Maharaja Agrasena

Maharaja Agrasena, in Agrawal tradition a Suryavanshi king, founded the city of Agroha in today's Hisar district of Haryana. He is the father of the Agrawal community: tradition says his yajnas gave the Agrawal gotras their names.

Popular retellings name his father as Vallabhsena, king of Pratapnagar, his mother as Bhagwati Devi and a younger brother, Shursena. They place him in the line of Kusha, son of Rama. His wife Madhavi is called a daughter of the Naga king Kumud. Indra, who also wished to marry Madhavi, is said to have caused a drought in anger, and the sage Narada ended the quarrel. After austerities at Kashi, Shiva is said to have sent him to Mahalakshmi, who blessed him with prosperity. Mahalakshmi is the family goddess of many Agrawals.

The story in its usual form was written down by Bharatendu Harishchandra in Agarwalon ki Utpatti (1871). He drew on tradition and on a text he called Sri Mahalakshmi Vrat Ki Katha, which he placed in the Bhavishya Purana. Later researchers have not found it in any published Bhavishya Purana. In 1976 Satyaketu Vidyalankar published a copy that he said came from Bharatendu's library. The date comes from the same tradition: it puts Agrasena at the end of the Dvapara age, and a 1976 Indian stamp marked the 5100th anniversary of his birth.

What the ground shows is a real town. Agroha is a group of mounds near Hisar. The Archaeological Survey of India dug there in 1888-89 under C. J. Rogers, and H. L. Srivastava dug there in 1938-39. His finds included 51 small rectangular coins reading Agodaka Agacha Janapadasa, found with four silver Indo-Greek coins that date the hoard to about the 2nd century BCE. Srivastava wrote the town's name as Agrodaka, a place also named in the Buddhist text Mahamayuri. The Haryana archaeology department dug again in the late 1970s and 1980s. The site was lived in from about the 4th century BCE to the 14th century CE.

Whether this town is Agrasena's city rests on community belief. The finds show a town called Agodaka or Agrodaka, not a king by that name. A Sanskrit inscription of 1272 CE calls Agrawals Agrotaka, people of Agroha, and the Jain poet Sadharu's Pradumna Charita (1354) names Agroha as their original home. So the community's tie to the place is old, though the king and his date are not documented. Historians generally call Agrasena legendary; J. P. Mittal (2006) treats him as a historical figure.

On the gotras, the accounts differ. In Bharatendu's version Agrasena held seventeen full yajnas and left the last one half-done, out of remorse at the killing of an animal, which is why Agrawals speak of seventeen and a half gotras. He also names seventeen queens and a junior queen, without tying them to the gotras. The common figure today is eighteen: in 1983 the Akhil Bharatiya Agrawal Sammelan adopted a standard list by vote (Lawrence Babb, 2004). Before that, the number and names varied by region, and some lists still differ. Calling any gotra a half is now thought insulting. Older retellings also differ on the family: a 1680 text, Bulakhichand's Vachanakosha, has a sage Agar marrying a Naga girl and having eighteen children, and an 1885 Bombay gazetteer has Agrasena marrying seventeen Naga princesses.

Part of the community follows Jainism. Jain tradition links this to the teacher Lohacharya, whom Muni Sabhachandra's Padma Purana (1654) places near Agroha.

1. Birth and marriage: tradition gives his parents as Vallabhsena and Bhagwati Devi of Pratapnagar and his wife as Madhavi, the Naga king Kumud's daughter. Indra's anger at the marriage is settled by Narada.
2. Austerities and the blessing of Mahalakshmi: he performs austerities at Kashi, and Mahalakshmi grants prosperity to him and his line. Agroha's temple is dedicated to her.
3. Founding Agroha: he founds the city of Agroha, the seat of his kingdom, in what is now Hisar district.
4. The yajnas: he holds the yajnas that gave the gotras their names, seventeen complete ones and a last stopped half-way in Bharatendu's account; the later standard list has eighteen gotras.
5. Turning from sacrifice: at the last yajna he stops the animal sacrifice and turns to non-violence. Babb notes that this story ties Agrawal identity to a rejection of violence in sacrifice.
6. One brick and one coin: every family settling in Agroha received one brick and one coin from each household, so no newcomer started with nothing. Some retellings say one rupee, not one coin.

• The city of Agroha: mounds near Hisar, Haryana, lived in from about the 4th century BCE.
• The Agroha Dham temple: the pilgrimage site at Agroha, with a temple dedicated to Mahalakshmi.
• Pratapnagar: his birthplace in the retellings.
• Kashi: where he is said to have performed austerities.
• Agrasen ki Baoli, Delhi: a stepwell that carries his name. Local tradition credits him with it. No record names its builder, and the structure seen now is generally dated to the 14th or 15th century. It is protected by the ASI.