Ancient India in a New Light

PART ONE

The Challenge of India's Traditional Chronology

1

The chronology of ancient India, as determined by modern historians, diverges completely from the chronology framed by India herself for her own antiquity. The complete divergence applies not only to very remote occurrences like the Bhārata War: it applies also to comparatively late ones like the rule of the Imperial Guptas. Could India be utterly at fault about historical time? Surely, here is an issue of capital importance - and. as if to rivet our attention on it, it becomes crucial apropos of the very point that brought modern historians their moment of "Eureka!"

The Problem of the Two Chandraguptas

Modern historians were convinced of a systematic start in their studies when the Frenchman de Guignes and the Englishman Sir William Jones¹ independently proposed a known historical original for the Indian king whose name had been mentioned in a Greek form by foreign writers on India soon after the invasion of the Punjāb by Alexander the Great in 326 B.C. Outstanding among these writers was Megasthenes, the ambassador sent to India in c. 302 B.C. by Seleucus Nicator, the chief successor of Alexander in the East. He came to the court of the king whom the Greeks called Sandrocottus and whose capital they designated Palibothra in the country of the Prasii.

The Prasii have been recognised as the Prāchya (Easterners), Palibothra as Pātaliputra and the eastern kingdom whose capital was Palibothra as Magadha. Sandrocottus has been identified with the Maurya adventurer Chandragupta who. like him, founded a dynasty in Magadha. Since Sandrocottus is reported to have not been a king when as an ambitious youth he first met Alexander and-to have already mounted the throne when in c. 305 B.C. Seleucus crossed the Indus to invade India but was pushed back by Sandrocottus, Chandragupta Maurya's accession to the Magadhan

1. Asiatic Researches, IV. p. 11.

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kingship has been considered solidly fixed between 326 and 305 B.C. This kingship has to be distinguished from a monarchical status won in the Indus-region in relation to a conflict with the foreign governors left behind by Alexander. Interpreting, on the one hand, the Greek background for it and, on the other, the Buddhist tradition, modern historians, by and large, favour 321 B.C.¹ Here, or close to it, is a point of certainty for them and all Indian chronology has been computed backwards and forwards from it.

The founder of the Mauryas, however, is not the only Chandragupta known to history as a Magadhan emperor and the founder of a dynasty. There is also the first of the Imperial Guptas, Chandragupta I. Modern historians put him over 600 years after Sandrocottus and set forth many reasons for the identification of the latter with Chandragupta Maurya. These are claimed to be supported most impressively by several lines of evidence converging to place Chandragupta Maurya's grandson Aśoka around the middle of the 3rd century B.C. But the ancient Indian chronology, based on the dynastic sections of the Purānas and other indigenous testimonies and traditions, runs counter to this historical vision. It leads us to identify the alternative Chandragupta as Sandrocottus.

The Traditional-Purānic Chronology of India

Perhaps the best approach to India's own account is through the Aihole Inscription² of King Pulakeśin II, the successful opposer of the southward push of King Harsha who is mentioned by the Chinese scholar Hiuen Tsang as his patron during his travels in India in 630-643 A.D. Pulakeśin has a double mode of dating his inscription. He specifies "the Śaka Era Year 556". Counted from the well-known Śaka Era of 78 A.D., this year brings us to (78+556=) 634 A.D., which falls within the period indicated by Hiuen Tsang for his association with Harsha. The second mode of dating is: "3736 years after the Kaliyuga." Going backwards by 3736 years from 634 A.D., we arrive at (3736-634=) 3102 B.C.

1.Cf. "Chandragupta, the Founder of the Maurya Empire" by F.W. Thomas. The Cambridge History of India, edited by E. J. Rapson (1922), I, pp. 471,473. See also the choice on p. 698 ("Chronology"), and Rc-mila Thapar, A History of India (A Pelican Original, Harmondsworth, 1966), I, p. 90.

2.Epigraphia Indica, VI, pp. 11, 12.

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This Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. - held to be the last Age in a series of Four Ages or Yugas - is a major reference-point in the traditional-Purānic chronology. Another such point is the Bhārata War. And the Aihole Inscription carries, along with its reference to the Kaliyuga, the words: "and after the Bhārata War." Evidently, Pulakeśin links the Bhārata War intimately with the Kaliyuga and understands it to have become a closed chapter at that point of time. But to consider him as openly coinciding the year of the one with that of the other would be rather unrealistic. For, by 634 A.D. the national poem, the Mahābhārata, about the war had already reached its final form and was part of the Indian consciousness and we cannot expect anybody who associated the Kaliyuga with 3102 B.C. to forget that by this date Yudhishthira, the eldest of the war's victorious Pāndava brothers, had been king of Hastināpura for a number of years and that the actual fighting against the Kauravas had ended before his accession. However, the epic does link the Kaliyuga and the Bhārata War intimately in three ways.

The Kaliyuga is marked by (1) the death of Krishna, about whom A. D. Pusalker¹ writes: "It was mainly and solely due to the important part played by Krsna in the great war that the Pāndavas emerged victorious"; (2) the abdication of the throne of Hastina-pura by Yudhishthira as the result of Krishna's death; (3) the grief-stricken departure of all the Pāndava brothers on a great northward pilgrimage after Yudhishthira's installation of his grand-nephew Parīkshit in his own place - Parīkshit who was born in the year of the Bhārata War.

These three events are the last of the occurrences connected with the Pāndavas who came out victors in the war. Understanding the inscription's words - "after the Bhārata War" - in a broad rather than a literal sense, we may take the war to have ended with these three events. All personages in the winning camp died or disappeared from the scene of the war and its aftermath. Thus the curtain may be said to have rung down on the whole sanguinary drama.through its epilogue. Whatever was directly linked with it came to a close in 3102 B.C.

J. B. Fleet interprets the inscription's allusion to the war in essentially the way we have suggested, except that he omits

1.Studies in the Epics and Purānas of India, p. 73.

2.The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1911, pp. 677-79.

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Krishna's death because he does not date it to the same year as Yudhishthira's abdication (leading to Parīkshit's enthronement) and the great northward pilgrimage of all the Pāndava brothers -two happenings which to him are the "final occurrence in the story of the Pāndavas and the Kurus" in relation to the Bhārata War.

Fleet adds that most probably the astronomer Aryabhata had in mind the same occurrence when he mentioned Bhārata Thursday as the last day of the Age which preceded the "Fourth Yuga" (=the Kali). Fleet quotes Aryabhata's commentator Paramesvara as explicitly connecting Āryabhata's words to this occurrence.

Regarded along Fleet's lines, though without his omission of Krishna's death, the Aihole Inscription does not differ from the Purānas and the Mahābhārata.

The traditional-Purānic chronology draws from the Epic the number of years by which the Kaliyuga was later than the Pāndava-Kaurava clash. E. J. Rapson¹ tells us: "According to the epic, as usually interpreted, [Parīkshit] was appointed king of Hastinapura more than thirty-six years after the great war between the Kurus and Pandus." Since the Bhārata War lasted only 18 days, its date can be computed, in keeping with the required condition, as (3102+36=) 3138 B.C. in the scheme of the traditional-Purānic chronology.

Bearing this year in mind, we have to note two characteristics of the Purānas' calculations. First, the calculations pertain centrally to the kings of Magadha. Second, they repeatedly hark back from one or another Magadhan dynasty to the birth of Parīkshit in the year of the war. Apropos of these characteristics, we have to overlook the prejudices arising from an ultra-analytical view of the Purānas. Admittedly, our documents exist in a somewhat corrupt state. Scholars have dwelt on the different time-lengths for the same dynasty and often a diversity of king-names in it as well as a variety of names for the same king. Again, they have argued that some dynasties are wrongly arranged. Researchers like S. N. Pradhan and H.C. Raychaudhuri have sorted out what they consider to be mistakes in naming dynasties and placing kings. Others have insisted that a couple of dynasties rated as Magadhan were not really so. But all this is irrelevant to our purpose and should not come in the way of grasping rightly the thrust of the Purānas in

1. "The Purānas", The Cambridge History of India. I. p. 306. C'f. the Mahābhārata, Mausala Parva. 1.1.

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the chronological direction. Through whatever corruption of text and miscomprehension of history and even deliberate-seeming distortion we must mark how they carry the dynasties of Magadha across huge stretches of time by mentioning certain intervals.

Where the values of these intervals happen to vary we must choose the one which agrees best with the general drive of the chronology as manifested elsewhere in the Purānas or helps most to reach what appears to be the last Magadhan dynasty on their list. Thus an interval running back to the birth of Parīkshit from the coronation of Mahapādma, also called Mahānanda (founder of the Nanda dynasty of Magadha just preceding the Mauryas) is given differently in different Purānas. F. E. Pargiter¹, in his famous pioneer study, lists the variants as 1015, 1050, 1500 years. Indian scholars too are aware of several readings. Anand Swarup Gupta, editor of the 6-monthly periodical Purāna published from Vāranāsi, informs us of the figures 1015, 1115, 1500.² He also guides us towards reading the real Purānic intention among the discrepant numbers. He³ says that 1500 years have to be chosen because they tally with the total of the durations which most Purānas ascribe to the dynasties of Magadha from the Bhārata War to Mahapādma's coronation: 1000 years (Barhadrathas) + 138 (Pradyotas) + 362 (Śiśunāgas). P. V. Kane,⁴ author of the classic History of Dharmaśāstra, though "holding as most modern scholars do that the Nandas flourished in the 4th century B.C.", reached the same conclusion earlier on reviewing the various Purānic texts.

The next interval the Purānas give is - to quote the Matsya Purāna (271.39) - from the Pulomas-Āndhras,⁵ known to modern historians as the Satavahana dynasty, back to Mahapādma. This interval is of 836 years. In the succeeding verse an interval equal to

1.The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age (London, 1913), p. 58, line 5 and fn. 21.

2."The Problem of Interpretation of the Purānas". Purāna (Vārānasi), January 1964, pp. 67-8.

3.Ibid., p. 68.

4.History of Dharmasāstra (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, 1946), Vol. Ill, pp. 899-900.

5.Strictly speaking, the first part of the expression employed - paulomastu tathāndhrastu - means "the offspring of Puloma". Perhaps a Puloma founded the family and perhaps that is why there were a number of Pulomas in the Āndhra dynasty.

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1500+836 is said to be there from the Āndhras back to Parīkshit. But the Sanskrit expression is at first glance somewhat ambiguous: āndhr-āntād a-Parīkshitah. We may be tempted to construe it: "from the Āndhra-end to Parīkshit." A look at the preceding verse tells us of Mahapādma as he is found in the phrase that puts 1500 years between his coronation and Parīkshit. We pick up where we left off there. The natural sense is that 836 years cover the period from the start of the Nanda dynasty to that of the Āndhras. And a confirmation of it comes on our observing a peculiarity of verbal construction in the Purānas' dealings with "intervals". Thus we have the phrase: Mahapādmāntare,' connoting conventionally "at an interval of Mahapādma", which is meaningless, for Mahapādma marks in the sentence concerned one extreme of an interval. In Sanskrit grammar a bahuvrīhi, an adjectival compound, is permitted as a replacement of an apparently regular genitive (shashthitat-purusha). A bahuvrīhi here would give the connotation: "at an interval to Mahapādma." Similarly the expression mahānand-ābhishek-āntam² cannot signify "to the end of Mahānanda's coronation". To save it from being nonsense it must mean "to Mahānanda's coronation at the end" -literally "to (the time) Mahānanda's-coronation-ended". Our andhr-āntād is most consistently understood as an adjectival compound signifying "from (the time) Āndhra-ended" - that is, from the time with the Āndhras at its end.

Hence the traditional-Purānic chronology brings the commencement of the Āndhras to the period reached when we deduct 1500+836 years from 3138 B.C. We are brought down to (3138-2336=) 802 B.C.

What about the close of the Āndhras? As D.C. Sircar' notes, the Purānas record for the full run of them several time-lengths: 300, 411, 412, 456 and 460 years. Which of them shall we choose?

Side by side with the "intervals" the Purānas have another mode of computation: what is termed the cycle of the Sapta Rishi, the Seven Rishis, the stars of the constellation Great Bear. The Seven Rishis are supposed to make a cycle of 2700 years by a stay of 100

1.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 58.

2.Ibid.

3."The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", The Age of Imperial Unity, edited by R.C. Majumdar and A. D. Pusalker (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1951), fn. continued to p. 196 from p. 195.

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years in each of the 27 Nakshatras or lunar asterisms of the ecliptic. 75 years before the Kaliyuga - that is to say, in (3102+75 = ) 3177 B.C. - they are held to have entered for. a century's stay the asterism Maghā. The Vayu Purāna (90.423), as well as the Brahmānda (11.24.234), says that the Seven Rishis who were in Maghā at the time of Parīkshit will be in the 24th century in a part of the Āndhras (āndhrāmse). Another version of the same sloka uses the word āndhrānte and appears to put in that century the end of the Āndhras. But this word can surely be a bahuvrthi and the whole phrase, with the word construed like the earlier andhr-āntād as an adjectival compound, can read: "the 24th century having at its end the Āndhras." All this means that when 2400 years passed after 3177 B.C. - the beginning of the Maghā-century in which the time of Parīkshit (3138 B.C.) had fallen - the Āndhra dynasty has already started. So we come down to a little before (3177—2400=) 777 B.C. for its commencement, a result not inconsistent with our previously found 802 B.C., since "a little before" easily allows a span of 25 years.

The Brahmānda (III.74.230) again says that the asterism whose guardians are the Pitris (Ancestors) - namely. Maghā - and which was associated with the time of Pfrikshit follows once more after the 27th century, "amongst the very Āndhras" (āndhrānantu). A variant both here and elsewhere - e.g., the Matsya¹ - of āndhrānantu is āndhrān-ānte, a Prakritism for āndhrāndmānte, which can be translated either as "at the end of the Āndhras" or as "in the end..." The second rendering would be in keeping with the substance of the other form of the Brahmānda verse. And both the forms, putting the 27th century in the terminal portion of the Āndhras, balance the verses which put the 24th century in the initial portion.

What we can gather about the closing part of the Āndhra line is: it extended from the completion of the Sapta Rishi's 27th century down to some point during the returning Maghā-century. In other words, the Āndhras closed somewhere in the 100 years after 27 centuries had elapsed from 3177 B.C. Their termination lies between (3177-2700=) 477 B.C. and (477-100=) 377 B.C.

D. R. Mankad² offers a possible interpretation of the Viiyu's and Brahmānda's reference to the number 24, which would apply

1.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 59.

2.Purānic Chronology (Anand. 1951), p. 293.

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it to the return of the Maghā century in the end of the Āndhras. These Purānas, with their collocation andhrdrhse sachaturvirhse, would then read: "in the 24th part of the Āndhras" or "in a part of the 24th Āndhra." So, after the return of the Maghā-century in 477 B.C., there would be some years or at least one year of the 24th Āndhra's reign plus the total of the reigns of the remaining Āndhras. The Āndhra line consisted, according to most Purānas,' of 30 kings. Thus there would be 6 remaining members. All the last 7 Āndhras' reigns sum up in the Purānas² to (28+7+3+29+6+10+7=) 90 years. Hence the end of the dynasty must come a little before (477-90=) 387 B.C. The exact date would depend on how many years of the 24th Āndhra had passed before the Maghā-century returned. In this way we reach a reckoning more precise than the one which left us with a century to range in. Now it is only the 24th Āndhra's 28 years to make the uncertainty. That is to say, the dynasty must have finished between (28+387=) 415 and 387 B.C.

Thus we have both a broad and a narrow time-bracket with which to match the consequences of accepting as the true duration one or another of the five time-spans given by the Purānas for the whole Āndhra line: 300, 411, 412 , 456, 460 years. Out of these alternatives, 411 and 412 alone bring us from 802 to a point not only between the two ends 477 and 377 B.C. of the repeating Maghā but also within the more particular range from 415 to 387 B.C. derived from Mankad. So we may consider the Āndhras Purānically to have ended in either (802-411=) 391 B.C. or (802-412=) 390 B.C. For the sake of convenience we may choose the latter round number.

This conclusion would not be affected if we were to correct some of the Purānic reign-lengths in the light of the inscriptions and coins modern research has found. The slightly changed figures would run: 29+7+7+29+6+10+8=96 years.³ 96 years backwards from 390 B.C., would take us to 486 B.C. as the beginning of the 24th Āndhra's reign. With 29 years for the length of this reign, we reach 457 B.C. as its end and so cover 477 B.C., which completes the Seven Rishis' 27th century declared by the Purānas to close within the period of the 24th Āndhra.

1.Pargiter, op. cit., pp. 36, 72.

2.Ibid., pp. 71-2.

3.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 204-06.

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With the passing of the Āndhras the Purānas do not fall silent but stop their detailed dealings with dynasties - the roll of king-names, individual reign-lengths, whole durations. After them the next great dynasty known in history is that of the Imperial Guptas. The Purānas¹ mention it thus: "(Kings) of the Gupta race will, enjoy these territories: namely, along the Ganges, Prayaga, Sake-ta and the Magadhas." As more than one Gupta is involved and as we know for certain that at least in the time of the second in the line - Samudragupta - the empire was much wider than indicated here, the writer must have used the plural number not because more than one king was known to him but because of the impressively firm establishment of the kingdom by the first Gupta so as to ensure dynastic succession. Again, nothing outside what may be termed the central seat of the Gupta empire, which seemed bound to be hereditary, was within the knowledge of the Purānas when the phrase we have quoted was penned. Hence this part of the account must have closed at the very outset of the new dynasty. Such is the suggestion also from the fact that we have not even the length of the first king's reign nor for him anything beyond his family-designation which alone appeared to be important at the moment for a collective pointer - although it is very likely that at a later date a passage was added and a Gupta conqueror figured there in disguise as "Visvasphani". What is striking in the phrase on the Gupta-kings is that they are collectively linked with "the Magadhas", like all the 8 other dynasties set forth in their particulars in regular sequence: Bārhadratha, Pradyota, Śiśunāga, Nan-da, Maurya, Śunga, Kānva, Āndhra. No other post-Āndhra line is thus linked by the Purānas. And what is notable about Visvasphani who is called "magnificent" and "mighty" and described as "overthrowing all kings" is the expression: "Of the Magadhas the king will be very valiant Visvasphani."² However, the Purānas supply no direct chronological matter about the Guptas, except that there is some lapse of time between them and the Āndhras.

How is the lapse to be measured with the help of the Purānas themselves? We may get the post-Āndhra situation into proper focus in a general manner by means of some observations of Pargiter's.³ He tells us: "The dynastic portion shows two stages of

1.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 73.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid., p. xii.

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termination. The earlier of these stages is the period following the downfall of the Āndhras and the local kingdoms that survived them a while. The Matsya account ends here with the mere mention of the Kilakila kings and no MS of the Matsya contains anything later.... The Vāyu. Brahmānda, Visnu and Bhagavata all carry the narrative on to the rise of the Guptas, which is the later stage." But we must add that within the first stage there are two steps; for the Kilakilas stand apart from the other local kingdoms. About the latter Pargiter¹ has said: "These local dynasties are all classed together as more or less contemporaneous." And about them in relation to the former we read:² "When they are overthrown by Time there will be Kilakila kings." So we have two problems to settle: "How long did the several contemporaneous kingdoms continue after the Āndhras? How much before the Imperial Guptas did the Kilakilas flourish?"

In Pargiter's list, the durations of the contemporaneous kingdoms range from the 52 years of the Sriparvatlya Āndhrabhrityas to the 200 of the Murundas. If we take the 200 as the limit, we may wonder how the Matsya, compiling its account two whole centuries after the Āndhras, could yet omit the various dynasties which the Vayu, Brahmānda, Vishnu and Bhagavata bring in. The Guptas themselves would surely find an entry. Definitely, the 200 years as a post-Āndhra period must be ruled out: much of them must be thought of as falling within the period of the Āndhras. In general we may assert that in view of the dynasties excluded by the Matsya the larger the number of years of the included kingdoms the less probable it is for the space of time from the downfall of the Āndhras to the advent of the Kilakilas. But can we accept even the 52 years of the Śīriparvaīya Āndhrabhrityas as wholly post-Āndhra? If the Murundas must be commenced before the Āndhras fell, there is no reason why any of the dynasties concerned should be exempted. And Pargiter' himself, who dates the end of the Āndhras to c. 236 A.D.,⁴ considers the Matsya account closed at about the middle of the third century. The date he⁵ calculates to be most likely is 260 A.D., though he thinks even a

1.Ibid., p. 44.

2.Ibid., p. 72.

3.Ibid., p. xii.

4.The usual year with historians today is 225 or 227 A.D.

5.Op. cit., p. xxv.

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little earlier one not impossible. Thus he is prepared to grant all the kingdoms no more than 24 years at most after the passing of the Āndhras. What would be our own reckoning on the basis of the Purānas, with 390 B.C. for the Āndhras' termination?

The impression which the chronological statements on the Sapta Rishi strongly convey is that the Matsya-stage lies within the Maghā-century. This century not only includes the Āndhras' termination but also extends beyond it: the Matsya-pundits stand after the Āndhras and still within this century: so this century allows them to refer to what is'post-Āndhra. There is no need to be post-Maghā in order to make a post-Āndhra reference. By being within the Maghā's 100 years the chronological statements on the Sapta Rishi can qualify to cover the Matsya-stage.

If we ask how it is that no dynasty after the Āndhras is mentioned by these statements, the explanation is the same as for the different way the Matsya treats post-Āndhra history: the lack of importance in the pundits' eyes. Importance was judged by a single double-aspected criterion: "Did a dynasty rule in Magadha and did it run its whole length as a Magadha-ruler?" This criterion held not only for the Matsya-stage but also for the stage of the Vayu, Brahmānda, Vishnu and Bhāgavata. As Pargiter¹ has noted, these Purānas made no addition either to the account of the intervals and the Seven Rishis' cycle or to the number and years of the local dynasts after the kings named in the Matsya had been "overthrown by Time". They did not care to add anything here. There is thus no cause for us to doubt that the Matsya-stage was comprised by the Maghā-century.

This stage must be later than at least 390 B.C. and earlier than 377 B.C. In the intervening years, therefore, we have the overthrow of the local dynasts and the coming of the Kilakilas.

What is the distance of the Kilakilas in time from the Guptas? The stage represented by the Purānas other than the Matsya confronts us at once with two assertions. One begins:² "Then after the Kilakilas Vindhyaśakti will reign" - and continues with what in a literal translation of the version adopted by Pargiter would read:³ "he having known 96 years will enter upon the earth." The other,⁴ after designating the Kilakilas as Yavanas, makes out Vindhyaśakti

1. Ibid., pp . xv, xxvi,

2. Ibid. , p. 72.

3. Ibid., fn 21.

4. Ibid., fns. 19, 20.

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to be himself a Kilakila. This assertion is in the "Vishnu Purāna (XX111) and. with a reference to the contemporaneous local dynasties after the Āndhras. it says:¹ "When they are destroyed, the Kilakila Yavanas will be kings; the chief of them will be Vindhyaśakti..."¹ By assimilating Vindhyaśakti to the Kilakilas it practically removes the problem of a separate chronology for them preceding his reign. We are left only with those 96 years of his to explain. Sircar' says that the Vayu Purāna gives him a reign of this length and he¹ later remarks: "The Purānic statement that he ruled for 96 years seems to be a mistake, or probably refers not to his reign-period but to the period covered by his long life." Pargiter⁵ has actually suggested, on a study of the words used,-that the sentence can be construed: "After having known the earth for 96 years he will come to an end." So we have to find how long he reigned, starting from some year between 390 and 377 B.C.

In looking for an answer we have to take into account another statement of the Purānas:'¹ "Vindhyaśakti's valiant son, named Pravīra, will enjoy the city Kāncanakā 60 years. His 4'sons will be kings." Evidently, Pravīra too had a long life and surely the Purānas imply that he and his father comprised between them a rather lengthy span. However, if the son could reign for 60 years, the father could not have reigned right till his 96th year: he must have abdicated in his son's favour after a reign of a fair yet not great length. The extent of the two reigns together we may reasonably guess from observing (1) that in contrast to Vindhyaśakti and Pravīra the hitter's sons are given no regnal years and (2) that all of them, instead of the oldest one alone, are said to have reigned. This means that for the Purānas none of them reigned in succession to Pravīra - that is, beyond the hitter's own reign-span - and all of them ruled as petty kings (viceroys) in

1.The Vishnu Purāna: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, translated by 11.11. Wilson (London. 1840). p. 477.

2.The Kilakilas are still unidentified. The word "Yavana", which our historians love to equate mostly with "Greek", cannot here signify this, for Vindhyaśakti, their principal member, is familiar to students of history as "a Brahmana belonging to the Vishnuvriddha gotra" and as "the founder of the Vakataka dynasty" (Sircar, "The Dcccan after Ihe Sātavāhanas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 219).

3."The Deccan after the Sātavāhanas", p. 217.

4.Ibid., p. 219.

5.Op. cit., p. 72, fn. 21.

6.Ibid., p. 73.

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different parts of their father's dominion at the same time. It is obvious that Pravīra outlived them. Therefore his father's reign and his own stretched jointly over 3 generations. If, with Sircar,¹ "we count, as is usual, 25 years to a generation", we get 75 years for the combined reigns of Vindhyaśakti and Pravīra. With the son having 60, the father cannot have more than 15. And we come down from some point within 390-377 B.C. to somewhere in the time starting (390-75=) 315 and finishing (377-75 = ) 302 B.C.

Now we have to inquire: "How do the Purānas' Guptas stand in relation to the 75 years concerned? Do they rise within them or after?" The very next sentence to the one about Pravīra and his 4 sons supplies us with the solution. It^: runs: "When the family of the Vindhyakas has passed away, there will be 3 Bāhlika kings." Clearly, the Purānas, referring to the end of the dominion of Vindhyaśakti's family over certain parts, have started counting a period immediately after Pravīra and his sons. It is to this period that, like the 3 Bāhlika kings and several other individuals or groups, the "(Kings) born of the Gupta race" belong. Since there is no sign of any time-steps here, the groups must be taken to be contemporaneous and as commencing in some year within 315-302 B.C. The founder of the Imperial Guptas must be dated to such a year.

As Chandragupta I of Pātaliputra was this founder and as Sandrocottus became king of Palibothra not earlier than 326 B.C. and not later than 305 B.C., it is axiomatic that Purānically Sandrocottus must be the founder of the Imperial Guptas and cannot be Chandragupta Maurya.

Whatever we may say, by way of criticism, about fixing the Kaliyuga in 3102 B.C., the Bhārata War in 3138 B.C., the coronation of Mahapādma Nanda in 1638 B.C. or, since the Nandas Purānically reigned 100 years, the beginning of the Mauryas in 1538 B.C, we cannot help being struck by the precision with which this chronology leads us to synchronise Chandragupta I with Sandrocottus.

Even without our calculations about the kingdoms and dynasties of the post-Āndhra epoch, the very fact that the Purānas can terminate the Āndhras in 390 B.C. and that a Chandragupta of Pātaliputra arrives on the scene not long after - this very fact is

1.Op. cit.. p. 219.

2.Pargiter, op. cit.. p. 73.

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enough, with Sandrocottus in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C., to make us sit up and take sharp notice of the extraordinary coincidence.

The situation in general, and still more with our calculations endowing it with particular acuteness, raises the question: "Does Megasthenes, who lived at the court of Sandrocottus, support the Purāna-prompted conclusion?" And it is indeed pertinent to ask: "Has he gathered from Indian sources any chronological information which would solve in favour of the Purānas the problem of the two Chandraguptas?"

The Crucial Criticism by Modern Historians

Extremely significant as the testimony of Megasthenes would be, we may yet concede in all fairness that it cannot be taken as absolutely final unless we settle all possible controversy bearing from outside it on the general chronology of the Guptas. Everything else can wait, but this issue is an immediate challenge.

Here the first block in our path is what modern historians consider a radical overall argument invalidating from the start the traditional-Purānic chronology. Before meeting any other buildup in favour of the present dating of the Guptas it is best to clear the ground for ourselves by facing the supposed sledge-hammer blow. If it cannot be countered, all talk on behalf of India's own account of her ancient history will be empty chauvinism. And if it can be countered we shall feel confident in confronting every other argument.

We may gather from Fleet¹ the elements of the fundamental criticism and state its crucial gist as follows:

"Around 400 A.D. astronomers realised the need to have a specified reckoning with a definite initial occasion. They found the required occasion in what a backward computation by them gave as a conjunction in 3102 B.C. of the sun, the moon and the five then-known planets at the first point of the Zodiacal sign Mesha (Aries). The reckoning thus devised was subsequently identified with the Kaliyuga of which the Purānas speak. The identification is first found, though without the actual name, in the astronomer

1. "The Kali-yuga era", The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1911, pp. 476 ff; also Fleet's article "Hindu Chronology" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed), XIII, p. 497.

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Aryabhata in 499 A.D. By then the Purānic pundits must have adjusted India's traditional history to the new date, fixed the time for the Kaliyuga's close companion, the Bhārata War, and constructed a whole long chronology. The acceptance of the new date must have become universal by 634 A.D., for in that year we have the public use of it in the Aihole Inscription dating itself in the Kaliyuga Era side by side with the well-known Śaka Era of 78 A.D. and referring also to the Bhārata War. But, as the former era is not a real historical one, the entire system of dates the Purānic pundits deduced from it and from the Bhārata War for events is arbitrary. All the ages they have assigned to the various dynasties of the past have no historical value."

Is any answer possible on behalf of the Purānic pundits? Yes -and a very devastating one.

The "Reductio Ad Absurdum" of the Modern Time-Scheme

Before launching on the answer we may doubt whether 3102 B.C. was a date new-fangled after about 400 A.D. rather than part of an old tradition. Even in the days of Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to India - c. 302 B.C. - Indian history had rightly or wrongly a hoary antiquity for the Indian mind. Pliny (VI.xxl.4-5), Arrian (Indica I.ix) and Solinus (52.5),¹ reporting Megasthenes, quote the Indians as saying that the line of kings in India - before Alexander and Sandroccottus - went back by more than 6000 years. In such a chronological scheme - very Purānic in temper -the Kaliyuga could easily start in an age fairly remote from the days of Megasthenes and, if the Guptas of Magadha commenced in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C., the Kaliyuga might well be taken by Megasthenes's contemporaneous calculators of the dynasty-lengths to occur in 3102 B.C. So there is a prima facie case for believing that the date favoured by the astronomers existed much earlier than c. 400 A.D.

Of course, this does not necessarily make the date for the Purānic Kaliyuga historically correct. Nor do we need, for the correctness of equating Sandrocottus with the founder of the Guptas, to have all ancient events reoriented chronologically with

1. The Classical Accounts of India, edited with an Introduction, Notes and Comments by R. C. Majumdar (Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, 1960), pp. 340, 223, 487.

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the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. as a reference-point. We may admit several items in the old Indian historical system to be incorrectly dated. Our chief concern, prompted by the linguistic Sandrocottus-Chandragupta identity, is to justify the rejection of the Mauryan equation and show the wrong-headedness of placing the Guptas where modern historians put them.

Paradoxically, we are enabled to do so with the help of the very criticism modern historians make of the alternative time-scheme and regard as crucial. They are hardly aware of an amazing implication of it.

If the old chronology was cooked up some time after 400 A.D. and was already in public use by 634 A.D. then according to the chronology of modern historians the Purānic pundits who did the cooking-up lived face to face with the Guptas whose period by the modern chronology is counted from 320 to 570 A.D. But we have submitted that the Indian time-scheme, the work of those very pundits, must begin the Guptas in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. Hence we have the ridiculous situation that the pundits set contemporaneous kings over 600 years before their own time!

Surely, there is a limit even to the lack of the historical sense we may attribute to Indian chronologists. Critics of the Purānic time-scheme would definitely overshoot the mark by asking us to believe that an Indian living day after day under a particular king could be mad enough to push publicly the same monarch back in history by more than 6 centuries. Here is a reductio ad absurdum of the modern criticism and of the chronology currently accepted.

An Unescapable Predicament

What we have to conclude is clear:

Since the Indian chronology, using the Kaliyuga and closely connecting it with the Bhārata War in a considerably ancient time, was undoubtedly in vogue in the centuries immediately preceding 634 A.D., the date of the Aihole Inscription, the Guptas could never have ruled during those centuries.

If they cannot be placed in this period, they must have started with Chandragupta I in the age of Megasthenes when there flourished as a Magadhan dynasty-founder at Palibothra (Pātaliputra) Sandrocottus, the only Chandragupta of the right associatains

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prior to 320 A.D., the initial point of the Guptas according to she current chronology. And, ipso facto, the Mauryan Chandragupta who at present is dated to c. 321 B.C. must recede into a past sufficiently beyond the post-Alexandrine epoch in India.

Only by the Guptas beginning in that epoch could the Purānic pundits of the period 400-634 A.D. - or of any other period following the age of Megasthenes - be contemporaneous with whatever kings might belong to that period.

Consequently, whether or not we credit the entire corpus of ancient dates calculated by Indian chronology, the commencement which that chronology has to make of the Guptas with Chandragupta I in the period posited for the accession of Sandrocottus in Palibothra - between 326 and 305 B.C. - must be absolutely correct.

All these conclusions must drive our historians into an unescapable predicament.

2

What can we anticipate modern historians to urge with immediate relevance to discredit this conclusion? Two lines of thought are conceivable as first steps. One may bring in the argument that the traditional-Purānic scheme is not the only Indian chronology, an alternative can be alleged in the name of the famous astronomer Varāhamihira. Then we shall have to expose the fallacies inherent in such a contention. This will take us into certain technical details of Indian astronomy as well as into some historical particulars for which we have to prepare the ground earlier. It will be best to begin by imagining our critics as trying to baffle us "factually" if logical opposition seems a forlorn hope. They may claim direct evidence for the present dating of the Guptas' commencement.

The Problem of the Gupta Era: Fleet and Albērūnī

What is today termed the Gupta Era (Sanskrit gupta-kāla) as first fixed by Fleet is indeed remote from our chronology. It takes its start from 320 A.D. as the accession-point of Chandragupta I. But, if we ask the school of Fleet for a definite reason to commence the Imperial Gupta dynasty from 320 A.D., all we hear of direct evidence is: "One can learn from the famous Arab traveller

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and scientist Albērūnī (1031 A.D.) that the Gupta Era started 241 years after the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. The completion of 241 years from 78 A.D. would give us the year 319-320 A.D."

Actually the words of Albērūnī¹ are: "As regards the Gupta-kāla, people say that the Guptas were wicked powerful people, and that when they ceased to exist this date was used as the epoch of an era. It seems that Valabha was the last of them, because the epoch of the Guptas falls, like that of the Valabha Era, 241 years later than the Śaka-kāla." Evidently Albērūnī implies that the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. was initiated when the Gupta dynasty came to an end and it was initiated not in celebration of that dynasty but in relief on liberation from it. Every impartial reader has to admit this, as does Sircar² who is a believer in Fleet's epoch: "According to a late tradition recorded by Albērūnī the Gupta Era (320 A.D.) whose epoch was 241 years later than that of the Śaka Era (78 A.D.) started when the Gupta emperors ceased to exist."

Of course we can try to make out that Albērūnī handed down a capital confusion and say, as Sircar does in continuation: "The legend which is palpably absurd seems to stand on the fact that the word kāla not only indicates an 'era', but also 'death' or 'destruction'." But all this is ingenuity for which neither Albērūnī nor his informants provide the least ground. Their statement is quite natural in their context. The information which Albērūnī transmits about the Śaka-kāla is of the same kind. His words here can serve to render legitimate the very form of his announcement of the Gupta Era. Though there is a peculiarity in them in connection with the legendary king Vikramāditya, which we shall discuss at a later stage of our book, the summing-up³ about 78 A.D. apropos of a Śaka ruler is unequivocal: "Now this date became famous, as people rejoiced in the news of the death of the tyrant, and was used as the epoch of an era, especially by the astronomers."

Mention of the astronomers as support for the communication that the end of the Śaka who had acted the tyrant figured as the beginning of the Śaka Era should exonerate Albērūnī of the charge of muddling matters at this point as well as in regard to the Gupta-kāla. We may quote from three famous astronomers whose works have come down to us and who are often referred to by

1.E. C. Sachau, Albērūnī 's India (London, 1914), II, p. 7.

2."The Vikrama Sarhvat", Vikrama Commemoration Volume, Ujjain, 1948), p. 565. 3. Op. cit., p. 6.

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Albērūnī . Brahmagupta, in his Brahma-Sphuta-Siddhānta (1,26), writes that when the Śakas came to an end 3179 years of the Kaliyuga [of 3102-3101 B.C.] had passed.' The next verse repeats the calculation with a variant expression still closer to Albērūnī , "the end of the Śaka king" (Śākanrpānte). Bhāskara informs us in the Grahaganita chapter of his Siddhānta Siromani (kālamā-nādhyāya, 1.28) that 3179 years of the Kaliyuga finished with a Śaka king's end.² Utpala (also known as Bhattotpala) brings in Vikramāditya like Albērūnī in a peculiar way, but is quite explicit that the era called Śaka begins from the date of the killing of the Śaka kings.³

In itself the view of 78 A.D. which Albērūnī shares with his astronomers is nothing erratic. A persistent Jain tradition⁴ presents the Vikrama Era of 58-57 B.C., as marking the death of the legendary Vikramāditya, though not with rejoicing at his demise, and several inscriptions do the same.⁵ Even apart from Alberunl's astronomers, Satya Shrava" has pointed out from both epigraphy and literature several instances which look upon the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. as signalling the end of the Śakas or of a Śaka king. It is worth looking at the most important items in Shrava's demonstration so that we may see that Albērūnī was not reporting mere fantasy when he gave the Gupta Era no less than the Śaka Era a negative aspect. Among the number of ways the latter is represented Shrava notes: "Śaka-nrpa-kalatīta-samvatsara or the era which marks the expiry of the time of the Śaka king or kings." He cites a long example from Important Inscriptions from the Baroda State, A. S. Gadre, Vol. I, p. 32, of 739 Śaka. A shorter one runs: "Śaka-nrpa-kālātita sathvatsara-sateshu tri (tri) shu daśsotta-reshu."⁷ Shrava adds that this way of naming the era "is used in a majority of copper plates and inscriptions of the Rāshtra-kūtas and Western Chalukyas". He goes on to quote a verse "found at the

1.Trim" kritādīni kelergo-agaika-gunāh sakdnte-abdah.

2.Nandādrindugunāstathā Śaka-nripasyānte kaiervatsarāh.

3.Benares Edition, p. 193.

4.Journal of the University of Nagpur, December 1940, pp. 52-53.

5.Epigraphia Indica, XIX, Appendix, No. 169; XX, Nos. 383 and 455; "Inscriptions of Kathiawad", New Indian Antiquary, June 1940, p. 112; Bhāratiya-Prdchina-Lipi-Mālā, p. 170.

6.Śakas in India (Pranava Prakashan, New Delhi, 1981), pp. 43, 49-50.

7.Epigraphia Indica, Vol. VII, Appendix, Inscriptions of Southern India, p. 2. No. 1.

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end of Lakshanāvalli, a work on logic by Udayana (906 Śaka). The author says that he completed the work when 906 years from the expiry of the Śakas had elapsed. His dating... shows that an era which began at the end of the Śakas was... in vogue in India." Then Shrava reflects on the meaning of the phrase Śaka-nrpa-kālātita-samvatsara: "Some scholars have translated this phrase as 'the expired year of the time of the Śaka kings.' But there are many clear examples, where this interpretation cannot hold good." Illustrations are provided:

"1. The following inscription of 743...year uses the words atīta and again atīteshu:

Śaka-nrpa-kālātīta-samvatsara-śateshu saptasu trichātvarinśa-

dadhikeshu atīteshu vaisdkha-paurnamāsyām.¹

2.Somadeva Suri, a Jain author, writing his Yaśas Tilakacham-pu in Śaka 881, writes in the colophon of this work:

Śaka-nrpa-kālātita-śarhvatsara-sateshvashtasvekasdityadhikeshu gateshu,

i.e., in the year 881 expired of the Śaka-nrpa-kāldtitā era.

3.Again, in an inscription of Śaka 930, the date is expressed as: Śaka-nrpa-kālātitā-samvat sara-śateshu navashu trinśa-dadhikeshu gateshu 930 pravarttamāna saumya-samvatsare.¹

"In numbers 1, 2 and 3, if the first atīta means the expired year, as scholars would like to have it, the following atitīeshu or gateshu will be quite redundant. Therefore the word atīta should be joined with &aka-nrpa-kāla and not samvatsara. It will mean Śaka-nrpa-kālamatitya, i.e., at the expiry of the time of the Śaka kings. The correctness of this interpretation of the above term is supported by Jayaditya in his vdrttika also. According to him, the word atīta here forms a compound with Śaka-nrpa-kāla as under the sutra II.i,24, the words kāntāram and atīta form the compound kāntārātita.^3. This indicates that the name of the era had the same significance behind it as expressed above by so many authors.

"This idea is further supported by so late a work as Mitāksharā (circa 1100 A.D.), a commentary on the law code of Yājhavalkya. Yājnavalkya writes that all grants of a king should have the time specified in them. On the word time or kāla, the Mitdkshard explains (1.320) that it should be done in the following two ways,

1.Ibid., Vol. XXI, p. 144.

2.Ibid.,

3.See also Sarasvati-kanthabharana, III.2,34. (Shrava's footnote)

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i.e., in the form of Śaka-nrpa-atīta and of Sarhvatsara (60 years Jovian cycle). Prof. D.C. Sircar translates this passage as 'the expired year of the Śaka kings and the (regnal) year'.¹ This translation is not warranted by the words of Mitāksharā. The words can only convey the meaning 'at the expiry of the Śaka king or kings.' Dr. Sircar seems to have translated it according to the general impression."

To Shrava² it is evident from the agreement among a number of ancient authorities that the current Śaka Era did not start, as generally believed, with the advent of the Śaka satraps - in pseudo-Sanskrit "Kshatrapas" - of Western India. It is also beyond doubt³ for him that there were more than one Śaka Era: he thinks of two - the era of 78 A.D. starting "at the extermination of Śaka kings in India" and the other "a still earlier and the actual Śaka era, which was so named because it was used by the Śaka rulers of Western India". At the moment we are not concerned with his exact position as to the earlier era. We shall later touch on the subject here and there as well as finally come to grips with the issue of Śaka-extermination in 78 A.D. Now that we have seen, by analogy from the evidence of a Śaka Era held to begin at the termination of a king or kings, that Albērūnī 's Gupta Era need not be "palpably absurd" we may tackle whatever difficulties may be set in our way on the strength of the current outlook on the Śaka Era.

We shall gather our data from R. C. Majumdar. He⁴ says that the Śaka Era "is not associated with the Śakas for the first five hundred years or more when it is simply called Varsha" and that "the name of the Śaka king" who is supposed to have "founded the era never occurs". About its origin, Majumdar⁵ mentions the modern consensus: "it was either founded by a Scythian ruler to commemorate his accession, or arose out of the continual reckoning of the regnal years by his successors. The identity of the Scythian king is, however, a matter of dispute." Majumdar's summing-up" on this era as well as on the earlier "Vikrama" of

1.Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Lahore Session, p. 53.

2.Op. cit., p. 52.

3.Ibid., p. 54.

4."The Vikrama Sarhvat and Śakabda", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 157.

5.Ibid., p. 158.

6.Ibid., p. 154.

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58-57 B.C. is: "The origin of both these eras is shrouded in mystery."

We may deepen the mystery in two ways. First, there is Majum-dar's assertion after noting the dispute over the Scythian king's identity: "As the era was used from the very beginning by the Śaka satraps of Western India, there can be little doubt that it commemorates the reign of their Śaka overlord. If it can be proved on independent evidence that Kanishka flourished about 78 A.D., he can certainly be regarded as this overlord and founder of the era, a view that is now widely accepted. But, unfortunately,...there is a great diversity of opinion regarding his date, and none of the views command general acceptance. The question must therefore be left open until we have a more definite idea of the chronology of the Scythian rulers." If this chronology is uncertain and if we do not yet know who the overlord of the Śaka satraps of Western India was, what grounds do we have to date these satraps from 78 A.D. onwards? Are they connected with any persons or events that we must situate in the post-78 A.D. period?

They had two branches - the Kshaharāta and the Kārdamaka:¹ the former was uprooted by Gautamfputra Satakarni, the Satāvāhana king;² the latter met its end at the hands of Chandragupta II,³ the third of the Imperial Guptas who were the next great dynasty in India after the Sātavāhanas. A powerful member of the Kardāmakas - Rudradāman I - was also in contact with the Sātavāhanas: he defeated a Satakarni.⁴ Apart from the Sātavāhanas and the Guptas we know of nothing to place the Kshaharātas and the Kārdamakas where at present they are dated. If, following the traditional-Purānic chronology and Alberunl's indication, we shift the beginning of the Guptas to 315 B.C., we have no reason to hold that the two Śaka houses observed the era of 78 A.D. and that their overlord was Kanishka, as most historians believe.

The second deepening of the mystery comes from the fact that Kanishka cannot be the Scythian king who is considered their overlord, for Kanishka is known as a Kushāna, not a Śaka, and it is the Śakas who are Scythians. Sircar⁵ says: "...the literary and epigraphic texts of ancient India often mention the Śakas

1. Ibid., pp. 179, 182.

2. Ibid., pp. 182, 201.

3.The Classical Age, p. 19.

4.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 83.

5."The Śakas and the Pahlavas", ibid., p. 120.

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(Scythians)..." The Kushānas, as again Sircar¹ writes, "were a branch of the famous Yuechi tribe whose early history is noticed in several Chinese historical works" and who "originally dwelt...in Chinese Turkestan, in the province of Kan-su, according to some scholars." When, under the pressure "of a neighbouring tribe called the Hiung-nu", they migrated westward, in the course of their march they met, defeated and dispersed, as Chinese sources narrate, "the Sae, Sai or Sek (Śaka) dwelling in the plains on the northern bank...of the Jaxartes..."² We must be careful to avoid mixing up the two tribes. "It is now generally accepted," Richard N. Frye' tells us, "that we are not to identify the Yue-chih with the Śakas", and India was quite aware of the difference as we know from the name given to the Kushānas in its literature. Sircar⁴ notes the reference by the Kāshmiri historian Kalhana's Rājatarahgini (I, 168-73) to "three kings of the Turuskha race", one of whom is Kanishka. Sircar's comment⁵ is: "The reference to the Kushāna family as of Turushka or Turkish origin in the Kashmir chronicle is supported by a tradition recorded by Albērūnī [II, pp. 10-11]. According to this tradition the Hindus had kings residing in Kabul, who were said to be Turks of Tibetan origin.... Albērūnī was told that the pedigree of this royal family, written in silk, existed in the fortress of Nagarkot (Kot Kangra in the Punjāb) and that 'one of this series of kings was Kanik, the same who is said to have built the Vihdra (Buddhist monastery) of Purushāwar (Peshāwar). It is called after him Kanik-chaitya.' There is little doubt that Kanik of Albērūnī is the same as the Kushāna king Kanishka who, according to another tradition recorded by the Chinese pilgrims, erected at Purushapura (Peshawar) a great stūpa more than six hundred feet in height.'"¹ A little later Sircar⁷ remarks: "In Indian literature the Kushānas are prcjbably referred to as Tukhara, apparently because they had once settled in the Tukhara country, which

1."The Kushānas", ibid., p. 136.

