku (Pali: Okkāka) has a Munda name, suggesting that the Sakyas were at least bilingual. Many of the Sakya village names are believed to be non-IA in origin, and the very word for town or city (nagara; cf. the Sakya village Nagakara, the locus of the Cūḷasuññata Sutta) is of Dravidian stock. [pp. 148–149] [...]

The Sakya clan derive their ancestry from King Ikṣvāku, whose name is of Austro-Asiatic Munda origin. [pp. 156–157]

— Levman (2014)

G. S. Ghurye holds that the Ikshvakus were Aryan horsemen and must have arrived in the subcontinent before the Aryans who composed the Rigveda. The Brahmana texts do also state that the Ikshvakus were a line of princes descended from the Purus. The Rigveda mentions that the Purus are one of the Aryan tribes. Mandhatri, an Ikshvaku ruler, is described in the Rigveda to have annihilated the Dasyus, and seeks the help of the Ashvin twins, the divine physicians of the Vedic religion.