Mulakas were a small tribe, very closely related with the Asmakas. They were perhaps situated to the south of Avanti, and according to Bhattasvami, the commentator of Kautilya`s Arthasashtra, their country was identical with Maharashtra. It has been stated that the Assakas and Mulakas occupied the regions on the banks of the Godavari. It has been stated that the capital city of the Mulakas were Paithan on the north bank of the Godavari River in the Aurangabad district of the Nizam`s dominions. While some scholars were of opinion that the Mulakas occupied the same tract of country as that of the Asmakas, and that the two tribes were identical.
In the Vayu Purana, both Asmakas and Mulakas are no doubt stated to be scions of the Iksvaku family and if one is to believe the Pauranic tradition as contained in the Garuda Purana, Mulaka, the originator of the Mulaka tribe, was the son of King Asmaka, a descendant of Bhagiratha. The Asmakas and the Mulakas were thus intimately related, but that the two tribes were different and lived in separate regions is revealed not only by the Brahmanical sources of the epics and Puranas, but by Buddhist sources as well.
In early Pali literature, Assaka is distinguished on the one hand from Mulaka in the north and on the other from Kalinga in the east. At the same time history states that in later times Mulaka came to be included in Assaka. In the historical period, Asmaka and Mulaka were no longer connected with Ayodhya. But as late as the second quarter of the second century A.D., the Mulakas were distinguished from the Asmakas.
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