2.Ibid.

3.The Heritage of Persia (A Mentor Book, The New American Library, New

York, 1963), pp. 197-98.

4.Op. cit., p. 148.

5.Ibid., p. 149.

6.Sircar's footnote: "Fa-hien, Sung-yun and Hiuen Tsang have described the magnificence of this stupa. The relic casket which it contained has been found in situ in course of-excavations. It bears an effigy and inscription of Kanishka."

7.Op. cit., p. 149.

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seems to have originally been a northern district of Bactria." Surely, in India a Turushka or Tukhāra king could hardly have passed as the initiator of a Śaka Era. To consider the Kushāna Kanishka a Scythian monarch responsible for this era is a rather irresponsible venture.

Shrava' has the same thought and buttresses it by another consideration. First he says: "Kanishka was decidedly a Tushara, and the Tusharas and Śakas have been distinguished one from the other by Indian writers from the earliest times." Then he adds "another very conspicuous fact", namely: "All the inscriptions of the Śakas or the Western Kshatrapas use the word varshe for era, while the inscriptions, copper plates, scrolls, etc. of Kanishka and his successors use the word samvatsara for the era. This clear distinction shows at once that the eras used by the rulers of these two dynasties are totally different. This distinction cannot be regarded as provincial only."

Four points have to be caught here in our context - partly against the background of Majumdar's observation² that "after more than three hundred years' rule the line of the Western Satraps came to an end" - a rule whose dates are, in the current opinion voiced by Rapson,¹ "all in the era which starts from the beginning of Kanishka's reign-in 78 A.D." Point 1 is: the era of the Śaka Kshaharātas and Kārdamakas has to be separated from Kanishka. Point 2 focuses the fact that this era running into over three centuries of Śaka sovereignty cannot be the one of 78 A.D. which takes its start with the expiry or extermination of Śaka kingship. Point 3 is the emergence of the question: "Who brought about this expiry or extermination?" Point 4 also brings up a question: "When precisely does the era of the Śaka Kshaharatas and Kardamakas commence?" We are not obliged now to offer answers to Points 3 and 4. Our concern is simply to suggest the legitimacy of the negative Śaka Era reported by Albērūnī and to put beside it his negative Gupta Era as a legitimate possibility.

We may add that even modern historians are aware of beginnings of a similar nature. Most of the Govindapala records of the 12th century A.D. and two inscriptions of Aśokachalla and one of

1.Op. cit.. p. 52.

2."The Expansion and Consolidation of the Empire", The Classical Age. p. 19.

3."The Scythian and Parthian Invaders", The Cambridge History of India, I, p.

585.

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Jayasena - all from Bengal - are dated from the cessation or destruction of a reign.¹ The very gauge-year which Albērūnī² uses -"the year 400 of Yasdajird" - in order to convey by comparison the chronology of the eras enumerated is practically of an era linked to the end of a dynasty. "Yasdajird" was the last king of the Sassa-nian dynasty of Persia and the era that was followed under his name was reckoned from the first of the 9 years during which he had ruled before losing his throne to the Arabs at the battle of Nihavend and terminating his royal line. Neither in the context of general history nor in that of Albērūnī 's report of kālas can a Gupta Era beginning with the expiry of the Imperial Guptas be deemed a freak. Of course, it would be the negative image of the one they themselves followed far earlier.

The naturalness of it can be demonstrated indirectly by proving how under no circumstances could Albērūnī have fitted the Guptas into the modern chronological scheme. Take his dating of the Bhārata War. True, he does not report the traditional-Purānic date: 36 years before the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. He reports the one which we have already referred to as an alternative alleged in the name of Varāhamihira and which had become popular around Albērūnī 's time as we shall see later from Kalhana who lived about a hundred years after him. But, as computed from the gauge-year - "400 of Yasdajird" - it goes back fairly into antiquity. Albērūnī ¹ counts "the year 953 of the Śakakāla" as corresponding to the gauge-year. This means (78+953=) 1031 A.D. An earlier correspondence runs:⁴ "According to both Brahmagupta and Pulisa [two astronomers], of the kaliyuga there have elapsed before our gauge-year 4132 years and between the wars of Bhārata and our gauge-year there have elapsed 3479 years." So the Bhārata War is put in (3479-1031 = ) 2446 B.C. elapsed, while the Kaliyuga is (4132-1031 = ) 3101 B.C. elapsed, which amounts to 3102 B.C. as its starting-point. Albērūnī 's Kaliyuga agrees with the postulate of the Purānic pundits. His epoch of the war falls short of theirs by (3138-2448=) 690 years. But it is most unlikely that with the war still so far away in time as 2448 B.C. he would conceive of the

I Radhagovinda Basak, "Govindapala Records Re-examined", Proceedings of 'he Indian Historical Congress, 3rd Session, Calcutta, 1939, pp. 528-36.

2.Op. cit., pp. 2. 7.

3.Ibid., p. 7.

^4. Ibid., pp. 4-5

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Guptas commencing as late as 320 A.D. Their ending in that year is immeasurably more in harmony with his chronological picture. There is no ground to assume any confusion on the basis of the double significance of the word kāla.

The only item striking one in Albērūnī 's statement as odd and requiring some elucidation is the reference to "Valabha" as the last of the Guptas. On the one hand it enforces the general drift -the Guptas' termination - by its stress on their having a last member before 320 A.D. On the other hand, our knowledge that the rulers of Valabhī came after Albērūnī 's Gupta Era, since Hiuen-Tsang names an early ruler of it as having been 60 years before his time (c. 640 A.D.),¹ sets Albērūnī 's statement in a queer light: it is as if they were ignored by him and our attention obliquely drawn to Valabhī history as if it came prior to 320 A.D. But even here he merely suggests that the last Gupta bore the personal appellation "Valabha": he does not affirm that after 320 A.D. there were no Valabhī kings. Indeed, as we can show, he could never make such an affirmation. Just ahead of the statement on the Guptas he² writes: "The Era of Valabha is called so from Valabha, the ruler of the town of Valabhī, nearly 30 yojanas south of Anhilvara. The epoch of this Era falls 241 years later than the epoch of the Śaka Era.... The history of Valabha is given in its prope'r place..." When we seek out the place³ we get the information which Majumdar,⁴ after giving what "seems to be the most reasonable explanation of the downfall of the Maitraka kings [of Valabhī] proffers: "The general belief, however, is that the Valabhī kingdom was destroyed by the Arabs. This is primarily based on a story recorded by Albērūnī . It is said that a rich citizen of Valabhī had a quarrel with the king and, 'being afraid of his resentment, fled to the Arab ruler of Sindh. He offered the latter presents of money, and asked him to send a naval force against Valabhī. The Arab ruler accordingly made a night attack, killed the king and his people, and destroyed the town.' " Whether right or wrong, this piece of information, bringing in the Arabs, proves the kings of Valabhī continuing for Albērūnī beyond 320 A.D in consonance with our own historical knowledge. But he has no

1.The Classical Age, p. 63.

2.Op. cit., II, p. 7.

3.Ibid., I, p. 192.

4."Northern India during A.D. 650-750", The Classical Age. p. 151.

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mention of the Guptas anywhere else in his book to correct a possible mistake in the passage about the Gupta-kāla. This puts the Valabhī Era on a different footing altogether - with no implication of the kings of Valabhī terminating in 320 A.D. The sole rapport for Albērūnī between "the Era of Valabha" and that of the Guptas' termination was the year common to both, and this common factor misled him to say: "It seems that Valabha was the last of them..." Note the word "seems". It denotes speculation on the basis of the data gathered, a misguided fancy which yet does not prevent Albērūnī from indicating the start of the Valabha Era with "Valabha, the ruler of the town Valabhī".

No legitimate way is open to us to evade Albērūnī 's pronouncement on the Guptas. And it appears to have at least one direct corroboration from outside his book. An era marking the termination of the Guptas is conjured up by a certain epigraphic phrase which has never been satisfactorily explained up till now. The phrase is in the Gōkāk plates of Dejja Mahārāja, published in Epigraphia Indica, XXI, pp. 289 ff.

N. Lakshminarayan Rao who was asked to edit them and offer his comments writes: "The grant registered in the charter was made when 845 years of the Āguptāyika kings had expired. The date is especially noteworthy for we do not know anything of the Āguptāyika kings with whom it is connected. This is the first inscription known to us making mention of these kings. No details about them are, however, recorded in this document except that they belonged to the spiritual lineage of Vardhamana, the 24th Jaina Tirtharhkara. The name of the era started by these personages, namely, the Āguptāyikas or the reckoning to which it belonged are questions which can be decided only by future researches. Palaeographically the document may be ascribed to about the 6th or 7th century of the Christian era. No reckoning is known at present which would give 845 an equivalent in the sixth or seventh century of that era."

Rao, guided by the Jain reference, hazards the guess that the era might be linked with the current Jain dating of Chandragupta Maurya to 313-12 B.C., Chandragupta Maurya whom a late Jain tradition honours as the disciple of the famous patriarch Bhadra-bahu in the last part of his life. Thus Rao gets 532-33 A.D. for the record. "But, considering the palaeography of the record, this date appears to be somewhat too early."

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Along Rao's line, not the first Maurya but a later one named Samprati might come on the scene. "Jain texts," says R. K. Mookerji,¹ "treat Samprati as a patron of Jainism almost in the same light as Buddhist texts treat Aśoka." And, according to Raychaudhuri,² "an era of Samprati, grandson of Aśoka is... mentioned in an ancient Jain MS." If we count onward from his date in the modern time-scheme the palaeographical criterion will be better observed. But, with Chandragupta left behind, we would be hard put to it to explain the word "gupta" in the document.

Even with Chandragupta present, this word would lack full appreciation along Rao's lines. That is one of the arguments broached by D. N. Mookerji who takes up the problem of the plates in The Journal of Indian History, April 1939, pp. 64-68. He submits the interpretation: "...'Āguptāyikanam rājriam' seems to mean in the reckoning of those kings whose names end in 'Gupta'..." So he is convinced that the era has to do with the Imperial Gupta family. He points out that in the Maurya family no one except its founder had the term "Gupta" at the end of his name and therefore the era cannot be linked with Chandragupta Maurya. But the usual Gupta Era of 320 A.D. he finds too late. Remembering that several of the Imperial Guptas bore the title "Vikramāditya" he identifies the Vikrama Samvat of 57 B.C. as the real Gupta Era and obtains (845-57=) 788 A.D. for the grant. In support of his chronology he cites an authority: "Dr. M. H. Krishna of the Mysore University kindly informs me that palaeog-raphically the date of the Gōkāk plate may be about A.D. 700." He also tries to show that Chandragupta I and not Chandragupta Maurya was really associated with Jainism.

Mookerji is justified in dismissing the Mauryas and concentrating on the Imperial Guptas but he is unconvincing in equating the latter's era with the Vikrama Samvat as well as in the attempt to turn these kings into Jains. Even if Chandragupta I be brought into relation with Jainism, how would his dynasty belong to the spiritual lineage of Vardhamana - that is, Mahāvīra? No doubt, the Guptas patronized Jainism no less than Buddhism but they were,

1."Aśoka the Great", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 89.

2.The Political History of Ancient India, 5th Edition (Calcutta University, 1950), p. 376. The author's footnote refers to Vincent Smith's Early History of India, 4th Edition, p. 202 n.

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first and foremost, followers of typically Hindu cults, especially Vaishnavism. If we are to make any sense of the obvious liaison between the era concerned and the Guptas we must separate the Guptas from the kings who are said to be of Mahāvīra's spiritual lineage. These kings are the framers and observers of the era, they are not themselves those whose names mark it: the Guptas. The key to the solution lies in an insight of Mankad's into the nuances of Sanskrit.¹ As against Mookerji's interpretation apropos of "Āguptāyika" - "the reckoning of those kings whose names end in Gupta' " - he substitutes: "the era of the kings who go up to the Guptas." He clarifies this reading to signify: "the era will start from the end of the Guptas." Thus we have kings of Mahāvīra's lineage who commence where the Guptas terminate and whose era is counted from that point of termination. In short, the reckoning is Albērūnī 's "Gupta-kāla".²

If Mankad's reading of the peculiar expression used in Dejja Mahārāja's plates connoted, as it might, an era from the start of the Gupta dynasty, it would tend to be somewhat artificial in a post-Gupta record, whereas if it connoted, as it certainly could, an era from the end of this dynasty, one which goes up to the termination of the Guptas, beginning where the total number of them is complete, it would be in that record a pointed manner of speaking. Adopting the style of Mookerji's translation, we may speak not of names ending in "Gupta" but of ended "Gupta"-names. What then of the palaeographical situation? 845 years added to 320 give us 1165 A.D., a sheer 377 years later than Mookerji's 788 A.D. Is such a difference tolerable in serious history - even though our outlook on Dejja Mahārāja's phraseology may illuminate all the details of its ambiguity or eccentricity?

The best answer is to quote the judgment of a few prominent historical writers to prove that palaeography - the comparative study of old scripts - is not an exact science which can be

1.Op. cit.. p. 306. fn. 1.

2.Mankad's own application of his reading differs from ours in some respects. Like us he does start the original Gupta Era in the time of Sandrocottus but he thinks it had more than one start and end. It ended first in the first century B.C. with what is known as the Vikrama Samvat, which seems to have served at the same time to continue the Gupta Era further until it terminated once more in 320 A.D. Mankad's scheme is argued out in a rather complicated manner and we do not concur with all its features.

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mechanically applied. There is the opinion of Sylvain Lévi¹ that palaeographical tests have little independent value (autorité absolue) although they may be used as a check (controle) upon or a guide (indice) to the interpretation of positive history. In a narrower context Jouveau-Dubreuil² has also put palaeography in its true place: he has remarked that it is a bad auxiliary to the chronology of Indian history as very often the documents dated in the same reign differ much from each other and thus its evidence would be mainly suggestive or corroborative but at any rate not conclusive by itself.

Perhaps A. S. Altekar³ provides us with the most significant "slant" on the subject. Discussing the dynasty known as the Maghās of Baghelkund and Kauśāmbī, he mentions three eras by which they might be dated: the Chedi Era of 248 A.D., the Gupta of 320 and the Śaka of 78. Thus the datings would vary by (320-248=)72, (248-78=)170 or (320-79=)242 years. Altekar informs us:

"Messrs N. G. Majumdar and Krishna Deva think it very probable that the era used is the Chedi era... (Epigraphia Indica XXIV, 146 and 253); Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni thinks that the era is the Gupta Era (ibid., XVIII, 159). Marshall, Konow and Dr. Moti Chandra opine that the era used is the Śaka Era (Archaeological Survey of India 1911-12, p. 417; E. I. XXIII, 247; Journal of the Numismatic Society of India II, 95 ff). The most cogent argument in favour of the Chedi or the Gupta Era is palaeographical; there is no doubt that the characters of the Maghā inscriptions are almost the Gupta characters. The argument however is not a convincing one; for many of the Gupta forms of characters are to be seen in an inscription of Kanishka, dated in the 14th [Śaka] year (92 A.D.); see £./. XXI, 2. The most fatal objection against referring the dates to the Chedi or the Gupta era is the contemporaneity of some of these rulers with the Imperial Guptas, which it renders inevitable. The Gupta feudator-

1.Quoted in English by Vincent Smith in The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 31, 1902, p. 196.

2.Quoted in English by Govind Pai in The Journal of Indian History, August 1935, p. 197.

3."New Indian States in Rajputana and Madhyadesa", A New History of the Indian People, edited by R. C. Majumdar and A. S. Altekar (Motilal Banarsidass, Lahore, 1946), Vol. VI, p. 41, fn. I.

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ies even in the distant parts of the empire refer to their overlords in their records; is it likely that Samudra-gupta, who had forcibly uprooted the kings of the Gangetic valley, would have allowed Bhlma-varman to rule as an independent king of Kauśāmbī in the years 339-358 A.D.? No Gupta feudatory was ever permitted to mint any coins. Is it possible that the Guptas would have permitted a feudatory family ruling at Kauśāmbī to issue its own coinage? On the other hand, if we refer the inscriptions to the Śaka era, there will be a gap of more than 50 years between the Maghās and the Guptas. It will explain the independent status of the Maghās, as also the circumstances of the Maghā coinage showing no influence on the Gupta copper issues."

An extra argument in Altekar's favour is Sircar's remark' that this Maghā dynasty may have been founded by a lieutenant of the Kushānas named Maghā.

Of course, a good deal of Altekar's "fatal objection" would vanish if the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. were seen in our light as terminating the Guptas; but here, as in Lévi and Jouveau-Dubreuil, what is to be noted is the acknowledged limitations of the palaeographical criterion and the primacy given to historical conditions within an accepted context.

A striking defect in utter reliance on palaeography is also brought home to us by the current situation in regard to the earliest available Tamil records: the caverinscriptions in the Brāhmī script. R. Venkatraman² reports: "The dating of these Tamil Brāhmī inscriptions remains controversial. Prof. T. V. Mahalingam was the first to suggest a system of staggered dates for them, which ranged from the 3rd century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. I. Mahadevan suggested a modified staggered dating, ranging from the 2nd century B.C. to the 6th century A.D. These two scholars based their conclusions on a system of palaeographical evolution in this Brāhmī script. They did not take into consideration other relevant fields like Archaeology, Numismatics, etc. Pointing out this lacuna, K. V. Soundarajan dated these inscriptions from the 1st or 2nd century A.D. to the 4th or 5th century A.D." Even within the purely palaeographical field a variation of

1."Northern India after the Kushānas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 176.

2.Indian Archaeology: A Survey (NS ENNES Publications. Madurai, 1985), p. 213.

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one century at the start and two at the end is seen as possible. When an all-round view is taken, the possibility is shown of palaeography failing by three to five centuries at the start itself as well as by one or two at the end. How can we speak palaeographi-cally of standing on solid ground everywhere?

Hence, if our treatment of that crucial formula in the Gōkāk plates is sound, palaeography should not be allowed to perplex us.

Dejja Mahārāja seems a very good help to our position, but in case palaeography is somehow deemed difficult to waive, our general stand on the negative Gupta Era need not suffer. For, the sole alternative to our treatment of "Āguptāyika" would still be within the same universe of discourse and turn merely to what we have adjudged the less pointed of the two interpretations we have listed. Instead of saying "up to the end of the Guptas" we would have to say "Up to the start..." There is no avoiding the sense of "Up to" in the Sanskrit "A". And there is no avoiding the Guptas at either their termination or their initiation. Nor is it possible to terminate or initiate a series of Guptas at 57 B.C. with the traditional Vikramāditya who is never said to be of any Gupta family. And, if "Going up to" cannot mean the Guptas' end, all that is left us to do in the interests of palaeography is to begin them between 324 B.C. and 305 B.C. with the Chandragupta who was Sandrocottus. Then we shall have for the Gōkāk plates a date within the period from (845-324 B.C.=) 521 A.D. to (845-305=) 540 A.D. This will take us very close to Rao's 532-33 A.D. and palaeographically not far from the recommended 6th or 7th century after Christ.

With regard to Albērūnī , the difference is no more than a matter of emphasis-shift. Before, the support to his negative Gupta Era of 320 A.D. was direct and an indirect one was extended by implication to our positive Gupta Era in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. Now the direct support is to the latter and an indirect one implied for Albērūnī 's 320 A.D. where the line of kings from that last quarter might end.

In both instances, we are justified in taking Albērūnī at his word and sticking to a straightforward understanding of him.

Even without the Gōkāk plates though more so with them, Albērūnī - supplying the only explicit allusion in all literature to the establishment of the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. and to its relation to the Gupta dynasty - forces us to date the founder of this

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dynasty, as well as the positive era installed by him and followed by his successors, a number of centuries previous to 320 A.D. But, going backwards where can we stop except at Sandrocottus for our non-Mauryan Chandragupta? As far as Chandragupta I is concerned, Albērūnī rules out the modern chronology and thereby buttresses the ancient Indian or traditional-Purānic.

The Problem of the "Synchronism" Proposed by Lévi

We may next be questioned: "What about the account, Hing-Tchoan. of the Chinese writer Wang Hiuen-t'se who was in India during 647-48 A.D. and who tells of the cordial interchange between two kings of the past - the Indian San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to and the Ceylonese Chi-mi-kia-po-mo? Has not Lévi elucidated this account by identifying the latter as Sirimeghavanna whom modern historians place from 352 to 376 A.D. and the former as the second member of the Imperial Guptas, Samudragupta, the end of whose reign these historians fix at 376 or 380 A.D.? As the identification is unchallengeable, does not Lévi's proposed synchronism establish Fleet's Era of 319-320 A.D.?"

The "synchronism" bristles with a lot of complexity. But we must clarify at the outset that there is no real complexity in the fact that there were two Meghavannas in Ceylon's history, an earlier and a later. Admittedly, the later one has a "Kittisiri" and not merely "Siri" before his name, but the earlier has always the suffix "abhaya" and is also known as Gothabhaya.¹ Without this suffix his name is incomplete, whereas "Siri" can easily stand as an abbreviation of "Kittisiri" by an oversight. The real complexity emerges fundamentally in regard to the system of dating used for the later Meghavanna.

There are two systems of dating. The traditional one is known to us from the Ceylonese (or Sinhalese) Chronicles Dīpavamsa and Mahāvamsa (4th and 6th centuries A.D. respectively). Here the history of Ceylon is traced from 543 B.C. as the year of Buddha's Parinirvdna or death. The other system, championed by Wilhelm Geiger and Wickremasinghe, dates Buddha's death to 483 B.C. According to them, this date was originally current in Ceylon and the reckoning from 543 was adopted a considerable time later.

1. Wilhelm Geiger, Mahdvamsa, tr., p. 263.

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By Geiger's epoch Sirimeghavanna would become a contemporary of Samudragupta as dated by Fleet's Gupta Era. But is Geiger justified? Even those who find him convenient to the modern chronology for the Mauryas cannot help looking at his theory a little dubiously. Thus Raychaudhuri¹ not only says: "Geiger's date... is not explicitly recognised by tradition." He² also comments on "certain Chinese and Chola synchronisms" adduced by Geiger to prop up his theory: "The Chola synchronisms referred to... are not free from difficulties, and it has been pointed out by Geiger himself that the account in Chinese annals of an embassy which Mahānāman, king of Ceylon, sent to the emperor of China in 428 A.D., does not speak in favour of his revised chronology." Raychaudhuri³ goes on to note that the traditional date of Menander, the Indo-Greek king, which is 500 years after Buddha, "works out more satisfactorily" with a Parinirvāna Era of 543 B.C. than with that of 483 or even with the date 486 of "a Cantonese tradition" which Raychaudhuri⁴ chooses to accept "as a working hypothesis for the determination of the chronology of the early dynasties of Magadha".

S. Paranavitana, one-time archaeological commissioner of Ceylon, rejects 483 totally. By implication, we may infer, he would reject anything approximating to it like 486, for the reasons against the one would hold against the other. He has conducted a close examination of the chronological tables prepared by L. C. Wi-jesinha on the basis of the Buddhist Era (B.E.) starting from 543 B.C. and that set forth by Geiger and Wickremasinghe. His scrutiny has a piquant interest for us because it decides against the theory of Geiger and Wickremasinghe by bringing in Lévi himself on his side. He⁵ writes:

"The theory has landed both these scholars in considerable difficulties in effecting a transition from one Buddhist era to the other. Chinese references to Ceylon during the period between the fifth and eighth centuries published by Sylvain Lévi (Journal Asiatique, 1900, pp. 297 ff, 401 ff) furnish us with indisputable evidence to prove that Wijesinha's dates are preferable to those of

1.Op. cit., p. 227.

2.Ibid., pp. 225-26.

3.Ibid., p. 226.

4.Ibid. p. 227.

5."History of Ceylon", A New History..., pp. 263-64.

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Wickremasinghe and Geiger. Pien-e-itien, chap. 66, records that in the fifth year of Iuen-kia (428 A.D.), the king of Ceylon, Mo-ho-nan by name, sent an embassy to the Chinese court. There is no difficulty in recognising the name Mahānāma in 'Mo-ho-nan' and there was only one king of Ceylon by this name. According to Wijesinha's tables Mahānāma reigned from 412 to 434. The date of the Chinese embassy falls correctly within this period. Computing on the basis of the Buddhist era beginning 483 B.C., Wickremasinghe makes Mahānāma ascend the throne in 468 A.D., forty years after his envoy arrived in China.

"The Nikāya Sangraha, a work of the fourteenth century, gives 818 B.E. as the date of Mahasena's accession. Adding up the lengths of intervening reigns as given in the Mahāvamsa, the first year of Mahānāma would fall in 953 B.E., i.e., 410 A.D. which enables the latter to be on the throne in 428 A.D. when his envoys were received by the Chinese emperor. On the same computation Sirimeghavanna should have ascended the throne in 845 B.E. (302 A.D.)...."

This is practically in conformity with Wijesinha's 304 A.D. for the same king.¹ Paranavitana continues:

"There is no valid ground to doubt the general accuracy of the chronicle for the three or four centuries preceding Mahānāma's reign. The great majority of the kings of this period are mentioned in contemporary records and when regnal years are given in these records, they do not come in conflict with the data furnished by the chronicles. Sylvain Lévi, who has tested numerous dates from the fifth to eighth centuries by means of Chinese references, concludes that 'the accuracy of the Sinhalese annals is triumphantly vindicated by this test'. Vincent Smith, than whom there is no severer critic of the Sinhalese chronicles, confesses that 'there is not, I believe, any reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the Ceylonese dates even for the much earlier time of Dutthāgamanī, about B.C. 161' (Indian Antiquary, XXI, 195). The question is not whether the Parinirvāna of the Buddha actually took place in 483 or 543 B.C., but whether a Buddhist era with 483 B.C. as its starting point was current in Ceylon at any period. The evidence available not only disproves the contention of Wickremasinghe, Geiger and others that such an era was in use during the period covered by this chapter [66-534 A.D.], but establishes that dates

1. Ibid., p. 257.

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were computed during this period in the traditional Buddhist era of Ceylon having 543 B.C. for its epoch."

Here a small "aside" of clarification would be in order. We have mentioned the convenience of Geiger and company to the modern chronology. We meant the usual calculation of 218 years given by the Chronicles as the time from the Parinirvāna to Aśoka's coronation. If we accept 483 B.C. for the former we obtain 265 B.C. for the latter - a result in keeping with the current historical structure, particularly as the Chronicles say that Aśoka was formally consecrated 4 years after his actual accession, so that we get for the accession 269 B.C. With 543 B.C. to start from, we arrive at 325 B.C. for Aśoka, making him a contemporary of Alexander the Great and setting him in the shoes of Sandrocottus. This is obviously bizarre. But Raychaudhuri¹ has suggested a way out of the anomaly. The earliest Chronicle, the Dīpavarhsa, calls the king who is coronated 218 years after Buddha's death "Piyadasi". Although usually Aśoka is indicated by this name in Pālī, the Indian drama Mudrā-rākshasa (Act VI) applies the term "Piadatmsana", which is equivalent to it and represents the pure Sanskrit "Priyadarsana", to his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya. Transferred to Chandragupta, the Dīpavarhsa's statement would fix his coronation in 325 B.C., not an utterly unlikely year if he were Sandrocottus. Thus even for the modern chronology the two systems of dating could be on a par.

However, the" whole problem is irrelevant to our purpose. Aśoka and his grandfather do not have to come into the picture at all. We have claimed for the Chronicles correct orientation, from a stipulated epoch of the Parinirvāna, in regard to their own island-kings after a certain period, not in regard to the history of the mainland in a more remote age. In our context, Geiger and Wickremasinghe's alleged convenience for the modern time-scheme has no bearing on Paranavitana's conclusions.²

If Sirimeghavanna is Wang-Hiuen-t'se's Chi-mi-kia-po-mo, his reign in Wijesinha's tables, which are proved accurate by Chinese sources, extends for 28 years from 304 to 332 A.D. Then, if

1.Op. cit., p. 271; also Indian Culture, II, p. 560.

2.The theme of Aśoka in itself, as well as that of the Parinirvāna. needs detailed treatment and we shall concentrate on both in Part Three of our book. At the present stage, they arc beside the point.

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Samudragupta, son of Chandragupta I, is his contemporary San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to, this king must come to the throne in 332 A.D. at the latest. Generally our historians believe that Chandragupta I, the first "Mahārājādhirāja" ("Supreme King of great kings") in the family, founded the Gupta Era on accession in 320 A.D. Mookerji¹ adds that this era was, according to Fleet, also that of the Lichchhavis of Nepal from whom it was taken over by Chandragupta I who was intimately connected with them. The intimate connection was by his marriage to the Lichchhavi princess Kumar-adevl who was to be the mother of Samudragupta. So the marriage which must have led to his transfer of the era to himself was most likely in the very year 320 A.D. In that case Samudragupta would be barely 12 years old when he became king. His own Allāhābād Pillar Inscription shows the utter improbability of 12 years, for it speaks in the highest terms of his ability and prowess which rendered him the most eligible out of several princes. Apparently his father abdicated in his favour with the declaration, as Majumdar² quotes it, "Thou art worthy, rule this whole world." How shall we relate such a situation to a mere stripling of not even 12? But, if Samudragupta could not have succeeded his father in 332 A.D., he could not have been contemporaneous with Sirimeghavanna.

An attempt may be made to endow him with greater maturity at this date by ascribing to him and not to his father the founding of the Gupta Era. Then the accession of Chandragupta I and the marriage with Kumāradevi could occur enough earlier than 320 A.D. to allow Samudragupta to be a fairly grown-up hero before mounting the throne in that year and establishing his era. Majumdar³ sees a good deal of plausibility here because of Sr.mud-ragupta's status as a conqueror on a grand scale. Paranavitana seems tacitly to countenance the theory when, in spite of the old traditional chronology for Sirimeghavanna, he" says: "this is not in conflict with the fact that he was a contemporary of Samudragupta, as we learn from the Chinese writer Wang-Hiuen-t'se." But

1.The Gupta Empire (Hind Kitabs Ltd., Bombay, 1947), p. 15,

2."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", A New History..., p. 137.

3."The Rise of the Guptas", ibid., p. 132; "The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", ibid., p. 159.

4 "History of Ceylon: Appendix", ibid., p. 264.

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Samudragupta¹ himself singles out his father from among his three ancestors by the special title which afterwards distinguishes the Gupta line: the premier role implied by what Majumdar² terms "the almost unanimously accepted view that Chandragupta I founded the Gupta Era". Samudragupta's special mention of himself as the son of a daughter of the Lichchhavis,¹ that is, of Kumāradevī, the wife of Chandragupta 1 - centres importance further on the family-phase immediately before him. He derives his own high value from the greatness initiated and established by both his parents.

The sole concrete support that can be adduced for the theory that he installed the Gupta Era consists of two copper-plate grants discovered at Nalāndā and Gayā and dated respectively to the years 5 and 9 of his reign, as if the family era commenced with it. But the genuineness of these plates is, as Majumdar⁴ admits, "certainly not above suspicion", though the suspicion, in his eyes, attaches much less positively to the first than to the second. Mookerji⁵ concedes no shade of difference and calls both of them "spurious". Altekar⁶ applies the same epithet to them. Although Raychaudhuri⁷ allows that the claim for Samudragupta's founding the era "cannot be altogether disregarded", it is - according to him - to be thought of "less plausibly" than that for Chandragupta's grandfather Gupta. Obviously, the copper-plates do not carry any weight for him. In fact, he" opines that "no reliance can be placed on them". Indeed they are too shaky a ground for building Samudragupta into an era-founder.

And they are all the more shaky precisely because they come with dates. The two epigraphs which are undeniably Samudragupta's - the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription and the Eran Stone Inscription - bear no dates at all:⁹ they do not bring in either regnal years or a family-era. By omitting both, they stand in stark contrast to

1.V. D. Mahajan, Ancient India (S. Chand & Co., New Delhi 1974), p. 395.

2."The Rise of the Guptas", A New History..., p. 132.

3.Mahajan, op. cit., p. 404.

4.Op. cit., p. 132.

5.Op. cit., p. 17.

6."The Administrative Organisation", A New History..., p. 292, fn. 2.

7.Op. (it., p. 531, fn. 2

8.Ibid., p. 551.

9.A New History..., p. 136.

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the copper-plates. The Nalanda and Gaya records run counter to Samudragupta's twice-proved practice and thereby ring false.

Apart from every other hurdle to taking 320 A.D. as the accession era of Samudragupta, there is the "serious objection" noticed by Majumdar¹ himself: "As Kumāragupta I, the grandson of Samudragupta, was on the throne in the year 136 of the Gupta era, it would give a total duration of 136 years to three generations which is far above the average." Majumdar² adds that, although this duration "is undoubtedly very high, it cannot be regarded as impossible, for we know that three generations of Western Chalukya kings from Vikramāditya V to Somesvara III ruled for 118 years". Majumdar's analogy is too facile. One can hardly say that some 18 years more, bridging 118 and 136, make very little difference. With unusual averages operating, every year is important and lessens credibility. A decade would be quite crucial and here it is a matter of nearly 2 decades. Even otherwise, what is just remotely possible need not be entertained, unless there is independent evidence suggesting the possibility. In the absence of such testimony, the extremely large average is in itself a valid restrainer.

From no angle can Samudragupta emerge as era-founder, a king already from 320 A.D. The only way left to present him as mature by this date is to hold that Chandragupta's accession was not related to the era he established, that it occurred years earlier and that along with it his marriage was fairly before 320. But to disjoin the accession from the era without any formulable reason is to indulge in an arbitrary fancy. To take the marriage backward so that it precedes the accession-cum-era would fail to take account of what certain gold coins connected with both Chandragupta and Kumāradevī imply. Their significance for our purpose may be conveyed with the help of both Majumdar and Altekar.

Majumdar³ states: "Mr. Allan's contention that these were struck by Samudra-gupta to commemorate the marriage of his parents is hardly convincing. The view, held by the old numismatists, that these coins were issued by Chandra-gupta jointly with the Lichchhavis and their princess Kumāradevī, who was his consort,

1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", ibid., p. 159.

2.Ibid., pp. 159-60.

3- "The Rise of the Guptas", ibid., p. 128.

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has been very ably defended by Dr. Aiyangar and Dr. Altekar" [Journal of Indian History VI, Suppl. 10 ff.; Numismatic Supplement XLVII, 105 ff], Altekar' explains: "Had Samudra-gupta issued these coins as commemorative medals, the name of the commemorator would naturally have appeared somewhere upon them, as it does on the admittedly commemorative issues of Agathokles and Eukratides. As it is, Samudra-gupta's own name is conspicuous by its absence on these coins."² Altekar continues: "On the obverse of the coins... we see the king and his queen... standing and facing each other; the king is probably giving the marriage ring to his consort. The names of both are engraved by their sides. On the reverse is Durga seated on a Hon... The legend is Lichchhavayah, which is probably in acknowledgement of the help the Guptas had received from their Lichchhavi relations."

Obviously, the coins of Chandragupta I commemorate his marriage to KumāradevI no less than the valuable assistance given by her family towards his imperial status. But he could not have had the right to issue them before his accession. Altekar³ justly observes: "With the assumption of the imperial title Mahārā-jādhirāja, Chandra-gupta I started his gold coinage." The marriage which is the most prominent part of its theme - as is clear from Allan's contention on behalf of Samudragupta - must have been the occasion on which the coinage started. Either it must have taken place a little after Chandragupta ascended the throne or else the assumption of the Imperial title coincided with the marriage and the double event commenced the era. All this means that Samudragupta could not have been born prior to his father's accession-year.

Nothing compels us to see in a tiny teenager a mighty monarch so as to make Samudragupta Sirimeghavanna's contemporary.

However, it is not only the absurdity of this situation that puts him out of court for Lévi's synchronism. Even if we could think of him as a less-than-12-year-old hero of many exploits wearing the

1."The Coinage", ibid., p. 302.

2.Majumdar's and Altekar's view of these coins has an important, almost fundamental, bearing on the question whether or not the Guptas came after the Kushānas and imitated their coinage and only gradually Indianized it. We shall deal with the question in Part Three, along with some other unavoidable ones. At the present stage any of them would sidetrack and impede our immediate concerns.

3."The Coinage", A New History..., p. 301.

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crown, we would never be able to get over a certain fact staring us in the face from the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription. It would also refuse to be blinked no matter how much earlier than 320 A.D. we might date Samudragupta's birth. His famous epigraph unmistakably includes "Sirhhala" (Ceylon) in the category of "vassal states", as Majumdar¹ puts it. Mookerji² refers to the same category when he writes of "Simhala" as well as of some other "foreign states'' being "ready to acknowledge the suzerainty of Samudra Gupta". But in Wang's story the Ceylonese king gives only "rich presents"³ to the Indian monarch who has permitted him to get a monastery and a rest-house built at Bodh-Gayā for the convenience of visiting Ceylonese pilgrims. How can San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to's generosity with a bit of his own territory constitute Chi-mi-kia-po-mo's far-away land a vassal state? Not the slightest evidence exists for us to conceive of the Ceylon of Sirimeghavanna as feudatory to Samudragupta. Sirimeghavanna was a king in his own right, owing allegiance to nobody, and in his reign Ceylon is said to have acquired a special importance because of the arrival there of the Tooth Relic of Buddha from Dantapura in Kalinga.⁴ Here India is shown as honouring Ceylon instead of vice versa. Sirimeghavarma's Ceylon was very far from being under any suzerainty and cannot equate at all with the Simhala of Samudragupta's Inscription.

Consequently, Wang's San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to must be distinguished from the Allāhābād Pillar's Samudragupta. In every respect the two stand apart.

The Real Synchronism

Who then could Wang's Indian King be? He has to be some other Samudragupta than the great one. Among the Imperial Guptas several names repeat: there were two Chandraguptas and three Kumāraguptas among the famous opening members. Once we accept the Imperial Guptas to have ended, as Albērūnī tells us, in 320 A.D. we must begin the line much earlier to accommodate all the family we know of and, if we start where Sandrocottus can

1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", The Classical Age. p. 12.

2.Op. cit.. p. 27.

3. The Classical Age, p. 11.

4. Sircar, "Ceylon", ibid., p. 284; also A New History..., pp. 257-58.

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perfectly fit Chandragupta I, it is quite on the cards that a second Samudragupta lived at the time where the Ceylonese Chronicles place Sirimeghavanna's opening 16 years (304-320 A.D.).

There is even a clue to a Samudragupta at what we posit as the tail-end of the Gupta dynasty. In the years between c. 230 and c. 340 A.D. a chief of a Scythian tribe known as Gadahara, ruling the Central Punjāb, issued some coins of Kushāna type with "Samu-dra" on them' and bearing, according to R. D. Banerji,² much resemblance to the coins of Samudragupta. But there is no convincing way to relate the great Samudragupta to the Gadaharas. On the assumption of the current date for him he is set in relation to a "Kushāna ruler exercising sway over Kabul and a part of the Punjāb, and possibly other territories further to the west".³ And this ruler is identified with the Kushāna chief Kidāra who in c. 340 A.D. put an end to the rule of the Gadaharas as well as of another Scythian tribe in the Central Punjāb and after 357 A.D. tried to be free of his Sassanian overlord but was sharply pulled up and could mature his final plans for independence not before 360: he delivered his blows against Shapur II only in 367-68. During these crucial preparatory years he is believed to have "secured the good will of Samudragupta, who had by this time extended his sphere of influence to the Punjāb..."⁴ Thus Samudragupta enters the Punjāb-picture and comes into contact with Kidāra around 360 A.D. and therefore at a distance of nearly 20 years from the period c. 340 A.D. when the Gadaharas could have been feudatory to him but were actually subdued by Kidāra at that date. We have necessarily to disjoin him from the Gadaharas and their "Samudra"-coins. Some other Samudragupta, a minor namesake of his, in touch with the Gadaharas but having nothing to do with Kidāra, swims into our ken.

And, as if to lend this minor Samudragupta a natural context, coins with "Chandra" on them and similar to the "Samudra"-coins have also been found.⁵ So we can think of a second small Samudragupta, the son or the father of a minor third Chandragupta, exercising suzerainty for a time over a Gadahara chief within the

1.A New History..., p. 21).

2.The Classical Age, p. 57. fn. 3.

3.A New History.... p. 147.

4.Ibid., p. 22.

5.Ibid., p. 150; also The Classical Age, p. 56, fn. 3.

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same period (304-320 A.D.) in which he synchronized with Sirimeghavanna.

Thus actually the synchronism à la Lévi of Chi-mi-kia-po-mo and San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to, seen without preconceptions, ties in with Albērūnī 's negative vote and helps rather than hinders the Purānic time-scheme.

Even independently of the necessity we have conjured up of a late small Samudragupta along with a similar Chandragupta, we have reason to envisage members of the Gupta family who preceded 320 A.D. but were not the ancestors of the Guptas whom our historians commence from that date.

I-tsing, the Chinese pilgrim, who was in India during 671-695 A.D. refers to a king named Chi-li-ki-to - that is, Śrīgupta - who lived 5 centuries earlier.¹ This takes us to the closing quarter of the 2nd century A.D., yet historians have not been lacking to .take I-tsing's 500 years as a rather rough estimate and to identify his Śrīgupta with the Gupta who is listed in the inscriptions of the Imperial Guptas as the grandfather of Chandragupta I. The identification would imply that the father and grandfather of Chandragupta covered nearly 150 years by just their two reigns. Raychaudhuri² who accepts Fleet's epoch sees yet no cogent reason for the identification. But I-tsing's Śrīgupta who has to be put around 175 A.D. remains a kind of freak in the modern historical perspective. He is most naturally explicable as part of a tail-end of the Imperial Guptas in an age about which we do not have much information.

There is no doubt of the dimness of our tail-end period. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri³ marks in general "the obscure period of the first three centuries of the Christian era." Mookerji⁴ brings more precision to the same view: "The history of Magadha, from the end of the Kānva rule [30 B.C. according to the modern scheme⁵] to the rise of the Guptas, three hundred years later, is very obscure." Within this shrouded area, both a second Samudragupta

1.S.K. Sen, India through Chinese Eyes (University of Madras, 1956), p. 162.

2.The Political History of Ancient India, p. 529.

3.Advanced History of India by K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and G. Srinivasachari (Allied Publishers, New Delhi, 1973), p. 183.

4."The Fall of the Magadhan Empire". The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 100.

5.Ibid., p. 99.

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and a Śrīgupta posterior to the eminent Imperial Guptas could be quite in place.

To the chronological contention against figuring this Śrīgupta as an ancestor of those famous members Sircar¹ has added one based on nuances of nomenclature. He remarks about the grandfather of Chandragupta I: "The name of this prince is Gupta and not §ri Gupta. It is therefore unreasonable to identify him with Śrīgupta mentioned by I-tsing as having lived about 175 A.D."

Of course, "Śrī" as an honorific can be prefixed to any name, but it is an integral component of the name of I-tsing's monarch. That is the point Sircar has in mind.

His objection appears to get support from the discovery of two seals.² One bears the legend Gutasya (in mixed Sanskrit and Prakrit), the other the Sanskrit legend Śrīguptasya. Two different persons with distinct names seem to be here.

The Problem of Fa-hien's Record

The next barrier across the new pathway we are laying out is the famous record by a Chinese pilgrim, which is said to concern the time of Samudragupta's son Chandragupta II who styled himself Vikramāditya. Vincent A. Smith,³ scrutinizing the foreign sources for matter on Indian history, writes: "...by far the most important and interesting of all foreign witnesses are the numerous Chinese pilgrims who visited the Holy Land of Buddhism, between A.D. 400 and 700. Fa-hsian [or Fa-hien], the earliest of them (A.D. 399-414), gives life to the bald chronicle of Chandragupta Vikramāditya, as constructed from inscriptions and coins." There is also Majumdar's declaration:⁴ "An idea of the peace and prosperity prevailing in the vast [Gupta] empire may be had from the account of the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien who travelled through Chandra-gupta's wide dominions for more than six years."

Now comes the anti-climax. Smith⁵ informs us, in the midst of a

1.Select Inscriptions bearing on Indian History and Civilisation (Calcutta, 1942),Vol. I, p. 492, giving the note to line 9 of p. 256.

2.A New History..., p. 131.

3.The Oxford History of India, Third Edition, edited by Percival Spear (1970), pp. 15-16.

4."The Expansion of the Gupta Empire", op. cit., p. 172.

5.Op. cit., p. 170.

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long survey of Fa-hien's records: "The enthusiastic pilgrim was so absorbed in the religious task to which his life was devoted that he never even mentions the name of any reigning sovereign." And Majumdar¹ goes on to observe: "Unfortunately Fa-hien does not give any account of the political condition of India, - he does not even mention the name of the great Gupta emperor."

This is a very serious blank. In addition, there are two queer items which may give us further pause. Raychaudhuri,² assuming that "much light is thrown on the character of Chandra Gupta Vikramāditya's administration by the narrative of Fa-hien", notes apropos of the pilgrim's account of the Indian people of his day his statement: "In buying and selling commodities they use cowries." Raychaudhuri comments: "The last statement evidently refers to such small transactions as Fa-hien had occasion to make. The pilgrim does not seem to have met with the gold coins which would only be required for large transactions. That they were actually in currency, we know from the reference... in inscriptions." A footnote follows: "Chandra Gupta II also issued silver and copper coins..." The historian's excuse is rather lame. Fa-hien is referring not to his own transactions but to those of people in general. Surely, if such low denominations as copper coins were current, commodities would not be bought and sold on any substantial scale with the help of nothing save cowries. Conditions of the Gupta empire do not seem indicated. There is also the discrepancy about punishment. Mahajan³ writes: "According to Fa-hien, punishments were very lenient. To quote him: 'The king governs without decapitation or other corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined, lightly or heavily, according to the circumstances of each case. Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only have their right hand cut off.' However, the testimony of Fa-hien is not accepted and it is pointed out that punishments were pretty harsh in the Gupta period." Mahajan⁴ further says: "In the Junagadh Rock Inscription of Skanda Gupta, there is a reference to torture. It is stated that during his reign, the accused were not 'over-much put to torture.' " This suggests some diminution in the torture-practice and appears to imply the common employment of

1.Loc. cit.

