ParIxit

Source: TW

Sankhayana Srautasutra of the Rig Veda recalls the reign of king Parikshit … as the golden age of middle-late Vedic times. It recalls many performances of Ashvamedha by the Kuru kings from his illustrious lineage.

In my view, this likely refers to parikSit-1, the son or grandson of Kuru himself, not parikSit-2, the son of abhimanyu. The reference to a happy couple enjoying their life under parikSit occurs for the first time in atharva-saMhitA, which I see as chronologically/textually overlapping with the 10th maNDala of the Rgveda-saMhitA (which refers to shAntanu, a pre-Mbh kaurava).

In the case of Parikshit 1 his son’s name was also Janamejaya…. Actually there were 3 Janamejaya in the whole Kuru lineage as per Pargiter

Also, as a further point, the AV mentions one pratIpa-prAtisutvana, whereas the Mbh recalls pratIpa, the father of shAntanu, as the son of one pratishravas (a variant of pratisutvan?). This shows that the saMhitA/mantrabhAgas of AV and RV-maNDala-10 were seen/revealed in the period between Kuru and shAntanu, ending shortly before the main plot of the Mbh began to unfold.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that there may be no references to janamejaya-3 (janamejaya, grandson of abhimanyu). In my view, there is a possible (though not yet incontrovertible) reference to janamejaya-3 in the shatapatha-brAhmaNa, where he performs a yaj~na without kAshyapas (vikashyapa) and a section of the kAshyapas get the better of janamejaya–one may connect this with the story that it was a kAshyapa who deferred to takSaka and did not go to parikSit-2 to help him recover from takSaka’s bite.