Madhucchandas

Madhucchandas · madhu-chandas, “whose chandas (Vedic metre) is sweet as madhu (honey)”

Madhucchandas is a ṛshi, the middle son of Viśvāmitra Maharshi. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa tells that Viśvāmitra had a hundred and one sons and that all of them came to be known by the name of Madhucchandas, as the Madhucchandases. When Viśvāmitra adopted Śunaśśepa of the Bhṛgu line and told his sons to take him as their elder brother, Madhucchandas, with the fifty younger sons, obeyed his father and received his blessing, while the fifty elder sons, who refused, received his śāpa. Madhucchandas is also named among the ṛtvijas of Yudhishṭhira‘s Rājasūya yajña.

The son who kept his father’s word

Śrī Śuka Maharshi tells Parīkshit that Viśvāmitra, the son of Gādhi, had great tejas like a well-kindled fire, and by the power of his tapas gave up his kshatriya-hood and attained brahma-varcas, the splendour of a brāhmaṇa. Of his hundred and one sons the middle one was Madhucchandas, and all of them became known by that same name, as the Madhucchandases.

Viśvāmitra adopted as his son Śunaśśepa, the son of Ajīgarta, of the Bhṛgu line. Śunaśśepa had been sold by his parents to be the human paśu in Hariścandra‘s yajña to Varuṇa; he praised Brahmā and the other devatās and was freed from the cords that bound him to the yūpa, and because the devatās set him free he became famous as Devarāta, “given by the devatās”. Viśvāmitra commanded his sons to take Śunaśśepa as their elder brother.

The fifty elder Madhucchandases did not think it right and would not agree, and Viśvāmitra, angered, pronounced a śāpa on them: “O wicked ones! Become mlecchas!” Then Madhucchandas, the middle son, together with the fifty younger ones, said to Viśvāmitra Maharshi: “Whatever you command us, in that we will stand.” They accepted Śunaśśepa, the mantra-drashṭā (one to whom mantras are revealed), as their eldest brother and told him, “We are your followers.”

Viśvāmitra blessed them: “You have kept my honour and made me one who has worthy sons. Therefore you too will have worthy sons.” He told them that Devarāta was a worthy son to him and a Kuśika of their own gotra. Because some of Viśvāmitra’s sons received a śāpa and some were blessed, the Kauśika gotra became of many kinds, and because the Kauśikas accepted Devarāta as their elder, they came to have the Devarāta pravara.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 9, Chapter 16

A ṛtvija of the Rājasūya

When Dharmarāja Yudhishṭhira, with the leave of Śrī Kṛshṇa, chose the ṛtvijas for his Rājasūya yajña, he chose thirty brāhmaṇas who knew the Vedas, beginning with Vedavyāsa, Bharadvāja, Sumantu, Gautama and Asita. Madhucchandas is the twenty-eighth of them, named after Vītihotra and before Vīrasena and Akṛtavraṇa. The ṛtvijas ploughed the yajña-ground with golden ploughs and gave Dharmarāja the dīkshā according to rule.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 74

Sources

• Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 9, Chapter 16; Skandha 10, Chapter 74