2.The Political History..., p. 558.

3.Op. cit., pp. 443-4.

4.Ibid., p. 445.

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it to a considerable degree in the reigns of Skandagupta's predecessors.

Of course, certain inaccuracies may always be expected in any record, especially one by a foreigner. But here it is not merely a matter of inaccuracies. What Fa-hien says may be perfectly true and yet it may not be relevant to Chandragupta Vikramāditya. The utter omission of the king's name complicates the issue of truth and falsehood: the truth of Fa-hien's time could be falsehood for the time of this Gupta monarch. And, in view of the absence of the name "Chandragupta", whatever discrepancies we find between the Chinese pilgrim's record and our knowledge of that monarch's reign tend to disqualify all the more the claim that Fa-hien's 6 years in India around the beginning of the 5th century A.D. can dictate Gupta chronology. The Purānic dating has nothing to fear from them.

The Argument from Chronological "Inconsistency"

After all the brief we have held for India's own chronology along Purānic lines, a protest may come from scholars who are themselves proponents of Indian chronological evidence from another indigenous source. They are likely to argue:

"You have mentioned the traditional-Purānic dating of the Bhārata War to 3138 B.C. - 36 years before the Kaliyuga. But do you not know that it is misleading to speak of India's own chronology as if it were of one piece? You may interpret the Aihole Inscription of 634 A.D. in your favour, but in the period shortly before this epigraph there is evidence of a huge discrepancy. The astronomer Varāhamihira, c. 550 A.D., claiming to expound the older astronomer Vriddha Garga, touches on the Indian notion about the constellation Sapta Rishi (Great Bear) and its stay of 100 years in each of the 27 Nakshattras. In his Brihatsamhi-tā, XIII, 1-4, he says, as translated by Kern:¹ 'I shall tell you, according to the theory of Vriddha Garga, the course of the Seven Seers by whom the northern region is, as it were, protected....The Seven Rishis were in Maghā when King Yudhishthira ruled the earth, and the period of that king is 2526 years before the Śaka Era....'

1. Alexander Cunningham, The Book of Indian Eras (Calcutta, 1883), p. 9.

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"In 1148 A.D. the Kāshmiri historian Kalhana (Rājataranginī, 1.51, 55-56) pointed out how this statement supported him in rejecting the belief that the Bhārata War (in which Yudhishthira had participated) occurred at the close of the Dvāparayuga preceding the Kaliyuga. He calculated backwards from the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. and interpreted Varāhamihira to mean that Yudhish-thira's period was 2526 years before 78 A.D. - i.e., 2448 B.C., which is 654 years after the advent of the Kaliyuga in 3102 B.C. Kalhana's reasoning is faultless. So we have a Varāhamihira-reckoning against the Purānic, with as much right to antiquity.

"Now let us attend to the Purānas exactly as you have yourself done. Counting 1500 years from the Bhārata War to the coronation of Mahapādma Nanda, 836 from that coronation to the start of the Āndhras and 412 as the total time-length of this dynasty, we get 2748 years in all from 2448 B.C. to reach the end of the Āndhras. The end is thus in 300 A.D. Then with the Purānic suggestion of a fairly brief interval, whose length is not univocally indicated, between it and the rise of the Guptas, we can justifiably have the Guptas rising in 320 A.D. as in the modern chronology.

"If we choose to interpret the Prakritic variant you have cited of the Brahmānda III.74.230, which is also present in the Matsya, namely, āndhrān-ānte, in a different way from yours, so that we have the Maghā-century returning after 2700 years 'at the end of the Āndhras' and not, as you interpret, 'in the end...', we shall have the Āndhra dynasty terminating in (2448 B.C.-2700=) 252 A.D. Understanding the preposition 'at' broadly and not as marking a precise point as though the Āndhras terminated in the very year when the 2700 years finished, we can bring into play the Purānic alternative 300 years for the duration of the Āndhras instead of the 364 which the date 252 A.D. involves and then their termination will be in 188 A.D., leaving a more plausible gap between it and the coming Guptas of the modern time-scheme.

"Thus even the Indian chronology can be made to bear us out. The inconsistency between the Purānic version and the version of Varāhamihira not only deprives the former of sole authority in the ancient field but also upholds the modern historical view so far as the Guptas are in question. Since in dealing with the Indian view it is the Guptas you are centrally interested in, your plea for identifying Sandrocottus with Chandragupta I, by force of the Indian chronology, is undermined, our usual identification of him with

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Chandragupta Maurya is left intact and our dating of the Guptas confirmed. Indian chronology itself frees us from the predicament you formulate."

The Fallacies of the Argument

The argument is fallacious in every way. But even otherwise it is not of much help. The alleged inconsistency between the Purānas and Varāhamihira does not abolish the situation that, according to modern historians, the Purānic pundits set contemporaneous Gupta kings over 600 years earlier. As the argument's date for Varāhamihira is c. 550 A.D., we have to exclaim: "Indian chronologists living under the Guptas (320-570 A.D.) differed by over 600 years about the existence of these very kings!" Confusion would be worse confounded: that is all. Now for the fallacies. As with the Aihole Inscription of 634 A.D., so with Varāhamihira, we have to ask whether his Brihatsamhitā could really fly in the face of the Mahābhārata whose final form was in circulation in that age and closely associated the Bhārata War with the Kaliyuga of 3120 B.C. without identifying in time the two occasions. Our question is all the more pertinent when we know that Varāhamihira is not only a savant in his own right but also an astronomer aware of Aryabhata who implies the Purānic sequence of the Bhārata War and the Kaliyuga.

However, assuming that he does reject this sequence, do we have the right to apply any Purānic time-indications like 1500, 836, 412 or 300 years if the starting-point is so wide asunder from the Purānic? Does Kalhana, who believes that Varāhamihira disagrees with tradition, dispose his history in such a fashion as to allow us to fix Chandragupta I in 320 A.D.?

In Rājatarahgīni I, 52-53, he gives Śaka 1070 as his own date -that is (78+1070=) 1148 A.D. - and counts 2330 years from Gonanda III of Kashmir to himself. Thus Gonanda III is dated to (2330-1148=) 1182 B.C. Between Gonanda II and Gonanda III Kalhana puts a long line of kings including familiar names like Aśoka, Jalauka, Hushka, Jushka, Kanishka. The last-named comes, for the majority of modern historians, in 78 A.D. But, for Kalhana, basing himself on Varāhamihira, he is beyond 1182 B.C., and Kalhana (I, 72) further says that Kanishka is 150 years after Buddha. So Buddha too is pushed up far beyond his com

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monly calculated time. We may "pooh-pooh" all this; but we may with equal justification "pooh-pooh" the idea that old Indian annalists following Varāhamihira could ever countenance placing the founder of the Imperial Guptas in 320 A.D. Although Kalhana may be deemed rather fantastic in his historical sequences, no Indian chronology will allow the Guptas to begin à la Fleet or the identification of Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya.

Take Alberum's information from Indian sources. We have seen how he anticipates Kalhana by dating the Bhārata War to 2448 B.C., yet puts forward 320 A.D. as the end of the Guptas, not their beginning. And he makes the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. the end instead of the beginning of the Śakas. Modern chronology can get no fillip from the dating of the Bhārata War 654 years after the epoch of the Kaliyuga.

Lastly, we may take up the point: "Is Kalhana correct in his dealings with Varāhamihira's statement?" At once we can pick a central hole. Kalhana never bothers to refer back to Vriddha Garga whom Varāhamihira mentions and whose "theory" leads him to speak of Yudhishthira and of the asterism Maghā for the Seven Rishis. Bhattotpala, the astronomer who lived some centuries before Kalhana, has given us, while interpreting Varāhamihira in his commentary Chintāmani, the exact words of Garga. They' run: "At the junction of the Kali and Dvapara ages, the virtuous sages who delight in protecting the people stpod at the asterism over which the Pitris preside (that is, Maghā)."

From these words Varāhamihira's meaning should be unmistakable. If, according to Garga, the Seven Rishis were in Maghā at the junction of the Kali and Dvāpara Ages and if, according to Varāhamihira who is expounding Garga, Yudhishthira ruled when the Seven Rishis were in Maghā, then, according to Varāhamihira, Yudhishthira ruled within the same 100 years during which the junction of the Kali and Dvapara Ages occurred. Varāhamihira could never have meant that Yudhishthira ruled 654 years after the Kaliyuga's advent in 3102 B.C. Here is a simple syllogism which cannot be denied.

And what it provokes us to inquire is: "May not the Śaka Era which Varāhamihira declares to be 2526 years after the 'period' of

1. As quoted in H.T. Colebrooke's Essays, II, p. 313 and in Cunningham's Book of Indian Eras, pp. 9-10.

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Yudhishthira, be other than the one of 78 A.D.?" The Śaka Era of the Aihole Inscription has to be referred to 78 A.D. because this inscription is of King Pulakeśin II, who foiled the southward ambition of King Harsha whom Hiuen-Tsang names as his patron in India during 630-643 A.D.: the specified Śaka year 556 counted from 78 A.D. brings us to 634 A.D. We have no comparable outside-check for Varāhamihira's Śaka Era. And a Śaka Era different from the usual one is nothing incredible in itself. R. K. Mookerji¹ writes: "There was an old Śaka era which started in about 129 or 123 B.C., the year that marked the settlement of the dispossessed Śakas in Bactria after the Parthian Emperor Phraates II was killed." A. K. Narain² cites an older Śaka Era, one of 155 B.C., which is "widely accepted". A still older one is also quite on the cards. It would have to be at the end of 2526 years from the point at which "Yudhishthira's period" can be fixed. Properly to fix it we must bear in mind the fundamental association of Yudhishthira with Maghā. The "period" of the former must necessarily relate to that of the latter.

Yudhishthira's coronation in 3138 B.C. after the Bhārata War and his abdication in 3102 B.C. after Krishna's death fall within the century of Maghā but they coincide with no significant point of it from which a counting can be done. The two natural significant points can only be its commencement and its termination: 3177 and 3077. Has Yudhishthira any relation to them? The Mahābhārata' tells us that he died in the 25th year of the Kaliyuga. As the Kaliyuga starts from 3102 B.C., this means (3102-25=) 3077 B.C. Thus we get a date precisely suitable to mark the "period" of both Yudhisthira and Maghā. Counting from it 2526 years we come to (3077-2526=) 551 B.C. as the Śaka Era intended by Varāhamihira.

Is there any reason to doubt our interpretation? A second clue is afforded by Varāhamihira himself in the form of some particulars about the epoch of 427 Śaka he has mentioned for the Panchasid-dhāntikā (1.8-10), his earliest work. S. B. Dikshit⁴ notes alternative readings of the week day in Varāhamihira's sloka: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Monday is what G. Thibaut has given; Dikshit

1.Ancient India (Allāhābād, 1956), p. 250.

2.The Indo-Greeks (Oxford, 1957), pp. 143-144.

3.Mahaprasthanika Parva, I.

4.The Indian Antiquary, Vol. XIX, p. 45.

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rejects it and prefers Tuesday to Wednesday out of the remaining versions. Whatever the week day, Varāhamihira clearly refers to the beginning of it and also the "beginning of Chaitra Sukla Pratipadi", the latter phrase meaning the ending of the Chaitra new moon. Dikshit, following Indian usage, takes 427 as the elapsed year, so that 428 would be the current year. But, taking the Śaka Era involved to be 78 A.D., he finds that 427 elapsed falls on none of the alternative week days from which we have to choose. If we substitute the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C., which is associated with the traditional king Vikramāditya who is called Śakari or Śaka-destroyer, we get, according to Dikshit, a Wednesday. But this is inadmissible to him. The sole way to keep Sukla Pratipadi and combine it with one of the alternatives possible and with 78 A.D. as the Śaka Era is to change Varāhamihira's Chaitra to Vaisakha, for then we arrive at a Tuesday. Dikshit, therefore, opines that Varāhamihira must have originally written Vaisakha and not Chaitra. V. Thiruvenkatacharya' legitimately objects to this opinion and points out that the whole artificial procedure arises from the obsession with 78 A.D.

If we stick to Varāhamihira's text, 78 A.D. (according to Swamikannu Pillai's Ephemeris) yields nothing except a Friday for 427 elapsed. Even if we regard 427 as current, 78 A.D. yields merely a Sunday. The usual Śaka Era is thus ruled out. But if we count 427 elapsed from 551 B.C. we get "the beginning of Chaitra Sukla Pratipadi", as indicated by Varāhamihira, at the end of a Tuesday, at nearly midnight, instead of at "the beginning" of a Wednesday - a small margin of error which is hardly serious and within the limits of probability. Thiruvenkatacharya justifiably concludes that Varāhamihira intended 551 B.C. to be the Śaka Era.

Bhattotpala's Confirming Testimony

Against the two clues we have cited, one of which seems decisive and the other definite enough, there is only the argument that later writers have believed Varāhamihira to have meant 78 A.D. But uncritical adherence to a belief is no substantial argument

1. Paper quoted on pp. 241-48 of Pandit Kota Venkatachalam's Chronology of Kashmir Reconsidered.

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And even in this argument we can trace flaws.

Bhattotpala quotes Bhaskara, the author of Siddhānta Śiromani, as giving his own birth-date - Śaka 1036 - at the end of this book and as stating that he wrote it at the age of 36, i.e., in Śaka 1072.¹ In terms of the era of 78 A.D. we get 1114 and 1150 A.D. respectively. But, as Shrava² points out, Bhattotpala himself has given the date of his own commentary on Varāhamihira's Brihatjātaka as Śaka 888, which, counted from 78 A.D., would bring us to 966 A.D. and thus be earlier than the astronomer he quotes. So, if Bhattotpala observes 78 A.D., Bhāskara's reference must be to a Śaka Era substantially preceding that year. Further, Bhattotpa-la's commentary culls a verse from "a Yavana king and astronomer" named Sphuji-dhvaja whose date is given as Śaka-kāla 1044.³ Here too 78 A.D. cannot be the era meant.

Nor indeed can we say that Bhattotpala's own Śaka 888 must hark back to 78 A.D. which he distinguishes as the date of the slaughter of the Śaka kings.⁴ There is no such designation for his 888 any more than for the years he reports of the two other astronomers. However, his Śaka-kāla must differ not only from 78 A.D. but also from Bhaskara's or Sphuji-dhvaja's. For, its identity with their era would once again land us in the anomaly of his alluding to people who came appreciably after him. Knowing that he has quoted Garga, we should expect him to be of the same mind as Varāhamihira. And that is exactly what we find on studying the full text which Shrava⁵ provides of the verse at the end of Bhattotpala's commentary on the Brihatjātaka: "Chaitramāsasya pan-chamyām sitāyām guruvāsare, vasu-ashta-ashtamite Śaka krteyam vivrtirmayā." Thiruvenkatacharya⁶ conveys the same information when on the basis of several editions he tells us of Bhattotpala stating that his commentary was written "in the year 888 of the Śaka Era on Thursday, Suklapaksha Panchami of the Chaitra month". To be exhaustive, Thiruvenkatacharya tries out both the Vikrama and the usual Śaka Eras. By Swamikannu Pillai's Ephemeris he shows that counting from the Vikrama Era of 57

1.Praśnadhyāya, sloka 58. See Shrava, op. cit.. p. 55.

2.Op. cit.. p. 55.

3.Ibid., referring to Indian Culture. Vol. XII, p. 81.

4.Benares Edition, p. 193. See Shrava, op. cit., p. 47, fn. 5.

5.Op. cit., p. 42.

6.Op. cit.. pp. 245-47.

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B.C. we find Chaitra Sukla Pānchami falling not on a Thursday but on a Sunday and, counting from 78 A.D., we reach a Monday instead of a Thursday. On the other hand, February 23 of 338 A.D. satisfies Bhattotpala's specification completely. If we go backwards by 888 years from this date we reach 550 B.C. as Bhattotpala's Śaka Era. As against the reading accepted by Thiruvenkatacharya we have the version in M. M. Sudhakar Dvivedi where a different week-day is given. Thiruvenkatacharya agrees with another scholar, Madimpalli Jagannatha Rao, who has made a special study of Bhattotpala, that Dvivedi has emended the original sloka because from the standpoint of the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. it appeared to be an obvious error with its required Thursday.

We may legitimately conclude: "There were a number of Śaka Eras. Two of them were much older than that of 78 A.D., and one of them which both Bhattotpala and Varāhamihira have used to indicate the epochs of their works went back to the middle of the 6th century before Christ: the year 551-550.

The Purānas, the Indian Tradition and 551 B. C.

Most interestingly, so old a Śaka Era is just what is needed by the Purānic time-scheme and by Indian tradition in general. The latter ranks Varāhamihira among the "nine jewels" of the court of the king whom it names Vikramāditya of Ujjayini and associates with the era of 57 B.C.' Varāhamihira himself, by declaring Śaka 427 to be the date of his earliest work Pānchasidhhāntikā, puts his composition in 124 B.C. according to the Śaka Era of 551 B.C. -that is, in the neighbourhood of, if not even within, the reign-period attributable to Vikramāditya. Amarāja,² evidently with the same date in mind, gives for Varāhamihira's death a Śaka reference - the year 509 - which is 82 years after it. We thereby get, if we calculate the Śaka years from 551 B.C., Varāhamihira's working life between 124 and 42 B.C., a span making him a contemporary of the traditional Vikramāditya. Such a span also explains why, while alluding to the eras of Kali and Śaka, he fails to allude to the

1.We may remark, in passing, that there is also more than one era of Vikrama: we have the Chālukya-Vikrama-kāla of 1076 A.D.

2.S. B. Dikshit, Bharatiya Jyotih-sastra (Poona, 1931), I, p. 211.

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era of 57 B.C. If he died in 42 B.C., he may not have composed any work in the 15 years of his life after that era had been instituted, whereas if he lived in the 6th century A.D. his omission of it is rather odd, to say the least.

True, this era is not associated with the name "Vikrama" earlier than the 8th century A.D. But modern historians can hardly excuse Varāhamihira's omission on that plea. They hold that 57 B.C. was originally known as the Krita Era and then as the Malava Era.' In their opinion the present designation was coined some time after Chandragupta II of the Gupta Dynasty had called himself Vikramāditya and, on extirpating the Śakas of Western India, chosen Ujjayinī as a secondary capital and become famous in later tradition as Vikramāditya Śakari.² The Krita Era, if identical with our Vikrama Samvat, is recorded in an inscription which, by the specified year 282, is as early as (282-57=) 225 A.D.³ The Malava Era, on the same assumption, first appears inscriptionally, by the specified year 461, in 404 A.D.⁴ Varāhamihira, coming in c. 550 A.D. and himself associated with Ujjayini, could have used any of the three names. That he did not serves as a bit of a poser to modern historians.⁵

The Purānic time-scheme requires the Śaka Era of 551 B.C. because it has to put, in more or less proximity to the reign of Chandragupta I in the 4th century B.C., three kings who were connected with the Śakas: (1) Gautamīputra Sātakarni, who was the 23rd out of the 30 members of the dynasty, Āndhra Satavahana, shortly preceding the Guptas, and who is known from both epigraphy and numismatics to have destroyed the Śaka Nahapāna's Kshaharata family, (2) the son of Chandragupta I, Samudra-gupta, who is styled overlord of the Śakas in the Allāhābād Pillar

1.Sircar, "The Vikrama Samvat", Vikrama Commemoration Volume, p. 582.

2.Ibid., p. 584.

3.Ibid., p. 580.

4.Ibid.

5.Of course, to set Varāhamihira in the 1st century B.C. would fix Āryabhata, whom he mentions, to a still earlier epoch and create another chronological problem. But such problems we must expect once we start antedating somewhere and they have to be grappled with at some time or other. At the moment they need not be our "headache". All we need do briefly is to quote The Classical Age (p. 322): "Aryabahata was born in Śaka 398" - and count from our era of 551 B.C., giving him the date (551-398=) 153 B.C. which puts him a little earlier than Varāhamihira.

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Inscription, and (3) the already-mentioned Chandragupta 11. Samudragupta's son, who proves himself the conqueror of the other Śaka family, the Kārdamakas, by replacing their coins by his own.

The last-named can serve also to show how 551 B.C. is precisely right for the start of an era of the Western Śakas. If his reign by the modern chronology is - as we have noted - 374-414 A.D., it is the period 56-94 years after the usual Gupta Era of 320 A.D. Purānically, we found his grandfather Chandragupta I coming to the Magadhan throne between 315 and 302 B.C. Then the years 56-94 (altogether 38) must begin between the two extremes of (315-56=) 259 B.C. and (302-56=) 246 B.C. Similarly the termination of these years has to lie between (259-38=) 222 and (246-38=) 208 B.C. The full span of the reign would cover at one end 259-221 B.C. and at the other 246-208. Let us bring these figures into relation with the career of the Western Śakas. Sircar¹ informs us that they "are known to have used a continuous reckoning from year 41 to year 310". A recent discovery substitutes 41 by ll,² but 310 remains untouched. Thus by our Śaka Era their coins were replaced by their conqueror's after (551—310=) 241 B.C. - that is, the conquest took place right in the midst of whatever reign-span we may allot Purānically to Chandragupta II.

Even within the general framework of Indian history, a Śaka Era of 551 B.C. appears to fit in excellently. The earliest date recorded by the Śakas of Western India is, as we have just marked, the year 11. So, by our computation, they do not go back beyond (551-11=) 540 B.C. This date not only falls, as it should, within the reign of the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus (558-530 B.C.) whose empire, according to Xenophon (Cyropaedia I. 1,4) included the Bactrians and Indians and (VIII.6,20-21) was bounded on the east by the Erythraean Sea, i.e., the Indian Ocean. The date also comes, as even more it should, later than both the phases of his far-flung eastern sway. Xenophon implies two campaigns. One (VI.2, 1-11) involves a campaign towards India before the war on Lydia in the west (c. 547 B.C.). The other is put by Xenophon (VIII. 6, 20-21) after Cyrus had reduced Babylon (c. 539 B.C.),

1.Op. cm

2.Sobhana Gokhale. "Andhau Inscription of Castana, Śaka 11", Journal of Ancient Indian History. Vol. II, Parts 1-2, 1968-69, pp. 104-115.

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but this is an error, as can be seen from Herodotus (1.178, 1.202) who says that Cyrus subdued every nation after the Lydian war and the last two expeditions of his life were against Babylon and the Śakas who lived east of the Caspian, so that the conquest of what Herodotus (1.179) calls "the rest of the continent" must take place before the overthrow of Babylon in c. 539 B.C. Soon after Cyrus's second passage into the Indus Valley - shortly in the wake of the Lydian victory - the Kshaharatas and the Kardamakas could have moved with their era into India and made their first inscription here in 540 B.C. Their initial establishment would be in Sind, immediately bordering the Erythraean Sea. That the Western Śakas ruled over regions in Sind in addition to Malwa, Gujarat, Kathiawar and western Rajputana is cogently inferred by Sircar' from the archaeological data available.

Then there is the title these Śakas use for themselves: "Kshatra-pa" or "Mahakshatrapa". The former is pseudo-Sanskrit corresponding to the old-Persian "Kshatrapavan", meaning "Province-guardian", of which the English version through the Greek is "Satrap", denoting a provincial governor. It indicates the Śakas' subordinate position. Prefixed with "Maha", it would show increase in power and is perhaps equal, in the Śakas' eyes, to the term "Rajan" which too they use. Our historians take the Western Śakas to be feudatories of the Kushānas. But the Kushānas never refer to any member of the Kshaharāta-Kārdamaka families nor have they any cognizance of the term "Kshatrapa". The Western Śakas, on their side, never allude to the Kushānas or mention any overlord.² But they can figure most appositely as owing allegiance first to the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus and then to Darius I and his successors. From Darius onward we hear explicitly of the satrapies of the Achaemenid empire.³

However, we are digressing, though not irrelevantly. Going back to our proper theme, we may assert: "Whatever else may be demonstrable or no, our syllogism apropos of Varāhamihira will never allow anyone, on the strength of traditions, to separate

1."The Śaka Satraps of Western India", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 181, 182, 184.

2.Ibid,, pp. 180, 185.

3.D. R. Mankad has some pertinent observations on the Western Śakas and Darius I in his Purānic Chronology, pp. 184-87. We shall have occasion later to advert to it as well as discuss these Śakas at some length.

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Yudhishthira and the Bhārata War from the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C.Indian chronology is not inconsistent at all. It is of one piece -the Purānic school and the Brihatsamhitd standing together in spite of Kalhana. Kalhana's reasoning is faultless on his own premisses; but his ignorance distorts Varāhamihira completely.

The Argument from Purānic Geography

Our historians may next offer the argument:

"Look at the geography of the Purānas. Around Mount Meru there is a ring of land, Jambudvipa, divided from the next continent, Plakshadvipa, by an ocean of salt. Plakshadvīpa in turn forms a concentric circle round Jambudvīpa and so on we make a total of seven continents, each circular and divided from its neighbours by an ocean of different composition. After Jambudvl-pa's ocean of salt we have oceans of treacle, wine, ghee, milk, curds and fresh water respectively. A.L. Basham,¹ writing of this geography, comments: 'This brilliantly imaginative picture of the world, which aroused the scorn of Lord Macaulay, seems to have been implicitly believed in by later Hindu theologians, and even astronomers could not emancipate themselves from it, but adapted it to their spherical earth by making Meru the earth's axis, and the continents zones on the earth's surface.' If such an absurd fantasy for the familiar earth can be entertained by Indians on the authority of the Purānas, why should we take seriously the Purānic mind in history?"

No Analogy Possible

The answer is not difficult to give. As the astronomers refrained from accepting the Purānic geography in a literal manner but attempted an adaptation of it to the earth which they actually knew or scientifically envisaged, their example is irrelevant. The theologians' implicit belief in it shows that this geography had a religiously suggestive, not a scientifically descriptive, significance. And here we may note a few things Basham² himself tells us.

1.The Wonder that was India (The Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1961), p. 489.

2.Ibid., pp. 488, 489.

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Mentioning an alternative geographical scheme set up by the theologians in which "the modest spherical earth of the astronomers" gives place to an earth described "as a flat disk of enormous size", he writes: "Around Meru were four continents (dvipa) separated from the central peak by oceans and named according to the great trees which stood on their shores opposite Meru. The southern continent, on which human beings dwell, had a jambu (rose-apple) as its distinctive tree, and it was therefore called Jambudvīpa.

There is the clear clue that only on Jambudvīpa do human beings dwell. Thus Jambudvīpa alone is our physical world: the term "earth" applied to the flat disk of enormous size including three other "continents" must mean a total cosmos of supra-physical no less than physical existence. Even Basham remarks apropos of the Purānic geography: "The seven continents cannot in any way have been related to actual portions of the earth's surface, though some modern students have tried to identify them with parts of Asia..." And, whenever accepted literally by either the common people or those theologians who were lacking in deeper religious understanding, the continents outside the ocean of salt were not the actual earth they knew but unknown territories in regard to which fantasy never clashed with fact. Facts were never preposterously blinked, though they must have been surrounded in addition with a legendary or mythical aura. So there is no comparison possible with the suggestion that the Purānic pundits put contemporary kings more than 600 years before their own time.

And, if we wish to realise the truth about the Purānic "fantasy", we may listen to Sri Aurobindo¹ who tells us that an immense and complex body of psycho-spiritual experience, supported by visual images, is embedded in the Purānas, though more loosely than in the Tantras and cast out in a less strenuous sequence. Sri Aurobindo goes On to say: "This method is after all simply a prolongation, in another form and with a temperamental change, of the method of the Vedas. The Purānas construct a system of physical images and observances each with its psychical significance. Thus the sacredness of the confluence of the three rivers, Gangā, Yamunā

1. The Foundations of Indian Culture (The Sri Aurobindo Library, New York City, 1953), p. 354.

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and Saraswatī, is a figure of an inner confluence and points to a crucial experience in a psychological process of Yoga and it has too other significances, as is common in the economy of this kind of symbolism. The so-called fantastic geography of the Purānas, as we are expressly told in the Purānas themselves, is a rich poetic figure, a symbolic geography of the inner psychical universe. The cosmogony expressed sometimes in terms proper to the physical universe has, as in the Veda, a spiritual and psychological meaning and basis..." Even the description of Jambudvīpa, the human continent, is bound to have some symbolic elements and to mingle with the outward aspect an inward vision of the physical.

Thus no analogy is possible from the Purānic geography and we cannot certify the Purānic pundits lunatic enough to look at the king under whom they lived and to say that he had flourished over 6 centuries prior to them.

The Task before Modern Historians

Will our historians have anything else to urge against the predicament in which they are caught?

They are sure to harp on the merits of their own time-scheme and ask if any holes can be picked in it. Of course, anybody choosing the old chronology for the Guptas will have to search for defects in the new and reinterpret a lot of things, at the centre of which sit the Aśokan Edicts apparently as firm in their time-indications as the rocks on which they are inscribed. In Rock Edict XIII there are those five foreign kings led by a king who is called "Yona" (an adjective considered translatable as "Ionian", indicating "Greek") - five rulers whose names have been adjudged to correspond with those of five post-Alexandrine Greek monarchs. And there is also the version in Greek along with an unmistakably Aśokan message in Aramaic in the inscription discovered some decades ago in Kandahar. Since the discovery of this bilingual inscription another in Greek alone and two more in only Aramaic with Aśokan references have come to light. Can we dislodge these records from the middle of the 3rd century B.C.?

We must certainly try to do so, but our critics have first to realize the task before them. Unable to get out of their predicament they must consent to listen to all that we may set forth in order to add to its logicality a practical proof. This proof would

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come from a detailed circumstantial display of calculations and conditions obtaining in the immediately post-Alexandrine period in India and negating the modern chronology by creating a background against which the Aśoka of the Rock Edicts would be most improbable, if not impossible, around 250 A.D. In other words, our critics have to look closely at the evidence of Megasthenes.

It is our belief that whoever looks at it thus will feel compelled to credit the Purānic chronology in at least some general aspects and quite undeniably in respect of the Imperial Guptas, as well as to cast about for an understanding quite unlike the one current today of factors, Aśokan and others, that seem to tell convincingly in favour of modern historians.

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PART TWO

The Momentous Evidence of Megasthenes

1

Megasthenes, the Greek who lived at the court of the Indian king "Sandrocottus" for some years from c. 302 B.C. as the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator, wrote a very popular book entitled Indica. The book itself is lost but it has served as the source for several Classical authors' accounts of the country where the ambassador had sojourned. A question of great moment to the subject of India's antiquity is: "Did Megasthenes receive any information regarding the historical chronology of India from the native annalists of his day?"

Such information is likely to throw sharp light on the problem whether "Sandrocottus" was Chandragupta Maurya, as modern historians hold, or the founder of the Imperial Guptas, Chandragupta I, as the traditional-Purānic chronology makes us conclude.

The Chronological Clue from Megasthenes

We have three versions of a statement by Megasthenes, which can bear upon our problem.¹

Pliny (VI. xxl.4-5) reports about the Indians: "From the days of Father Bacchus to Alexander the Great, their kings are reckoned at 154, whose reigns extend over 6451 years and 3 months."

Solinus (52.5) says: "Father Bacchus was the first who invaded India, and was the first of all who triumphed over the vanquished Indians. From him to Alexander the Great 6451 years are reckoned with 3 months additional, the calculation being made by counting the kings, who reigned in the intermediate period, to the number of 153."

Arrian (Indica, I. ix.) observes: "From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians counted 153 kings and a period of 6042 years, but among these a republic was thrice established... and another to 300 years, and another to 120 years. The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India

1. Majumdar, The Classical Accounts of India, pp. 340, 457, 223

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but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked..."

Obviously, a many-sided and comprehensive pronouncement of Megasthenes's has got broken up and been transmitted with some confusion and one lacuna.¹To arrive at its proper general drift we must make a few analytic observations. After making them, we may pass on to the first important issue involved: "What historical or legendary figure mentioned by the Indians became identified with Dionysus (Bacchus) in the Greek mind to serve as the starting-point of Indian chronology and of the line of Indian kings?"

To begin with, we may note from the more expansive versions of Solinus and Arrian that Dionysus and Alexander are terms of comparison in respect of the invaders of India - especially the Greek ones. Dionysus is declared to be the first who invaded India, Alexander the only other person to do so. The latter thus stands where he does., in his own right and not as a mistaken substitute for Sandrocottus. And the most appropriate way to connect the two invaders is by calculating the time that elapsed between them. Solinus gives us just this time-connection.

To connect them by a number of kings, as does Pliny, is controversial; for, it brings up at once the query: "Does the number refer to the whole of ancient India?" 153 or 154 kings are far too few for the whole, in which there were a host of practically independent kingdoms, each with its own genealogy of rulers. The number must be in reference to merely one particular kingdom which can be associated with Alexander and with which Dionysus may have been associated either directly or through some scion of his. But can we associate any such kingdom with Alexander? He subjugated the states of several kings - Taxiles (the ruler of Takshaśilā) whose personal name was Omphis (Āmbhi), Sisicottus

1. Majumdar (The Classical Accounts of India, Appendix I) has contended that a good deal of what we attribute to Megasthenes does not originate with him and that what does originate is mostly unreliable. We believe Majumdar mistaken on the whole on both counts; but, even if he were, right, our inquiry would not be affected. First, our quotations, now and later, would still have an ancient Greek source connected with India and relating directly to the time of Sandrocottus. The name Megasthenes is really immaterial, though it is difficult to dissociate Sandrocottus from Megasthenes. Secondly, there is nothing intrinsically incredible about his gathering the chronological information concerned here and elsewhere. Possible defects in other matters are irrelevant in this.

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(Saśigupta), Abisares (the ruler of Abhisāra), Astes (Hastin or Ashtakarāja), the Elder Porus (Paurava), the younger Porus, Sophytes (Saubhūti), Phegelas (Bhagalā), Musicanus (King of the Mushikas?), Oxycanus also called Porticanus (from Sanskrit Partha?). But he was not specifically a king of this or that state. So his name at one end of a king-series is an anomaly.

Quite the reverse is the case with Sandrocottus whose name in Arrian's king-series replaces Pliny's "Alexander". Sandrocottus, though emperor of many peoples, is specifically known as the King of the Prasii - the Prasii whom Pliny elsewhere (VI.22) describes as the greatest nation in India. We can easily conceive him as the tail-end of a line which goes back through various dynasties of kings of Palibothra to a hoary past along one branch among many leading to a common ancestor whom the Greeks identified with an India-conquering Dionysus.

This conception seems natural when we realize that the small king-number - 153 or 154 - was mentioned to Megasthenes at Palibothra itself, where he was stationed as ambassador. And what endows this conception with inevitability is the importance which Indian chronologists and historians have given to Magadha whose capital was Palibothra (Pātaliputra) of the Prasii (Prāchya, Easterners): the kings of Magadha after the Bhārata War are the principal theme of the Purānic lists of dynasties. Sandrocottus and not Alexander was certainly the terminus intended by Megasthenes to the king-series the Indians mentioned to him.

Along with this series there must go also a time-span other than any pertaining to Alexander. True, Alexander and Sandrocottus were contemporaries and the gap of 409 dividing Pliny's and Solinus's 6451 plus 3 months from Arrian's 6042 is a gross mistake; but there is reason for a difference between the periods applicable to Alexander and Sandrocottus respectively. The two which we have are not meant to be the same: one of them is not just a distortion of the other. And that which should apply to Sandrocottus must not be less than the period for Alexander, by however small a margin instead of the wide one of 409 years. It must be a little more than that period. For, Plutarch¹ as well as Justin² records that when Alexander, a few months after his invasion of India, met Sandrocottus, the latter was not yet a king. According

1.Life of Alexander, LXII. The Classical Accounts..., p. 199.

2.Historiarum Philippicarum, XV, iv. The Classical Accounts..., p. 193.

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to Plutarch, the meeting took place at about the time the Macedonians "most resolutely opposed Alexander when he insisted that they should cross the Ganges." Plutarch, of course, is in error if he meant the Ganges to be the last river reached by Alexander. He did have in mind the crossing of it, but the last river reached was the Beās, the Greek Hyphasis, not the Ganges. And Alexander's programme came to a halt at it at approximately the end of July 326 B.C.¹ Thus we are sure that Sandrocottus mounted the throne of Palibothra later than this date, just as we are sure - from again Plutarch and Justin - that he had already done so when Seleucus crossed the Indus. But which of the two time-spans shall we take as our basis, helping us to correct the mistake of the other?

Three considerations combine in favour of Pliny and Solinus. The initial one is that, as shown by the lacuna for the first republic's duration, our text of Arrian for all its more abundant detail is not free from damage which might result in either omission or mutilation. Secondly, Solinus, who is dated to 200 A.D. as against Pliny's birth in 23 A.D. and Arrian's 67 years later, is yet no copyist of Pliny or Arrian. In spite of agreeing with the latter in his king-number, he differs from him in several respects; and, in spite of agreeing with the former in several respects, he differs from him in his king-number. So his concurrence with Pliny about the time-span has a weight of its own. Thirdly, the extra 3 months he and Pliny mention with the years, although we may not take them literally to a day, bring a touch of scrupulous computation which cannot be easily ignored. A careful reporting of Indian information is indicated. We may safely accept the chronology of Pliny and Solinus as our basis and then try to guess the one which our text of Arrian misrepresents.

As the numeral 6 proves a definite element of truth in it and as the final 2, exceeding the digit in the same place in Pliny and Solinus, is in consonance with our conclusion that the time-span for Sandrocottus should be greater than the one for Alexander, our right way with Arrian would lie in guessing the intended time-span by introducing as few changes as we can in the figures the text supplies.

We may argue on the following lines: "After 6 the numeral has to be 4, but the exchange of places by 0 and 4 will result only in 6402 which would put Sandrocottus's coronation at Magadha at

1. The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 50.

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still an impossible 49 years' distance from Alexander's time. Some other numeral has to substitute the zero. But this numeral must lead to more years than 6451. Since 2, 3 or 4 will not give us more years, what we need is something greater which will yet not carry us lower than 305 B.C. when the Indus was crossed by Seleucus and when Sandrocottus had already become king.¹ Either 5, 6 or 7 can serve our purpose,, providing us with 6452, 6462, 6472 and leading us from 326 B.C., the year of Alexander's invasion of India, to 325, 315, 305 B.C., all within the permitted range. Out of these, 325 looks too early: there is absolutely nothing in the reports at our disposal to hint at it. When Alexander left India in September 325 there was no information that beyond the Hyphasis a new king had arisen, replacing or augmenting the threat posed by Xandrames (or Agrammes) of whom he had heard at the end of July 326. As for 305, it looks too late: the reports tend to indicate some year or other before it, making 305 the lowest limit possible, rather than pinpointing it or even favouring it. 315 is the best and is not laid under suspicion by anything in the reports. All we can deduce from Justin (loc. cit.)² is that Sandrocottus, before this, had won a victory over Alexander's prefects in the Indus-region and become there a king in place of them after Alexander's death which had taken place in June 323 B.C. A local kingship in north-western India is all that can be said to precede 315. Whether the Magadhan sovereignty came before or after the one in the Indus-region has been a matter of debate among scholars: Some, like Raychaudhuri,³ put it earlier; others, like Mookerji,⁴ regard it as later. Our sources appear to leave the issue indefinite and the ground keeps open for us to infer 315 from Arrian. Thus Sandrocottus's coronation must have been not 6042 but 6462 years after what Arrian calls 'the time of Dionysus' and Pliny 'the days of Father Bacchus'."

It is worth pausing a little at 315. It happens actually to be one of the dates picked out by an eminent scholar. A. A. Macdonell,⁵

1.According to both Plutarch and Justin (The Classical Accounts..., pp. 198, 193).

2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 193.

3.An Advanced History of India, edited by R. C. Majumdar, H. C. Raychaudhuri and Kalikinkar Datta (Macmillan & Co., London, 1953), p. 101.

4."Foreign Invasions", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 58.

5- A History of Sanskrit Literature (William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1928), p. 410.

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after identifying Sandrocottus with the first Maurya, opines: "Having gained possession of the Indus territory in 317, and dethroned the king of Pātaliputra in 315 B.C., he became master of the whole Ganges valley as well." As the last Greek agent, Eudemus, lingering on in India as governor of the province between the Indus and the Paropanisus, left the country in 317 B.C.,¹ Sandrocottus's triumph over the Greek governors, recounted by Justin (XV.4), can be taken as completed in 317. Then 315 for inland sovereignty may reasonably be conjectured - and the conclusion happily does not depend on who Sandrocottus is identified with, even though Macdonell walks'in the usual rut. 315 also falls into broad relationship with the Purānic pointer which is towards some year in the period from 315 to 302. But this pointer is compatible with our chronological inference from Arrian by substituting Chandragupta 1 for Chandragupta Maurya. So the compatibility may be understood as the first general sign that Sandrocottus was the founder of the Imperial Guptas.

To proceed with our analysis. We must now consider the import of those two phrases: "the time of Dionysus", "the days of Father Bacchus". For, the proper comprehension of them will guide our mode of counting the 153 or 154 kings. Do they direct us to the beginning of Dionysus's (or Bacchus's) kingship in India or to the end of it? In other words, is Dionysus included in the 153 or 154 kings?

The coupling "From... to" employed by all the writers is ambiguous, whether we apply it to the "time" and "days" or to the king-number. Luckily we have an unequivocal expression in Soli-nus to help us out. It occurs in the statement he makes immediately after mentioning the years and months. The statement, as it stands, is a little obscure on the whole, as if a sort of riddle were propounded from which we have to guess an average reign-period by dividing the years and months by the king-number.² But its general turn seems really to be a somewhat jumbled way of saying: "the calculation being made by counting the reigns of the kings, who ran to the number of 153, in the intermediate period." As it

1.R. K. Mookerji, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times (University of Madras, 1943), pp. 50-51.

2.Such is the interpretation of Mankad in his Purānic Chronology, pp. 16-17. According to us, it has two or'three serious hurdles to leap, but its Tightness or wrongness has no bearing on our present situation.

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comes when Solinus brings into relation with the number of kings the years and months from Dionysus to Alexander, it holds both for the time-span and for the king-series. Separating, as we do, from Alexander the king-series and joining it to Sandrocottus, while keeping for Alexander the time-span found in Solinus as well as in Pliny, we may formulate the situation: "6451 years and 3 months stretch out between the reigns of Dionysus and Alexander in India. After Dionysus ceased reigning and before Alexander started doing so, we have 'the intermediate period'. Similarly, the kings who are counted are the ones succeeding Dionysus and preceding Sandrocottus. Indeed, Dionysus, who 'was the first of all who triumphed over the vanquished Indians', must be regarded as the first king of the Indians, but if we count both of them, the king-number will be 155 or 156."

We find E. R. Bevan aware of the same situation. He¹ writes: "Megasthenes was given at the court of Pātaliputra a list of the kings who had preceded Chandragupta on the throne... The line began with the 'most Bacchic' of the companions of Dionysus, Spatembas, left behind as king of the land, when Dionysus retired." After Dionysus and before Sandrocottus (Chandragupta): that is Bevan's reading of the king-series.In referring to Dionysus's "most Bacchic" companion he is drawing upon Arrian (op . cit., I. viii). We shall come to this personage later.

The final point to glance at is: "Which of the two king-numbers is to be accepted?" Since two authors out of three - each independently of the other - give 153 and since Arrian who correctly refers the king-series to Sandrocottus is one of them, 153 would appear to have more weight and could justifiably be preferred. However, when the difference of 154 from it is exceedingly small, perhaps the two serial numbers are there because of a disagreement among the calculators whether a certain name was to be included or not in the final tally. But, for this to hold, the upper name Dionysus must be uniquely identifiable and not exposed to a possible equation with anyone just preceding the analogue discovered in an Indian list.

In view of all our observations our job is to link Sandrocottus with an intervening chain of 153 kings to the ancient monarch of India whom the Greeks named Dionysus. By doing it we should be

1. "India in Early Greek and Latin Literature", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 409.

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able to decide between Chandragupta Maurya and Chandragupta I for Sandrocottus and between the rise of the Mauryas and the rise of the Imperial Guptas in 315 B.C. The whole of ancient Indian chronology hinges on our decision apropos of the clue from Megasthenes.

The Kings from Dionysus to Sandrocottus

Naturally, to come to a decision we must consult the Indian sources on which Megasthenes based himself. Where time-periods or king-lists are concerned, the informants of Megasthenes are very likely to have been Purānic pundits. "In fact," says Mankad¹ rightly, "apart from the Purānas, there is no other source for such information." And we may observe one striking correspondence in Megasthenes's mode of chronological statement to a turn of phrase in the Purānas. Megasthenes speaks of "the intermediate period": it at once recalls the repeated use by the Purānas of the word "interval". Megasthenes brings just what is typical of the Purānas.

No doubt, the early Purānas were not quite in the form which we have today of this kind of literature, but there must have been many things in common and we are justified in tracing the extant Purānic documents to versions in fairly ancient times. "The early versions of the Purānas," Pusalker² sums up, "existed at the period of the Bhārata War and that of Megasthenes." And, like the original work of Megasthenes, these versions must have had a consistent tale of historico-chronological indications, which at present we can rebuild in several if not all respects by critical collation of the various reports.

Pargiter, in his Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, has set up a table of collated genealogical lines from the time of Manu Vaiva-svata to that of the Bhārata War. His Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age collates the members of the eight dynasties which the Purānas set ruling in Magadha after the latter event. As for the line from Vaivasvata backward to Manu Svāyambhuva who marks the ultimate point in the Purānic time-vision for the earth, these two books supply very few details. We have to go elsewhere for whatever details are possible.

1.Op. cit.. p- 2.

2.Studies in the Epics and Purānas of India, p. lxvi.

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Our task is to start, on the one hand, from Chandragupta Maurya and, on the other, from Chandragupta I of the Imperial Guptas and count backward from each in an attempt to see where the 153 preceding kings would lead us, ending with a figure identifiable with Dionysus.

Before Chandragupta Maurya the Purānas name 4 Magadhan dynasties. The Nandas are his immediate predecessors. The Purānas give them as 9, a father and 8 sons.¹ They come after the Śiśunagas, about whom we are told by Pargiter: "All the authorities say that there were 10 kings."² Earlier come the Pradyotas and Barhadrathas. About the former we learn³ that they were 5. About the latter Pargiter⁴ tells us: "There were 32 kings altogether, 10 before the battle and 22 after." It is the 22 that are immediately relevant. So the total along the Magadhan line amounts to (9+10+5+22=) 46 kings up to the Bhārata War.

