Yadu and the Yādava lineage

The Ṛgvedic people

Yadu appears in the Ṛgveda alongside Turvaśa, the two usually named as a pair and generally as outsiders to the Bharata-centred perspective of the surviving hymns. Little can be said about their territory from the hymns themselves; the association with the Mathurā region and the western coast belongs to later literature.

The lineage

In the Purāṇic genealogies Yadu is the eldest son of Yayāti, cursed to forfeit the succession, so that his descendants form a great house that is nonetheless barred from the imperial line. From him descend the Vṛṣṇis, Andhakas, Bhojas and Sātvatas — the confederated clans of the Mathurā country whose politics fill the early books of the Harivaṃśa.

This is the setting of the Kṛṣṇa story: a clan republic rather than a kingdom, ruled by an assembly of elders, harried by Jarāsandha of Magadha, and finally removed westward to Dvārakā on the Saurashtra coast. The tradition ends the lineage in self-destruction, the clans killing one another in a drunken quarrel after the Mahābhārata war.

Afterlife of the name

Yādava became one of the most durable claims of descent in Indian dynastic history. Ruling houses as far apart in time and place as the Seuna Yādavas of Devagiri in the Deccan and several Rajput and southern lines asserted it. Such claims are statements of legitimacy made at the moment of writing, and they do not establish continuity with any Vedic people.