The king of Magadha who dies in that war is Sahadeva.⁵ He is thus the last of the 10 Bārhadrathas "before the battle", his successor Somadhi heading the post-battle 22. Now our count has to go upward from Sahadeva to Manu Vaivasvata. Pargiter's "Table of Royal Genealogies" (see infra, pp. 72-77) is arranged under 12 heads repeating their columns in 3 sets of facing pages. We start with p. 77 and go up col. 1 from Sahadeva to Brihadratha who has the caption MAGADHA above him. From him we pass to col. 2 which carries his father Vasu Chaidya of the CHEDI line. We continue there up to Sudhanvan under the caption PAURA-VAS, the traditional "Lunar Line". He is one of the 3 sons of Kuru whose name occurs in col. 6 of p. 76. From here we follow the continuation of the Pauravas at the bottom of col. 6 on p. 74. On completing this column we continue to col. 6 of p. 72 and climb on from Tamsu to Manu through several Paurava names. Below Manu Vaivasvata stands his daughter Ila. We have to replace her by Budha, with whom, we are told.'' she "consorted". Another departure is in regard to the name Bharadvāja on p. 74, col. 6. It is put within brackets by Pargiter because, as he' says, Bharadvaja

1.The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 25, line 7; p. 26. line 7; p.

69.

2.Ibid., pp. 20, 65.

3-Ibid., p. 19. line 10; p. 68.4, Ibid., p. 13.

5.Ancient Indian Historical Tradition (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. 1962), pp.

52-53.

R-Ibid., p. 252. 7. Ibid., p. 159.

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never sat on the throne: an adopted son of Bhārata, he consecrated his own son Vitatha as Bhārata's successor after the latter had died. So we must omit Bharadvaja if we are to take the actual kings. Thus treated, the list would run as below with 47 for its start:

47. Sahadeva	70. Vitatha
48. Jarāsandha	71. Bhārata
49. Sambhava	72. Dushyanta
50. Urja	73. Tarhsu
51. Sudhanvan	74. Matināra
52. Satyahita	75. Richeyu
53. Pushpavant	76. Raudrāsva
54. Rishabha	77. Aharhyāti
55. Kuśāgra	78. Samyāti
56. Bnhad-ratha	79. Bahugava
57. Vasu Chaidya	80. Sudhanvan-Dhundu
58. Krta	81. Abhayada
59. Chyavana	82. Manasyu
60. Suhotra	83.Pravīra
61. Sudhanvan	84. Prachinvant
62. Kuru	85. Janamejaya I
63. Sarhvarana	86.Pūru
64. Rksha	87. Yayati
65. Ajamidha	88. Nahusha
66. Hastin	89. Āyu
67. Suhotra	90.Purūravas
68. Brihatshatra	91. Budha
69. Bhuvamanyu	92. Manu

Beyond Vaivasvata, the collated picture in outline is in Pusalker's remark in The Vedic Age-} "Fifth in descent from Prithu was Daksha, whose daughter's grandson, Manu Vaivasvata, saved humanity from the deluge..." The details of the picture may be filled in from the Purānas,² with Daksha's daughter Aditi substituted by her husband Kasyapa. We proceed bactward from the

1."Traditional History from the Earliest Time to the Accession of Parīkshit", The Vedic Age, edited by R. C. Majumdar and A. D. Pusalkir (George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, 1952), p. 271.

2.E.g.. Vayu 11.22-26, 39, 41; Matsya XI.

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father of our Manu as the start: Vivasvata or, as Pargiter' designates him, "Vivasvant, 'the sun' ":

93. Vivasvata or Vivasvant	97. Prāchīnabarhisha
94. Kasyapa	98. Havirdhāna
95. Daksha	99. Antardhana or Antardhi
96. Prachetas	100. Prithu

For the next collation we may draw upon both Pusalker and Mankad. Pusalker² mentions Prithu as the son of Vena who in turn he calls the grandson of Chakshusha. In Pusalker's passage Prachl-nagarbha comes before Chakshusha and succeeds Dhruva who is the son of Uttanapada, the third son of Manu Svāyambhuva "who is said to have been born of Brahma" and who is "also known as Viraj". Pusalker adds: "The Vayu Purāna mentions Ananda as a Brahma (supreme ruler) who was a predecessor of Manu Svāyambhuva." Mankad¹ cites the Brahma Purāna for a detailed genealogy with explicit links. We may accept it as the most helpful for our purposes:

101.Vena	108. Dhruva
102.Aiiga	109. Utanapāda
103.Puru	110. vira
104.Chakshush Manu	111. Vairāja (Svāyambhuva
105.ChakshushManu)	112. Viāj (Svāyambhuva)
106.Ripu	113. Vishnu
107. Slisti

If we strictly follow the general Indian tradition according to which, as Pusalker⁴ phrases it, "the dynastic lists begin with the mythical king, Manu Svāyambhuva", the total number would end with 111. But even 113 is a far cry from the 153 demanded by Megasthenes. Passing backward beyond Chandragupta Maurya we fall very seriously short. Megasthenes's Dionysus can never be reached and therefore his Sandrocottus cannot be the founder of the Maurya dynasty.

1.Op. cit..,,. 289.

2.Op. cit., pp. 270-71

3.Op. cit., pp. 22-23.

4.Op. cit., _p. 270.

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FROM PARGITER'S ANCIENT INDIAN HISTORICAL TRADITION¹

TABLE OF ROYAL GENEALOGIES

¹ Pp. 144-49. Pargiicr explains on p. 143: "The names of kings whose positions are fixed by synchronisms or otherwise are printed in italics, and the famous kings are indicated by an asterisk."

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(BY PERMISSION OF MOT1LAL BANARSIDASS, DELHI)

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How will the rival Chandragupta fare? While the other had 4 Magadhan dynasties preceding him, he has 8 in all, including the dynasty of the opposing candidate himself. On the Āndhras whom the Purānas put on the throne of Magadha a little before the first Imperial Gupta, with no other Magadhan line between them, Pargiter¹ writes: "the Vāyu, Brahmānda, Bhagavata and Visnu all say there were 30 kings...and 30 is no doubt the correct number." The Kanvas before them count 4.² The Surigas, to whom they were the successors, run to 10.³ Of the Mauryas "the best attested number" is the same.⁴ The full tally comes to (30+4+10+10=) 54. With the 9 Nandas, 10 Śiśunagas, 5 Pradyotas and 22 Barhadrathas added, the list of kings after the Bhārata War and before Chandragupta I swells to (54+ 46=) 100. The pre-war monarchs who for Chandragupta Maurya formed the list from 47 to 92 amount to 46. So beyond Chandragupta I we reach Manu Vaivasvata with the number (100+ 46=) 146. To get Megasthenes's 153 anterior to Sandrocottus and posterior to Dionysus we have to bring in Vivasvata (or Vivasvant), Kasyapa, Daksha, Prachetas, Prachina-barhisha, Havirdhana and Antardhana (or Antardhi) - a group of 7 with its predecessor Prithu, son of Vena, generally known as Prithu Vainya, standing beyond the totalled (146+7=) 153 and made to fill the role of Dionysus.

Can he really fill it? If he can, Sandrocottus will be proved to have been the founder of the Imperial Guptas.

Our task now is to search in India's traditional accounts for an Indian analogue of Dionysus. Along with the Purānas, we must draw upon other repositories of tradition - the Vedas, the Brahmanas and the Epics.

Dionysus in India

The Greek Dionysus is, in the first place, a religious figure, the god of wine. Hence, strictly speaking, his Indian analogue is Soma. Soma originally occurs in the Rigveda. There he is apostrophized as lord of the wine of delight (ānanda) and immortality (amrita), pouring himself into gods and men, the deity who is also

1.Op. cit.. pp. 36, 72.

2.Ibid., p. 71.

3.Ibid., pp. 33, 70.

4.Ibid., pp. 27, 70.

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deep-hidden in the growths of the earth, waiting to be released as a rapture-flow for men and gods.

In the times after the Rigveda, Soma emerges more specifically as a lunar god no less than as a king of the vegetable world with his being of nectar passing between heaven and earth through ritual and sacrifice. During those times, Soma is also regarded, in the earliest reference to the origin of kingship (Aitareya Brahmana, I, 14), as the god whom the other gods, seeking to fight the titans (Asuras) effectively, elected as their king after having lived without a king so far. In the Śatapatha Brahmana (V.3.3.12; 4.2.3; XIII.6.2.18; 7.1.13) the Brāhmīns speak of Soma as their king while common folk acknowledge an earthly monarch. The same book (XI.4.3.9) applies to Soma the epithet Rāja-pati, "lord of kings". All this goes to suggest that Soma in ancient Indian tradition was the primeval as well as the supreme king from the religious standpoint.

But the true religious analogue of Dionysus need not be exclusively what the Greeks had in view, and we are concerned with the Indian figure whom they in the days of Alexander and Megasthenes identified with their Dionysus for various reasons, among which a strong touch of Soma, even if inevitable, might yet be only one stimulus. Besides, although Megasthenes connects wine with some religious ceremonies in India, there seems to have been in the country then no marked cult of the wine-god. The god mentioned as "Soroadeios" and interpreted to Alexander as "maker of wine" is now recognized to have been "Sūryadeva", the sun-god. "Some ill-educated interpreter," Bevan¹ explains, "must have been misled by the resemblance of sūrya, 'sun', to sura, 'wine'."

In the absence of a marked cult of Soma, the wide-spread Indian worship, which the Greeks reported, of Dionysus must have indicated some other deity tinged with Soma-characteristics. The unanimous vote of scholars, bearing on Strabo's statement (XV.I) from Megasthenes that the Indians who lived on the mountains worshipped Dionysus, whereas the philosophers of the plains worshipped Heracles, is for Shiva, who was worshipped with revelry by certain hill-tribes. The pillar symbol, lihga, associated popularly with Shiva as a phallus, making him a fertility god, and the bull which goes with him as his vāhana, vehicle - these two characteristics must have affined him still further with Dionysus

1. "India in Early Greek and Latin Literature", op. cit., p. 422.

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who "is believed to have been originally a Thracian fertility god worshipped in the form of a bull with orgiastic rites'" and whose exoteric symbol, the phallus, was carried about in the rural festivals as well as in the mysteries.²

But surely when the Greeks spoke of royal history running in India from the time of Dionysus to that of Alexander and Sandrocottus, their Dionysus was the fusion of this Shiva with some legendary hero who, unlike Shiva, was celebrated as a primal king and who carried even more than Shiva a Soma-colour by which in some way he was affined to the wine-aspect of the Hellenic god.

The fusion is to be expected, since he was to the Greeks as much an empire-builder as a god. In the imagination of the Macedonian soldiers he was the subject of Euripides's fable - a conqueror of the East whom they endowed with a constructive role in the remote past of India. This role bulked large in the thought of Megasthenes and it is well spotlighted by Arrian (Indica, I. vii)³ drawing upon the Greek ambassador's book: "Dionysus,... when he came and had conquered the people, founded cities and gave laws to these cities, and introduced the use of wine among the Indians, as he had done among the Greeks, and taught them to sow the land, himself supplying the seeds for the purpose... It is also said that Dionysus first yoked oxen to the plough and made many of the Indians husbandmen instead of nomads, and furnished them with the implements of agriculture; and that the Indians worship the other gods, and Dionysus himself in particular, with cymbals and drums, because he so taught them;... so that even up to the time of Alexander the Indians were marshalled for battle to the sound of cymbals and drums." Then Arrian (I. viii)⁴ refers to the end of Dionysus's dealings with India and adds some names and numbers, to whose bearing on Indian traditional history we shall advert at later stages of our study: "when he was leaving India, after having established the new order of things, he appointed, it is said, Spatembas, one of his companions and the most conversant with Bacchic matters, to be the king of the country. When Spatembas died his son Boudyas succeeded to the sovereignty; the father reigning over the Indians fifty-two years,

1.Smaller Classical Dictionary (Everyman, London), p. 110, col. 2.

2.The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed.). Vol. VIII, p. 287, col. 2.

3.The Classical Accounts..., p. 221.

4.Ibid.

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and the son twenty; the son of the latter, whose name was Kradeuas, duly inherited the kingdom, and thereafter the succession was generally hereditary..." Among the cities founded by Dionysus, Arrian (Anabasis, V.l; Indica, 1.1) in company with all his fellow-annalists names only Nysa (in the Hindu Kush), so called - according to them - after either Dionysus's nurse or his native mountain.

Some further points may be cited from Diodorus. Like the others he (11.38) mentions the Indian mountain "Meros" (Meru), at whose foot lay the city of Nysa, as a place where Dionysus had been, and he links with its name the Greek legend that Dionysus was bred in his father Zeus's thigh (meros in Greek). In a few things Diodorus differs from what most authors have quoted from Megasthenes. After repeating the story of the invasion of India by Dionysus he (ibid.) mentions Dionysus as not leaving the country after his achievements but as reigning over the whole of India for 52 years and then dying of old age while his sons succeeded to the government and transmitted the sceptre in unbroken succession to their posterity. (Evidently, Diodorus has mixed up the length of Spatembas's reign with that of Dionysus's: the latter should be unknown if the reign-lengths counted are to be only in "the intermediate period" between Dionysus and Sandrocottus.) What is more, Diodorus (III.63) shows us that the Greeks knew of a counter-legend to the one about the entry of Dionysus into India from the west. And from this counter-legend the figure after whom the Indians started their king-series emerges in a clearer shape:¹

"Now some,... supposing that there were three individuals of this name, who lived in different ages, assign to each appropriate achievements. They say, then, the most ancient of them was Indos, and that as the country, with its genial temperature, produced spontaneously the vine-tree in great abundance, he was the first who crushed grapes and discovered the use of the properties of wine... Dionysus, then, at the head of an army, marched to every part of the world, and taught mankind the planting of the vine, and how to crush grapes in the wine-press, whence he was called Lenaios. Having in like manner imparted to all a knowledge °f his other inventions, he obtained after his departure from among men immortal honour from those who had benefited by his

1 Ibid., p. 239.

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labours. It is further said that the place is pointed out in India even to this day where the god had been, and that cities are called by his name in the vernacular dialects, and that many other important evidences still exist of his having been born in India..."

There are some more details to the Dionysus-story, but all about him is not of equal moment; and those points in particular which have too closely a Greek colour cannot be of much help to us. A few points which strike us as rather fanciful may also be passed over.

What we have mainly to match from Indian sources is an ancient human-divine personage who is a great progressive and constructive leader - one who is organically knit together with the country's traditional history and geography and stands deified in legend at the head of all royal successions in India.

The Indian Candidates

Indian tradition shows us three human-divine personages, each of whom in an important sense was a king in the past and acted as a fundamental force of progress.

Legendary India starts with Manu Svāyambhuva. He is reputed to have subdued all enemies, become the first king of the earth and revived the institutions of the four castes and of marriage, which had been established by his predecessor and progenitor, the deity Brahmā, alias Ānanda.¹

With a status similar in another epoch is Manu Vaivasvata.² He is said to be the originator of the human race and all the wide-spreading dynasties mentioned in the Purānas spring from him. He framed rules and laws of government, and collected a sixth of the produce of the land as a tax to meet administrative expenses. He is also famous for having saved humanity from the deluge which occurred in his time.

As a conqueror, Dionysus may be seen as resembling Svāyambhuva. As a law-giver, he may be traced in Vaivasvata. As a primal king, he is more like Vaivasvata than Svāyambhuva, for, though both are royal genealogy-starters in their own ways, the latter is such simply by being the first Indian - and Dionysus, even as "Indos", was not the Adam of India. But in all his other

1.The Vedic Age, pp. 270-71.

2.Ibid., pp. 271-72.

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capacities Dionysus is not at all like either Vaivasvata or Svāyambhuva.

The third human-divine figure who is a primal king in Indian eyes stands in time midway between Svāyambhuva and Vaivasvata: he is Prithu Vainya - Prithu, the son of Vena. When we examine him, we discover that in all notable respects he is the candidate par excellence for the Indian Dionysus.

Prithu Vainya as Dionysus

Prithu is not explicitly acknowledged by extant Indian records as a genealogy-starter, but he is called again and again the first king in a very special connotation of the phrase and, if he suited the Greeks who were obsessed with their Dionysus in Indian annals and who connected Dionysus with Sandrocottus through a succession of kings, Indian records could easily lend themselves to making him for them a genealogy-starter. For, although Svāyambhuva was the first king on earth and Vaivasvata the king at the source of all detailed human families, Prithu initiated the special status and significance enjoyed by kingship in ancient Indian history: he is "celebrated as the first consecrated king, from whom the earth received its name Prithvī".¹ Even the hoary Satapatha Brahmana (V.3.5.4) styles him the first anointed monarch. As D. R. Patil² relates, the Vayu Purāna terms him ādirāja (first king) and the Mahābhārata (IV and XI) says that the divine Vishnu entered the person of the king and hence the whole universe worships kings as if they were gods. The Vishnu Purāna³ too, deems him a portion of deity.

Prithu as king precedes Vaivasvata in time, but it is not by such precedence that, like Svāyambhuva, he is primal in royalty. He is ādirāja by God-invested right and thus combines in himself the typical position of Dionysus the starter of royal dynasties: king as god and god as king. Thus he is suited the most to begin a line of duly coronated kings.

Nor is he less a conqueror than Svāyambhuva. When he was born, says the Vayu Purāna,⁴ he stood equipped with bow, arrows

1. Ibid., p. 271.

2.Cultural History from the Vayu Purāna (Poona, 1946), pp. 28, 163.

^3.Wilson, op.cit.. XIII, p. 101.

4.Patil. op. cit.. p. 163.

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and a shining armour. After his consecration he proceeded to vanquish the earth because he found her devoid of Vedic rites and proper service. Terrified of his uplifted weapons the earth fled in the shape of a cow and, on being pursued, pleaded not to be destroyed and she surrendered herself to his demands. Prithu is also the earliest among the kings who came to be chakravartins -that is, in Pargiter's words,¹ "sovereigns who conquered surrounding kingdoms and brought them under their authority, and established a paramount position over more or less extensive regions around their kingdoms." As the earth-vanquisher and the chakra-vartin prototype he is exactly like Dionysus who, "at the head of an army, marched to every part of the world". Indeed, these Greek words seem almost echoed in the Vishnu Purāna:² "The valiant Prithu traversed the universe, everywhere triumphant over his foes..."

Prithu also resembles Dionysus uniquely and exclusively by many of his peace-time achievements. We may remember from Arrian that Dionysus taught the Indians to sow the land, first yoked oxen to the plough, made many of the Indians husbandmen out of nomads, furnished them with the implements of agriculture, and founded cities. As V. M. Apte³ writes, the Atharvaveda (VIII. 10.24) gives Prithu (or to use its peculiar spelling, Prithī) Vainya "the credit of introducing the art of ploughing". Pusalker⁴ sums up many of his constructive activities: "He levelled the whole earth, clearing it of ups and downs, and encouraged cultivation, cattle-breeding, commerce and building of cities and villages."

Here we may recall Diodorus's phrase on Dionysus: "cities were called by his name in the vernacular dialects." Apropos of Hiuen Tsang's travels (c. 640 A.D.) in India, A. Cunningham⁵ writes of the town which the Chinese scholar mentioned as Pehoa: "The place derives its name from the famous Prithu-Chakra-varti, who is said to have been the first person that obtained the title Rāja." Then Cunningham refers to the legendary events after the death of Prithu's father Vena: "On his death Prithu performed the Śrad-

1.Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, p. 399.

2.Wilson, op. cit., p. 489.

3."Social and Economic Conditions", The Vedic Age, p. 460.

4."Traditional History...", ibid., p. 271.

5.The Ancient Geography of India, by A. Cunningham, edited with an Introduction and Notes by S. Majumdar (Calcutta, 1924), p. 385.

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dha, or funeral ceremonies, and for twelve days after the cremation he sat on the bank of the Sarasvati offering water to all comers. The place was therefore called Prithūdaka or Prithu's pool, from daka or udaka water; and the city which he afterwards built on the spot was called by the same name. The shrine of Prithūdaka has a place in the Kurukshetra Mahātmya, and is still visited." S. Majumdar¹ adds by way of annotation on Prithūdaka: "Referred to in the Kāvyamīmāmsā (p. 93) as the boundary between Northern and Central India." Jaya Chandra Narang² goes as far back as Patanjali in referring to this town: "Uttarapatha is defined...as the country to the north of Prithūdaka, i.e. the modern Pihowa on the Sarasvatī..."

Neither is this the sole Dionysian item of geography to be noted. In the Hāthigumphā inscription of Khāravela (second half of the 1st century B.C.) we read the claim of this king of Kalihga to have devastated Pithuda, the capital of a king of the Masulipatam region of the Madras State. Kharavela's Pithuda seems to be the same as Pitundra, metropolis of the Masoloi, according to the geographer Ptolemy (c. 140 A.D.). And both the names appear to resolve into the Sanskrit Prithuda.

Now we may turn to the religious aspect of Prithu to match that of Dionysus. Although king, he carried on profound religious practices, as the Matsya Purāna (X) informs us. And his pursuit of the earth, we may recollect, was due to his anger at the neglect of Vedic rites and proper service. In the Rigveda he figures in one hymn (X. 148.5) as a rishi under a name similar to the Atharva-veda's for him: he is Venya Prithī.³ There is, further, the suggestion from the compilers of the Vedic Index (II, p. 16) that, as Patil⁴ puts it, "Prithu of the Rigveda was probably a vegetation deity." This brings him very close indeed to Dionysus as well as to Soma. And his connection with the vegetable world emerges too from the story of his pursuit of the earth. When the earth surrenders herself to his demands, there takes place "the milching of the earth". This act seems to have many levels of significance. On the most

1.Ibid., p. 702.

2."Regional Structure of India in Relation to Language and History", The Cultural Heritage of India (Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta, 1958), Vol. I, p. 47.

3 Pargiter, op. cit., p.

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apparent, the idea which is prominent is rightly said by Patil¹ to be "that the king must provide for his people means for sustenance especially through the vegetable world." But there is also here a relation to the Soma-concept. For, the "milching" involves the preparation of a wondrous drink from earth-products. And this drink assumes directly the aspect of Soma when we observe the circumstances under which the Vayu mentions the deposition of Prithu's father Vena. Vena was deposed because he "held ideas against the performance of sacrifices and in his reign the gods did not partake of Soma at all".² And Prithu is declared, on his consecration as king, to have restored the Vedic sacrifices: he thus released, as it were, the rapture-wine from the earth for the gods.

The image of the "cow" is itself Soma-suggestive. In the Rigve-da (1.4.1,2) "it is said of Indra,...who is a good milker in the milking of the cows, that his ecstasy of the Soma-wine is verily 'cow-giving', godāid revato madah."³ Again, corresponding to Prithu's milching of Prithvī as a cow - Prithvī-dohana-akhyanā -there is the Rigvedic phrase (III. 1.14) about the immortalizing Soma: amritam duhanah, "they milked out immortality.'"¹ Further, the Seven Nectar-bringing Rivers of the Rigveda "are usually designated as...the seven fostering Cows, Sapta dhenavah."⁵ Lastly, we may quote a remark of Sri Aurobindo's: "We have seen how closely the yield of the cow, the ghrita, and the yield of the Soma plant are connected..."⁶ An example is 1.20.19, where Rishi Vamadeva says about Agni: "may he press out both the pure udder of the Cows of Light and the purified food of the plant of delight (the Soma) poured out everywhere."⁷ Thus one of the most Dionysian characteristics - the production of wine, the drink of rapture - can be connected with Prithu.

When we look at the Rigvedic Vena we see in a still more Dionysian light the pertinence of the Purānic story of his depriving the gods of Soma. Vena in the Rigveda is not only called (X.93.14) a "generous patron", the original bounty which in the Purānas is

1.Ibid.

2.Ibid., p. 24.

3.Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1956), p. 143.

4.Ibid., pp. 132, 134.

5.Ibid., p. 141.

6.Ibid., p. 220.

7.Ibid., p. 235.

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pictured as becoming perverted: he is also a form of the Rigvedic wine-god of delight, Soma, the true religious analogue of Dionysus. In one hymn (1.83.4,5), where the birth of Light from the lower life and from its crookedness is spoken of, we have the expression: yatah sūryo vratapā vena ājani, "the Sun was born as the protector of the Law and the Blissful One".¹ Vena is the word for "the Blissful One" and the Blissful One is that power or personality of the Supreme which is Bhaga and which is the creative enjoyer, the one who takes the delight of all that is created, the one to whom all creation is bhojanam, meaning both enjoyment and food. Bhaga (= Bacchus?) is Soma, and Soma gets directly implied to be Vena when the Rigveda (V.58.4) speaks of three kinds of clarity (ghritam): "one Indra produced, one Sūrya, one the gods fashioned by natural development out of Vena." Sri Aurobindo,² after giving this translation, comments: "Indra is the Master of the thought-mind, Sūrya of the supramental light, Vena is Soma, the master of mental delight of existence, creator of the sense-mind."

Thus Prithu Vainya gets steeped in a Soma-connotation. And Megasthenes was encouraged to catch it in a Dionysian shape from his Indian informants all the more by the very sound of this hero's patronymic "Vainya". Just as the Indian hill-fortress Varana becomes "Aornos" to Alexander's army and just as the Indian god-name "Varuna" is answered by the Greek "Ouranos", so too "Vainya" must have sounded to the Greek ear like the Greek "Oinos" (wine), "Oine" (vine), "Oenos" (vinter). We may remember that Dionysus, because of his art of crushing grapes in the wine-press, came to be termed "Lenaios". The Greeks may have understood Prithu to have been designated "Vainya" for the same act. What is more, Greek legend knew of a King Oeneus of Calydon associated with Dionysus. "According to tradition Oeneus of Calydon was the first mortal to whom he gave the vine..."³ Mythology makes Oeneus "father or reputed father of Deianira":⁴ "the story that Dionysus was the real father of

1. Ibid., p. 276.

2 Ibid., p. 120.

3. The New Century Classical Handbook, edited by Catherine B. Averery (New York, 1962), p. 405, col. I.

4. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by M. Cary and others (1961), p. 618,

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Deianira... suggests that they were originally wine-gods...'" Surely, Vainya to the Greeks could be Oeneus the wine-god who was on a par with Dionysus and even identified with him.

While we are about Prithu as Vainya, son of Vena, we may allude to the myth that Dionysus was bred in the thigh of his father Zeus and delivered from it to the world. The common myth concerning Prithu's birth is that he was born from the churning of Vena's left arm. But Ronald M. Huntington² has drawn attention to traditional sources which, instead of "left arm", read "thigh".

And this Purānic myth has yet another point worth marking. The expression "churning" is applicable only to a liquid, and the churned Vena assumes the look of an earth-nectar turned unproductive and needing to be revived - once more the idea of perverted Soma.

But, if the Vena of the Purānas reveals the sense of the Rigvedic . Soma becoming perverted, then Prithu the saviour who is churned out of him grows the same Soma set right again: he is Soma once more delight and immortality, Soma restored to divinity.

Thus, Prithu subsumes all that Soma brings of equivalence to Dionysus. Not only does he take into himself the godhead of wine, but also his status as the first consecrated king of earth merges in the kingship which for the first time came into being among the gods.

Even with Dionysus as Shiva, Prithu has a rapport. The Manu-smriti (IX.44) calls the earth Prithu's wife (bhāryā). So, if in the story of his pursuit of her she is given the form of a cow, he as her husband becomes by implication a bull. And the bull, ever since the Rigveda, has been a symbol of generation, inward or outward, spiritual or physical. Hence Prithu joins up on one side to the bull-form that went with the worship of Dionysus and on the other to the bull-vehicle that is Shiva's. Even if we regard with the Purānas the earth-cow as Prithu's daughter he assumes the bull-aspect and gets connected with Shiva and Dionysus. And, since Shiva with his phallus-emblem was a fertility god like Dionysus, Prithu by his connection with the vegetable world and still more as a vegetation deity gets assimilated with equal ease to both. The

1.Ibid., pp. 618-19.

2."The Legend of Prithu", Purāna, (Vārānasi), Vol. II, 1-2, July 1960, p. 190, fn. 8.

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Greeks would find little difficulty in making their Dionysus a composite of Shiva and Prithu.

Perhaps they would be further helped on finding that the appellation "Lord of Prithvī", which would be most apt for Prithu, was also used for Shiva: Shiva is called Prithvīśvara in a Gupta inscription.¹

The Sanskrit for the Name "Dionysus"

Our special formula of Dionysus=Prithu and our broad one of Dionysus=Shiva=Prithu would acquire an added interest if in regard to Shiva and Prithu we could light upon a possible Indian equivalent of the name "Dionysus". Here we would be in the realm of conjectures, and it is necessary to state that our formulas do not depend in the least on our incursion into this realm. Their credibility can be neither enhanced nor lessened by our success or failure. No critic should think that our fundamental brief is affected in any way. But a certain imaginative enrichment may ensue if the possibility of an Indian equivalent can be suggested.

The name "Dionysus" as a whole has had various explanations: the terminal component has been taken as "Nusos" (Thracian for "son") or "Nusa" (tree) or "Nusa" ("Nysa", proper name of a mountain or a nurse). The only thing certain is the initial component "Dio" for the Greek "Dios" ("God").

It is well known that the Indian "Deva" for the Greek "Dios" is particularly linked with Shiva: e.g., in the very inscription where he is called Prithvīśvara he is also named Mahādeva, "Great God". It is evident too from the story in the Purānas and the Mahābhārata that the concept of King as Divinity derives from the consecration of Prithu. Prithu is the first king to be considered Deva: the appellation Bhūdeva ("Earth-God") which is common to Indian literature for a king may be traced to the legend of his anointment. So we have for both Shiva and Prithu an Indian equivalent to the initial component of "Dionysus". The terminal component can find also its Indian equivalent with regard to them if we keep in mind how first the companions of Alexander related the cult of Dionysus to India. They did so on reaching the town in the Hindu Kush which they called Nysa after the name heard by them on its occupants' lips. They enthusiastically surmised that

1. Epigraphia Indica, X. 72, lines 7-8.

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Dionysus had given this town its name in honour of his nurse or of his mountain. Naturally then they would expect the God worshipped there to be their own Dionysus and their expectations must have been fulfilled when they may have found this God, who was Shiva, called Deva: what could the Deva of Nysa - Deva Nysasya in Sanskrit - be save Dionysus? Megasthenes, on longer stay in India, particularly in Magadha, heard of a king whose various achievements and functions answered to what the Greeks' own tradition had said about Dionysus, and this king was known not only as the first in an important sense but also as Deva: further, he had some association in common with Deva Nysasya. Would it be any wonder if he too got called Dionysus?

The appropriateness of the dubbing must have been confirmed for Megasthenes by a phrase he may have come across about this king. Since the Godhead is said to have entered Prithu and Prithu to have become the first consecrated monarch by that divine Presence, one can imagine the informants of the Greek ambassador using for Prithu the apt phrase Rāja daivyena sahasā, "King with God-Force". .This phrase could very well be to Greek ears the Indian way of saying "King Dionysus". It is a phrase easily coined for Prithu against a Purānic-cwm-Rigvedic background. In the Purānas Prithu, with the Godhead in him, turnedTruthwards the Earth-cow whose sacrificial and productive "milk" had been confined by irreligious powers. In the Rigveda (X. 108.6) we have actually the expression sahasā daivyena about the heavenly Sara-ma who comes pressing upon the dark powers named the Panis to let the hidden Cows go upward to the Truth.

Or else there might have been a reference to Prithu's most memorable work and the phrase put forth: Dohanēśa, meaning either "Lord of the Milking" or "Master-Milker". This too would have on the Greek tympanum the ring of "Dionysus".

Some Final Considerations

Looked at from every angle, Prithu emerges as the Indian original of the Greeks' Dionysus in a multiple manner impossible to either Svāyambhuva or Vaivasvata. Even the role of Dionysus as law-giver, which relates him to Vaivasvata, is implicit in Prithu's role as champion of Vedic rites and fosterer of trade and sovereign over a vast number of peoples and builder of cities. If law-giving

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can in general be equated to orderly government, it is an activity of Prithu's. For, Patil¹ writes, "From the fact that the Prithvī-dohana-ākhyāna - i.e., Prithvī as a cow is milched by Prithu assisted by the Gods and others - forms an essential ingredient of Prithu's tale it is clear that the Purānakāras looked upon him as the originator of Kingship and orderly government." And, though Vaivasvata is the father of the human ages and thereby looks plausible for the part of history-starter which Dionysus plays in the Greek account, the history he starts is joined with Prithu in an organic and essential way. The period at whose head stands Vaivasvata differs from all preceding periods in that, unlike them, it had cities and villages, knew agriculture, trade, pasture and cattle-breeding. And it knew all these things because of Prithu: Prithu has given a special distinguishing character to the Vaivasvata epoch and made the period, in which the Purānic dynasties from that Manu flourished, what it historically is.²

Svāyambhuva himself, the sheer first of all earth-kings in the Purānas, is assimilated in a certain sense. The Vishnu Purāna,³ after describing how Prithu chased and conquered the earth which was fleeing from him like a cow, tells us that the land promised to obey his behests and adds: "he therefore, having made Svāyambhuva Manu the calf, milked the Earth and received the milk into his own hand, for the benefit of mankind. Thence proceeded all kinds of corn and vegetable upon which people.subsist now and perpetually." H. H. Wilson⁴ has a footnote on the phrase about Svāyambhuva: "by the 'calf, or Manu in that character, is typified, the commentator observes, the promoter of the multiplication of progeny." Whatever the explanation, the phrase renders the prime king Svāyambhuva a living portion of the Prithu-history, a power serving organically the achievement of the first consecrated monarch.

A last consideration, rounding off the rich many-sided equation of Prithu to Dionysus, is a legend connected with Magadha. We have argued that the 153 kings of Megasthenes trace the line upward from Sandrocottus, rather than from Alexander, to

1."Gupta Inscriptions and the Purānic Tradition", Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, Vol. II, Nos. 1-2, p. 156.

2.Vāyu Purāna, 62.170-74. Vide Patil, Cultural History..., p. 71. ³ Wilson, op. cit., XIII, p. 104. 4. Ibid., fn. 8.

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Dionysus and that they pertain to just the province of Magadha at their tail-end. It would be most appropriate if to balance Sandrocottus at the lower extreme as king of Magadha the list went back, with whatever intermediate breaks, to an original Magadhan monarch. Seen through Purānic eyes, the equation of Prithu to Dionysus makes Dionysus such a monarch. Thus the Brahma Purāna (4.67), which in the midst of later accretions is held¹ to have very ancient matter enshrined in it, bears a legend in which Prithu is, in B. C. Law's words,² "the first Samrat or Emperor of Magadha".

Indeed, such a legend is no freak of a flash in one single Purāna. Magadha's original connection with Prithu is borne out also by the Vayu (62.147), the Brahmānda (ii.36.172) and the Harivarhsa (5.325), not to mention the Rāmāyana (i.35.5.35, ed. Gorr) and the MahaBhārata (xii.59, 2234).

It seems impossible to doubt that Prithu Vainya at the commencement and Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Gupta in Magadha, at the termination are what the Indian informants of Megasthenes intended when they spoke of a series of 153 kings from Dionysus to Sandrocottus. Through Megasthenes the Purānic chronology of the rise of the Imperial Guptas in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. appears to be completely vindicated.

The Alternative Number of Kings: 154

With Prithu Vainya uniquely identifiable as Dionysus, we can see in the proper light the less supported alternative king-number 154. On a back-view of Pargiter's Tables it becomes both apt and intelligible. For 153 is reached on omission of Bharadvaja who never sat on the throne. But if we include him because he was next after Bhārata and just before Vitatha we shall get 154 dynastic names.

Even on omitting the non-king Bharadvaja we can entertain the possibility of 154 rulers. In the case of only one dynasty Pargiter brings himself to consider an alternative to his count - by a single addition. His list of the Āndhras³ has No. 24a within brackets, a name mentioned in one copy (e) alone of the Vayu Purāna.⁴ "A

1.The Cambridge History of India, p. 300.

2.Tribes in Ancient India (Poona, 1943), p. 95.

3.Op. cit., p. 36. 4. Ibid., p. 37.

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line found in only one MS.," Pargiter¹ observes, "should not be rejected straight away (see Introduction § 31); hence I have included him in the list in that position.... If he is genuine, we may suppose that the total 30 is a round number." With 31 Āndhras we get 154 kings.

Thus both the numbers from Megasthenes get aligned to the Purānas with an astonishing accuracy.

Answers to Some Possible Objections to Linking Chandragupta I and Prithu

Although Prithu as Dionysus strikes one as most appropriate, a couple of objections may be raised to our counting 153 or 154 between him and Chandragupta I.

It may be said: "The Purānas designate the Pradyotas as kings of Magadha. but modern research is disposed to put them on the throne of Avantī. Also, modern research has not struck upon any definite evidence to regard the Āndhra Sātavāhanas as Magadhan kings. If we leave the two dynasties out, there will never be 153 or 154 kings before Chandragupta I along the Magadhan line backward to Prithu."

The answer is very simple. To begin with, modern research is not unaminous: scholars like V. Smith² do not agree with the majority opinion. But even if this opinion happens to be correct, our argument stands - and it would stand in spite of any number of dynasties falling under doubt. For, we are unconcerned at the moment with the issue of the Purānas' correctness in this matter: we are concerned with nothing else than what the Purānas record and what we are supposing their pundits to have conveyed to the Greek ambassador in the time of Sandrocottus. The issue really is: "Does the Purānic list, right or wrong, correspond numerically to that of Megasthenes?" The correspondence is very striking.

One may also object: "According to Pargiter's careful analysis,³ the scheme of genealogy from Vaivasvata to Sahadeva, inclusive

1. Ibid.

2 The Early History of India. (London, 1934). Chapters II and VIII. Vide also Anand Swarup Gupta. "The Problem of Interpretation of the Purānas", Purāna (Vārānasi), Vol. VI. No. 1. January 1965, p. 68, fn. 37. on the question of the Pradyotas.

³- Op. cit., pp. 144-49.

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of both, comprises 94 generations. To take only 46 king-names, as you do, misrepresents the state of affairs. You should count 94 kings and, adding the 7 names up to Prithu, get 101 names before the Bhārata war. Then, with the members of the 8 dynasties prior to the Imperial Guptas added, the total number will be (101 + 100=) 201 instead of 153. This will throw the Purānas out of tune with Megasthenes and invalidate your whole procedure and proving."

Here too the main point is overlooked. We dp not affirm that no more than 46 kings existed from Vaivasvata to the Bhārata War along the line linking with the Magadhan monarchs. Nor do the Purānas make such an affirmation. Pargiter¹ has shown that they do not really claim to be exhaustive about any line: "in one place it is frankly admitted that there is a gap" and the very word vistarena suggesting completeness turns out to be compatible with expressions like sahkespena and samāsena, signifying "succinct" or "concise", and what is implied is merely "the full traditional account". Our concern is simply with the number of names actually offered and with the problem: "Does it agree or not with the Greek account?" Pargiter's analysis of the generations makes no odds. A most potable agreement is there. Both our procedure and proving remain untouched.

The Time-relation of Dionysus to Heracles

The sole objection truly worth weighing arises from Arrian's concluding remark: "The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations." In the context of the king-series, Heracles is evidently meant to have been either fifteenth in the list or contemporaneous with whoever else was fifteenth. But we know who Heracles was, from Arrian's own slightly earlier statement (Indica, I. viii):² "Heracles... who is currently reported to have come as a stranger into the country is said to have been in reality a native of India. This Heracles is held in especial honour by the Sourasenoi, an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora and Cleisobora, and through whose country flows a navigable river called the Jobares. But the dress which this Heracles wore, Megasthenes tells us, resembled that of

1.Ibid., p. 89 with fns. 1 & 2.

2.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 221-22. .

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the Thracian Heracles, as the Indians themselves admit. It is further said that he had a numerous progeny of male children born to him in India (for, like his Theban namesake, he married many wives) but that he had only one daughter. The name of this child was Pāndaia, and the land in which she was born and with the sovereignty of which Heracles entrusted her was called after her name Pāndaia." Sufficient clues have been seen by scholars' in this account to identify Heracles.

D.R. Bhandarker equates him with Krshna Vasudeva (plus Krishna's brother Balarāma) and the Sourasenoi with the Surasenas or Satvatas. Lassen, McCrindle and Hopkins state that Methora and Cleisobora are respectively Mathura and Krish-napura on the Jamunā (Jobares). The story about Pāndaia is a confused reference to Krishna's close personal association with the Pāndavas in the Bhārata War and to his family-tie to them by the marriage of his sister to the Pāndava Arjuna. A further fact is spotlighted by Sircar:² "There is some evidence to show that the association of Vasudeva with the Pāndya country is old. In the fourth century B.C. the grammarian Katyayana explains the word Pāndya as 'one sprung from an individual of the clan of the Pandus or the king of their country'. Katyayana therefore associates the Pāndya country with the Pandus or Pāndavas whom epic tradition intimately connects with Vasudeva." Even linguistically the equivalent of "Heracles" can be found: "Harikrishna." When the "Krishna" of "Krishnapura" becomes "Cleiso" in "Cleisobora", the terminal "cles" of "Heracles" can well be equated to "Krishna" added to "Hera" for "Hari".

But, if we have Krishna Vāsudeva here, how in any sense can he be 15th after Dionysus or Prithu? He cannot be even 15th from Vaivasvata, for he was a contemporary of Sahadeva. In fact, Pargiter, when followed not along the lunar line leading to Sahadeva but along another line of the Lunar family which leads to Krishna, shows him to be the 53rd name, though the 94th generation, if Vaivasvata is the 1st name and generation. This would make him (53+7=) 60 in name-number after Prithu and (94+7=) 101 in generation after him. Hence the account of Megasthenes cannot be equated here to the Purānic results and the rift threatens

1.Pusalker, Studies in the Epics and Purānas of India, p. 64.

2. "The Early History of Vaisnavism", The Cultural Heritage of India (Sri Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta 1956), Vol. IV, p. 142.

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to invalidate our conclusions, by means of Purānic comparisons, in favour of Chandragupta I.

One may put up the defence that the rift may be due to a slip by the copyists of Megasthenes, like the enormous yet obvious error of a much smaller time-gap between Dionysus and Sandrocottus than between Dionysus and Alexander. Such a slip need not prejudice the highly impressive correspondence already traced. But, of course, it would be better if the discrepancy could be explained. And actually there is a way out of the difficulty. It lies in inquiring: "Can Krishna be put, in some sense or other, immediately after the 14th name in our Purānic list so that he may be the 15th after Prithu?" If he can, we may legitimately suggest that Megasthenes has made a mix-up without truly falsifying the Purānic information.

When we examine our Purānic lists we find that after Prithu the 14 names are: (1) Antardhana, (2) Havirdhāna, (3) Prachina-barhisha, (4) Prachetas, (5) Daksha, (6) Kaśyapa, (7) Vivasvata, (8) Manu Vaivasvata, (9) Budha (for Ilā), (10) Pururavas (11) Ayu, (12) Nahusha, (13) Yayati, (14) Pūru. But Pūru, the 14th successor, is not the only son of Yayati: we have named him alone because through him we arrive ultimately at the Magadhan line. Pusalker,' drawing upon the Purānas and the MahaBhārata, tells us, as also does Pargiter by his Tables: "Yayati had five sons. Devayānī bore two, Yadu and Turvasu, and Śarmishthā three, Anu, Druhyu, and Puru." All these sons are 14th after Prithu. Pusalker continues: "Yadu, the eldest son of Yayāti, founded the Yādavas, the first Lunar dynasty to rise into prominence." The greatest and almost the last Yādava was Krishna.² The term "Yada-va" means in general a member of Yadu's family: its first and immediate meaning is "son of Yadu". If Krishna, who is the Yādava par excellence just as Rāma Dāśarathi is the preeminent Raghava (descendant of the Solar Line of Raghu), is understood as "son of Yadu", then, since Yadu is 14th in succession to Prithu, Krishna is 15th. And he is 15th not only as a name: those who are next in succession to Yadu - his "sons", as they are called - are 15th in generation no less than in name-number. Pargiter,³ counting Vaivasvata as the 1st generation, makes Yadu's sons the 8th:

1."Traditional History. "The Vedic Age, p. 274.

2.Ibid., pp. 298-99.

3.Op. cit., p. 144, col.l.

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they become the 15th when 7 are counted between Vaivasvata and Prithu. Therefore Prithu would be exactly 15 generations earlier than Krishna who, according to us, substitutes one of these sons in Megasthenes's understanding.

The precise generation-number 15 which Krishna as "Yādava" could fit is too suggestive to be without relevance to our problem of Dionysus's having been "fifteen generations earlier than Heracles". Besides, the very name of the son, through whom the line which nearly ended with Krishna came into being, is somewhat allied in sound to Krishna's name: it is Kroshtu.¹

We may mention also an alternative possible reason for Megasthenes's mistake. In fact it would be a double possibility. In Pargiter's Tables² we have, in the same generation as Krishna, one Dhristadyumna of the South Panchāla line. If we count 15 names upward before him in the same line we strike upon a member of it who, like the famous Vainya, bears the name "Prithu" as part of his full appellation which is "Prithusena".³ Again, if we count the generations back from Dhristadyumna by taking him to be one of the generations counted, we reach another member of the same line at the 15th earlier generation, whose name is "Prithu": this Prithu and Dhristadyumna are respectively the 80th and the 94th generation.⁴

Whichever standpoint we may choose of the three which are open to us, we come to the end of our labours with the objections that may be made. So we may hold, in conclusion, that Megasthenes on his evidence was not a contemporary of Chandragupta Maurya. He is historically on the side of the Purānic chronology in so far as it leads to the accession of Chandragupta I somewhere in the period 315-302 B.C. - a date which the 315 B.C. we have read in Megasthenes for this accession suits excellently. His chronological information came from Indians who in c. 302 B.C. - the date of his arrival at the court of Sandrocottus - were setting up their time-scheme with the end of Prithu's semi-legendary reign at one extreme and at the other the rise of the Imperial Guptas in their own day.

1.Ibid.

2.Ibid., p. 148, col. 5.

3.Ibid.,

4.Ibid., p. 148, col. 5.

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2

As a result of our scrutiny of the three versions that have come down to us in the reports of Pliny, Solinus and Arrian, we may read the total chronological clue from Megasthenes thus:

"Dionysus was the first who invaded India, and was the first of all who triumphed over the vanquished Indians. From the days of Dionysus to Alexander the Great, 6451 years are reckoned with 3 months additional. From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians reckoned 6462 years, the calculation being made by counting the kings who reigned in the intermediate period, to the number of 153 or 154. But among these years a republic was thrice established, one extending to...years, another to 300 and another to 120. The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked."

With this manifold chronological clue at the back of our mind we have made several identifications and computations aligning Megasthenes to the Purānas, but a few knots still remain to be unravelled.

The Remaining Knots

We have to find the precise starting-point of the Indian chronology conveyed to Megasthenes by the Purānic pundits of his age, as well as to ascertain the missing number of years for the first "republic". Also, the two discoveries, along with the very fact of three "republics", have to be brought into line with the chronological materials in the Purānas and with the traditional Indian chronology applied to them. This will enable us to see whether more evidence is available from Megasthenes to resolve the rivalry between Chandragupta Maurya and Chandragupta I for identification with Sandrocottus.

Before we proceed, we may remind ourselves of three Purānic traditional dates:

1.3102 B.C., the advent of the Kaliyuga with Krishna's death.

2.3138 B.C., the year of the Bhārata War and Parīkshit's birth.

3.3177 B.C., the year in which the Sapta Rishi, the Seven Rishis, the stars of the constellation Great Bear, are said to have

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entered the Nakshatra (lunar asterism) Maghā in the course of a cycle of 27 centuries supposed to be running through the 27 lunar asterisms of the ecliptic by a stay of 100 years in each of them.

The Exact Date of Alexander's Invasion

We must begin our task of reaching the starting-point of Indian chronology in the age of Megasthenes by deciding the date from which to count backward to Dionysus the 6451 years and 3 months, a date connected with Alexander.

Obviously, we are concerned here with the question: "When exactly did Alexander invade India and stand as victor on Indian soil?" As India proper was then east of the Indus we have to know the year, month and day of Alexander's crossing of this river. The year is 326 B.C. And the consensus of historians is that the crossing occurred in the beginning of spring. But what were the month and day?

For a satisfactory answer we should take note of all the information provided by the classical accounts of Alexander's campaign.

The opinion that the invasion took place at the beginning of spring in 326 B.C. is derived from a passage in Strabo (XV. 17)¹ founded on Aristobulus, a companion of Alexander's. Strabo says about Alexander and his men: "they spent the winter near the mountainous country in the land of the Hyspasians and of Assaca-nus, and...at the beginning of spring they went down into the plains and to Taxila, a large city, and thence to the Hydaspes River and the country of Porus..."

But evidently the notion of the beginning of spring is general rather than precise: it does not connote the very first day of the season, for that day cannot equally apply to the Indus-crossing and the arrival at Taxila. Vincent Smith² tells us that the arrival must have been 3 days later. So Aristobulus must mean a span of several days constituting the initial portion of spring. This is confirmed by another passage in Strabo (XV.61),³ based again on Aristobulus. Here he speaks of this historian's meeting with the Indian ascetics at Taxila and, referring to climatic conditions, observes that "the spring of the year had begun".

1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 250.

2The Early History of India, p. 63.

3The Classical Accounts..., p. 276.

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Is there a way to know how small or large we should make Aristobulus's span of several days, and how to place in it with accuracy the Indus-crossing? Aristobulus himself supplies no clue. As with the Indus-crossing and the arrival at Taxila, his whole first statement crams together in quick and uninterrupted sequences many occurrences which actually stand fairly apart. Smith,¹ following Arrian (V.8), Diodorus (XVII.87) and Curtius (VII.12, 13),² speaks of Alexander's "stay in his comfortable quarters at Taxila for a sufficient time to rest his army". Then the march to the Hydaspes (Jhelum) took, by Smith's calculation,³ probably a fortnight. On the western bank of the Hydaspes there were watching and foraging, while Porus deployed his army on the eastern bank. Smith⁴ supposes 6 or 7 weeks of preliminaries and preparations such as described by Arrian (V.9.10):⁵ at least a month may be supposed. Aristobulus slurs over all these things.

He slurs similarly over intervals prior to the Indus-crossing. Smith,⁶ quoting Curtius (VIII. 12),⁷ writes that, having left the mountainous country, Alexander "arrived at the Indus after the sixteenth encampment" - that is, at the end of 16 days of marching "through the forests down to the bridgehead of Ohind". On the authority of Diodorus (XVIII.86)⁸ and Arrian (V.3),⁹ Smith¹⁰ mentions 20 days' rest and recreation for the army at the bridgehead. This means that the Indus was crossed (16+30=) 46 days after the men had started leaving the mountainous country.

In what season should we put these days? Aristobulus has said that Alexander's men "spent the winter" near that country. So the 16 days of downward march before touching the plains and the 30 by the Indus before the crossing cannot be during the winter. We should thus be led to take Aristobulus's "beginning of spring" in a very broad sense: the Indus was crossed 46 days after winter had ended, and 49 days of spring had elapsed before Taxila was

1.Op. cit., p. 66.

2.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 29, 166, 114-16.

3.Op. cit., p. 67.

4.Ibid., pp. 68, 90.

5.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 30-31.

6.Op. cit., pp. 62-3

7.The Classical Accounts..., p. 113.

8.Ibid., p. 165.

9.Ibid., p. 23. 10.Op. cit., p. 63.

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reached. But to say even after the 49th day that "spring of the year had begun" is to make nonsense of that expression. Even to designate the 46th day as "beginning of spring" is nonsensical. If the expression is to stand, we must take in rather a broad sense Aristobulus's mention of winter also. Some of the 46 days before the Indus-crossing should be put into that season. But we cannot push there more than half the number. So, approximately, the Indus-crossing will take place after the first 23 days of spring and the arrival at Taxila after the first 26 days. Since Arrian (V.4)¹ informs us that the river was crossed early one morning, we may roughly put the passage in the dawn of the 24th spring-day.

When exactly in the year would this day fall? It is surprising that Smith² should write: "The passage of the Indus must be dated in February or at the latest in March." Apparently he is going by that particular Indian Calendar which divides the year into 6 seasons, each of 2 months. Originally, by this Calendar, Vasanta or spring commenced in late February, 2 months after Sislra or dew-time had commenced in late December, strictly speaking at the winter solstice of December 21. But if Smith goes by this Calendar, what becomes of Aristobulus's phrase? About 27 days out of a season of 2 months will carry us pretty close to the middle of it and clean beyond the beginning in even the broadest sense. The conclusion is inevitable that Aristobulus, in Strabo's report, was not writing in terms of the Calendar of 6 seasons.

And, indeed, would it not be odd that he should? When we know that the Greeks were writing for Greek readers, then, unless they give a warning about a change of meaning in the terms intelligible to such readers, we have to assume for "spring" or for any other season the meaning commonly attached to it in the Greek Calendar. The proof is to be found in Strabo himself. He (XV.1.13)³ says: "India is watered by the summer rains and... the plains become marshes." Arrian (V.IX)⁴ is clear-cut on the point when he speaks of "the time of the year when the sun is wont to turn towards the summer solstice", and adds: "At this season incessant and heavy rain falls in India." The summer solstice

1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 24.

2.Op. dr., p. 64, fn. 2.

3.The Classical Accounts..., p. 249. 4-Ibid., p. 3r.

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comes on June 21. But the scheme of 6 seasons has Grishma (heat) from late April to late June and then Varsha (rain) from June 21 for 2 months. Its summer is Grishma: it has no regular rains during that season. The Greek historians leave little doubt that, when they do not provide us with an open sign of a different sense, their "summer" covers with its start the Indian monsoon and that this start is on the solstice of June 21. Here is an index to the usual Greek division of the year into 4 seasons, each of 3 months, in which spring begins on the vernal equinox, March 21, and runs up to the summer solstice.

Hence, from all points of view, the first 27 days or so of spring which we have shown to be Aristobulus's "beginning" must extend from March 21 (inclusive) to nearly April 16 (inclusive). Then c. April 16 will mark the arrival at Taxila and c. April 13 the Indus-crossing.

C. April 13 is the date of Alexander's invasion of India and the end-point from which we have to count backward by 6451 years and 3 months to reach the starting-point of Indian Chronology.

The Starting-point of Indian Chronology in Megasthenes

Adding 6451 years and 3 months to c. April 13, 326 B.C., we go backward to c. January 13, 6777 B.C. But if the 3 months are not meant to be taken quite literally, the starting-point of Indian chronology in the age of Megasthenes was a date somewhere in January 6777 B.C.

What is striking about this year is the two end-digits. Immediately we are reminded of the Sapta Rishi cycle. The Seven Rishis enter each asterism in the year 77 of a century, just as in the Purānic traditional chronology they entered Maghā in 3177 B.C. It would seem that Megasthenes's 6777 B.C. was related to this cycle and that its being the starting-point of Indian chronology implied for this cycle in his day a starting-point in January 6777 B.C., coinciding with the first year of the intermediate period between Dionysus and Sandrocottus, the year in which the reign of the former came to an end and that of his successor, the first king out of the 153, commenced.

If we attend to some of the Vedic associations of Sapta, the very use by the Greeks of the name "Dionysus" facilitates our bringing in the Sapta Rishi cycle. "The number seven," writes Sri

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Aurobindo,¹ "plays an exceedingly important part in the Vedic svstem, as in most very ancient schools of thought." It is also applied to those beings, at once human and divine, called Arigir-asas, whose parable or legend is "on the whole the most important of all the Vedic myths".² The Aiigirasas are called sapta rishayah, the Seven Rishis or Seers.³ "The Ahgirasa Rishis are ordinarily described as seven in number: they are the sapta viprāh, the seven sages who have come down to us in the Purānic tradition⁴ and are enthroned by Indian astrology in the constellation of the Great Bear."⁵ They are, as described in Hymn VI, 25.9, "the Fathers who dwell in the sweetness (the world of bliss), who establish the wide birth..."⁶ Expressive of this world of bliss is the Soma-wine, the heavenly effluence of the god Soma. "The drinking of the Soma-wine as the means of strength, victory and attainment is one of the pervading figures in the Veda... The Ahgirasas also conquer in the strength of the Soma."⁷ "They are brāhmanāso pitarah somyāsah... ritāvridhah (VI. 75.10), the fathers who are full of the Soma and have the word and are therefore increasers of the Truth."⁸ The relation of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, to the Vedic deity Soma, lord of the wine of delight (ānanda) and immortality (amrita), is obvious. Through Soma, Dionysus can be more easily linked with the Seven Rishis and with the astronomical time-calculation known as their cycle.

We may even suggest that the same Vedic association of the Seven Angirasas with Soma is related to the name which Arrian (Indica, I. VIII)⁹ gives of Dionysus's successor who was "the most conversant with Bacchic matters": Spatembas. This name can be thought of as a Greek hearing of the possible Sanskrit compound Saptāmbhas. The word ambhas or water is a typically Purānic one {e.g., Vishnu Purāna, 1.5) but it occurs earlier too, as in the Aitareya Brāhmana (V.I.1.2) and even in the Rigveda (X.129.1). Saptāmbhas would mean "Seven-watered" and yield a sense apt to

1.On the Veda, p. 111.

2.Ibid., p. 158.

3.Ibid., p. 207.

4."Not that the names given them by the Purānas need be those which the Vedic tradition would have given them." (Sri Aurobindo's footnote).

5-Ibid., p. 198.

6-Ibid., p. 190.8. Ibid., p. 210.

7.Ibid., pp. 209-10.9. The Classical Account..., p. 221.

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our purpose. For the Rigveda (VII.42.1) speaks of the Aiigirasas as being not only with "the divine Word, the cry of Heaven ... and of its lightnings thundering out from the Word", but also with "the divine waters ... that are set flowing by that heavenly lightning ... and with the outflowing of the divine waters the outpressing of the immortalising Soma....." ¹ These waters "are usually designated in the figured Vedic language as the Seven Mothers or the seven fostering Cows, sapta dhenavah."² And "this Soma-wine is the sweetness that comes flowing from the streams of the upper hidden world, it is that which flows in the seven waters..."³ Thus the Seven Rishis, Soma and the seven waters or rivers all go together and Spatembas as Saptāmbhas fits naturally and perfectly into the picture.'Through the idea of the Soma-bearing seven waters that are associated with the Ahgirasas, the successor of Dionysus can also be linked with the cycle of the Sapta Rishi.

Against a Vedic background we may even see a subtle identification of the stars of the Great Bear with the wine-carrying waters; for, the expressions sapta mātarah and sapta dhenavah ("the seven mothers" and "the seven fostering cows") are applied in the Rigveda indifferently to Rays and to Rivers.⁴ Spatembas (Saptāmbhas) would appear to have a rapport still more close than Dionysus with the Sapta Rishi. Perhaps the Purānic pundits in the age of Megasthenes held that it was he who, seeing the link of the Sapta Rishi with his predecessor, established their cycle as starting with the end of his predecessor's reign and the beginning of his own.

In any case, we may well hazard to put the start of the cycle in January 6777 B.C. But the moment we do so we suggest a contact between Megasthenes's starting-point of Indian chronology and the chronological statements in Indian tradition. And the question arises: "Initiating the cycle in 6777 B.C. with an appropriate asterism, would we reach in the course of the cycle's repetitions the Maghā-century in 3177 B.C. within which the Indian Purānic tradition places the Kaliyuga's commencement (3102 B.C.) and the Bhārata War (3138 B.C.) with Parīkshit's birth soon after it in the same year?" If that century could be reached, there would be convincing proof that Megasthenes's 6777 B.C. was in direct

1.On the Veda, pp. 215-16.

2.Ibid., p. 146.

3.Ibid., p. 210. 4. Ibid., p. 111.

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relation to those two dates and that those dates were part of the traditional Indian chronology as far back as c. 302 B.C.

The crucial point to settle is: "What asterism out of the 27 should be considered the first one in 6777 B.C.?" But before we can settle it we must decide whether the Seven Rishis were understood as traversing the asterisms in a forward or in a retrograde motion. Modern scholars have reported two schools of reckoning. Colonel Wilford¹ remarked in 1805 that the direction was supposed to be retrograde. But Cunningham² in 1883 took it to be forward. What was it in ancient times?

The Direction of the Seven Rishis' Cycle

If we look at the cycle in the light of the Vedic Angirasas, we would take a hint from the verses: "Forward let the Angirasas travel, priests of the Word, forward go the cry of heaven, forward move the fostering Cows that diffuse their waters..." (VIII.42.1).³ Apropos of the Purānas we have to answer by studying a verse which is found in both the Vishnu and the Bhagavata Purānas and which is the sole one naming another asterism in relation to Maghā. It runs in Pargiter's translation:⁴ "When the Great Bear will pass from Maghās to Pūrva Āsādhā, then, starting with Nanda, the Kali age will attain its magnitude." Who exactly is this Nanda and how long after Parīkshit does he come and at what remove from Maghā is Pūrva Āshādhā?

Let us glance at the sequence of the 27 asterisms commencing with Aśvini as at present: (1) Aśvinī (2) Bharanī (3) Krittikā (4) Rōhinī (5) Mrigaśira (6) Ardra (7) Punarvasu (8) Pushya (9) Aslesha (10) Maghā (11) Pūrva Phalguni (12) Uttara Phalguī (13) Hasta (14) Chitra (15) Svatī (16) Visakha (17) AnuRādhā (18) Jyeshtha (19) Mūla (20) Pūrva Āshādhā (21) Uttara Āśhādhā (22) Śravana (23) Dhanishtha (formerly Śūravishtha) (24) Śatabhisha (25) Pūrva Bhadrapada (26) Uttara Bhadrapada (27) Revatī.

If we go forward from Maghā to Pūrva Āshādhā we pass from the 10th to the 20th asterism, a space of 1000 years from the beginning of the one to the beginning of the other. By a retrograde

1- "The Kings of Māgadha", Asiatic Researches, Vol. 9.

2.The Book of Indian Eras.

3.Sri Aurobindo's translation, op. cit., p. 215.

4.The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 75.

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motion we do the same after 1700 years. When does Nanda occur in Purānic history?

In the Vishnu and the Bhāgavata themselves,¹ the name Nanda is used for Mahāpadma, who is called Mahānanda in the Brāhmanda,² and ranked as the first of nine Nandas in all the Purānic lists. Also, the period from Parīkshit's birth to the coronation of this Nanda, which is given in some Purānas as either 1500 or 1115 or 1050 years, is 1015 in the version examined by Pargiter³ of the Vishnu and the Bhagavata. So Nanda's reign would begin in (3138-1015=) 2123 B.C. This date must be included in the Pūrva Āshādhā century meant by Pargiter's version. But that is exactly what would happen if that century ran after 1000 years from the commencement of the Maghā's 100. For it would be from (3177-1000=) 2177 to 2078 B.C. Clearly, then, the motion of the Seven Rishis in these Purānas from Maghā to Pūrva Āshādhā is in a forward and not in a retrograde direction.

Of course, since the durations of the 3 dynasties preceding the first Nanda, Mahāpadma, are 1000, 138, 362 years and add up to 1500 years, 1015 is a wrong number. Pūrva Āshādhā too is a mistake for the asterism whose century would begin 1500 years after the beginning of Maghā - and it is a very likely mistake because the other asterism has a name with an identical opening half: what begins 1500 years later than the commencement of Maghā is Pūrva Bhadrapada. Moreover, there is the first king of the Pradyota dynasty to be thought of. The Purānas start this dynasty at once after the Barhadrathas' 1000 years - that is, in (3138-1000=) 2138 B.C. - and thus within the first half of the Pūrva Āshādhā's century from 2177 to 2077 B.C. The first Pradyota had a name and a reputation somewhat like those of the first Nanda, Mahāpadma. He was, as our historians⁴ tell us, Chanda Mahāsena. We are also told by them:⁵. "The Purānas refer to him as having subjugated the neighbouring kings, but describe him as 'destitute of good policy'." As we learn from Pargiter,⁶ Mahāpadma in all the Purānas is a conqueror of many countries, who made

1.Ibid., p. 69, fn. 15.

2.Ibid., p. 58, fns. 14, 15.

3.Ibid., p. 74, fn. 10.

4.B. C. Law, "North India in the Sixth Century B.C.", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 14.

5.Ibid.

6.Op. cit., p. 75, with fn. 11.

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himself Ekarāt, sole monarch, and he is designated by the Matsya as "a portion of Kali". Perhaps it is these words of the Matsya that clinched the misreading of "Nanda" for "Chanda" in the Vishnu's and Bhāghavata's phrase ending with: "....Kali age will attain its magnitude." And possibly the 1015 years after 3138 B.C. are meant to suggest that in the 15th of his 23 years of reign Chandra reached his height in being "destitute of good policy".

Yes, both Pūrva Āshādhā and 1015 years in connection with Nanda are errors - unless we follow the famous traditional commentator Śrīdhara in taking the passage to mean in condensed form: "The darkness of the Kaliyuga will go on increasing in the reign of King Pradyota during the Seven Rishis' conjunction with Piirva Āshadha, It will increase still more by the time Nanda begins to rule. " But the rightness or wrongness of the Vishnu's and Bhagavata 's indications is not our immediate concern. The indicationsare of importance to us here inasmuch as they determine the Puranic view of the Sapta Rishi's motion.

The First Asterism for 6777 B. C.

With this motion established as forward, the ground is cleared for us to inquire what asterism should be the first in 6777 B.C. for the Sapta Rishi cycle. As we saw, the list of asterisms at present opens with Aśvinī. But Whitney¹ informs us that the opening with Aśvinī was introduced in about 490 A.D. when the vernal equ inox took place' in the first point of that asterism. And C. R. Kaye² rightly tells us: "The early lists all began with Krittikā." Shall we make Krittikā our initial aste rism?

But did the early lists put Krittikā first because of a linking of it , as of Aśvinī, with an astronomical phenomenon serving to begin the New Year ? And did Krittikā always stand first before Aśvinī took the lead ? What Kaye himself has to communicate to us in full is: "The early lists all began with Krittikā, but the Mahābhārata puts Śravana first , the Jyotisha Vedānga begins with Śravishthā , the Sūrya Prajnāpti with Abhijit, the Sūrya Siddhānta with Aśvinī. But here Aśvinī is definitely equated with the vern al equinox, while Abhijit , Śravana and Sravishthā, which are continuous, are equated with the winter solstice." As Abhijit stands between

1.Sūrya Siddhanta, VIII, 9. p. 211.

2.The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 50, p. 47.

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Uttara Āshādhā and Śravana in a system of 28 instead of 27 asterisms, Uttara Āshādhā would replace it in the system with which we are dealing apropos of the Seven Rishis. So we learn that when the winter solstice occurred successively in Uttara Āshādhā, Śravana and Śravishthā (later called Dhanishtha), the list successively opened with these asterisms. But, when we look further into the Jyotisha Vedānga, which is admittedly the earliest astronomical treatise in our possession, we find light thrown on the initial position of Krittikā in the early lists. For, although Śravishthā leads the asterism-list, the list of the deities presiding over the various asterisms gives the prime place to Agni, the presiding deity of Krittikā.¹ A distinction between the ritualistic or religious primacy and the astronomical is brought out here. Krittikā as a list-header is suggested to have a religious and not an astronomical import. And this suggestion is confirmed in the famous statement of Garga quoted by B. G. Tilak² and, from Tilak, by Kaye: "Krittikā is first for purposes of ritual, Śravishthā for the purpose of the calendar."

It is easy to understand the religious primacy accorded to Krittikā. As the centre of all ancient ritual was the sacrificial fire, the physical manifestation of the god Agni, and as Agni was the presiding deity of Krittikā this asterism stood the most prominently in the mind of the Brāhmanas. But it can have no astronomical significance except when it could be associated with either the winter solstice or the vernal equinox, the two points at which the New Year used to start in different ages.

Thus, to accept Krittikā for starting the Sapta Rishi cycle in 6777 B.C. merely because it heads all the early lists would be a mistake. The asterism we want is one in which the winter solstice or the vernal equinox occurred in that year and which on account of that occurrence would open the list.

In view of the extreme antiquity of the year concerned we may simplify our research by attending to expert opinion. According to J. B. Fleet,³ originally the year started at the winter solstice, with Śiśira as the first season beginning then. P. C. Sengupta⁴ assures us

1.B. G. Tilak, Orion (Bombay, 1893), p. 41.

2.Ibid., p. 30.

3.The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed), Vol. XIII, p. 493.

4."Hindu Astronomy", The Cultural Heritage of India (Sri Ramkrishna Mission, Calcutta, 1937), Old Series, Vol. HI, p. 345.

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that the Vedic year began with the winter solstice and the spring came to be reckoned as the first season in a new system of computation. We may add from Sengupta¹ a few other indications. The oldest astronomical reference he discovers is to the winter solstice happening on the full-moon day of the month Phālguna in the year c. 4550 B.C. He has also said: "The Vedic year-long sacrifices were begun in the earliest times on the day following the winter solstice...Winter was thus the first season of the year...The Indian years, before the time of Āryabhata I, were generally begun from the winter solstice day, but after his time gradually the years came to be reckoned from the vernal equinoctial day."

To find, however, our asterism we must understand the peculiarity of "the precession of the equinoxes". The equinox - vernal or autumnal - moves through the asterisms in the reverse, order and the last point of an asterism is reached first and the first point last: conversely, the asterism, in which the equinox takes place immediately before it occurs in another, is the one which in the normal order comes after it. This seeming anomaly is caused, as Newton explained, by the action or attraction of the planets, the sun and the moon on the earth's protuberant equatorial ring, so that daily the equinoctial points reach the meridian a little sooner than they otherwise would.² The movement of the points is called "precession". The point of the winter solstice lies exactly halfway between those of the autumnal and the vernal equinoxes, that of the summer solstice vice versa.³ So the seeming anomaly applies to the solstitial points as well. The rate at which the equinoctial and solstitial points shift from asterism to asterism can be known by dividing by 27, which is the number of the asterisms, the time required by these points to perform one complete circuit of the heavens. The points perform the circuit, called a period of precession, in 25,868 years/ Consequently, the passage from asterism to asterism, in connection with either the equinoxes or the solstices, occurs at the average rate of (25,868/27=) 958²/27 years.

To calculate where the winter solstice was in 6777 B.C., we need

1.Ancient Indian Chronology (Calcutta, 1947), pp. xviii, 169; p. 156; p. 166; p. xx.

2.The New American Encyclopedia (New York, 1945), p. 1116, "Precession of •he Equinoxes".

3.Ibid., p. 1265, "Solstices".

4.Ibid., p. 116.

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to start from a definite datum about its occurrence at some time or other. J. C. Ray,' working from the accepted identification of Dhanishtha (or Śravishthā) with the star Beta Delphini, has calculated that the winter solstice occurred in the first point of Dhanishtha in 1372 B.C. and in the first point of Śravana in 405 B.C., though the earliest year in which the new moon happened on the day of the winter solstice so as to make Sravana observable as the star of this solstice was 401 B.C. From this it is easy to calculate that the winter solstice began to be in Dhanishtha - that is, at the last point of the asterism -in (1372+958=) 2330 B.C. A table based on the average rate of precession can show us at a glance the asterisms of the winter solstice in the ages before 2330 B.C. :

From 3288 to 2330 B.C.: Satabhisha

From 4246 to 3288 B.C.: Pūrva Bhadrapadā

From 5204 to 4246 B.C.: Uttara Bhadrapadā

From 6162 to 5204 B.C.: Revatī

From 7220 to 6162 B.C.: Aśvini

Our 6777 B.C. fell between the last two dates. Hence in that year, as throughout the period of 7220 to 6162 B.C., Aśvini would head the asterism-list. If the Sapta Rishi cycle was thought to have commenced in 6777 B.C., Aśvini could be considered its first asterism.

Megasthenes's Starting-point and the Purānic Maghā

Starting with Aśvini in 6777 B.C., let us see where the Maghā century would come according to a forward movement of the Seven Rishis through the asterisms at the rate of an asterism per century.

Maghā is the 10th asterism when Aśvini is the 1st. So from the beginning of its century to the beginning of Aśvini we have 900 years. The Seven Rishis, in the period before Alexander and Sandrocottus, would enter Maghā once in (6777-900=) 5877 B.C. and a second time, after 2700 years more, in (5877-2700=) 3177 B.C. and a third time in (3177-2700=) 477 B.C.

The middle date is a most remarkable result. For, the century

1. Paper entitled "The First Point of Aśvini" (1934) quoted by V. S. Agrawala in India as Known to Panini (Lucknow, 1953), pp. 416-62, but misinterpreted by him owing to neglect of the reverse order of precession.

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from 3177 to 3077 B..C. which it gives as the one during which the Seven Rishis stayed in Maghā is precisely the century holding within it, according to the traditional Indian chronology, those two events - the birth of Parīkshit in the wake of the Bhārata War and the advent of the Kaliyuga - which the Purānas declare to have occurred in the 100 years of the Seven Rishis' stay in Maghā.

The conclusion appears inevitable that the chronology communicated to Megasthenes as starting from 6777 B.C. not only employs the Sapta Rishi cycle known to the Purānas but is also related, through this cycle, both to the Purānic associations of Maghā and to the dates traditionally going with those associations: 3138 and 3102 B.C. The implication of such a conclusion is that the Purānic pundits who were the informants of Megasthenes had already these dates, together with 3177 B.C., as important points of reference. In other words, the Purānas are linked to these traditional dates through a common background which is a chronology starting from 6777 B.C. and employing, like them, the cycle of the Seven Rishis and having, like tradition, for important points of reference 3138 and 3102 B.C.¹

A strong hint that his chronology was cognizant of these dates is contained in some words of Megasthenes himself. Does he not mention Heracles no less than Dionysus and does he not mention his very epoch and has not scholarship identified his Heracles with Krishna who played a central part in the Bhārata War of 3138 B.C. and died in 3102 B.C.? No doubt, the merely 15 generations he gives us from Dionysus to Heracles cannot cover the period from 6777 B.C. to the Purānic epoch of Krishna; but the intention to communicate accurately the chronological position of Krishna is perfectly clear, and we have already explained how even the mistake of 15 generations can rest on a specific traditional point connected with the Yadava family to which Krishna belonged.

The liaison between Megasthenes's starting-point and the Purānic Maghā, which from 3177 B.C. starts the century holding those traditional dates, has a most critical bearing on Indian history. But we shall touch on this bearing at the end. At the moment let us add

1. Here a tribute is due to Cunningham (op. cit., pp. 14-15) for reaching by a sure instinct what we have demonstrated by logical reason. He was perhaps the first to draw serious attention to the chronological evidence of Megasthenes and divine its true import.

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a few remarks to render more definite to our minds the place of the starting-point in the January of 6777 B.C., and then pass on to consider the three "republics". We have two facts to remember in arriving at greater definiteness: it is the Sapta Rishi cycle that is concerned and it is the winter solstice of December 21 that begins the ancient year. The years of the cycle are lunar¹ and get adjusted to the solar by the general arrangement of intercalated and suppressed months. The lunar year begins after the first new-moon conjunction or the first full-moon conjunction, subsequent to the entrance of the sun into the Zodiacal sign with which the year commences.² At present the former conjunction is used in Southern India, the latter in Northern.³ About the India known to Megasthenes, Curtius (VIII.9)⁴ has preserved the information that the Indians "mark the divisions of time by the course of the moon not like most nations when the planet shows a full face but when she begins to appear horned." About still more ancient India Sengupta⁵ says: "The months were begun either from a full moon or a new moon." The Sapta Rishi cycle as observed in Kashmir and thereabouts (from c. 800 A.D.) has its lunar months ending with the full moon." But, as Jean Filliozat⁷ reminds us, they must originally have ended with the new moon, for their reckoning was from Śudi I which is the start of the bright fortnight. We have no knowledge of what the still older Sapta Rishi cycle did. According to our reference that it commenced in January 6777 B.C., it would seem to mark the beginning of the first month of the lunar year connected with the winter solstice of December 21, 6778 B.C. And, since there is a gap of about 15 days between the new moon and the full moon, one of the two in relation to that solstice must fall in the opening half of January. If an astronomer could calculate which of the two did so, we should know the very day, the first of the lunar year, from which ancient Indian Chronology as formulated in c. 302 B.C. was taken to start.

1.The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed.), Vol. XIII, p. 493.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid.

4.The Classical Accounts..., p. 106.

5.Op. cit., p. 343.

6.The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 13th Edition, Vol. XIII, p. 499.

7.L'Inde Classique (Paris, 1953), Vol. II, Appendix, p. 736.

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The Three "Republics" and the Purānic Chronology

Now for the "republics". Do the Purānas contain any suggestions that there were 3 gaps in their dynastic series and do they indicate the time-lengths of these gaps?

A first glance at the Purānic material we have presented so far must direct us at once to the gap between the end of the Āndhras— Māgadha-rulers, according to the Purānas - and the rise of the Guptas who are mentioned as Māgadha-ruling dynasts. In this gap we have only one king linked with Māgadha, a king whose name has many versions and who is brought into Pargiter's text¹ as Viśvasphāni. In spite of some unorthodox destructive deeds on his part, he is almost extolled to the skies, even designated "Visnu's peer in battle". As an isolated phenomenon he stands oddly, almost freakishly. Since he cannot be included among the Āndhras, he prompts us to take him along with the Guptas. How he might figure in their line we shall discuss in another place. Suffice it to say now that his position, without predecessor or successor, in Pargiter's text at a little distance from the Guptas cannot efface our impression that the Purānas are showing us, from the Āndhras' termination to the Guptas' commencement, a "republic" in Māgadha.

And indeed Māgadha, just before the Guptas became an Imperial Māgadhan dynasty, seems to have been in republican hands. Here the famous clan of the Lichchhavis comes upon the scene. Two facts stare us in the face in regard to Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Guptas: he is the monarch of Pātaliputra, the capital of Māgadha, and he is the husband of Kumāradevī, a Lichchhavi princess. And it would appear that he obtained Pātaliputra by his marriage with Kumāradevī, in honour of whom he issued gold marriage-coins jointly representing her with him as if in recognition of her share in the political supremacy, the imperial status which he was the first among the Guptas to enjoy. In D.R. Bhandarkar's view,² it is clear not only from the tradition of the Lichchhavis but also from one of the Nepāl inscriptions published by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indrajit ³ that the Lichchhavis used to rule at

1.Op. cit. p. 73.

2.Carmichael Lectures. 1921, p. 10.

3.The Indian Antiquary. IX, p. 7.

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Pātaliputra. R. K. Mookerji¹ too opines: "There is some evidence of Lichchhavi rule in Māgadha." There certainly were periods when Pātaliputra was under another sway, but the hold of the Lichchhavis on it just before the time of Chandragupta I seems just as certain. And, as Mookerji² tells us, the Lichchhavis had been republicans from long before the time of the Buddha.

We can hardly doubt that a part of Arrian's information is borne out by the Purāna's section on the post-Āndhra epoch, although the testimony is only by silence. However, two objections are likely to be voiced.

First, do we not hear of a King of Māgadha, whom the Greeks call Xandrames and whose powerful army on the other bank of the Ganges was what chiefly daunted the Macedonians of Alexander and caused their refusal to march with him further beyond the River Hyphasis (Beās)? How then could Pātaliputra have been in republican hands after the end of the Āndhras and before Chandragupta I (Sandrocottus) mounted the throne?

This is too big a question to be shortly dealt with in all its aspects - particularly as regards tracing the Indian equivalent of Xandrames in conformity with the equivalent we have traced of Sandrocottus.³ But we can pretty satisfactorily answer in general the assumption that the Greeks definitely make Xandrames out to be a King of Māgadha, a ruler of Pātaliputra.

There are three Classical writers who refer to Xandrames in one way or another: Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch. Two of the relevant phrases from Diodorus (VII.93)⁴ are: "The dominions of the nation of the Prasioi and the Gandaridai, whose king was Xandrames, had an army of 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants... Poms... added that the king of the Gandaridai was a man of quite worthless character..." On the basis of these phrases we hear, once in the same chapter and twice in the next, of Alexander's projected "expedition against the Gandaridai". One more phrase of Diodorus's (II.37)⁵ does not mention Xandrames but surely implies him when, after mention-

1.The Gupta Empire, p. 8.

2.Hindu Civilisation (Bhavan's Book University, Bombay, 1957), 11, p. 240.

3.For a full treatment of the identity of Xandrames see Supplement Two at the end of this Part.

4.The Classical Accounts..., p. 172.

5.Ibid., p. 234.

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ing "the Gangaridai, a nation which possesses a vast force of the largest-sized elephants", it runs: "Owing to this, their country has never been conquered by any foreign king... Thus Alexander the Macedonian, after conquering all Asia, did not make war upon the Gangaridai,...when he learned that they possessed four thousand elephants well trained and equipped for war." We may note that the Prasii (or Prasioi, as Diodorus designates them), the people who have been identified by our historians as of Māgadha proper, are mentioned only once in connection with Xandrames. And in that very context he is called the king only of the Gangaridai (misspelled Gandaridai). On five other occasions they are without the Prasii apropos of Alexander's desired march eastward beyond the Beās (Hyphasis) towards Xandrames. And on no occasion do we hear of Palibothra (Pātaliputra).

Curtius (IX.2),¹ calling Xandrames Agrammes, speaks of him as the King of "two nations, the Gāngāridae and the Prasii". There is no further reference, but we may observe that, unlike the case in Diodorus, the Gāngāridae are mentioned first and the Prasii after them. Plutarch (LXII)² follows the same order and, without giving any name - Xandrames or Agrammes - simply writes: "the kings of Gandaritai and the Praisiai were reported to be waiting for (Alexander)..." Plutarch has "kings", in the plural: Xandrames would thus be the king of only one of the two nations. A slightly later statement by Plutarch, couched in terms similar to those used by Porus about Xandrames, suggests Xandrames alone as king of the whole stretch of country with which Alexander had to deal. But this, alongside the previous mention of more than one king, would imply, on Xandrames's part, a king-leadership of both the nations in their coalition against Alexander and not his being actually the monarch of both. Perhaps we should give him even direct rule over a part of the Prasii so that his over-all king-leadership would be a natural one. But as neither Plutarch nor Curtius, any more than Diodorus, breathes at all of Palibothra in the context of Xandrames, whether he be explicit or implicit, Palibothra which is the heart of Māgadha should lie outside his government.

In contrast we read of Sandrocottus in Strabo (XV.1.36):³ "It is

l Ibid., p. 128.

2.Ibid., p. 198.

3.Ibid., p. 262.

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said that Palibothra lies at the confluence of the Ganges and the other river [Erannoboas=Hiranyavaha, or Sonos=Son ],...and that the tribe of people amongst whom this city is situated is called the Prasii and is far superior to the rest; and that the reigning king must be surnamed after the city, being called Palibothros in addition to his own family name, as, for example, King Sandrocottus, to whom Megasthenes was sent on an embassy." Strabo (II.1.9)¹ also says in connection with the ambassadors despatched from the Seleucid kingdom to the Indian court: "Both of these men. were sent to Palibothra, Megasthenes to Sandrocottus and Deimachus to Amitrochades, his son."

The Prasii, Palibothra, Sandrocottus - these go together. And nowhere is Sandrocottus joined with the Gangaridai, even though we must presume he ruled over them since he is considered the master of all India and particularly since - as Raychaudhuri² reminds us - "a passage in Pliny [VI.22³] clearly suggests that the Palibothri, i.e. the rulers of Pātaliputra, dominated the whole tract along the Ganges". Xandrames, on the other hand, is eminently the king of the Gangaridai, having nothing to do with Palibothra even if practically he was for Alexander the military master of the India banded against the foreigner.

Where the Gangaridai, with whom Diodorus links Xandrames exclusively again and again, are to be located is also a many-sided problem.⁴ But its general solution is provided in unmistakable terms by a passage we have not yet drawn upon from Diodorus (XVIII.6).⁵ Mentioning the "Gandaridai" as a nation whose elephants deterred Alexander from undertaking an expedition against them, he fixes their "region": "This region is separated from Farther India by the greatest river in those parts (for it has a breadth of thirty stadia), but it adjoins the rest of India which Alexander had conquered..." The "greatest river", thirty stadia in breadth, is, of course, the Ganges, to which this dimension or one very near it is often ascribed in the Classical accounts. So we learn that the Gangaridai extended from the country between the Beās

1.J. McCrindle, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (Westminister, 1893), p. 408.

2.The Political History of Ancient India (3rd Ed.), p. 256.

3.The Classical Accounts..., p. 342.

4.The problem is exhaustively treated in Supplement One to this Part.

5.The Classical Accounts..., p. 239.

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(Alexander's halting-place) and the Ganges, across the Madhyadeśa (Middle Country) through Māgadha, into Lower Bengal where the Ganges, forming its delta, marks the Gangaridai off from Farther India. People of the entire Ganges-region - of what Pliny, intending to indicate an extensive unity, calls "the whole tract along the Ganges" - are the Gangaridai.

Some details from Pliny (VI.22)¹ and Solinus (52.7)² about the Gangaridai in the Ganges-delta point us towards the internal structure, so to speak, of this wide-spread "nation". We gather that they were known as the "Gāngārides Calingae", as a branch of the Calinga-people whose other branches are named by Pliny³ the Modogalingae and the Maccocalingae. We also gather that they had a king of their own, over whom 60,000 foot-soldiers, 1000 horsemen and 700 elephants kept watch and ward. Comparing these figures with those associated with Xandrames, king of the Gangaridai, we conclude that the Gangaridai-king in Lower Bengal was distinct from Xandrames and a much smaller power. Xandrames was evidently a more westward ruler of a more central section of the Gangaridai. And, as Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch set him on the Ganges' eastern bank, awaiting Alexander, there must be a third and still more westward section too, one between the Beās and the Ganges. It is to this section that Diodorus (VII.91)⁴ alludes when he reports that the Younger Porus fled to the nation of the Gangaridai to escape Alexander advancing beyond the Acesines (Asiknī, Chenāb) to overrun his kingdom. The fleeing ruler crossed the Hydraotes (Irawati, Ravi) to reach the Hyphasis (Beās) and pass into the Gangaridai's territory. That territory must have started from the Hyphasis at the frontiers of the Punjāb. Xandrames, therefore, is situated more inland, in the Madhyadeśa.

But, in one passage (II.37),⁵ Diodorus not only mentions the Gangaridai's "eastern boundary" in the Ganges-delta; he also gives to the eastward-extended Gangaridai 4,000 elephants. Telling us of no other boundary, he obviously is writing of the total Gangaridai nation. This would imply that Xandrames's full

1.Ibid., pp. 341. 350 fn. 8a.

2.Ibid., p. 457.

3.Ibid., pp. 341, 342.

4.Ibid., p. 170. 5Ibid., p. 234.

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elephant-strength - 4,000 - has a contribution from Lower Bengal too. The king of the Ganges-delta, although independent essentially, must be acknowledging in a loose way Xandrames as the chief Gangaridai-monarch. Hence, broadly, Xandrames was an overlord. But fundamentally he was the king of the middle Gangaridai group. This group was west of both Lower Bengal and the heart of Māgadha, Pātaliputra.

Thus the first objection, picturing Xandrames as basically a Māgadhan emperor, may be disposed of. In spite of what we read about him and the Prasii, Palibothra in the post-Āndhra age could have been a republic under the Lichchhavis with their multitude of small rāja-figures - princes and princessess - jointly administering their land.

The second objection would ask: "How can the republican period of Māgadha in the post-Āndhra age be of 120 years, as in Arrian the third and last republic's duration is, when we know that the Purānic chronology has the Āndhras ending in 390 B.C. and the Imperial Guptas rising at some point within 315-302 B.C.? Since you have inferred from Arrian 315 B.C. for the Māgadhan coronation of Sandrocottus, will you not have only 75 years instead of 120?"

To get a possible answer let us go back to the ipsissima verba of Arrian. Referring to the number of kings and the number of years, he¹ says: "but among these a republic was thrice established...and another to 300 years and another to 120." The repeated "another" shows that there was no such word as "first": the absence of "second" and "third" proves that the missing phrase must have been as we have reconstructed it: "one extending to...years." That McCrindle has not mistranslated is clear if we consult Pierre Chantraine's edition which has the original Greek on one side and the French version on the other.² The Greek words used with both the republics whose years are given are: Thv.., Thv meaning "once...once" and rendered "une fois...une fois" by Chantraine. McCrindle has not been absolutely literal but his English idiom is essentially faithful to the Greek turn of speech. There is no denying that Arrian refrains from specifying which republic was the first in time and which the last. After the opening expression -"From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus" - it is quite on the

1.Ibid., p. 223.

2.Arrien: L'Inde- Texle etablit et traduit (Paris, 1927), pp. 34, 35.

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cards that he gives the durations of the republics from the reign of Sandrocottus backward because Sandrocottus has just been named and that, after reaching the earliest republic, goes again forward in time in the next statement where the earlier person precedes the later one: "The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations." Moreover, the last-mentioned republic could appropriately be the first in time since the name "Dionysus" occurring in the next statement neighbours it.

The very Purānas, whose pundits were Megasthenes's informants, vary their sequences in their general chronological summary. When, at this summary's conclusion, they use the Sapta Rishi cycle they proceed from the earlier Parīkshit's time to the beginning-part or the end-part of the Āndhras; but, when they lead on to the Sapta Rishi cycle with a series of "intervals", they have in each case the opposite movement. They begin by passing from Mahāpadma's coronation to the birth of Parīkshit. Then they go to the "interval" from the Pulomas-Āndhras to Mahāpadma. And, then, referring to the whole period constituted by the two time-lengths given, they tell us of the "interval" from the time that has the Āndhras at its end to the time of Parīkshit. Every "interval" is in the reverse order - from the later event to the earlier.

This fact may have some bearing on Megasthenes. Arrian introduces the three republics with the words: "but among these", and "these" are the "years" of the "period" from Dionysus to Sandrocottus - the self-same period whose length Solinus calculates by counting the reigning kings within it and which he calls "intermediate". As with the events joined by the Purānic "intervals", may not the republics that were part of the "intermediate period" have been counted in the reverse order? Besides, the republics themselves are breaks, blanks, intervals in the king-series and may function in the order observed by the "intervals" of the Purānas.

Everything considered, there should be little anomaly in believing that the republics are listed from later to earlier. And, if the one about which we have a gap in Arrian's Indica is that from the downfall of the Āndhras to the emergence of the Guptas as an imperial power in Māgadha, we can fill the gap from our knowledge with (390-315=) 75 years.

What about the two other republics - the nearer one of 300 years and the farther of 120? We may approach the question with

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some penetrating comments by Mankad. He¹ says: "It is, of course, evident that what Arrian calls a republic may mean a kingless period; and a kingless period would mean a period without a king, but, in the case of an imperial seat like Māgadha, an absence of Imperial Dynasty." In other words, whatever the Greeks may have understood, a "republic" in Indian thought can cover rule over Māgadha by either freebooters or foreigners as well as a kingless polity.

Mankad goes on to refer to a Purāna unnoticed by Pargiter - the unconventional Yuga-Purāna. It is the historical chapter of the Gārgīsarhhitā. "Scholars," says A. K. Narian,² "are almost unanimous in regarding the Yoga-Purāna as the earliest among the extant works of Purāna type and as exhibiting an independent tradition." It would be no wonder if Megasthenes received information from it. And the Yuga-Purāna speaks of breaks in the dynastic series of Māgadha.

Mankad³ writes: "Usually the Purānas say that the Śungas came immediately after the Mauryas... The Yuga-Purāna...is unequivocal in saying that there was a period of foreign rule between the Mauryas and the Śungas." Mankad next cites the analysis he has made of the edition published by himself,⁴ perhaps the best edition so far, of this old document. From his analysis we see that the Kānvas who in the other Purānas immediately succeed the Śungas came also after an intervening period in which foreigners overran the country.

Hence we have actually two "republics". But their time-lengths are not mentioned - unless we accept an ingenious theory of Mankad's which does bring a remarkable "coincidence". In Megasthenes the two "republics" total (300+120=) 420 years. Mankad⁵ observes about the conventional Purānas: "The usual figure for the Śungas is 112 years and, as is pointed out by Pargiter (p. 30), if we include months, then 118 years. Now jmt (j MS of Matsya) gives 538 years to the Śungas (see Pargiter's texts, p. 33, fn. 50), i.e. exactly [538-118=] 420 years more than the usual

1.Op. cit., p. 85.

2.The Indo-Greeks. p. 82.

3.Op. cit., p. 89.

4.Yuga-Purāna (Anand. 1951).

5.Purānic Chronology, p. 12.

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figure. This, I suggest, includes the 420 years of the kingless periods."

Of course, Mankad, not reading Arrian in the reverse order we have surmised, makes the post-Maurya "republic" last 300 and the post-Sunga 120 years. We would have to go the other way around. But, in either case, we should remark that though Mankad's interpretation of the 538 years as inclusive of the two republics may be right, the time-lengths thus indicated must be regarded as pretty covert.

Thus all of Megasthenes's 3 republics have their originals in the Purānas. And our job of tallying chronologically the Greek evidence and the Indian is complete. But we must attend briefly to one small lacuna remaining in our interpretation of the Greek material bearing on Indian traditional history: Arrian's passage on the successors of Dionysus.

The Successors of Dionysus

"Spatembas", the name of Dionysus's immediate successor, we have explained as "Saptāmbhas", "Seven-watered", and connected with Soma and the seven rivers of Divine Delight (as well as the seven seers) famous in the Rigveda. What about the two next kings: "Boudyas" and "Kradeuas"?

By reference to the Rigveda's vision we can throw light on them also. Sri Aurobindo¹ has cited from V. 45 the 11th verse: Dhiyam vo apsu dadhise svarsām... From the root dhi, meaning "to hold or to place", he² interprets the Rigvedic use of the word dhī psychologically: "Dhi is the thought-mind or intellect; as understanding it holds all that comes to it, defines everything and puts it into the right place, or often dhi indicates the activity of the intellect, particular thought or thoughts". Sri Aurobindo³ notes too "the seven forms of Thought-consciousness, sapta dhītayah (IX.9.4)." Evidently, there is a relation to the seven waters or rivers. And this is confirmed in the verse we have culled. Sri Aurobindo⁴ translates it: "I hold for you in the waters (i.e. the Seven Rivers) the thought that wins possession of heaven..." Another confirming

1.Op. cit., p. 199.

2.Ibid., p. 86.

3.Ibid., p. 98.

4.Ibid., pp. 199-200.

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phrase, svādhvo diva ā sapta yahvīh (1.72.8), he¹ translates: "The seven mighty ones of heaven (the rivers) placing aright the thought." And we find a correspondence to this in an expression which takes us straight to what we want: ritasya bodhi ritachit svādhih (IV.3.4), which Sri Aurobindo² renders: "the Truth-conscious who places aright the thought." Ritasya bodhi is analogous to another Rigvedic locution, ritasya dhitih (1.68.3), "the thought of the Truth", and bodhi which is a developed variant of dhi is obviously the basic equivalent of "Boudyas".

As for "Kradeuas", we have only to inquire what goes Rigvedi-cally with the activity of dedicated sacrificial Thought to complete the psychological service of the Divine Delight that is also the Divine Truth. In 1.2, towards the end we have the expressions: dhyam ghritāchim and kratum brihantam. Translating the first as "richly luminous Thought",³ Sri Aurobindo takes the second as "vast effective will-power".⁴ He⁵ comments: "Thus the two requisites on which the Vedic Rishis always insist are secured, Light and Power, the Light of the truth working in the knowledge, dhiyam ghritdchim, the Power of the Truth working in the effective and enlightened Will, kratum brihantam." "Kratu," says Sri Aurobindo,⁶ "means in Sanskrit work or action and especially work in the sense of the sacrifice; but it means also power or strength (the Greek kratos) effective of action. Psychologically this power effective of action is the will. The word may also mean mind or intellect and Sayana admits thought or knowledge as a possible sense..." In Kratu we have the right inevitable accompaniment to or else next-step from bodhi and the basic equivalent of the name of Boudyas's successor: "Kradeuas."

"Saptāmbhas", "Bodhi", "Kratu" make a connected series against the background of the Rigvedic Sacrifice to Soma in the inner psycho-spiritual sense. How do they become relevant to their counterparts that have come down to us in the Purānas, the names of Prithu's three successors: "Antardhī", "Havirdhāna", "Prāchinabarhisha"?

1.Ibid., pp. 229-30.

2.Ibid., p. 239.

3.Ibid., p. 86.

4.Ibid., p. 88.

5.Ibid.

6.Ibid., p. 73.

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In the psycho-spiritual sense, "Saptāmbhas" and "Bodhi" stand for what Sri Aurobindo¹ calls "the intoxication of the Ananda,... inflowing upon the mind from the supramental consciousness..." "Inflowing" is the word to remember in relation to "Antardhana". This name conventionally means "disappearance, invisibility";² but its components, understood literally, convey an inner holding or placing or setting. And in the Rigveda IX.83.4 Soma gets, though without the same vocables, the description: "Lord of the inner setting."³ Our second name "Havirdhāna", similarly interpreted, indicates, the holding or placing or setting of the food or wine of the Sacrifice. And in the next verse of the same Hymn we read about Soma: "O Thou in whom is the food, thou art the divine food..."⁴ On this phrase and its sequel Sri Aurobindo⁵ writes: "Soma manifests here as the offering, the divine food, the wine of delight and immortality, havi, and as the Deva, lord of that divine offering (havismah)....hz flows about and enters into this great march of the sacrifice which is the progress of man from the physical to the superconscient. He enters into it and encompasses it wearing the cloud of the heavenly ether, nabhas_y the mental principle, as his robe and veil." Soma, flowing into the being and held or placed or set there as the Sacrifice in the mould of the mental principle, the "thought", is "Havirdhāna".

Our third name, "Prachīnabarhisha", has its second component associated by the Rigveda with the Seven Rishis, the Angirasas, who, as Sri Aurobindo⁶ tells us, "take their seats with the gods on the barhis, the sacred grass, and have their share in the sacrifice." But barhis in the Rigveda has a multiple sense:⁷ it means not only the sacred grass but also "one who has or spreads the sacred grass, a worshipper, sacrificer". Prachīna Rigvedically connotes⁸ "turned towards the front or eastward"; it also points to a forward direction. Later it signifies⁹ "ancient". Combining both the meanings, the full name "Prachlnabarhisha" suggests "the forward-looking,

1.Ibid., p. 85.

2.Monier-Williams, op. cit., p. 44, col. 2.

3.Sri Aurobindo, op. cit., p. 402.

4.Ibid.

5.Ibid., p. 411.

6.Ibid., p. 181.

7.Monier-Williams, op. cit., p. 722, col. 2.

8.Ibid., p. 704, col. 3.

9.Ibid.

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light-facing sacrificer who persists from the past, is long-practised, ever-energetic, and joins the past to the future." At once we are recalled to the phrase in the Hymn - "the march of the sacrifice" -to which Sri Aurobindo has given the gloss: "the progress of man from the physical to the superconscient." It also takes us back to the Hymn's preceding verse, whose last phrase runs: "Those who are utterly perfected in works taste the enjoyment of his honey-sweetness."¹ Thus "Prachīnabarhisha" is affined - again in the context of Soma - with "Kratu" which, as we learn from Sri Aurobindo, may mean either work of sacrifice or effective power.

Megasthenes's reign-periods for Spatembhas and Boudyas - 52 and 20 years respectively - we cannot match with any Indian record, for the Purānas' reign-periods commence only after the Bhārata War. But we shall see at a subsequent point their relevance to our picture of Indian traditional history in the time of Megasthenes.

Megasthenes's Chronology and the Identity of Sandrocottus

We are at the end of our labour. But we may revert to the practically perfect comparison which we have found possible between the chronological clue from Megasthenes and the traditional-Purānic scheme of dynasties and durations. For, this comparison calls for a revolution in our historical ideas.

Not only have we to carry to c. 302 B.C. the cognizance of the dates for the Kaliyuga's advent and for the Bhārata War - 3102 and 3138 B.C. - and thus give the lie to the conception dear to modern historians that they were introduced after 400 A.D. We learn also to see that in the light of this cognizance we come face to face with the Purānic time-indications about the various king-lines by reference to the birth of Parīkshit immediately after the Bhārata War in 3138 B.C. As we have already noted, these time-indications at even their longest stretch bring Chandragupta Maury a not later than the 16th century B.C. And all chronological clues from the Purānas, including the references to the 24th and 27th centuries of the Seven Rishis after Maghā in indicating the length of the Āndhra dynasty, combine to put Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Guptas, in the age of Alexander the Great.

1. Sri Aurobindo, op. cit., p. 420.

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Again, if the 3 republics, enumerated by Megasthenes as occurring in the interval between Dionysus and Sandrocottus, answer to a trio of breaks of the Purānic dynasties after the Mauryas and before the Guptas, then Megasthenes's contemporary Sandrocottus cannot be the Chandragupta who was the first of the Mauryas but another and later Chandragupta who flourished fairly after them. This Chandragupta can only be the founder of the Imperial Guptas.

So the results, to which we come by commencing Indian chronology in the first half of January 6777 B.C. and by taking into account 3 republics, bear out the result to which we came by counting 153 or 154 kings backward from the coronation of Sandrocottus and reaching Prithu Vainya who is identifiable with Dionysus. In a fourfold fashion Megasthenes, contemporary of Sandrocottus, supports the Purānic equation for this king of the Prasii whose Māgadhan coronation took place in 315 B.C.

This, of course, does not automatically mean that all the Purānic dates are correct for the several dynasties preceding the Imperial Guptas. All would depend on whether the Bhārata War, 36 years before the Kaliyuga's advent, was fought or not in 3138 B.C. The Purānic pundits, accepting this date, have built up their chronology so as to lead from this date down to Chandragupta I in the time of Megasthenes. But the fact remains that they took their stand on the founder of the Gupta dynasty as the contemporaneous terminus of their chronology. The coronation of that king in 315 B.C. in Māgadha is an event we have to admit on the evidence of Megasthenes. Consequently, the whole of Indian history has to be reoriented on the basis of this new date established by the evidence of Megasthenes no less than by other considerations.

3

Modern historians are bound to look askance at our attempt to bring the chronology reported by Megasthenes into close rapport with that which is based mainly on the Purānas. But in one respect the modern pundits of the Purānas themselves rather than these historians may raise their voices in protest. Their complaint would not be against our case, from both Megasthenes and the Purānic time-scheme, for Chandragupta I in 315 B.C. substituting Chandragupta Maurya as Sandrocottus. It would be against some of the

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chronological implications of equating 6777 B.C. with the first year of the period after Prithu Vainya whom we have identified with the Greek ambassdor's starter of India's royal lines, Dionysus.

The Mathematics of the Four Yugas

The Purānic pundits may cry: "If Prithu's successor is put in 6777 B.C. the whole Purānic mathematics of the Four Yugas or Ages breaks down. The Purānas speak of a recurring cycle of Four Ages, Chaturyuga - Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali - whose lengths progressively diminish in the ratio of 4:3:2:1. The Kri-tayuga is alloted 1,728,000 years, the Tretā 1,296,000, the Dvāpara 864,000, the Kali 432,000 years. The total or Mahāyuga is 4,320,000 years. The sum of the first 3 Yugas is 3,888,000 years. If the Kaliyuga of the cycle in which we are living started in 3102 B.C., as the Purānas hold, the Kritayuga of our cycle should have started in (3102+ 3,888,000=) 3,891,102 B.C. Manu Vaivasvata whom the Purānas put at the beginning of our Kritayuga should therefore be in 3,891,102 B.C. and Prithu from whom he was eighth in descent should be even earlier and not just precede 6777 B.C. According to the Greek version of the Purānic chronology the sum of the first 3 Yugas is less than the (6777-3102=) 3675 years after Prithu. If the Kaliyuga has gone on for over 600 years and if only 3675 years went before it up to Prithu, how shall we adjust the proportions of 4:3:2:1 as among Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali? If we accept the companions of Alexander and their immediate successors as transmitting correct Purānic lore, we shall have to throw overboard the time-honoured Yuga-mathematics."

Our reply in brief has to be that when so much proof has been shown of the Purānic origin of the Greek information the sole course open to us is to take the Yuga-mathematics as foreign to the ancient editions of the Purānas. In the opinion of Pusalker,¹ the earlier versions which existed at the period of the Bhārata War and even those at the time of Megasthenes were different from the extant ones which have come down with inflation, omission, emendation and contamination during the last 2000 years and more. We may suggest that the Yuga-mathematics found a place

1. Studies in the Epics and Purānas of India, Introduction, p. lxvi.

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in the Purānas after Megasthenes had derived his information from them.

Referring to the whole complex of chronology which includes not only the Four Yugas with their diminishing ratio and their Sandhyās or connective intervals containing each a tenth of a Yuga's period, but also fourteen Manvantaras (Periods of presiding Manus), each with seventy-one Chaturyugas (and a surplus), a thousand of which Chaturyugas make a Kalpa (Aeon), a Kalpa being a day or night of Brāhma and such a day or night being equivalent to 12,000,000 years of the gods (divya) as against 4,320,000.000 of men (manāva) - referring to all these details, Pusalker¹ says: "This chronological system... is purely hypothetical and a later elaboration. The idea of four ages seems to be an early one." Pargiter² considers the division of time into Four Yugas to have had a historical basis but the elaboration of it and the fitting of it into an amazing yet precise scheme of cosmogony to be a subsequent speculative development. A cogent pointer to the truth of Pargiter's contention is: there is a repeated reference in the Purānas³ to the application of the history of the Four Ages to India alone and not to the whole world. Exclusion of the rest of the world argues that originally these Yugas had nothing to do with cosmogony. Cosmogony surely cannot be confined to India. Hence, in the eyes of both Pusalker and Pargiter, while a fourfold pattern of Ages can be traced to India's antiquity, the colossal numbers associated with all the parts of it cannot be taken as integral to it.

Actually, the extant Purānas bear signs of two distinct stages in the material of their Yuga-system. As Paul⁴ informs us, Wilson⁵ shows two systems of calculation observable regarding the duration of a Kalpa in the Purānas: the original and simple one equates a Kalpa to 1000 Mahāyugas, the later incorporates into it the Manvantaras also. It should then be possible to think of the Yuga at a pre-cosmological stage when the amazing mathematical conception of them was absent from the Purānas.

Even the vestige of such a stage can be spotted in the Purānas

1.Ibid., p. lvi.

2.Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, p. 175.

3.Pargiter cites: Brāhmanda, 19, 20; Vishnu, ii, 3, 19; Linga, i, 52,32.

4.Cultural History from the Vdyu Purāna, p. 195.

5.Vishnu Purāna, translation, p. 24, fn. 6.

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today, hinting at a flexible tradition in which the Yuga-lengths could not be fixed beforehand but would depend on certain significant circumstances and be shorter or longer according to turns of history and complexes of events. Thus we read¹ apropos of "the portion of the Lord Visnu, which was born in Vasudeva's family and named Krsna": "As long as he touched the earth with his lotus-feet, so long the Kali age could not encompass the earth." This means not that Krishna had to die in 3102 B.C. exactly after 864,000 years of the Dvāparayuga but that the Kaliyuga had to wait for his death, and its advent was determined by a contingent historical event with a psychological meaning rather than by a fore-fixed mathematical necessity or destiny.

Is it, then, any wonder Megasthenes has none of the set colossal numbers and yet A. A. Macdonell² is able to tell us: "We...learn from Megasthenes that the doctrine of the four ages of the world (yugas) was fully developed in India by his time"? Such a situation has no un-Purānic colour. We should hardly be surprised if the Purānas of c. 302 B.C. were themselves free of these numbers.

Some Indian Variants of the Yuga-Idea

At least we do not have to cast about very far in non-Purānic Indian literature to realise that the idea of cycles and even of a recurring fourfold cycle is not inseparably linked with the numbers of the Purānas' mathematics.

Fleet³ writes: "The original scheme of a Yuga seems to have been on the decimal system of notation, a cycle of 10,000 years (Atharvaveda, 8.2.21)..." R. T. H. Griffith⁴ translates the source of Fleet's information: "A hundred years, ten thousand years we give thee, ages two, three, four." The sentence is rather obscure, yet we may note that not only are 10,000 years made the limit but also Four Yugas are clearly enumerated. And, after the rise to 10,000 years, we cannot drop down to a piffling "decade" or "generation" as "Yuga". Four Yugas, substantial no less than systematised, seem to be here.

The very names by which they have come to be known are

1.Pargiter, The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 75.

2.A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 411.

3.Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1911, p. 486, fn. 1.

4.The Hymns of the Atharvaveda (Benares, 1916), I, p. 390.

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fairly ancient too. The Aitareya Brāhmana (VII.15.4), describing the merits of exertion, has the picturesque phrases: "A man while lying is the Kali; moving himself he is the Dvāpara; rising, he is the Tretā; walking, he becomes the Krita.'" Here there is an explicit mention of Yugas. But to what are we referred by means of these four terms? It is common knowledge that in Vedic literature different throws at dice, probably counted to 1, 2, 3 and 4, were called Kali, Dvāpara, Tretā and Krita. If the Aitareya Brāhmana had the dice in mind, why is there no inkling of the quantitative relationship of the numbers? What it does offer us is a qualitative gradation - the changes usually attributed to the Yugas in a descending order of merit from Krita to Kali are very suggestively present, vividly symbolized, in an ascending form the other way around. What is at work on the qualitative side is the same general turn of imagination as appreciated by C. S. Venkateswaran² from the Purānas:³ "The waning strength and stability of Dharma in the four yugas is graphically depicted by representing it as a majestic bull which stood firm on its four legs in the golden age of the world (krtayuga) and lost one of its legs to [ either of] the succeeding two yugas, Tretā and Dvāpara, to stand tottering on a single leg during the present kaliyuga." The Purānic image, however, has a quantitative side too, affined to the dice-throws. The Aitareya Brāhmana has the Yuga-import in its progressive picture but without any hint of a ratio like 4:3:2:1 in the reverse. Nor does it prompt the notion that the years of the four divisions are equal in number. In fact, the numerical issue is not involved in any shape: it is kept out of sight and the sole Yuga-implying typification is in terms of quality.

The names, in direct association with the Yugas, are found -with a couple of variations - in the later yet sufficiently old Sadvimsa Brāhmana (V.8): Pusya, Dvāpara, Kharva, Krita. If so striking a feature as the Purānic ratio had gone with them, some allusion to it would have been most likely - all the more when such attention-gripping lengths went with this ratio. We cannot plead that the names' being a little different renders all comparison

1.A. A. Macdonell and A. B. Keith, The Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (John Murray & Co. London, 1912), II, p. 193.

2."The Ethics of the Purānas", The Cultural Heritage of India, (Calcutta, 1962), II, p. 287.

3.Brāhma, clxxv.24; Liriga, xxxix.13.

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irrelevant and argues against the pre-Purānic presence of a scheme like that of the Purānas but without their peculiar trappings. Patil¹ tells us about the Purānas themselves: "Instead of Kali, at some places, Tisya is mentioned." Pargiter² has Purānic citations where Dharma does duty for Krita. And, of course, Satyayuga is a well-known substitute for Kritayuga. The slight discrepancies in the names do not interfere with the impression that the Purānic peculiarities to which we are accustomed have no vital, inevitable or obsessive relation to the scheme as such.

Coming closer to the time of the Purānas we have the Manu-smriti (1.68 ff) which, with all the usual names for the Yugas and with the Purānic ratio, provides to us the following table of years: Krita 4800, Tretā 3600, Dvāpara 2400, Kali 1200. If the years are divya (divine), they amount to the Purānas' table, for each divya year equals 360 manāva (human). But, as Mankad³ remarks,"the years are not characterised as divya, and therefore they are taken as manāva years." This makes indeed a world of difference. And, for the manāva-interpretation, Mankad refers us to Tilak as well as to "Aiyar who quotes on this point the agreement of Roth, Wilking and others". The Manusmriti brings in the word "divya" only in regard to the total of the lengths of the Four Yugas: 12,000 years. It terms this period "Divya Yuga" and adds that 2000 Divya Yugas make the day and night of Brāhma. Mankad descerns here "some distinct tradition" preserved, giving new names to what are usually taken as Chaturyuga and Kalpa.

Mankad⁴ also stresses that the MahāBhārata (Vana Parva, 188.V. 12-28), repeating the Manusmriti's figures, does not name the years divya or manāva and therefore again we should consider them manāva. So, again, the numbers which resemble those that go into the Purānas' calculations have another significance and represent much smaller periods.

Two other references of Mankad's⁵ are important as well:

(1) According to Yāska's Nirukta (14th Adyaya), Brāhma's

1.Op. cit., p. 74. The texts concerned are: Vayu, xxiv.l; lviii.30 ff.

2.Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, p. 178. The texts are: Brāhmanda iii.63,121; Vayu, lxxxviii.123; Harivarhsa, 13,761; Brāhma, viii.30, Siva, vii.61,23.

3.Purānic Chronology, p. 313, fn. 1.

4.Ibid., pp. 311-12.

5.Ibid., p. 112.

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day has 1000 Yugas and so has His night. The word used is Yuga and not Chaturyuga or Kalpa or Divya Yuga. Thus the designations employed by the Purānas for units of extreme length are replaced by one which Purānically means a lesser duration, and even the number given of these units is very moderate.

(2) Albērūnī (I, p. 373) writes: "Brāhmagupta says that Āryabhata considers the Four Yugas as the four equal parts of a Chaturyuga." In the very epoch of the Purānas and among eminent astronomers the fourfold scheme admitted of divergences, and one of the most typical Purānic features - the diminishing ratio of the Yugas - could be jettisoned.

The varied evidence we have cited from various times may be summed up in a rough chronological order: "Much before the extant Purānas, a cycle - apparently fourfold - was there of a substantial number of years, which was yet far smaller than the Purānic. The very names and attributes seen in the Purānas for the Four Yugas are fairly ancient and-they are not associated with any numerical convention. Under names slightly different here and there - as in the Purānas themselves - the Four Yugas were explicitly recognised in the epoch before these books but with no recognition of any such fixed interrelated lengths as are typical of the extant Purānas. Or else there was a scheme whose unit of extreme length carried a name which Purānically stood for a lesser span, and even its numerical value was less than the latter's. Where a scheme of Four Yugas, with the Purānic ratio as well as names, existed, the numbers were not swollen out to the dimensions found in the Purānas. The fourfold scheme, in the Purānic epoch itself, had equal divisions instead of the Purānic ratio."

The broad conclusion we arrive at along several routes is: the Yuga-mathematics of the extant Purānas cannot be regarded as the only system of recurring Yuga or Chaturyuga entertained in ancient India. A particular inference, as to what one may expect as a possibility, is: since the regularly diminishing ratio was not always kept and the stunningly vast numbers were not always present, there could be anywhere a system in which the numbers were smaller than the Purānic but resembled them simply in being unequal as between Yuga and Yuga.

Once again we may legitimately think of the Purānic pundits, who were contemporaneous with Megasthenes, as being free of the Yuga-mathematics that have come down to us. And, once

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again, if Megasthenes starting with 6777 B.C. has none of the huge numbers, he need not be adjudged un-Purānic.

The Source of the Mathematical Speculations

Cunningham has put his finger on the source of the later speculations which have supplied us with the gigantic collective length of the Four Yugas. In doing so, he enables us to catch the starting-point in time for the conception of this length.

He¹ says: "The present extravagant system...was an invention of the astronomers, which they based on their newly acquired knowledge of the precession." Cunningham is talking of the precession of the equinoxes. He informs us that the precession per year fixed by Parasāra was 46.5 seconds and that by Āryabhata 46.2. The problem springing from these numbers was: given the precession, what would be the period of one revolution through the whole circle of the ecliptic of 360 degrees? As 60 minutes make 1 degree and 60 seconds 1 minute, to cover the full circle of the ecliptic takes (360x60x60=) 1,296,000 seconds divided by 46.5 or 46.2. To get rid of the decimal point we have to multiply both the dividend and the divisor by 10. Then we get ^12,960,000/465 or ^12,960,000/462 years. As both the upper and the lower terms are divisible by 3 we get ^4,320,000/155 or ^4,320,000/154 years. The numerator is exactly the number of years which goes into a Māhayuga, a set of Four Ages . The Māhayuga seems to have a link with this astronomical figure . If we multiply by 155 Parasāra's number of years for the run of the ecliptic and by 154 Āryabhata's number, we do away with the denominator and get simply 4,320,00 years as the period in which the ecliptic would be circled 155 or 154 times. The Māhayuga appears originally to have been conceived as such a period. Interestingly enough, the same number of years, though with a different number of cycles required, would be obtained if we operated with the precession of 49.8 seconds as determined by the Greek Hipparchus (c. 160-125B.C.), the pioneer in this field,or with the precession of 50.1 seconds accepted in Cunningham's day (1883).²

Fleet³ has mentioned some other possibilities than the one put

1.The Book of Indian Eras, p. 4.

2.The reason, of course, is that these values, like the others, are divisible by 3.

3.Op. cit., p. 492, fn. 2.

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forward by Cunningham. But most of them have to do with astronomy - calculations connected with this or that astronomical fact or belief. It is hardly to be doubted that the origin of the Yuga-mathematics lay with the astronomers. And, if Hipparchus is the first precessionist, the Purānic mathematics must have evolved in the post-Hipparchan era or, at the earliest, the Hippar-chan era itself. Since Hipparchus was born in c. 160 B.C., the time in either case is after Megasthenes. So, in the ancient scheme before the astronomers took it up, there may have been neither the bewilderingly large durations nor the fixed proportions and the Yugas may have been distinguished according to historical and psychological signs. There is, in consequence, nothing incongruous in that the Krita Age of our present cycle should be held by Megasthenes and the Purānic lore of his epoch to start some time after 6777 B.C., which marks in our interpretation the end of Prithu's (or Dionysus's) reign.

Towards the Original Yuga-Scheme through the Indian Generation-unit

Basing ourselves on the concordance between the Greek reporter and the original Purānas, we may try to construct the fourfold scheme of ancient Indian traditional history, which must have preceded the Yuga-mathematics of the astronomers. Here to build aright we must ascertain the number of generations involved and the value of the Indian generation-unit.

We have seen the extant list of 153 kings in "the intermediate period" between Dionysus and Sandrocottus dividing into two parts: (1) 53 after Prithu down to Sahadeva who, according to the Purānic chronology, died in the Bhārata War of 3138 B.C., (2) 100 from the first member of the Bārhadratha dynasty after the war down to the last of the Āndhras. In dealing with the Four Yugas, the more apt division would be 54 down to the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. and 99 onward from it.

The period of the 54 is (6777 - 3102=) 3675 years. That of the 99 may be computed by counting from 3102 B.C. to 390 B.C., the date we have found on Purānic evidence for the end of the Āndhra dynasty. We get 2712 years. Evidently, to have 54 kings for 3675 years and 99 for 2712 is gross disproportion. We may reasonably hold that the right number of generations have been preserved for

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the years from 3102 B.C., onward - the period for which the Purānas claim detailed knowledge - but that there are gaps for the earlier span of time.

Our conclusion is borne out by Pargiter's analytic calculation of 94 generations from Vaivasvata to Sahadeva, and 95 to Somadhi who succeeded Sahadeva in 3138 B.C., after the Bhārata War. We can count 95 generations from Vaivasvata to the Kaliyuga in 3102 B.C. As 7 names go between Prithu and Vaivasvata, these 95 generations actually stand behind (54-7=) 47 of our kings. Again, as those 7 names, obtained on collation, have not been challenged, we may accept them as being free of gaps. Then, behind our 54 kings, we get (95+7=) 102 generations extending over (6777-3102=) 3675 years.

At first glance, there is some disproportion here also in comparison to the 99 generations for 2712 years. But we must remember one distinction between the two groups: the latter group belongs to the Kaliyuga, the former to the pre-Kali period. In the Purānic view, all things deteriorate in general in the Kaliyuga. Hence a smaller generation-unit for that Age is quite a natural concept, provided the comparative smallness is within certain limits and leads to no grossness of disproportion. Actually, the two units work out to: (1) very slightly over 36 years for the pre-Kali period; (2) about 27 ¹/4 years for the Kali.

The rationale of the difference between the two units lies in a consideration of what Indian books call the period of celibate studentship, BrāhmachĀrya. K. V. Rangaswami Aiyangar¹ sums up the information "The longest period of BrāhmachĀrya was forty-eight years... The smaller periods stopped at thirty-six, twenty-four and eighteen..."

In very ancient times the upper limit observed was the highest possible. Thus the Rigveda (1.89.9) speaks of Rishis living "a hundred autumns till their sons become fathers in their turn". If a Rishi could not see before he was 100 his grandchild who was the second generation after him, he must not have seen, before he was himself 50, his own child who was the first generation. If 100 is just a round number, the generation-unit was in the neighbourhood of 50. Obviously, the celibate student-life of 48 years was lived by a Rishi; so he would marry and beget at the age of 49. Everybody

1. "The Samavartana or Snana (The End of Studentship)", Prof. K V. Rangaswami Aiyangar Commemoration Volume (Madras, 1940), p. 55.

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could not be expected to emulate the Rishi's example. Yet, looking up to it, they would attempt their best and we may say that some would achieve 36 years and others 24. With 48 as their model, they would endeavour to avoid the lowest period, 18. The years, then, at which the married life of the householder would begin would be 49 , 37 or 25. The average drawn from them by dividing their sum by 3 is 37. For very ancient times, therefore, 37 years could be calculated as the generation-unit, a number remarkably close to our "slightly over 36" for the pre-Kali epoch.

In later times the highest period of BrāhmachĀrya would be 36 years and the next best 24 and 18. The beginning of the householder's married life would be at 37, 25 or 19. The average comes to 27 ^l/4 years - again a notable correspondence to our "about 27" for the Kali period.

Our reading of two particular generation-units in Purānic thought is thus justified. But what clinches it is the material we can gather from Megasthenes on the problem before us. He is of help to us at three places in his report.

Arrian, basing himself on Megasthenes, has in his Indica (I.IX), at the end of his chronological statement about the number of years and then the number of kings, the sentence: "The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations.'" Here four things have to be remarked. First, although the "generations" occur in the same context as the "kings", the two ideas cannot be put on a par. The number of kings offered us carries no guarantee that it exhausts the full roll of monarchs: it merely repeats what tradition has broadly preserved. But, when generations are counted, they have to stand as an unbroken series. Continuity without gaps is implied here by tradition. We need not doubt that Megasthenes had in mind the consecutive repetition of a certain numerical unit, as one usually has when speaking of generations. Secondly, the reference is clearly to an Indian generation-unit ("The Indians tell us..."). Thirdly, it is certainly to the pre-Kali epoch: the time is not very long after 6777 B.C. Fourthly, the unit, though specified as Indian and set in a context of remote antiquity, is mentioned by Megasthenes without any comment on its quantitative value. Evidently, if it had been much at variance - either on the short or on the long

1. We have already given the correct interpretation of this sentence on the assumption that Heracles was Hari-Krishna.

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side - with the current Greek unit, he would have felt obliged to add an enlightening gloss. So, could we but know what the Greek unit was in about 302 B.C., we should be not far off from the Indian which was conceived as proper to the pre-Kali epoch.

Herodotus,¹ the Greek historian shortly preceding Megasthenes, writes of reckoning "three generations as a hundred years". This means 33V3 years to a generation. Hence the Indian generation applicable to the pre-Kali time must be either 33¹/3 years or so near it as to call for no differentiating observation. If Megasthenes received from his Indian sources even 30 years on the one hand or 37 on the other, that generation-unit would vary as little from the Greek as would make no matter. A conjecture by us that he was close to our "slightly over 36 years" would be perfectly in order.

And indeed we have from another place in him a numerical implication which is close to the Greek average and as good as agrees with ours. It is there just in passing, but applies directly to the pre-Kali epoch. Arrian's Indica (I.VIII) registers that the successor of Dionysus reigned for "fifty-two years" and the successor's son for "twenty". No other regnal period is given; but these two added together make 72 years and yield an average of 36 for the generation-unit.

To this pre-Kali unit a third place in Megasthenes indirectly yet concretely points. Not only that: we get also a pointer to a different generation-unit applying to the period of the Kaliyuga, including Megasthenes's own day in India. Strabo (XV. 1.59),² paraphrasing him, tells us that among the Brāhmanas the student-life extended to thirty-seven years, after which the married householder's life started. This number is just a tiny bit at odds with one of the Indian figures we have cited for the BrāhmachĀrya period. Unquestionably a mistake has crept into Strabo's report. Instead of saying that the householder's life began for the Brāmanas at 37, he has said that the student's terminated for them at this age. But, from the fact that a stretch of 36 years of studentship has traditionally been deemed an arduous discipline in the Kaliyuga, actually the extreme according to the Manusmriti (III. 1), and from the fact of the Brāhmanas being picked out for mention by

1.The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (The Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1960), Book Two, p. 158.

2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 274.

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Megasthenes apropos of the 36 years, we may infer a distinction in discipline between this class and the others. The classes less prone to religion must be confining their studious celibacy to the lower periods - 24 and 18 years. Married life would commence for them not at 37 but at 25 and 19. And, as we have already found, the average generation-unit resulting from these figures is 27. To Megasthenes's own day in our country as well as to the Kaliyuga in general, the generation-unit applicable is implied to be hardly more than this, while the exceptional practice of the most dharma-inclined class, the Brāhmanas, shows what the average generation-unit was ascribable to the pre-Kali antiquity.

If the 36 years gathered from Arrian and the 37 derived from Strabo are looked upon as alternative truths of that antiquity we strike the balance of 36¹/2 years as the overall truth of it.

Thus probing Megasthenes we see him essentially at one with our reading of the Purānic mind. And we may move on to determine the original scheme of the Yugas.

The Original Scheme of the Yugas

With 6777 B.C. against the 7th name before Vaivasvata and with each generation slightly exceeding 36 years, we can at once fix the start of the Four Ages which were initiated by Vaivasvata. 7 generations are about (7x36=) 252 years. So the Kritayuga must open in c. (6777-252=) 6525 B.C. Our next step is to ask what events would go to distinguish and separate the Four Yugas.

Pargiter¹ writes: "It is a commonplace of history that great wars, conquests or political changes put an end to one age, and usher in a new age, or mark the transition from one age to the other; and so the Mohammedans and the British introduced new ages into India. It is natural therefore to surmise that similar changes occurred and were so regarded in ancient India, and indications of this are found in tradition. The end of the Dvāpara age was admittedly marked by the Bhārata battle, for it is declared that the battle occurred in the interval (sandhyā) between the Dvāpara and Kali ages... Tradition speaks also of an earlier time of great destruction and misery, when the ksatriyas were well-nigh exterminated and North India was plunged into grievous calamities, and Brāhmanic fable attributes that to Rāma Jāmadagnya, though ksatriya tradition

1. Op. cit., pp. 175-7.

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shows it really occurred in consequence of the devastating raids of the Haihayas, from which Sagara delivered the land and restored peace... There is no later similar period of calamity that suggests itself as a change of age, but tradition treats Rāma's destruction of Ravana and the Rāksasas of the Dekhan and Ceylon as an epoch of signal vengeance upon evil foes."

Pargiter's table of genealogies indicates that the three periods of destruction divide the whole duration of time from the Krita Age to the end of the Dvāpara into three parts of not very unequal lengths which might well constitute three Ages. He continues: "This division accords with what tradition says about the transition from one age to another. Krsna lived at the time of the Bhārata battle and the close of the Dvāpara age. Rāma Dasarathi lived in the interval between the Tretā and Dvāpara ages. To Rāma Jamadagnya is assigned the same position, and the references say he lived in the Tretā age, and smote the ksatriyas in the interval between the Tretā and Dvāpara ages. But this was Rāma Dasar-athi's position, and that particularization is clearly wrong, for Rāma Jamadagnya was avowedly prior as shown by the synchronisms in chapter XIII, and the allegation that he destroyed all ksatriyas off the earth twenty-one times (really the long-continued Haihaya devastations) is wholly incompatible with the story of Rāma Dasarathi. It is obvious that Rāma Jamadagnya belonged to the interval between the Krta and Tretā ages, when in fact the Haihayas had their dominion, and the references should be to the Krta age and that interval.¹ The Krta age then ended with the destruction of the Haihayas; the Tretā began approximately with Sagara and ended with Rāma Dasarathi's destruction of the Rāksasas; and the Dvāpara began with his reinstatement at Ayodhya and ended with the Bhārata battle so that, taking the numbers in the table of genealogies, the division is approximately thus, the Krta Nos. 1-40, the Tretā Nos. 41-65, and the Dvāpara Nos. 65-95."

Whether or not we agree with Pargiter's watertight compart-mentalization of Brāhmanic and Kshatriya traditions, his playing down of the former and his substitution of Sagara for Rāma Jamadagnya as the historical destroyer at the Krita's end, the demarcating lines he draws for the Four Ages are very persuasive.

1. Patil. op. cit., p. 76, with fn. 12, is able to cite the Vayu Purāna (99.499) as putting Rāma Jamadagnya's work in the Kritayuga. (K.D.S.)

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So, utilizing the 36 years and slightly over per generation at our disposal, we may affirm that the Krita Age covered (40x36=) 1440 years plus X, the Tretā (25x36=) 900 plus X and the Dvāpara (30x36=) 1080 plus X. They total 3420 years and a small excess. What the excess comes to can be decided by deducting 3102 B.C. (the start of the Kaliyuga) from c. 6525 B.C. (the start of the Kritayuga). The result is about 3423 years, which is 3 years more than 3420. We may distribute the 3 years equally among the three Ages, so that our final account gives 1441 for the Krita, 901 for the Tretā, 1081 for the Dvāpara. Then, as our Krita began in c. 6525 B.C., we should begin our Tretā in c. (6525-1441=) 5084 B.C. and our Dvāpara in c. (5084-901=) 4183 B.C.

For clarity's sake we may draw it all up in tabular form. The Purānic Yugas in the time of Megasthanes must have been roughly:

Krita, starting 6525 B.C., running 1441 years;

Tretā, starting 5084 B.C., running 901 years;

Dvāpara, starting 4183 B.C., running 1081 years;

Kali, starting 3102 B.C., running ? years

The Run of the Kaliyuga

The question-mark for the run of the Kaliyuga has to be paid a little attention. According to the current Purānic thinking, the Kali has kept running from 3102 B.C. for over 5000 years. Of course, in a flexible scheme such a length is not utterly anomalous, but a more natural denouement would consist in a smaller span. And that is precisely what a glance at some points in the Purānic material prompts us to propose.

Both the Vishnu and the Bhagavata have the phrase which, in Pargiter's translation,¹ we have noticed apropos of the problem whether the motion of the Seven Rishis is forward or retrograde: "...starting from Nanda, this Kali age will attain its magnitude." The Nanda spoken of is, as we already know, Mahāpadma whom the Matsya calls "a portion [incarnation] of Kali". And his coronation, according to the Purānas with their 1000, 138 and 362 years for the 3 dynasties preceding him and starting from Parīkshit's birth in 3138 B.C., we have fixed Purānically as 1500 years after that event. From the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. he would be 1464

1. The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 75.

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years away. If, with his coronation the Kaliyuga attained its "magnitude" {vriddhi), we may fairly say it was past its half course and began to be on the way to its culmination, its end. In less than double 1464 years we should have its whole run. As the double is 2928 years, somewhat before (3102 -2928=) 174 B.C. the Kaliyuga would come to a close.

In connection with the phrase from the Vishnu and Bhagavata we have discussed how their mention of the asterism Pūrva Āshādhā, which is the 10th if Maghā is reckoned as the 1st, and how their placing of Nanda 1015 years after Parīkshit's birth bring us, according to the dynastic durations, to the 15th year of the reign of the first Pradyota king, Chanda Mahāsena, whose name as well as ill-fame could lead to an identification with Nanda Mahāpadma in the Purānic pundits' mind. The Kaliyuga's "magnitude", therefore, could more comprehensively be understood as attained after (3138-1015=) 2123 B.C. and before (3138-1500=) 1638 B.C. - that is to say, between 1015 and 1500 years from Parīkshit's birth. Starting with the Kaliyuga we get the period between the Kali's 979 and 1464 years. Doubling the numbers we reach, for the Kaliyuga's close, somewhere between (3102-1958) 1044 and (3102- 2928=) 174 B.C. As the completion of the vriddhi comes with Nanda's reign we should have once more a point not much prior to 174 B.C., but now as the logical consequence of a process commencing with the earlier event that is Chanda's rule.

Our result anyhow will be in excellent conformity with our table of Yugas. Our next step is to see what direct support the Purānas give to this line of thinking.

First, let us observe the "Evils of the Kali Age" in Pargiter:¹ "There will be Yavanas here by reason of religious feeling, or ambition, or plunder... Massacring women and children and killing one another, kings will enjoy the earth at the end of the Kali age. Kings of continual upstart races, falling as soon as they arise, will exist in succession through Fate. They will be destitute of righteousness, affection and wealth. Mingled with them will be Ārya and Mleccha folk everywhere..." Then let us note what the Avatar Kalki, who is supposed to come and wind up the Kaliyuga, will do. We learn from PatiP that this Avatar of Vishnu will annihilate various peoples such as Yavanas and Tushāras and

1.Ibid., p. 74.

2.Op. cit., pp. 75, 307, No.842.

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other Mlechchhas and, after his victorious career, he will give up his life at the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Yamunā.

Now we may pick out some details of the period marking the downfall of the Āndhras (Sātavāhanas), the dynasty shortly preceding the Guptas. The Purānas¹ mention kings of several races, mostly Mlechchhas, and the second of the two lists is headed by 8 Yavanas and 14 Tusharas. After enumerating many other rulers, the Purānas² remark: "All these kings will be...niggards in graciousness, untruthful, very irascible, and unrighteous."

Surely, there is a parallelism between all this state of affairs and the evils "at the end of the Kali age". And we come across a very suggestive phrase in the same post-Āndhra context. After mentioning "the kings of Nisadha", the Purānas³ say that they "will exist till the termination of the Manus". Pargiter¹ enters the footnote: "Or perhaps 'as long as Manu's race'." Traditionally, a Manu starts a series of roughly 71 Chaturyugas, is the father of the race living in it and presides over it till its termination. In any of these Chaturyugas, his race could well be called "Manu's". And our phrase would seem to mean that the dynasty of Nishadha in the immediate post-Āndhra time would continue up to the present Chaturyuga's end. But then the end should not be very far. In fact, the Purānas could not know how long the dynasty would last unless this termination of the existing Chaturyuga. preceded their account. Everything indicates, though fragmentarily, that the Kali Age was drawing towards its culmination at this time.

And what makes the indication most vivid, most definitive, is a passage which is the centre-piece, so to speak, of the whole account. Here we encounter an extremely striking figure whose name has many versions. We have already alluded briefly to him earlier. Now we shall deal with him in some detail. His name is a compound whose first part is the same in the several forms: Visva (World). The second has: sphatika, sphāti, sphani, sphīni, sphūrji or sphurti.⁵ We may quote the passage from Pargiter:⁶ "Of the Māgadhas the king will be very valiant Viśvasphāni. Overthrowing

1.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 72.

2.Ibid., p. 74.

3.Ibid., p. 73.

4.Ibid., fn. 11.

5.M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 994, col.

6.Op. cit., p. 73.

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all kings he will make other castes kings... Viśvasphāni the magnificent will be mighty, Visnu's peer in battle... After gratifying the gods, the pitrs and Brāhmans once and again, he will resort to the bank of the Ganges and subdue his body: after resigning his body he will go to Indra's world."

No historical post-Krishna figure in the Purānas is suggested to be divine as is this king. Like both Krishna and Kalki he is equated with Vishnu, and he is a conqueror like them, and his death most explicitly resembles Kalki's. Certainly, a mysterious Avatar is before us. If, from the many versions of his name, we take Viśvasphurti we get a very significant appellation for an Avatar: sphurti¹ can mean "breaking forth visibly, sudden appearance or display, manifestation". What can be more apt than "World-manifestation"? We are reminded at once of Vishnu's Visvarupa, "World-Form". And, as the very period in which Viśvasphurti is thrown into relief reflects in general the description of the Kaliyuga's end, a Kaliyuga would seem to have reached its close with an Avatar of Vishnu just before the Purānas started taking their present shape with "(Kings) born of the Gupta race"² among the last to be mentioned.

Here a small clarification may be made. We must not exactly equate Viśvasphurti with Kalki. Kalki, of the Purānas as we have them today, is a figure by himself, and they conceive him without conceiving Viśvasphurti as an Avatar. The latter's Avatarhood is no part of the existing Purānic scheme of the Kaliyuga end. It belongs to the context of a close of the Kaliyuga, that was once envisaged but later hazed off and is now overlooked. Viśvasphurti is not Kalki: he is only like him in some essential traditional attributes and actions. There is resemblance, not identity.

But who would Viśvasphurti be and what should be his date closing the Kaliyuga? A bell is rung in our minds the moment we read the whole Purānic sentence about the Gupta kings. We find associated with them, as with Viśvasphurti, not only the Ganges but also the Māgadhas. The Māgadhas link him very intimately with the Guptas. For, in the post-Āndhra epoch it was only the Gupta conquerers who had, like Viśvasphurti, the Māgadhas as the seat of their empire.

1.Monier-Williams, op. cit., p. 1271, col. 1.

2.Pargiter, op.cit., p. 73.

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Mankad¹ has argued that this mysterious figure is none other than the greatest conqueror among the Guptas, the hero of the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription, the overthrower, uprooter or paramount lord of many kings: Samudragupta, son of the dynasty-founder Chandragupta I. Mankad has also shown Samudragupta as fitting very satisfactorily into the chronological sequence conjured up by the Purānas^' list of the kings - Vindhyasakti, Pravīra, etc. - soon after the Āndhras and before Viśvasphurti. And, to confirm and crown the comparison, he has ably approached it from the religio-spiritual angle. But here perhaps we cannot do better than cite some observations of Sircar² on Samudragupta from a quite independent context:

"The Allāhābād pillar inscription...represents him actually as the god Visnu in human form. Samudragupta is described as equal to the four loka-pālas, viz. Kubera, Varuna, Indra, and Yama, and also as 'one who is a mortal only in celebrating the observance of mankind, but is otherwise a god dwelling on the earth'. This no doubt refers to the conception of a divine king similar to that found in the Manu Smrti (VII.4-8). But more important is another passage of the same record in which Samudragupta is represented as identical with the achintya purusa or inscrutable Being, i.e. Visnu, who is 'the cause of the prosperity of the pious and the destruction of the wicked'. It is quite clear that this passage is an echo of a verse of the Gitd (IV.8) which refers to the descent of God on the earth, in human form, for protecting the pious and destroying the sinners."

Correspondence with the locus classicus of Avatarhood in the Gita is particularly meaningful for us. For there Krishna, as Vishnu's incarnation, says: "I am born from age to age." The final expression in Sanskrit is yuge-yuge. It seems to set the seal on the Purānic view of the Avatar of Vishnu as coming at the end of every one of the Four Yugas - Rāma Jamadagnya in the Krita, Rāma Dasarathi in the Tretā, Krishna Vasudeva in the Dvāpara, Kalki in the Kali as computed in the current form of the Purānas. An implied harking back by the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription to the Glta's yuge-yuge in connection with Samudragupta invests this emperor with the typical Avatar's position and purpose.

1.Op. cit., pp. 269-76.

2."Early History of Vaisnavism", The Cultural Heritage of India, (Calcutta, 1956), IV, p. 131.

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And surely warrior Samudragupta, who is imaged as Vishnu descended on earth, is very much like Viśvasphūrti, who is "Vishnu's peer in battle". Also, as the terminator of a Kaliyuga and the initiator of a Kritayuga, he is exceedingly appropriate. "There can be no doubt," writes R.C. Majumdar,¹ "that Samudragupta ushered in a new age in the history of India." And Majumdar² calls the era which Samudragupta "heralded...in Āryavarta" the "Golden Age which inspired succeeding generations of Indians and became alike their ideal and despair". In the reigns soon after Samudragupta's, the very term "Kritayuga" was in the air. Several inscriptions of Gupta times show its popularity.' How compellingly the presence of a Golden Age was felt may be seen from an inscription" during the reign of Samudragupta's grandson Kumār-agupta I. It is said to be made by "Dhruvasarman, who follows the path of the customs of the Krita age..."

So much for the evidence of the Purānas and modern historians. What do the Greeks have to communicate? Strabo (II. 1.9) calls the son of Sandrocottus "Amitrochades", and Athenaeus (XIV.67) "Amitrachates". "Amitrachates" can be equated to "Amitrachchhettā" ("Mower of enemies"), reminding us of the name often applied to Samudragupta by his successors: "Sarvara-jochchhetta" ("Mower of all kings"). "Amitrachades" could be, as B. M. Barua⁵ opines, "Amritakhada⁷' ("Eater of ambrosia"), a designation most apt for the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription's "god dwelling on the earth" and achintya purusha in human form. The Greek view, therefore, of the son of Sandrocottus accords both with the warrior-side and with the Avatar-side of the son of Chandragupta I. And it has the special value of suggesting independently a place for Samudragupta in the post-Alexandrine era.

1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", The Classical Age, p. 15.

2.Ibid., p. 16.

3.Patil, op. cit., pp. 198, 200, referring to Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute (Poona), 2, 163.

4.Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, III, The Gupta Inscriptions, No. 10, Plate V, pp. 44-45.

5.Aśoka and His Inscriptions (New Age Publishers, Calcutta, 1946), Part I, pp. 46-47.

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One more pointer it provides for the identification of Sandrocottus with Chandragupta I and fixes more firmly the Purānic Kaliyuga's termination in the very era for which we have contended by equating Viśvasphurti with Samudragupta.

Now we may reach out to the precise date. In the Mathura inscription (No. 5) Chandragupta II gives the 61st year of the establishment of the imperial dynasty by his grandfather and the 5th of his own reign,¹ which means that he became king in the 56th year after his grandfather's accession. So Samudragupta's death must have occurred, according to our chronology, in (315-56=) 259 B.C. We may take 259 B.C., as the end of the Kaliyuga which commenced in 3102 B.C. Then we get (3102-259=) 2833 years for the Kaliyuga's full run, a time-span in just the right relation to the limit of 2928 years (leading to 174 B.C.) which we deduced for that run on the basis of the 1464 years making in the Purānas the Kaliyuga's vriddhi.

Thus we obtain from the Purānas the traces of a tradition about the return of the Kritayuga, which the later pundits must have lost in face of the numerous mishaps the country suffered not long after the reign of the fifth Gupta emperor, Skandagupta, and the loss of which made them look forward to Kalki in the remote future.

This tradition's count of the Kaliyuga sits with fair symmetry within the pattern of unequal and moderate Ages'we have reconstructed as likely in the milieu of Megasthenes in c. 302 B.C.

The Evidence of Megasthenes about the Chaturyuga

And when we turn to Megasthenes we discover in general terms exactly what we should expect him to gather from the Purānic lore of his day. He would not be able to report in c. 302 B.C. anything answering to the passage on Viśvasphūrti. He would actually have had to be ambassador to Chandragupta II and not Chandragupta I if he was to collect from the pundits the substance of that passage. At the close of the 4th century B.C. he should be in the position only to convey to us, with his background of a chronology starting before Manu Vaivasvata, the idea of an entire cycle completed in the far past and of another one begun long ago and now in a state fraught with omens and forebodings of the end, a grim state

1. Majumdar, "The Expansion of the Gupta Empire", A New History..., p. 166.

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corresponding in its own way to the condition the Purānas feel in the post-Āndhra epoch during which, amidst a lot of strange vicissitudes, the Gupta dynasty has arisen. As a whole, Megasthenes's scheme should be pliant, historically rather than mathematically oriented.

Strabo (IX.1.64),¹ believed to be drawing upon Megasthenes, recounts the speech of the Indian ascetic Calanus to Alexander's messenger Onesicritus:

"In olden times the world was full of barley-meal and wheaten-meal, as now of dust, and fountains then flowed, some with water, others with milk and likewise with honey, and others with wine, and some with olive oil; but, by reason of his gluttony and luxury, man fell into arrogance beyond bounds. But Zeus, hating this state of things, destroyed everything and appointed for man a life of toil. And when self-control and the other virtues in general reappeared, there came again an abundance of blessings. But the condition of man is already close to satiety and arrogance, and there is danger of destruction of everything in existence."

Obviously, the words of Calanus begin with a reference to a Krita yuga (or Golden Age). They pass on to a time of destruction just before a return of the Age of abundance, a Kaliyuga before another Kritayuga. And they conclude with an awareness of ever-worsening circumstances of a contemporary Kaliyuga under the threatening shadow of a new divine destruction. There can be no doubt that Calanus speaks, in an abridged or telescoped form, of two Chaturyugas, a group of pre-Vaivasvata Four Ages already gone and the next group seeming to draw to its culmination in his own day - that is, during Alexander's invasion of India in what, according to the Purānas, is the post-Āndhra epoch, with the rise of the Guptas in the offing.

A broad or overall characteristic of the account is: the change of Ages is due to changing human traits and attitudes (man's "gluttony and luxury", his "self-control and the other virtues"). The "blessings" of Zeus as well as His punitive judgments follow upon historico-psychological events. Nothing is made dependent on pre-determining mathematics on a cosmological scale.

Thus Megasthenes and the Purānas can be shown to stand in accord in the matter of the Four Ages and we need not let the astronomical Yuga-mathematics trouble us. We have answered

1. Majumdar, The Classical Accounts..., p. 277.

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the single query relevantly cropping up after we had completed our task of proving the chronology of Megasthenes to be the old Indian one and to be based at its lower end in the historical fact of the accession of Chandragupta I of the Imperial Guptas, rather than Chandragupta Maurya, as Megasthenes's Sandrocottus, to the throne of Pātaliputra, Megasthenes's Palibothra, in 315 B.C.¹

4

A last item remains to be treated in order for us to complete our picture of correspondence between the chronology set down by Megasthenes and the Purānic computations. Both our sources are in perfect accord over Chandragupta of the Imperial Guptas. The date 315 B.C. which we have derived from Megasthenes for his accession within the period 326-305 B.C. suggested by the Classical accounts fits unforcedly within the period which we can infer from the Purānas: 315-302. Will it be possible to match all Purānic regnal dates with those derivable from Megasthenes with the aid of the information gained from the Purānas about individual reign-lengths and the lengths of dynasties? A central test-case would be the accession-year obtained from the Purānas and Megasthenes for the modern historians' equivalent of Sandrocottus, Chandragupta Maurya whom we have substituted by Chandragupta I.

Do Megasthenes and the Purānas Correspond in the Date for Chandragupta Maurya?

The traditional-Purānic time-scheme starts from 3138 B.C. where the Bhārata War is placed. It counts the dynasty-lengths onward - 1000 years for the 22 Barhadrathas, 118 for the 5 Pradyotas, 362 for the 10 SlsuNāgas - and also separately mentions 1500 years, which is their exact sum-total, as the period from the birth of Parīkshit in the year of the Bhārata War to the coronation of Mahāpadma, the first member of the Nanda dynasty succeeding the SisuNāgas. It gives 100 years to the 9 Nandas who are the predecessors of the Mauryas. Thus 3138-1500-100 brings us to Chandragupta Maurya's accession in 1538 B.C.

The calculation according to Megasthenes would begin from the

1. Supplement Three attempts a comparison between the claims of the two Chandraguptas to the main personal characteristics of Sandrocottus.

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accession of the Imperial Guptas' founder in 315 B.C. By his clues we struck, by means of a comparative study of the well-known Purānas as well as the less known Yuga-Purāna section of the Gārgi-Sarhhitā, upon the proper placement of his 3 "republics" -that is, periods during which no great dynasty ruled over Māgadha. We determined their lengths as 75 years between the Guptas and the preceding Āndhras, 300 between the Kānvas and the preceding Śungas, 120 between the Śungas and the preceding Mauryas. We gave the Āndhras a duration of 412 years, the number we found, along with 411, the most suitable, with the help of the Purānas' Sapta Rishi cycle, out of the five they provide - the other three being 300, 456 and 460. To the Śungas the Purānas assign 112 years and to the Kānvas 45. Adding up all the figures -75, 300, 120, 412, 45 and 112 - we get 1064 years. If we add this number to 315 B.C., our accession-date for Chandragupta I, we reach 1379 B.C. for the end of the Mauryas. The Purānas count 10 Mauryas and their total duration as 137 years. So, by our calculation, the rise of the Mauryas is in (1379+137=) 1516 B.C.

There is a discrepancy of 22 years with the result we arrived at directly from the Purānas' starting-pont in 3138 B.C. We may surmise that something in the Purānic information available in the time of Megasthenes and capable of resolving the discrepancy is missing in the extant Purānas. On a close look, the Maurya dynasty-length of 137 years which we have accepted in either calculation gets suspected as the source of the non-alignment. From what Pargiter remarks it would appear that there was an alternative version to which a clue exists in the extant Purānas. He¹ observes that the Purānic account of the Mauryas has suffered more than that of any other dynasty. And he² asks in a footnote: "Because its great fame in Buddhism disgraced it in Brāhmanical eyes?" His regular comment concludes:³ "All agree that the dynasty lasted 137 years. The regnal periods added together (excluding the Matsya list which is incomplete) are 160 years in eVa, and (Śaliśuka being omitted) 133 in Va and Bd;⁴ or, if we add Śaliśuka's reign to the latter, the total is 146 years; and the total in eVa

1.The Purāna Text..., p. 26.

2.Ibid., fn. 1.

3.Ibid., p. 27.

4.The abbreviation eVa stands for the e Ms of the Vayu, and Bd for the Brāhmanda. (K. D. S.).

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would be reduced to about 145 years if we correct its duplication in the middle. This figure, 145 or 146, is compatible with the stated duration, 137 years, if (as is probable) the total of the several reigns is nominally raised above the true total by reckoning fractions of years as whole years." Or else we may take 137 as a round number left by omission of the extra years actually constituted by totting up the year-fractions but unfortunately now lost to us. In that case 145 or 146 would be the true sum, provided the three reign-periods - namely, Chandragupta's 24 years, Bindusar-a's 25 and Aśoka's 36 - which appear uniformly everywhere, except that the Matsya omits the first two - can be regarded as the only ones handed down.

The proviso arises because the Buddhists, for whom this dynasty has - as Pargiter's footnote indicates - "great fame", have a different reading for these three reigns. As the Buddhists are particularly concerned with Aśoka, the king-model par excellence of their religion, we may justifiably ask whether their chronology for the first three Mauryas may not serve as a worthy alternative. The answer is bound to be "Yes".

The Purānas and the Mahāvamsa-like Figures

To ascertain this alternative correctly we must resort to the Mahāvarhsa, the most substantial of the Pali Chronicles, and see what its deliverances are. The usual count claimed from it is: 24 years for Chandragupta, 27 (or 28) for Bindusāra and 37 for Aśoka,¹ as against the Purānas' 24, 25 and 36 respectively. But actually 24 for the founder-Maurya is not the Mahāvamsa's number. It hails from the later Manjusri Mulakalpa (V.441) which, by the way, allots (V.449) to Bindusāra 70 years. The true position in regard to the Mahāvamsa emerges from a statement of Max Muller's in his History of Sanskrit Literature:² he quotes 34 years from that Chronicle, although adjudging the digit 3 a mistake for 2. If the Buddhist chronology is valued, as it should be, for the three opening Mauryas, we must compute their joint reign-periods as (34+27+37=) 98 years rather than the Purānic (24+25+36=) 85.

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 70, 89, 704.

2.2nd Edition, published by Williams and Norgate, London, p. 271, fn. 1 and p 297, fn. 1.

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The Mahāvamsa's addition yields 13 more years than the Purānas'. If we join them to the 146 we have received from Pargiter's calculations, we come to 159 years as the duration of the Mauryan dynasty. On counting this number, instead of 137, upwards from 1379 B.C. which is the date we have drawn from Megasthenes for the end of the Mauryas, we strike precisely upon (1379+159=) 1538 B.C. for the accession of this dynasty's founder. The junction with the extant Purānic chronology from the Bhārata War to the advent of the Mauryas is complete.

We can have the same junction if we choose 28 and not 27 for Bindusāra and pick up the 145 which Pargiter offers as equally eligible with his 146.

Of course there was no Mahāvarhsa in c. 300 B.C. when Megasthenes consulted the Purānic pundits of his day. But there would be nothing unprecedented in figures like the Mahāvarhsa's having been communicated by them to him. For, there are several differences between his Purānic knowledge and the data we can gather from the extant Purānas. Although he carries an overall reflection of the latter, which is definitive for jointly equating Sandrocottus to the founder of the Imperial Guptas, the vast number leading to the upper end of the Greek ambassador's chronology has dropped out of the Purānic writings in our possession now. Similarily, from the 3 "republics" reported by him, only the last emerges - and that too in an indirect fashion - while the earlier 2 are lost to these documents and are flashed out only in the unusual and somewhat confused Yuga-Purāna. Besides, in the present Purānas themselves there are variants to the general figures, some of them scattered but others seeming equally acceptable: an instance of the latter kind is the interval between Parīkshit's birth and Mahāpadma's coronation - 1015, 1050, 1115, 1500 years. So, in c. 300 B.C., the Mahāvarhsa-figures as alternatives to the ones which alone have come down to us are not unlikely.

Perhaps their ancient presence may be suspected in the blanks to which Pargiter points in the Matsya Purāna whose version, he¹ tells us, is the earliest. Pargiter² says the Matsya omits all reference to the reign-periods of Chandragupta Maurya and Bindusāra as well as to that of Aśoka's successor Kunāla. The blanks for the first two Mauryas may cover a divergent Mahāvamsan tradition

1.Op. cit., pp. 26-27.

2.Ibid., p. 70, fns. 1, 2 & 3.

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now vanished. And the Kunāla-blank may conceal the extra year which should, by that tradition, have belonged to Aśoka. Anyway, our recourse to the Buddhist reign-periods as a possibility in the Purānas of Megasthenes's day looks valid from the very fact that they so easily and naturally combine with the already existing variant of 145 or 146 years for the Maurya dynasty's duration to set Megasthenes alongside the current Purānas.

The Several Purānic Alternatives

Indeed, the several alternatives hidden away in stray versions of these writings are absolutely necessary if we are to match or approximate, with dynasty-lengths, the interval from Mahāpadma's coronation to the start of the Āndhras: 836 years. Megasthenes with 2 out of his 3 "republics" - the pair of pre-Āndhra ones amounting to 120 and 300 years respectively - can make up for the poor extension of the pre-Āndhra king-lines as commonly computed: the meagre 45 of the Kānvas, the modest 112 of the Śungas, the none-too-substantial 137 of the Mauryas and the scanty 100 of the Nandas. The extant Purānas can muster with these numbers no more than 394 years in contrast to Megasthenes's total of 836, consisting of the same Kānvas-Śungas-Nandas duration of 257 plus the differing 159 for the Mauryas plus the 2 republics' 420. The Purānas cannot reach the wanted amount unless we attend to some divergences in them. Thus for the Nandas, instead of Mahāpadma's 88 years before his sons' 12, a variant is 28.' For the Mauryas we have cited Pargiter's reference to 160 in eVa or, if a duplication in the middle is omitted, 145 and, if the omission of 6alisuka in Va and Bd is made good, 146 in them, in place of the general mention of 137. For the Śungas we have two amazing alternatives: 300² and 538³ substituting 112. The Kānvas have 85" in some versions rather than 45. From all these the pundits could take the Nanda 100, the Suriga 538, the Kanva 45 and, after totalling them to 683, scrutinize the several Maurya lists. Neither 137, 145, 146 nor 160 would yield the remaining 153. By invoking the same lost Mahāvarhsa-figures for Chandragupta

1.Ibid., p. 69, fn. 17.

2.Ibid., p. 33, fn. 50.

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid., p. 35, fn. 29.

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Maurya, Bindusāra and Aśoka as Megasthenes used - namely, 34, 27 and 37 - and, adding the extra 13 thus gained to 137, the pundits could reach 150. The still lacking 3 they could perhaps manage by choosing the appropriate successor of the first 5 names which are common to the Vayu and eVa and whose reign-periods perfectly accord. For, then, the Vayu's Indrapalita who has 10 years would replace the eVā's Dasona who has only 7.' Or some other possibility was there, of which we have no trace in the surviving documents.

Certainly a way had to be found to support that general wide interval forming part of the crucial chronological material which at the same time conjured up immense antiquity and adjusted Chandragupta of the Imperial Guptas into the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. In fact, the interval had to answer to some kind of detailed dynastic computation: otherwise it would be disbelieved. If we cannot discern its diverse components at once it is because the Purānas have come to us considerably mutilated. Yet enough basic structure remains in them to indicate broadly the lines of chronology which Megasthenes reflected in the Indica around 300 B.C. and which, along with his information, the existing Purānas in their own manner follow, with the resultant identification of Chandragupta I with his Sandrocottus.

The Core of Our Reconstruction and the Dispensable Items

This identification, let us repeat, is the living core of the Purāna-cum-Megasthenes reconstruction of ancient Indian history. As the items of the reconstruction move further and further into the past beyond the 315 B.C. for Chandragupta I, they may increasingly lose credibility and we must not hesitate to abandon or modify them in the interests of modern research. The year 1538 B.C. for Chandragupta Maurya is one such item; but to establish it as an implication common to Megasthenes and the Purānas is to help their joint unerring establishment of the correct year for the accession of Chandragupta I. And to this cogent point of chronology we must hold on, calmly undertaking the Herculean labour of explaining anew all that modern research may pose in battle array against it.

1. Ibid., p. 70, cols. 1 & 2.

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SUPPLEMENT ONE

WHO WERE THE Gangaridai? AN OLD QUESTION REOPENED

"Gangaridai" (sometimes misspelled "Gandaridai", once "Gan-daritai") - "Gāngārides", - "Gāngāridae" (or "Gaggaridae"¹) -these are the names under which a great people in ancient India was known to Greek and Latin writers of antiquity. Modern historians² are as good as unanimous in locating this people in the region watered by the mouths of the Ganges, the Ganges-delta in what is now called Lower Bengal. And for their decision they quote two authorities: (1) Megasthenes (c. 302 B.C.) whose lost book Indica is believed to have been extensively drawn upon by several Classical authors after him; and (2) Ptolemy (c. 130 A.D.), the geographer. Both are taken to be explicit in their indications, leaving little room for controversy.

But we submit that the indications seen in Megasthenes are due to a superficial first-impression, that a bit of analysis will reveal the sense of a much wider location, that this sense can be substantiated by several passages in the Classical writers themselves and that the indications found in Ptolemy, far from being independent evidence, are actually borrowed from Megasthenes on a misunderstanding of him comparable to that by modern historians.

1

The earliest account based on Megasthenes occurs in Diodorus (1st century B.C.). Referring to the Ganges, he (II.37)³ writes: "Now this river which at its source is 30 stadia broad, flows from north to south, and empties its waters into the ocean forming the eastern boundary of the Gangaridai, a nation which possesses the greatest number of elephants and the largest in size. Owing to this, their country has never been conquered by any foreign king; for all other nations dread the overwhelming number and strength of these animals. Thus Alexander the Macedonian, after conquering

1.The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 468, fn. 5.

2.Ibid., p. 469.

3.The Classical Accounts of India, p. 234.

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all Asia, did not make war upon the Gangaridai, as he did on all others; for when he had arrived with all his troops at the river Ganges, and had subdued all the other Indians, he abandoned as hopeless an invasion of the Gangaridai when he learned that they possessed four thousand elephants well trained and equipped for war."

True, we begin here with an association of the Gangaridai with the Ganges-delta; but obviously we do so because they end where the river ends. Otherwise, why should only their eastern boundary be mentioned? Diodorus supplies us with no reason to confine their other boundaries to lower Bengal. What seems implied by the end of the Ganges with the end of the Gangaridai is that this river and this nation are everywhere associated and that the remaining boundaries of the Gangaridai are in the regions traversed by the Ganges in its flow from north to south before it falls into the ocean. And the second part of Diodorus's report plainly makes the Gangaridai spread north-west of lower Bengal.

Of course, to say that Alexander arrived at the Ganges is a mistake: not the Ganges but the Hyphasis (Sanskrit Vipasa, Beās) marked the terminus of his march. However, if by crossing the Ganges he would have had to wage war upon the Gangaridai, they must have extended very much north-west of the Ganges-delta: they must have been right in Madhyadeśa, the Middle Country, for he would have first touched the Ganges there.

Indeed Diodorus himself in another passage (VI.XCIII)¹ tells us in general where Alexander would have touched it: "he had obtained from Phegus a description of the country beyond the Indus. First came a desert which it would take twelve days to traverse; beyond this was the river called the Ganges with a width of thirty-two stadia and a greater depth than any other river; beyond this again were situated the dominions of the nation of the Prasioi and the Gandaridai, whose king, Xandrames, had an army of 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants trained and equipped for war."

The whole concluding phrase about elephants repeats verbatim the one from the other extract and assures us that the same Gangaridai are spoken of. But now we are only some distance away from the "Indus". The "Indus" here is actually the "Hypa-nis" towards which Diodorus makes Alexander advance just be-

1. Ibid., p. 172.

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fore he obtains Phegus's description. "Hypanis" is the same as "Hyphasis", the penultimate eastern tributary of the Indus, However, the "Ganges" mentioned cannot be identified with any tributary; for its own proper dimensions are given. Now, the distances which Pliny (VI.21)¹ in the 1st century A.D. reports as having been calculated for Seleucus Nicator (c. 305 B.C.) from the point where Alexander stood on the Hyphasis are: "168 miles to the Hesidrus (Śutudru, Sutlej), and to the river Jomanes (Yamunā) as many (some copies add 5 miles); from thence to the Ganges 12 miles." This makes the Ganges, at the most (168+168+5 + 112=) 453 miles away. By the same table the mouths of the Ganges are over 2,600 miles off. So the place where Alexander would have touched the Ganges would have been about (2,600-453=) 2172 miles apart from Lower Bengal. So he would have met the Prasioi and the Gangaridai at a distance of (in round numbers) 2,000 miles from the Ganges-delta.

Perhaps our attention will be drawn to the sequence of the two nations in Diodorus's account. The Prasioi are mentioned first, the Gangaridai afterwards. But the order is of little significance - first, when we set over against it the same historical material presented by Curtius (c. 40 A.D.) and Plutarch (c. 50 A.D.) and then when we look at Diodorus's own other references to the same situation.

Curtius (IX.2)² writes in the course of his account: "Next came the Ganges, the largest river in all India, the farther bank of which was inhabited by two nations, the Gāngāridae and the Prasii..." Plutarch's treatment (LXII)³ of the situation reads: "...its farther banks were covered all over with armed men, horses and elephants, for the kings of the Gandaritai and the Praisiai were reported to be waiting for (Alexander)..."

Both Curtius and Plutarch reverse Diodorus's order. And Diodorus himself, going on to say more about King Xandrames, has the words:⁴ "...the king of the Gandaridai..." He omits the Prasioi altogether, as if only the Gangaridai really mattered, as if it was they who were prominent and Alexander had to combat Xandrames as their king rather than the Prasioi's. We may go still further and say: "Xandrames was truly their king and merely in

1.Ibid., p. 341.

2.Ibid., p. 128.

3.Ibid., p. 198. 4- Ibid., p. 172.

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some manner of speaking the Prasioi's." Such a conclusion is lent strong colour by Plutarch's plural, "kings", instead of the singular of Diodorus and Curtius: Plutarch signifies different kings for the two peoples.

However, we must take stock of what Plutarch¹ writes a little later of the youth "Androcottus" ("Sandrocottus" in Strabo, Pliny, Arrian, Appian and Justin): "Androcottus...saw Alexander himself and afterwards used to declare that Alexander could easily have taken possession of the whole country since the king was hated and despised by his subjects for the wickedness of his disposition and the meanness of his origin." Alongside the previous "kings", these words should mean: all the territory which was banded against the Macedonian had for practical purposes one king who, as distinguished from the other crowned head, ruled over the whole country which Alexander had to face first in the course of his projected advance. This king we can identify as Xandrames since both Diodorus² and Curtius' speak of Xandrames's unpopularity for the same reasons that Plutarch gives. The Gangaridai then, under their specific monarch Xandrames, are implied by all the three authors to be Alexander's immediate enemy.

Such a suggestion becomes explicit after a few more lines in Diodorus's own text: we hear there⁴ of Alexander being "sensible of the difficulties which would attend an expedition against the Gandaridai". In the next chapter (XCIV)⁵ "the expedition against the Gandaridai" is the topic on two occasions. No, we cannot put the Prasioi in front. The Gangaridai definitely stand in the fore, waiting for Alexander, over 2,000 miles away from Lower Bengal.

This situation of theirs becomes even clearer in a passage from Diodorus elsewhere (XVIII.6):⁶ "(India) is inhabited by very many nations, among which the greatest of all is that of the Gandaridai against whom Alexander did not undertake an expedition, being deterred by the multitude of their elephants. This region is separated from farther India by the greatest river in those parts (for it has a breadth of thirty stadia), but it adjoins the rest of

1.Ibid., p. 199.

2.Ibid., p. 172.

3.Ibid., p. 129.

4.Ibid., p. 172.

5.Ibid., p. 173.

6.Ibid., p. 239.

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India which Alexander had conquered..."

These phrases join up on the one hand with those relating to Xandrames, king of the Gangaridai, and on the other with those that specify the Gangaridai's eastern boundary. What is more plainly brought out in connection with (1) Alexander's warlike intentions against the Gangaridai, (2) the Gangaridai's terrifying mass of elephants, (3) their territory's limitation on the east by the Ganges - what emerges into sharp focus in the midst of glimpses of things we have already been told is the extension westward of their territory from that eastern river-frontier. We have a reference to the "region" inhabited by the Gangaridai: while it is said to be "separated from farther India" - that is, India's extreme east - it is stated to "adjoin" all the parts over which Alexander stood as conqueror. In language as plain as possible we learn that the Gangaridai stretched out to the west up to the point Alexander had reached in the course of his invasion.

Nor is that the end of the story for us from Diodorus. In another section (VII.91)¹ of the same work (Bibliotheca Historica, Historical Library) he tells us that the Younger Porus - into whose kingdom Alexander had moved after crossing the river (obviously the Acesines, Sanskrit Asikni, Chenāb) next to the Hydaspes (Sanskrit Vitasta, Jhelum) in the eastward direction - had fled farther east "to the nation of the Gandaridai". Unquestionably, the Younger Porus did not flee to Lower Bengal - not even to the country just beyond the Ganges. Diodorus brings Alexander up to the Hypanis and Porus is still uncaught. All we can say is that Porus went across this tributary of the Indus into the valley of the Gangetic river-system. E.R. Bevan² comments: "To the Gandaridai, says Diodorus. The people of the Ganges-region are probably meant."

"The people of the Ganges-region" - here Bevan appears to go unwittingly to the heart of the matter. The very name "Gangaridai" relates the nation concerned to the Ganges, and it would be strange that this nation should then be limited to the delta of the river rather than be spread to all the lands through which, together with its tributaries, it flowed.

But the query inevitably arises. "Why should all the people of

1.Ibid., p. 170.

2.'Alexander the Great". The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 370, fn. 4.

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the Ganges-region be classed under one rubric as if they made a single nation?" The sole answer can be: "They were all either directly under one rule or within a confederate arrangement of some sort providing for an effective working head."

The next unavoidable query is: "When the Gangaridai are linked with the Prasioi, what exactly is the relation of the two?" Our scholars equate the "Prasioi" to the Sanskrit Prāchya, meaning "Easterners"; but, though the linguistics are correct, the Greek and Latin texts fix a narrower denotation than the Indian term. After stating that Palibothra (Pātaliputra) lies at the confluence of the Ganges and another river, which is elsewhere called Erannoboas (Hiranyavāha) or Sonos (Son), Strabo (IV.1.36)¹ who was a contemporary of Diodorus says: "the tribe of people amongst whom this city is situated is called the Prasii..." And Pliny (VI.22)² informs us that the Prasii, after their capital Palibothra, are themselves called the Palibothri. Solinus (first half of the 3rd century A.D.) comes with the same picture:³ "The Prasian nation, which is extremely powerful, inhabits a city called Palibothra, whence some call the nation itself the Palibothri." The Prasioi or Prasii or Praisiai or Prasians of the Classical writers are, therefore, specifically those Easterners whose capital city was Pātaliputra: they are the people of the ancient province of Māgadha.

However, we must distinguish their specific role from their general one. Pliny, at the end of the information to which we have referred, observes that not only the Prasii proper but even the people "along the whole tract of the Ganges" are called the "Palibothri". And, as if in proof of this, he⁴ writes: "The river Jomanes flows through the Palibothri into the Ganges..." Certainly, these Palibothri did not belong to Māgadha: they were only the people under the rulers of Pātaliputra. And it is in the same sense that we have to take Pliny's slightly later statement:⁵ "The Indus skirts the frontiers of the Prasii." Thus in their general role the Prasii or the Palibothri are co-extensive with the Gangaridai. The two seem a joint entity or rather the same entity under two names, and it is as such that they commanded those vast military forces the

1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 261.

2.Ibid., p. 342.

3.Ibid., pp. 457-8.

4.Ibid., pp. 342-3.

5.Ibid., p. 343.

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rumour of which struck terror into the hearts of Alexander's army and halted its progress at the Hyphasis.

But at the same time we have to note some difference within the unity. First, although the Prasii proper of the Palibothran province of Māgadha are themselves the Gangaridai inasmuch as Palibothra is on the Ganges and although the Gangaridai everywhere are the Prasii and the Palibothri inasmuch as the latter hold sway over the entire Gangetic tract, the Gangaridai can be distinguished from them as those peoples of the Gangetic tract who do not belong to that distinct unit of political power, the Palibothran province of Māgadha. Secondly, when Xandrames was king and represented the strongest authority in the Indian interior, the Gangaridai in their difference from the Prasii were prominent, with 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants.¹

A little later, when Sandrocottus is the master of interior India, the Prasii are - as Pliny² recounts - in paramount power and "their king has in his pay a standing army of 600,000 foot-soldiers, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 elephants, whence may be formed some conjecture as to the vastness of his resources".³ We may also mark that while Palibothra is frequently associated with Sandrocottus in the Classical reports,⁴ it is never mentioned in connection with Xandrames in spite of the Prasii being associated with.the Gangaridai whose monarch especially he is called. From this we may suppose that Classical authorities do not picture him as sovereign of Pātaliputra even if he commanded the Prasii: only a part of Māgadha, if at all, can be attributed to him and mostly he must have held sway over the Gangaridai west and south-west of Māgadha with the result that Alexander's intended expedition was said to be against the Gangaridai and not the Prasii.⁵

1.These are Diodorus's figures. Curtius gives 3,000 elephants. Plutarch's figures are: 8,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 8,000 chariots and 6,000 elephants.

2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 342.

3.Solinus's figures are: 60.000; 30,000; 8,000 {ibid., p. 468).

4.Ibid., p. 262; McCrindle, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (Westminister, 1893), p. 409.

5.A limitation like this of Xandrames's kingdom would conflict with the current view that he was the last of the Nandas, the dynasty founded by Mahāpadma Nanda who is described in ancient Indian books as a Māgadhan ernperor with his seat at Pātaliputra. We may add that the Classical accounts also do not speak of Xandrames being fought by Sandrocottus who is currently identified with Chandragupta Maurya, the overthrower of the last Nanda.

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One point, however, calls out for settlement. We may be told: "If the Prasii in their specific role are inhabitants of Māgadha, should not the Gangaridai in a similar role have an original province of their own? And must we not think that, like the Prasii in their general role, the Gangaridai too are mentioned as being in various places just because their rule extended far and wide? Their homeland, their origin, their central seat need not be anywhere except in the Ganges-delta. And may not Xandrames have been particularized as king of the Gangaridai because he hailed from Lower Bengal and may not the Gangaridai for the same reason have been particularized as Alexander's waiting enemy against whom he was to make an expedition?"

This argument would be cogent only if, just as the Prasii can be fundamentally equated with the Palibothri, the people whose home is in or about Pātaliputra, so also the Gangaridai could be equated on genuine grounds with the Ganges-delta rather than with the whole tract of the Ganges. Diodorus supplies us with no cause to favour that locality: he gives us nothing analogous to Palibothra to localize them there or anywhere else.

And we must remember that the very word "Gangaridai" has defied explanation in terms of a particular spot. De St.-Martin¹ searched for a tribe-name answering to it and picked out the Gonghris of south Behār as preserving it to our day. But as the Gonghris are not at all a famous people even in India, leave aside the ancient West that kept the Gangaridai in mind for nearly five centuries, they have to be rejected.

S.N. Majumdar² has suggested Gangā-Rādhā, standing for "the territory of the Ganges with Rādhā" - Rādhā being the name of West Bengal. The objection to it is that if Rādhā is intended to be an addition to the territory of the Ganges, it is superfluous as it is itself part of that territory and if the sense is of Rādhā as a Ganges-territory the nomenclature is odd because Rādhā which is only one part of the Ganges-territory was never known by such a designation and is unlikely to have been called so rather than by its own well-known individual name. Besides, the Prasii themselves were Ganges-people and to draw a line between the people of Rādhā and those of Māgadha by calling the former the Ganges-

1.McCrindle, op. cit., p.

2.McCrindle's Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy, edited by S.N. Majumdar (1927), p. 383.

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people is without import: two individual provinces having the same characteristics do not require to be thus distinguished. It is only if a number of provinces with a common characteristic are sought to be demarcated for some purpose from Māgadha that they can be classed together generically as the Ganges-people. The purpose of the demarcation could be that in those days Māgadha was a distinct entity standing out from all the rest whereas all the rest were great only by diverse kinds of coalition under one head or another. We might have said: "The rest were those parts of the Ganges-region that were ruled over by the Prasii", but such a statement would not be adequate to the fact that in connection with Xandrames the Gangaridai instead of the Prasii are in prominence. Hence what we are entitled to hold is simply what we have already done: the word "Gangaridai" is for the Ganges-people who are other than the distinct political entity constituted by the Prasii and who are spread over a vast area west and south and east of the Prasii.

But what then must be the Indian original of the word? No designation of the kind we want exists in Sanskrit literature, and some scholars believe it to be a purely Greek formation on the analogy of the Greek name for the people of the north-western frontier country of Gandhara: Gandarai, Gandarioi, Gandaridai -the last variant even stealing into Diodorus to do duty for "Gangaridai". But the Classical writers unmistakably tell us that Alexander received the name from Indian princes who were his allies: Phegus alias Phegelas (Bhagalā) and later the Elder Porus (Paura-va). So we must think it an Indian compound expression, with Gangā (Ganges) for its first member, which these informants found it useful to adopt from regional colloquial practice. The most likely expression is the possible Prakrit Gangārāttā, "Ganges-State". It would denote either of two political entities. There could be a confederacy of different countries, with minor heads under one paramount lord. Or there could be a number of confederacies of varying size and importance, each with its rāja, king, and functioning in practical independence but having a general interrelation or unity under the head of the largest and most central confederate group, a unity which would become most effective in a time of emergency like Alexander's invasion. Which of the two arrangements was presided over by Xandrames we shall decide after we have examined all the evidence from Megasthenes.

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Our conjectural term, Gangārāttā, could easily have arisen in Alexander's period. R. K. Mookerji¹ has spoken of "the republican peoples for which the Punjāb was known in those days, the Ārattas or Arāshtrakas, 'kingless' peoples, peoples not living under a rāshtra or State, of which the usual normal type was a kingship." He adds: "Baudhāyana, in his Dharmasūtra (c. 400 B.C.) describes the Punjāb as the country of Ārattas [1.1, 2, 13-15]. The Mahābhārātā [VIII.44.2070] calls the Ārattas Pdnchanadas, 'natives of the land of five rivers', [Ib.45, 2110] and also Vdhikas, 'people of the land of rivers', comprising the Prasthalas, Madras, Gandharas, Khasas, Vasatis, Sindhus, and Sauvīras." We may note here not only the employment of the word rātta, though with a negative prefix, but also the grouping of several peoples thus designated with a reference to rivers. Further we learn from Mookerji:² "In Panini's time there were both individual republics functioning by themselves and confederacies of such republics such as the Trigarta-shashtha, or the Sdlvas..." In the very time of Alexander, says Mookerji,³ "some kind of national opposition was organised... by the confederacy of the Kshudrakas and Malavas who united their military resources in a powerful allied army. Such a federal army was known even in the days of Panini who calls it, 'the Kshudraka-Mālavi-sena.'" A confederacy not of Ārattas but of rattas with a reference to the river Ganges could certainly be mentioned to Alexander in the natural course by Punjāb-princes like Bhagala and Paurava.

Thus the name "Gangaridai" occurring in Diodorus and his fellow-historians can itself prop up our theory of a wide location. All in all, we cannot conclude from Diodorus that Megasthenes put the Gangaridai centrally in the delta of the Ganges. The signs are quite to the contrary.

And we may round off with some words of Arrian's to match those of Diodorus with which we started our inquiry. Diodorus, before speaking of Alexander's decision to cry a halt to his invasion, referred to the eastern boundary of the Gangaridai and typified them as "a nation which possesses the greatest number of

1.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 36.

2.Ibid., p. 39.

3.Ibid., p. 42.

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elephants and the largest in size". Arrian (Anabasis, V.25),¹ without mentioning the Gangaridai, has yet a pointer to them when, like Diodorus, he too writes of the end of Alexander's march towards the Indian interior. In the description which, according to him, Alexander got of the country beyond the Hyphasis we have the phrase: "The elephants there are more numerous than elsewhere in India and conspicuous both for size and courage."

So the outstanding mark which Diodorus gives of the Gangaridai commences right from the eastern frontiers of the Punjāb, putting the seal on Diodorus's own testimony that the Gangaridai's country adjoined the Indian areas conquered by Alexander and that the Gangaridai were there to afford shelter to the Younger Porus fleeing from the foreigner. The outstanding mark runs also into the Ganges-delta; and evidently the collected strength of a good deal, if not all, of the Gangetic valley constitutes it. But it would seem mainly to lie in the Middle Country in part alliance with Māgadha.

2

The next version from Megasthenes comes in Pliny. Pliny (IV.22)² touches on the Gangaridai after making an observation about the Ganges in mid-career: "...it flows out with a gentle current, being at the narrowest eight miles, and on the average a hundred stadia in breadth, and never of less depth than twenty paces (one hundred feet) in the final part of its course, which is through the country of the Gāngārides. The royal city of the Calingae is called Parthalis. Over their king 60,000 foot soldiers, 1,000 horsemen, 700 elephants keep watch and ward 'in procinct of war'."

Here, at first sight, there is no ambiguity as regards the Gangaridai, but one wonders why suddenly in their wake crops up the royal city of the Calingae and why the military strength of this people rather than of the Gangaridai has been reported. If we go in Pliny backwards from our quotation, pass through the introduc-

1.Arrian s Life of Alexander the Great, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (The Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1958), p. 187.

2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 341.

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tory sentences about the Ganges and reach the end of the preceding paragraph, we alight upon the words:¹ "The tribes called the Calingae are nearest the sea, and higher up are the Mandei, and the Malli in whose country is Mount Mallus, the boundary of all that district being the Ganges." What is most striking is that the Calingae, by being "nearest the sea" in all the district whose boundary is the Ganges, are actually in continuity with the "Gāngārides" through whose country the Ganges has "the final part of its course" (before it "empties its waters into the ocean"). We get the suspicion that something is amiss in separating them. And the return to the Calingae, with a mention of their royal city and the forces keeping watch and ward over their king, suggests that the theme of the whole description is some combination of the Gāngārides and the Calingae and not the Gāngārides as such.

A passage from a third writer, Solinus (c. 200 A.D.), provides the answer to our perplexity and illuminates a point which the translation of Pliny's passage obscures. Solinus (52.7)² transmits Megasthenes thus: "The least breadth of the Ganges is eight miles, and its greatest twenty. Its depth where it is shallowest is fully a hundred feet. The people who live in the furthest-off part are the Gāngārides, whose king possesses 1,000 horses, 700 elephants, and 60,000 foot in apparatus of war."

It must hit anyone in the eye that Pliny and Solinus are concerned with the same subject, the latter in a somewhat abbreviated form. The estimate of the military strength is exactly the same -and the passages of both are followed by communications absolutely alike³ about the various occupations of the Indians, though again in a shorter form in the later version. Now we may ask: "If the identical subject is treated, why does the one passage attribute the military figures to the Calingae and the other to the Gāngārides? Could it be that the identical people is called by two names?" If we have the identical people, the sudden appearance of the Calingae and their royal city in the first context is explicable. And our natural suspicion would be that the people bore some such name as the Gāngārides-Calingae.

J. McCrindle, the first translator and editor in English of all of

l. Ibid.

2.. Ibid.. p. 457.

3. Ibid., pp. 342, 457.

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Megasthenes surviving in others' account, has a footnote¹ to Pliny's version, mentioning a reading which depends in the original Latin on the shifting of a full-stop. In the actual translation the Latin has been construed: "...Gāngāridum. Calingarum regia ..." = "...of the Gāngārides. The royal city of the Calingae..." But the footnote says that the common reading is: "...Gāngāridum Calingarum. Regia...", which has to be translated: "...of the Gāngārides-Calingae. The royal city..." R.C. Majumdar² too has the note: "Bostock translates: 'The last nation situated on the banks of the Ganges is that of the Gāngārides Calingae; the city where their king dwells has the name of Portalis'; and he adds in a footnote against Portalis: 'called Parthalis in most of the editions'."

McCrindle³ comments on "the common reading":"This is probably the correct reading, for, as General Cunningham states (Ancient Geography of India, pp.518-519), certain inscriptions speak of 'Tri-Kalinga'. 'The name of Tri-Kalinga,' he adds 'is probably old, as Pliny mentions the Macco-Galingae and the Gāngārides-Calingae as separate peoples from the Calingae, while the Mahābhārata names the Kalingas three separate times, and each time in conjunction with different peoples. (H. H. Wilson in Vishnu Purāna, 1st ed., pp. 185 note and 188.).' "

"Tri-Kalinga" is only mediaeval and not early: Cunningham has no real justification in supposing it to be an ancient term. But we may bear in mind the people named Vanga who are mentioned in Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa (Canto IV) and put in the Ganges-delta. Scholars like D.C. Sircar⁴ identify them with the Gangaridai of the Classical accounts. More accurately, we should equate them with the Gangaridai of the Calingae. And, accordingly to McCrindle,⁵ the MahāBhārata describes the Kalingas "as occupying, along with the Vangas (from whom Bengal is named) and three other leading tribes, the region which lies between Māgadha and the sea". The Purānas suggest even a closer relationship. They speak of the Vangas as having a progenitor who was a brother of the progenitor

1.Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian (Calcutta, 1920), pp. 137-38.

2.Op. cit., p. 350, note 8.

3.Op. cit., p. 138.

4.Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Bombay, 1947, pp. 91-8.

5.Op. cit., p. 135, fn. contd. from p. 134.

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of the Kalinga people. In the time of Megasthenes the Vangas may have been deemed a part of the Kalingas who, as McCrindle¹ infers from Pliny, were a widely diffused race. Cunningham, as well as McCrindle and Bostock after him, is thus essentially correct in favouring the combination "Gāngāridum Calingarum" which can be established even by a mere comparison of Pliny with Solinus.

Once the true name, for Megasthenes, of the people in Lower Bengal has been ascertained we have to fix down what it implies about the term "Gangaridai". McCrindle, with the preoccupation born of the first impression that the Gangaridai lived originally, if not exclusively, around "the final part of the Ganges' course", takes Pliny to be considering them wholly a branch of the Caling-as. But the straightforward interpretation is simply that one section of the Calingas is the Gangaridai of the Ganges-delta: there is no inevitable implication that the Gangaridai are limited to this region or at least have their original home in it, no necessary implication that they are not a larger people, only a part of whom is here, forming one branch of a certain tribe. Without examining all that may be elsewhere said about them it is gratuitous to regard them as being completely exhausted by constituting a particular portion of the Calingae and by dwelling in Lower Bengal.

The gratuitousness becomes quite apparent if we just look at the number of elephants ascribed to the Gangaridai in the version of Solinus: 700. How is it that a nation, which owns "a vast force", "an overwhelming number" of these animals, is credited with so low a figure when even the "Megallae"² and the "Pandae"³ boast of 500 each and the "Andarae"⁴ are actually given 1,000 and the "Horatae"⁵ 1,600? Surely, the 700 belong to merely a portion of the great nation of the Gangaridai, the portion which is within the group of the Calingae. This small number not only demolishes the idea that the Gangaridai are exclusively the people of Lower Bengal: it also renders suspect the idea that they have their original home there, for one cannot without self-contradiction speak in the same breath of a nation famous for the multitude no less than the size of its elephants and attribute to its central stock a

1.Ibid., p. 134. fn..

2.Pliny (VI.23); Majumdar. op. cit., p. 343.

3.Pliny (ibid.); Majumdar, ibid., p. 344.

4.Pliny (VI.22); Majumdar, ibid., p. 342.

5.Pliny (VI.23); Majumdar, ibid., p. 344.

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few piffling hundreds which barely exceed or which even fall below the possessions of nations not at all famous in this respect.

Here some objections may be raised apropos of the combination: Gāngārides-Calingae. First it may be said: "If the Gāngārides represented the inhabitants of the whole Gangetic tract, why do the Classical writers link them with only one people, the Calingae, instead of with several who too are inhabitants of that tract?" The answer is: "The linking happens not because those people fail to be the Gāngārides but because the Calingae are the sole people who, as Cunningham's reference to the Macco-Calingae shows us, have several groups in several localities and have one group coming into the Gangetic area: this group gets distinguished from the others by being called the Gāngārides-Calingae."

The second objection may run: "If one group of the Calingae coming into the Gangetic tract gets its name linked with 'Gāngārides', why does another group which lived according to Megasthenes (Pliny VI.22; Majumdar, op. cit., p. 342) on 'a very large island in the Ganges' get called Modogalingae? McCrindle (op. cit., p. 138, footnote) regards the Modogalingae as a subdivision of the Calingae. What prevents the people of the large Ganges-island from being also termed Gāngārides-Calingae if the Gāngārides are not to be deemed specifically the people of Lower Bengal?" The answer runs: "If we take the Modogalingae, also known as Mod-ogalikam (McCrindle, op. cit., p. 138, footnote §), as really a sub-division of the Calingae,' we should note what exactly Megas-thenes says: 'There is a very large island in the Ganges which is inhabited by a single tribe called Modogalingae.' Mark the word 'single'. The Calingae in the Ganges-delta may have been composed of many tribes.² Instead of each of them getting mentioned

1. M. de St.-Martin (McCrindl e, op, cit. p. 133, fn.) thinks they are such a subdivision and finds their representat ives in the ancient Mada,a colony which the Book of Manu , in its enumeration of the " impure" tribes of Āryavarta, mentions by the side of the Andhras, a people ancientl y located also in the lower Gangesregion. S.N. Majumdar (McCrindle's Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy , p. 234) believes Modo or Modoga to be equivalent to mudu of ancient Telugu, meaning "three" . so that "Modogalingae" would connote the Three Kalingas . But Megasthenes does not at all bear out such a wide and general significance, and the Three Kalingas are too mediaeval to be brought in.

2. Cf. McCrindle (op. cit. , p. 134, fn. contd . from p. 133) who writes that the Gangaridai of Lower Bengal "consisted of various indigenous tribes, which in course of time became more or less Aryanized".

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with a different prefix to the name 'Calingae', all of them may have been lumped together as people of the Ganges-tract, the Gāngārides, and then combined with that name. When one single tribe, particularly mentioned as such, was a sub-division of the Calingae, it could be conveniently indicated by a specific name in the prefix 'Modo' and no need would arise to label it as Gāngārides. If we explain the use of this label as meant not only to indicate the coming of a certain group of a many-grouped people into the Ganges-tract but also to indicate the inclusion of many tribes within this group under a Gangetic heading, the objection will be completely met."

The not unreasonable hypothesis that many tribes were contained by the group of the Calingae in Lower Bengal will answer also the query: "When Pliny says that the district, of the Mandei and the Malli has the Ganges for its boundary, why is the people of Lower Bengal alone designated as the Gangaridai?" We may submit: "The Mandei and the Malli are, like the Modogalingae, single tribes upon the Ganges; they are not a collection of tribes upon it. Hence they are listed by individual names and not by a general Gangetic title as we suppose the Ganges-delta collection to be."'

We may add: "If the Mandei and the Malli or, for that matter, any other Ganges-tribes had been taken in a lump in relation to the river along which they lived, they would have been called the Gangaridai. Pliny himself provides room for such a broad label when, as we have already marked, he employs the collective phrase: 'the whole tract along the Ganges.' Even a collective heading he mentions: the context in which he has that phrase concerns the Prasii and their capital Palibothra and he tells us that the people along this tract were called 'Palibothri', denoting the Palibothri's domination there. In a different context the Gangetic tract, taken a la Pliny as one whole of various peoples, would naturally give rise to a label like 'Gangaridai'."

There appears to be no argument derivable from Megasthenes through Pliny and Solinus, any more than through Diodorus, against our theory. We have certainly to grant that the Gangaridai stretch eastward into the Ganges-delta; but, if their members in this locality could count only 700 elephants out of the 4,000 assigned to them by Classical writers, the major bulk of them must have been outside that locality and stretched westward up to

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the frontiers of the Punjāb.

With the mention of the 700 elephants we may revert to the topic we have touched upon earlier: the kind of confederate arrangement of which Xandrames was the head. These elephants, we may recall, belonged to a "king" and we are informed also of his "royal city". The reference is not at all to a vishayanati, "provincial governor", who could also be labelled as a rāja. It is to a regular monarch, a true rājā , guarded by his own troops. In that case , the Gangārāttā ("Ganges-States") of Xandrames consisted of a number of confederacies, each with its own true head, and all of them loosely linked together under the hegemony of the largest of them. The largest was in the Madhyadeśa, Middle Country; for, Xandrames is named in connection with the eastern bank of the Ganges after the country beyond the Hyphasis . This country between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, which adjoined the parts conquered by Alexander and in which the Younger Porus sought shelter. was also the Gangaridai's. So there must have been a smaller confederacy there too. The largest, along .with that smaller, may be taken to have supplied the 3,300 elephants whose addition to those 700 of the "Gāngārides-Calingae" made up the whole sum of the mighty multitude mentioned by Diodorus when he states the Gangaridai's eastern boundary in Lower Bengal but with no inclusion of them in the Calingae, no restriction of them to the eastern side of India and with a suggestion 'of their Gangesextensive existence.

A collectivity of confederacies leads us to see in Plutarch's "Kings of the Gāngāritai and the Praisiai" more than merely a couple of crowned heads: the kings of the several Gangetic confederacies might be present, side by side with one or more royal leaders of the other group. Then Plutarch's later single "king" would be the royal leader of the largest Gangetic confederacy, who was virtually master of the "whole country" by which Alexander was immediately and directly opposed, quite far from the Ganges-delta.

3

Now Ptolemy alone remains. His main testimony is where in his Geography (VII.181)¹ he writes: "All the country about the

1. The Classical Accounts..., p. 375.

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mouths of the Ganges is occupied by the Gangaridai." At a second place he¹ implies by the proximity of another people, the Maroundai, to the north of the Gangaridai the latter's location in the same region.

So much does the first statement read like a paraphrase from Solinus or from the version of Pliny where the Gāngāridae are separated from the Calingae, that we may imagine Ptolemy to have depended entirely on his old materials. But he mentions the royal city of the Gangaridai to be Gange² and the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (about 60 years before the Geography) not only mentions (63)³ the same Gangé, which it calls Ganges as well, but also says that it stood on the river Gange or Ganges in the country called Gangé or Ganges. All this information is missing in Megasthenes. Hence one may argue: "With so much of Gange on the scene it is natural for the people to be called Gangaridai."

Sircar⁴ writes: "It is clear...that the Gāngāridae or Gangetic people received their name from this chief city called Gange, apparently named after the river Ganges." But he himself admits: "A people called Gāngā or Gahgeya inhabiting lower Bengal and having their capital at a city called Gāngā (Greek Gange or Ganges) is not known from ancient Indian literature." And we may make the addition: "The river Gāngā is not confined to Lower Bengal. Gange as a city-name is also not unique to the Ganges-delta. Artemidorus (c. 100 B.C.), the author of an earlier Periplus, is reported by Strabo (XV.I.72)⁵ thus: 'Artemidorus says that the Ganges River flows down from the Emoda mountains towards the south, and that when it arrives at the city Ganges it turns towards the east to Palibothra and its outlet into the sea.'" Wilson identifies this Ganges or Gange with Prayāga, i.e., Allāhābād, but Groskurd with Anupshahr.⁶ So Sircar's derivation of "Gāngāridae" from the city-name "Gange" can have no force to put the people of that designation originally or exclusively in Lower Bengal. All the more radical is the lack of force when Artemidorus's Gange which is fairly distant from Lower Ben-

1.McCrindle's Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy, edited by S. N. Majumdar, p. 212.

2.The Classical Accounts..., op. cit.

3.Ibid., p. 308.

4.Journal of Indian History, Vol XXXIV, Part III, Dec. 1956. p. 267.

5.The Classical Accounts..., p. 281.

6.McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy, p. 175.

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gal is reported nearly 200 years earlier. And the irrelevance of such a city-name plus the possibility of its occurrence wherever the river Ganges flows does away with the necessity of looking for a particular tribe with a Gangetic-sounding name restricted to it. The search, therefore, for a people called Gāngā or Gdhgeya or anything approximate to it, inhabiting Lower Bengal or any other locality, is beside the point.

All this cuts the ground from under Sircar's further elaborate argument. He¹ says about the city Gange at the meeting of the Ganges with the Bay of Bengal: "The modern representative of this ancient city seems to be the holy place at the junction of the Gāngā and the Sagara or Gangā-sagara. The name Gāngā, suggested by the early Graeco-Roman writers, may be regarded as an eka-desa of the name Gāngā-sāgara.^,, And he continues apropos of the historical fact that the Vangas inhabited the Ganges-delta: "After the name of the capital the country was also often called Gāngā... The Greek name of the Vanga people seems to be the result of a confusion the foreigners made between the sounds of the two names Vangāh and Gāngā."

Yes, Sircar's argument proceeds on a basis that has no solidity and that therefore vitiates the whole superstructure. But even otherwise can it stand up?

The city Gange was, no doubt, called after the river Ganges. But when, from the name of this capital, the people of the Ganges-delta were never known as Gāngā or Gangeya, can we build anything towards "Gangaridai" on the notion that the country was often called Gāngā from the name of the capital? Moreover, at the time when Megasthenes reported the Gangaridai branch of the Calingae in the Ganges-delta the capital was not called Gange but Parthalis. The existence of the Gangaridai has no connection with what the name of the capital at any period might be. And so the calling of the country from the capital's appellation Gang6 can contribute nothing towards the formation of the label "Gangaridai" for the people in it. Again, the confusion of Vangāh with Gāngā is possible but hardly probable: from ancient times the country of the Vangas was known as Vanga and the mere occurrence of a city-name "Gange" is not likely to make foreigners mistakenly say "Gāngā" for "Vanga" in regard to the land and its people. Artemidorus's Gange above Palibothra or to the north-

1. Op. cit., p.

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west of it led to no "Ganga" for the country where it stood.

Suppose we accept Sircar's proposed confusion on the foreigner's part. Then too would it follow at all that the name "Gangaridai" for the Vanga people could emerge from the confusion? There is no philological process by which "Gangaridai" can derive from Gange or Ganges. The people-name can be Gāngāi or Gāngāe, even Gangidai, Gangidae or Gangides, but never Gangaridai or any equivalent of it. In Classical writers, as we have noted - and they include Ptolemy - we hear of the people of Gandhara called Gandarai, Gandarioi, Gandarae or Gandaridai as well as Gandaridae. The two last forms are very similar to what we are discussing, but quite legitimate because the ar-sound occurs in Gandaritis, which is Strabo's name for the country, and in Gandaria which must have been the name used by those who termed the inhabitants Gandarioi. A country to have its inhabitants known as Gangaridai must itself be Gāngāra or else Gāngār-ida. To derive Gangaridai from Gange or Ganges is not sound philology. Sircar's idea that, since the capital in the Ganges-delta was called Gāngā from the capital city's name and since Vangah sounded like Gāngā to the foreigner's ear, the Vanga people were called Gangaridai by the foreigners - this idea is founded on Sircar's error that for the foreigners a variant for the term Ganges was "Gāngāres"¹ and this variant led to Gangaridai. There is no such variant as "Gāngāres". If there were, Classical scholars like de St.Martin and McCrindle would not cast about for a tribe-name similar to Gangaridai and conjecture the name "Gonghri" of an obscure tribe to be answering to the demand. "Gāngāres" does not figure in any Classical dictionary. And if "Gonghri" has to be rejected, as certainly it must, the name "Gangaridai" cannot issue naturally or logically or inevitably for the Vanga people of the Ganges-delta by any philological process from any Classical term for river, city or country.

How, then, did Ptolemy strike upon it for the people of Lower' Bengal? He could not have got it from mariners or travelling tradesmen, for they would have used not this word but some genuine derivative from Gange or Ganges - unless they mistook the term in Megasthenes to refer exclusively to this people. The mistake could be committed if a passage like Solinus's were read by itself or if a wrong version of the one in Pliny were accepted

1. Ibid., p. 267.

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without being compared to the Solinus-passage or to the statements of Diodorus. Most probably Ptolemy himself or his model, Marinus of Tyre, misunderstood Megasthenes and, on finding Gange in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and perhaps also in the reports of others, got confirmed in the misunderstanding by the resemblance of their word to the first two syllables of the word from Megasthenes.

Ptolemy is certainly not beyond error. R. C. Majumdar¹ marks that "'discoveries of modern times have brought to light [the Geography's] grave and manifold errors" and that "Ptolemy had a very distorted view of the shape of India and his determination of the positions of places is mostly inaccurate". We may instance some of his "howlers". He² puts Barberie inland to the north of Patala which was at the head of the Indus-delta, in contrast to the Periplus which correctly mentions it as a maritime port under the name of Barbarikon on the middle mouth of the Indus. He³ gives Pityndra as the existing capital of Maisolia, the country named, as S. N. Majumdar⁴ observes, "from the river Maisolos which signifies the whole extent of the mouths of the Godavari and the Krishnā" - Pityndra which, as Levi pointed out, is the same as Pithuda mentioned in the Hathigumpha Inscription of Kharavela before Ptolemy's time as having been completely destroyed by that conqueror. Even the celebrated Palibothra is given by Ptolemy⁵ not to the Prasii (whom he calls the Prasiake) but to the Mandalai to whom he has assigned dominions far beyond their proper limits. Again, he⁶ gives the river Ganges itself only three tributaries, although Arrian (quoting from Megasthenes) enumerates no fewer than seventeen and Pliny nineteen. Evidently several items in the Geography are due to confusion or inadequate and wrong information. The designation of Lower Bengal as the home of the Gangaridai is surely one such item.

Ptolemy is not a foundation firm enough for the conventional view of the Gangaridai. He cannot be invoked to negate the wider location we have discovered for them in Megasthenes or the

1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 351 (introductory note).

2.McCrindle, op, cit., p. 140.

3.Ibid., p. 187.

4.Ibid., p. 387.

5.Ibid., pp. 167-8.

6.Ibid., pp. 96-97.

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significance we have drawn from it for their name.

To clinch our case for a wider location we may close with a reference to Virgil and Ovid, both of them writing in the 1st century A.D. as contemporaries of Diodorus.

Ovid has the phrase: "terra Gangetis" ("the land of the Ganges"). It stands in general for India. Virgil, in his Georgics (111.26-27), writes:

In foribus pugnam ex auro solidoque elephanto

Gāngāridum faciam victorisque arma Quirini.

Dryden renders the lines:

High o'er the gate in elephant and gold

The crowd shall Caesar's Indian war behold.

C. Day Lewis, in our own time, translates them:

On the doors of my temple I'll have engraved in gold and solid

Ivory a battle scene - the Romans beating the Indians.

In both versions we may notice the Gandaridai forming a broad category and representing India or the people of India.

What is to be fixed in mind on taking Ovid and Virgil together is the common concept of the Gangetic as one wide whole of country and people. On account of the growing importance of the Ganges-region in the three centuries before Ovid and Virgil, the Gangetic as an extensive unity has become a synonym for the Indian. The amplification of its significance may be traced to a historical phenomenon of the age of Megasthenes - the unification of "the whole tract along the Ganges" (to quote Pliny again) into a super-tribal far-spread "nation" constituting a many-sided yet single kingdom, Gāngārāttā, whose variously located inhabitants were collectively called the Gangaridai.

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SUPPLEMENT TWO

XANDRAMES OF THE CLASSICAL ACCOUNTS AND HIS INDIAN COUNTERPART

A NEW EQUATION PROPOSED

When Alexander the Great, in the course of his invasion of India, reached the river Hyphasis (Vipāśa, modern Beās), he heard from the Indian prince Phegelas (Bhagalā) the news, which the renowned Porus (Paurava) confirmed, that on the eastern bank of the Ganges there was waiting for him Xandrames, king of the Gangaridai and the Prasii, with an army of 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants. The news struck terror in the hearts of the tired Macedonians and they forced their leader to call a retreat.

This was at approximately the end of July 325 B.C. At that time a young Indian named Sandrocottus had met Alexander and repeated to the Macedonian what the latter had already been told by his other Indian informants: the king of the interior regions which had been banded against the foreigner was hated and despised by his subjects for the wickedness of his disposition and the meanness of his origin. Sandrocottus himself afterwards became a king, one more powerful than even Xandrames.

Such in general is the picture with which we are presehted by the reports of Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch taken together. Modern historians have identified Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya and Xandrames with the last member of the dynasty of nine Nandas, which preceded Chandragupta Maurya on the throne of Māgadha.

But, while the names "Sandrocottus" and "Chandragupta" can be equated, has an Indian equivalent of "Xandrames" been found in the case of the last Nanda? If not, is there any evidence worth crediting, which would induce us to overlook the absence and still hold on to the current identification? And do we know of some other figure in Indian history who can serve in all respects or at least in the fundamentals as a better counterpart of Xandrames of the Classical accounts?

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1

The name "Xandrames" indubitably looks as if it were the Greek form of either the Sanskrit "Chandramās" or some other appellation like it. The Purānas¹ mention the founder of the Nandas as Mahāpadma and designate one of his eight sons variously as Sukalpa, Sumālya, Sumātya, Sahalya. We find no trace of anything akin to "Xandrames".

In Buddhist tradition² we do not hear of a father and eight sons but of nine Nanda brothers, all of whose names are given in the Mahābodhivamsa: (1) Ugrasena, (2) Panduka, (3) Pandugati, (4) Bhūtapāla, (5) Rāshtrapāla, (6) Govishānaka, (7) Daśasiddhaka, (8) Kaivarta and (9) Dhana. Here also nothing answers to "Xandrames".

F.W. Thomas³ implies that "Dhana" was merely the nickname of the last Nanda and that his real name was "ChandRāmas". Thomas has grasped at the suggestion offered by the Mahāvamsatīkā:⁴ "The youngest brother was called Dhanananda for his passion for hoarding wealth." What Thomas implies is quite possible - but there are innumerable other possibilities, too. What is to lend "ChandRāmas" priority - without our first demonstrating Dhana to be the king the Greeks were speaking of? The English scholar's supposition has in itself no force. We can judge its value only after surveying the whole plea for the last Nanda.

Can we even be sure the Mahāvamsatīkā is not merely taking advantage of a coincidence - a hoarder of wealth happening to bear the name "Dhana"? We may attend to Barua's observation:⁵ "One may just be amused by the ingenuity of the Mahāvarmsatīkā in the invention of stories for the etymological significance of the names, Chandragupta ('one who was guarded by a bull called Chandra') and Bindusāra ('one on whose body flowed the blood of she-goats'), both of which are far-fetched." In the explanation of "Dhana" the Mahāvamsatikā's "ingenuity" may have found self-justification for once. But can we be anything more than "just

1.Pargiter, The Purāna Texts of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 26 with fn. 24; p. 69 with fn. 20.

2.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 31.

3."Chandragupta, the Founder of the Maurya Empire", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 469.

4.Barua, Aśoka and His Inscriptions (Calcutta, 1946), Part I, p. 43.

5.Ibid., p. 45.

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amused"? The test is: Does the Mahāboddhivamsa itself, which originally lists the nine Nanda-names, supply a gloss on "Dhana"? It puts "Dhana" on a par with all the other appellations, none of which has been taken for a nickname. And, if the Nandas were a rich family, as they evidently were, the last and youngest of them may have been named for his good fortune to be born amidst a hoard of wealth. He may have had no name except "Dhana".

H.C. Raychaudhuri,¹ perhaps realizing the arbitrariness of Thomas's idea, attempts a more direct-looking solution. Reminding us that Curtius, unlike Diodorus, speaks of Agramm'es and not Xandrames, he has submitted that the Sanskrit patronymic "Au-grasainya", derivable from "Ugrasena" and meaning "Son of Ugrasena", is the Indian original of the name preserved by the Greeks. But it is difficult to see how Ugrasena who is explicitly called the eldest among the Nanda brothers can give rise to a term which clearly makes him the father of the rest to whom alone it must apply. "Augrasainya" is a sheer misnomer in the sole context in which the name "Ugrasena" occurs. Besides, in its second part it has not the least correspondence to "Agrammes".

What perhaps goes most against it is the baselessness of the belief underlying its formation - the belief that, in R.K. Mooker-ji's words,² "The form Agrammes is modified into Xandrames by Diodorus". Actually, Curtius who uses "Agrammes" belongs to the 1st century A.D., whereas Diodorus wrote in the 1st century B.C. Chronologically, there can be no doubt that "Agrammes" is a corruption of "Xandrames", possibly through an intermediate version like "Andrammes" analogous to Plutarch's "Andro-cottus"³ in the 1st century A.D. for Strabo's "Sandrocottus"⁴ in the 1st century B.C. Moreover, a corruption cannot have - as does "Xandrames" - so plainly Indian a ring, while the supposed original has none. Hence we have to ignore "Agrammes" and take only "Xandrames" into consideration. But then no Nanda can have any standing.

The sole remaining argument is sought to be founded on some details in the reports by both Diodorus and Curtius. The former

1.The Political History of Ancient India (3rd ed.). p. 15.

2.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 32.

3.The Classical Accounts..., p. 198 (Plutarch's Life of Alexander LXI1).

4.Ibid., pp. 262, 270, 272 (Strabo's Geography, XV.1.36.53,57).

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(VII.93)¹ says of his Xandrames: "...the king of the Gandaridai² was a man of quite worthless character and held in no respect, as he was thought to be the son of a barber. This man - the king's father - was of a comely person, and of him the queen had become enamoured. The old king having been treacherously murdered by his wife, the succession had devolved on him who now reigned." Curtius (IX.2)³ reports essentially the same story but with one or two variations in the details: "...the present king was not merely a man originally of no distinction but even of the very meanest condition. His father was in fact a barber scarcely staving off hunger by his daily earnings but who, from his being not uncomely in person, had gained the affection of the queen and was by her influence advanced to too near a place in the confidence of the reigning monarch. Afterwards, however, he treacherously murdered his sovereign and then, under pretence of acting as guardian to the royal children, usurped the supreme authority, and having put the young princes to death begot the present king who was detested and held cheap by his subjects as he rather took after his father than conduct himself as the occupant of the throne."

Our historians draw upon Jain tradition in their attempt at a parallel for the Nandas. In the Āvaśyaka Sutra (p. 693), we have a Nanda described as begotten of a barber. Hemachandra's Parisish-taparvan (VI.232) makes him the son of a barber by a courtesan. Struck by the barber-story, our historians forget a central discrepancy. Even in Jain tradition there are nine Nandas and, as in the Purānas, they are a father and eight sons. It is only the first, the father, who is called the son of a barber. Yet it is not he who can be deemed Xandrames. The ninth Nanda immediately preceding Chandragupta Maurya is our man. He is nowhere spoken of as a barber's son or stigmatized as belonging to a barber-family. Thus once more the Nandas are out.

The Purānic evidence on their origin, it should be obvious, is quite unhelpful. Else there would be little inducement to resort to Jain tradition. The Purānas⁴ see Mahāpadma as the son of the Śunga king Mahānandin by a Śūdra woman. Here it is the mother instead of the father who is of mean origin. And there is no

1.Ibid., p. 172.

2.Misspelling of "Gangaridai".

3.Ibid., p. 128

4.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 25.

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question of the queen conspiring with a lover and murdering her husband and bringing to the throne her son by that lover, or of the lover himself carrying out several murders to set up his future son as king. Mahāpadma comes to the throne rightfully and is coronated in the normal course of things.

The only point of agreement with the Classical accounts of Xandrames is, in a very general sense, "mean origin". And so, in spite of particular differences, the Purānas broadly agree also with Jain tradition. But Mookerji¹ notes how glaringly Buddhist reports are here at variance: "Buddhist tradition does not impute any base origin to the Nandas and thus runs counter to the Brahminical and Jain traditions... The worst infamy which Buddhist tradition records against these Nandas is that they were originally outlaws and robbers."

Casting them in such a role, Buddhist tradition, as again Mookerji² observes, "represents the Nandas as openly conquering Māgadha by force and not by any secret conspiracy or cowardly assassination of the reigning king by intrigues of the queen." Consequently, it comes about that the sole tradition which supplies some kind of excuse, however lame, for equating by name the Classical Agrammes with a Nanda differs toto coelo from Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch in every other circumstance.

Nor, we may add, are "the Brahminical and Jain traditions" uniform each in its own voice. While the Purānas label the Nandas as Sudras, the famous Indian drama Mudrā-rākshasa (VI. 6), by which many scholars set considerable store, regards the Nandas as prathita-kulajāh, "of illustrious birth", or uchchhaivarvijanam, "of high birth". And even in the Jain Pariśishtaparvan (VIII.230), which makes a barber breed the first Nanda on a courtesan, the daughter of the Nanda preceding Chandragupta Maurya claims, after falling in love with Chandragupta at first sight, from the deposed father the right to marry the Maurya victor and the claim is conceded "because it is customary for Kshatriya girls to marry according to their choice" (Prāyah Kshatriya-kanyānārh śasyate hi svayamvarah). The Nanda's Kshatriyahood is thus asserted.

This leads us to suspect that the single feature in which Jain tradition somewhat approaches the Classical accounts - namely, the barber-birth - is not meant to be taken literally. Perhaps the

1.Op. cit., pp. 32,33.

2."The Rise of Māgadhan Imperialism", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 32.

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very fact of its exclusive occurrence in this tradition implies that it is not literally meant. And, when the Pariśishtaparvan itself is internally inconsistent, we may endorse B. M. Barua's remarks:¹ "The barber story is almost proverbial in the ancient royal tradition of India. When a reigning monarch was found stingy in the payment of awards or in making gifts, he was taken to be a barber's son."

Even the mean and avaricious disposition of the Nandas is not unequivocally affirmed in our literature. The Buddhist Mahāvam-satikā which speaks of the last of them being "addicted to hoarding treasure" says that towards the time when he was dethroned "he, instead of any more hoarding wealth, was bent upon spending it in charities which he organised and through the machinery of an institution called Dānaśālā administered by a Samgha whose President was to be a Brāhman."² So, in the later part of his reign he is not likely to have been "despised by his subjects for the wickedness of his disposition" (to quote Plutarch³), as Xandrames was when Alexander heard of him a few years before Sandrocottus replaced his pre-eminence in the Indian interior.

The Buddhist Manjuśrī-mūlakalpa⁴ has the same charities but they are set in an entirely different story. This book knows of no nine Nandas. It has only one single Nanda who gained the throne from the position of a prime minister, as though by a magical process, and was a pious and sagacious man, a Buddhist who yet patronised Brāhmans. This character is as far as can be from the Greeks' Xandrames.

The Nanda, known as Yoga-Nanda, who in the Kashmiri tradition⁵ is himself overcome by a magical spell practised by Chanakya against him and is supplanted on the throne by Cha-nakya's protégé Chandragupta Maurya, has also no resemblance to Xandrames, except that he is stated to be of the lowest caste, a Sudra. There is too much ambiguity about him to permit any appreciable comparison.

1.Op. cit., p. 47.

2.Mookerji. op. cit., pp. 33-4.

3.Ibid.

4.Barua, op. cit., p. 43.

5.As preserved in the Kathasaritasagara and the Brihatkāthamanjari, two Sanskrit works usually dated to the 11th century A.D.

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None of our historians accept the Kashmiri tradition, believing they have found better substance elsewhere. But this tradition has one notable point. In addition to Yoga-Nanda a Pūrva-Nanda is mentioned. So there are two instead of the usual nine Nandas or the one Nanda of the Manjuśrī-mūlakalpa. Although, as Mookerji¹ remarks, the relation between the two is not specified and we are not even told what Pūrva-Nanda's status is, nowhere save here -however vaguely - do we have, as in the Classical accounts, just two figures of the same family. The stories which our historians prefer have, all of them, the ninth and not the second family-member to match with Xandrames. The Kashmiri tradition, while having no rapport in its story with the Classical accounts, serves yet by this stray background-similarity in number to show up an extra inadequacy in the proposed Nanda-parallel.

Finally, this parallel lacks the Classical feature that the family member preceding Xandrames is not himself a king. Diodorus says, "The old king having been treacherously murdered by his wife, the succession had devolved on him who now reigned." Between Xandrames and the old king, there was nobody on the throne. According to Curtius, Xandrames "rather took after his father than conduct himself as the occupant of the throne". Being the occupant of the throne is contrasted to being like the father: the father could never have been king at the same time he was father. He did not occupy the throne even though he, "under pretence of acting as guardian to the royal children, usurped the supreme authority" - that is, got the reins of power into his hands so that he could do what he liked with the princes' lives. Xandrames is called "the present king" whom the barber-father begot: the begetter is not honoured with the royal title. In the parallel our historians propose, the Nanda-predecessor of Dhana is a king in his own right and openly styled so.

Thus there is not a single element in which the parallel does not break down. After such a debacle, can we regard as anything except a face-saving fancy the ad hoc hypothesis that, as distinguished from the nickname "Dhana", the last Nanda's name was "Chandramās"?

So we return to where we started, and may sum up that both at the centre and at the periphery the alleged Nanda-correspondence fails to hold together. "But what is the alternative?" we may be

1. Op. cit., p. 49.

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asked. The reply is easy, though unexpected. The very search for likenesses in the Nanda-legends appears a superfluity when we open the historico-dynastic section of the Purānas to seek out Xandrames directly by name. For, there he stands in striking relief with a most recognizable physiognomy in all fundamentals.

2

In a list - from the Vayu Purāna - of the Nāga kings of Vidiśā, belonging to the epoch between the Āndhras (Sātavāhanas) and the Imperial Guptas, Pargiter¹ gives us the phrase:

Sadāchandras tu Chandrāmso dvitiyo Nakhavāms tathā

He² renders the phrase: "Sadāchandra, and Chandrāmśa who will be a second Nakhavant." In "Chandrāmśa" we have surely a name sounding very much like "Xandrames". And we must realize that in the entire history of India it is the only echoing one borne by a king whose existence no scholar has doubted. Here is a fact of the greatest initial importance. It demands all the attentive study it can get.

In a footnote Pargiter³ cites a variant from another copy of the Vayu for the qualifying words: dvitiyo Nakhavām. The variant runs: Nakhapāna-jah, meaning for Pargiter⁴ "Nakhapāna's offspring". He sees in "Nakhavam or "Nakhapāna" the Purānic version of "Nahapāna", the name of the Śaka ruler hailing from the Kshaharata family whom Gautamiputra Satakarni of the Āndhra dynasty destroyed.

Modern scholars concur with his interpretation, but not with his distinction between Sadachandra and Chandrāmśa. They rightly find in tu a sign of identity: if cha had been used the names could have applied to different persons. So they⁵ speak of "Sadāchandra surnamed Chandrāmśa, who is described as a second Nakhavat". But never having questioned the current hypothesis about Sandrocottus, neither they nor Pargiter have ever connected Chandrāmśa with Xandrames.

1.Op. cit., p. 49.

2.Ibid., p. 72.

3.Ibid., p. 49 fn. 11.

4.Ibid., fn. 24.

5.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 169.

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The qualifying words about Chandrāmśa can themselves be a very strong prop to the identification with Xandrames if we reject Pargiter's gloss and disjoin the words from Nahapāna the Śaka king. First, we must take the Purānic term flexibly: it can be not only "Nakhavant'or "Nakhavat" but also "Nakhavan" and Pargiter¹ himself in the introductory note to the passage uses this very form. It is extremely suggestive that a description of one whose name leads us to identify him with Xandrames, the son of a barber, should have the term "Nakha" in it.² "Nakha" means "nail" and in India a barber has to deal with nail-cutting no less than with hair-cutting and actually one of the synonyms for "barber" is Nakhakutta ("nail-cutter").¹ In "Nakhavān", therefore, we are invited, as it were, to read the barber-idea. But it is apparently fused with another notion. The word signifies "one who has nails" and, with "Nakhakutta" in our mind, we may interpret "having" in a double sense so that the name would imply "one who at the same time possesses nails to cut with and has nails in his possession by cutting them" - that is to say, a nail-cutter who wounds and tears his customers; or, if we wish to reflect in brief the pun which appears to be in the Sanskrit van in this context, we may say "a barbed barber". Such a ślēsha or double entendre, accompanied by the adjective dvitīyo, "second", is just what would be appropriate in the case of Chandrāmśa if he were Xandrames, since Xandrames, according to Curtius, "took after his father", the barber who, as we are told, had killed his royal patron and that patron's children, too.

But it is not only because Xandrames was like his father in character and manner that Chandrāmśa is affined to him: it is also by Xandrames's being the very next in number to his father in this respect that the Nāga king's affinity can be affirmed. Dvitīyo, "second", is a most pertinent expression. Both Xandrames and Chandrāmśa, unlike Dhana-Nanda of our historians, come immediately after their fathers: they are "second" in the family and not ninth. The rank common to them drives their equation home with particular accuracy.

1.Op. cit., p. 48.

2.I owe this observation to Dr. M. VenkataRāman, formerly of Madurai University.

3.M. Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 524.

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In the variant Nakhapāna-jah, which Pargiter renders by "Nakhapāna's offspring", we have the same suggestion of immediate succession. And, by exposing the absurdity of relating Chandrāmśa to the §aka Nahapana as son to father, it clinches our interpretation. The barber-idea is even more evident here, for, one of the meanings of pāna is "protection"¹ and Nakhapāna would connote "Nail-protection". But to get the full appositeness out of this word we must glance at the grammatical side of it. Pāna has the neuter gender: as it is, we cannot apply it to a man. It is a word like shāsana, meaning "mastery" or "subdual", which also being neuter cannot go into a personal name unless there is an h after it, as in the well-known name of Indra, Pākashāsanah which that god carries as the subduer of or master over the demon Paka. So the one whose offspring is Chandrāmśa must bear the name Nakhapānah. Our text does not contradict such an assumption, since the only instance in which his name appears is the word Nakhapdna-jah and, when there is already aa h at the end of a word, Sanskrit grammar will not allow another in the midst of the expression. The absence of h after pāna is just what we should expect if the original name were Nakhapānah to personify "Nail-protection".

The purpose of employing this term instead of Nakhakutta would seem to be the demarcation of the barber in question from others of his profession: here was a barber who rose to a special post in the household where he worked and thus deserved a distinguishing appellation. And this compound appellation may be taken in an ironic double sense to yield the idea of protecting nails by means of nails. The aptness of the double sense will at once be seen if we remember Diodorus and Curtius. The father of Xandrames or Agrammes was really the nailed protector of nails, for he clove his way through everything to the supreme authority while doing his barber's job. In his relation to the sons of his sovereign he is spoken of by Curtius as setting up the "pretence of acting as guardian to the royal children" while planning to "put the young princes to death". In the word "guardian" we have actually the echo of the Purānic pānah "protector": he continued to protect the prince's nails as their guardian when all the time digging his own nails, as it were, deep into their lives.

The explicit Classical accounts and the pregnant Purānic line can

1. Ibid., p. 613.

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stand very well together on several scores. The central position may be considered as won: what remains is to settle some surrounding issues.

3

Our first concern now is to put the geographical situation of Xandrames as the king of the Gangaridai and Prasii on a level with that of Chandrāmśa as the king of Vidiśā. We are likely to be pulled up with the questions: "Are not the Gangaridai the people of the Ganges-delta in Lower Bengal and the Prasii the Prāchya, Easterners, and especially the people of Māgadha with their imperial capital at Pātaliputra, the Palibothra of the Greeks? How then can a Nāga monarch whose seat was Vidiśā have been Xandrames?"

We have already discussed in detail the location of the Gangaridai, also called Gangarides or Gangaridae, and their relation to the Prasii. To make the present essay self-contained, the conclusion at which we have arrived may be summed up and whatever argument is most relevant may be briefly used to structure the summary:

"On the evidence of Pliny (VI.22),¹ the Prasii, who are also called the Palibothri, are specifically the people of the city Palibothra (lying on the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Sonos [Son]). On the same evidence, they are in general the Palibothran rulers of 'the whole tract along the Ganges'. But this general role of theirs belongs to the time of Sandrocottus who is directly named by Strabo (XV.1.36)² the king of the Prasii and of Palibothra. In the time of Xandrames it is not they but the Gangaridai who are in prominence. As against Diodorus who mentions them after the Prasii in connection with Xandrames, both Curtius (IX.2)³ and Plutarch (LXII)⁴ put them before, and Diodorus himself in his next reference to the same ruler calls him the king of the Gangaridai as if he were essentially their king alone. On four other occasions (XVII.93,94; 11.37; XVIII.6)⁵ Diodorus speaks of Alexander's

1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 342.

2.Ibid., p. 262.

3.Ibid., p. 128.

4.Ibid., p. 198.

5.Ibid., pp. 172, 173, 234, 239.

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projected expedition or war against the Gangaridai: there is no mention of the Prasii. And on one (11.37) of these four occasions he assigns to the Gangaridai 4,000 elephants - the same number that he gives when telling us of Xandrames, king of the Prasii and the Gangaridai. Obviously, the royal power that was Xandrames and the military resources he commanded had fundamentally to do with the Gangaridai. The Gangaridai were the real and immediate 'nation' Alexander would have faced on reaching the Ganges. The Prasii were secondary and subsidiary, merely a background enemy. Under Xandrames's command they were a minor force. If he ruled over them - and was not just their leader, a sort of temporary king over them in a coalition against Alexander - it must have been over just a part, a part which had nothing to do with Palibothra since Palibothra is never associated with him in the Classical accounts. To the west of Palibothra, in the western regions of the Gangetic river-system, where Alexander would first meet him, lay the kingdom of Xandrames and his Gangaridai.

"No doubt, the Gangaridai were also in the Ganges-delta. Diodorus puts in that locality their eastern boundary; but it is precisely in this passage that he ascribes 4,000 elephants to them, thus joining them up with Xandrames's army-figures when he awaited Alexander's attack far away from the Ganges-delta. And in this passage Diodorus speaks also of Alexander wanting to cross the Ganges and make war upon the Gangaridai: the Ganges would be initially crossed more than 2,000 miles to the west of Lower Bengal. No wonder Diodorus does not refer to any other boundary in this locality than the eastern.

"The existence of the Gangaridai not only in the Ganges-delta but also much further west emerges quite clearly in another of Diodorus's passages (XVIII.6). There he says that the region inhabited by the Gangaridai is separated from Farther India by the Ganges but adjoins the rest of India which was conquered by Alexander. So the Gangaridai stretch from the frontiers of the Punjāb where Alexander halted, across Madhyadeśa (Middle Country) through Māgadha to Lower Bengal.

"A westerly extension of the Gangaridai is proved also when Diodorus (XVII, 9)¹ recounts how the Younger Porus fled for shelter to the nation of the Gangaridai from Alexander advancing beyond the Acesines (Asikni, Chenāb) and across the Hydraotes

1. Ibid., p. 170.

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(Iravati, Rāvi) towards the Hyphasis. Between the Hyphasis and the Ganges - that is, on the frontiers of the Punjāb to the west of the latter river - the Gangaridai begin.

"The people local to the Ganges-delta are found, on a comparison of a passage in Pliny (V.22)¹ with one in Solinus (52.7),² to be known as the 'Gāngārides-Calingae' - a branch of the widely diffused many-branched Calinga people - and their elephant-strength is only 700. The Ganges-delta is thus definitely shown to hold no more than a part of the Gangaridai - a small one and certainly not the central which must be more westward where Xandrames stood in battle-array to meet the Macedonian. And, as the Pliny-Solinus reference assigns the 700 elephants of the Ganges-delta to the 'king' of the Gangaridai there, Xandrames with his 4,000 must be the king of the Gangaridai lying outside the Ganges-delta no less than mostly west of Māgadha. A number of Gangaridai groups, distinguishable from the 'Gangarides-Calingae' though not without the latter's contribution, must have assembled against Alexander, with their different kings, among whom Xandrames was the most powerful and principal monarch, welding them all into one.

"Here we may note a point in Plutarch.³ Although referring to the king - 'despised by his subjects for the wickedness of his disposition and the meanness of his origin' - as the one who ruled the total country which was banded against Alexander, Plutarch yet tells us not of the king of the Gangaridai and the Prasii but of 'kings'. The plural is there and it brings up two suggestions.

"In the first place, the barber's son Xandrames, virtually sole master of all the extensive portion of interior India which was opposing the foreigner, was ruler really of the Gangaridai and not of the Prasii who had their own government. Here our conclusion from Diodorus's 'king of the Gandaridai' gets support. In the second place, there may have been many kings of the Gangaridai themselves as also of the Prasii - and Xandrames may have been the biggest of the former, leading the pooled military resources of several related Gangaridai groups. This suggestion agrees with our conclusion from the 'king' of the 'Gāngārides-Calingae' as distinct from the 'king' of the Gangaridai that was Xandrames.

1.Ibid., pp. 341, 350, note 8.

2.Ibid., p. 457.

3.Ibid., pp. 196-199.

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"Associated - as their name indicates - with the Ganges, the several Gangaridai groups must be forming a 'nation' which is best designated by the phrase Bevan¹ uses apropos of the Younger Porus's flight: 'the people of the Ganges-region.' Pliny also seems to have had in mind such a Ganges-wide location when he wrote of 'the whole tract along the Ganges' as a single extensive unity.

"And the name 'Gangaridai' is most probably an echo of the possible Prakrit expression, Gangārāttā, 'Ganges-States', denoting a number of confederacies of varying size and importance held together - however loosely - in spite of several kings by the predominant position of the king of the central confederacy.

"A comprehensive sense related to the Ganges in its entirety is the sole logical one not only in view of the various references with their different facets but also in view of the fact that no single ancient Indian tribe famous enough to equal the Gangaridai has been lighted upon by scholars to explain their name.

"In the comprehensive sense, even the Prasii, the Palibothri, are the Gangaridai; but, as they constituted a distinct political entity, they are listed side by side with the latter as though different from them. For practical purposes the Gangaridai are the people of the whole Ganges-tract except those of Pātaliputra in particular and of Māgadha in general. And the middle areas of the Ganges-tract constituted the dominion of Xandrames, king of the Gangaridai."

Every piece of evidence from Classical sources converges to present to us Xandrames as not a king of Eastern India, neither the monarch of Māgadha in any substantial connotation nor the monarch of Lower Bengal, but the overlord of a wide territory westward of both and quite conceivably having its centre at Vidiśā where the Nāga Chandrāmśa was sovereign.

4

Once we have made it possible to shift Xandrames to Vidiśā, our next concern is to render it likely that, like Xandrames, Chandrāmśa may have been sovereign over a fairly extensive territory from a governmental seat at this city.

The Purānas figure the Nāgas as flourishing at other centres too: Kantipuri, Mathura, Padmavati.² The prevalence of Nāga rule

1."Alexander the Great", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 370, fn. 4.

2.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 169.

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over considerable portions of Northern India in the historical context within which Chandrāmśa is set is also attested by epig-raphic and numismatic finds.' It seems the Nāgas who are specified in the Purānas as rulers of one or another centre were really masters over more than one centre and that the object of mentioning this or that centre was to denote the home or the principal city of each Nāga. Thus, "some coins bearing the name of Mahārāja Ganendra or Ganapa have been discovered at Padmavati and also at Vidiśā and Mathura",² which shows that this king of Padmavati may have expanded his influence over the rest of the Nāga centres. Again, the Vākātaka records mention Mahārāja Bhavanāga, whose daughter married a son of the Vākātaka king Pravīra, one of the kings mentioned in the Purānas along with Chandrāmśa. This Bhavanāga, who is thus a contemporary of Chandrāmśa, is described in the records as belonging to the family of the Bharaśi-vas "who were besprinkled on the forehead with the pure water of the Bhaghathi that had been obtained by their valour".³ The implication is "that their home was away from the Bhagirathi (Gariga) but that they extended their power as far as the valley of that river".⁴ Another king, Virasena, who has left numismatic and epigraphic traces, is believed to have been a Nāga with his capital at Mathura and with sovereignty also over Bulandshahr, Etah and Farrukhabad districts as well as parts of the Punjāb.⁵ The Nāgas, whether centred at Vidiśā, Kantipuri, Mathura or Padmavati, can be considered prominent rulers of the Gangaridai - the peoples along the course of the Ganges - and Chandrāmśa the Nāga of Vidiśā may be set over various Gangetic peoples, regarded as overlord of several Gangetic kings and equated in geographical extension with Xandrames.

In the Gangetic valley west of Māgadha the Nāgas are known to have been the immediate predecessors of the Guptas whom the Purānas report as rising into imperial power at Māgadha in the period immediately following Chandrāmśa's. Two of the Āryavar-ta kings whom Samudragupta, the second of the Imperial Guptas, is declared in the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription to have "extirpated"

1.Ibid.

2.Ibid., p. 170.

3.Ibid., p. 169.

4.Ibid.

5.Ibid., p. 171.

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were Nāgas: GanpatiNāga and Nāgasena, who appear to have been a couple out of the nine Nāgas said by the Purānas to have ruled at Padmāvatī.¹ Even during the reign of the Gupta dynasty the Nāgas continued in the provinces over which Xandrames had held sway. Samudragupta's son married KuberaNāga who was a Nāga princess. "A Nāga named Sarvanāga was appointed vishayapati (provincial governor) and was ruling the Antarvedl district (between the Gāngā and the Yamuna and between Prayāga and Hardwar) under Skandagupta",² the fifth Gupta emperor.

Everything geographical favours our view of Xandrames and Chandrāmśa. And, with mention of the Guptas replacing the Nāgas in the Gangetic valley west of Māgadha, we come first to the problem of Sandrocottus whom the Classical accounts know as the next great king of the Indian interior after Xandrames and then to the problem of chronology in a historical vision which takes Chandrāmśa to be a contemporary of Alexander the Great and thereby implies the substitution of the Guptas for the Mauryas on the throne of Pātaliputra.

5

What poses itself as a problem in regard to Sandrocottus is in fact a solution in regard to Xandrames. That Sandrocottus should soon follow Xandrames as the chief power in the Indian interior is one more proof of the identity of the latter with Chandrāmśa. For, the Guptas, arisen to imperial status at Māgadha in the period immediately following Chandrāmśa's have as their founder a Chandragupta just as do the Mauryas. Sandrocottus of Palibothra, in the matter of both name and royal seat, could perfectly well be Chandragupta I of Pātaliputra, the first of the Imperial Guptas. The sequence of Xandrames and Sandrocottus matches with absolute exactness the sequence of Chandrāmśa and Chandragupta I.

Nor is this a fitting together which, for all its precision, is merely general. It can be substantiated in closest particularity. For convenience's sake we shall start with a detailed discussion of the chronological relation between the Nāga and the Gupta.

In the post-Āndhra and pre-Gupta interval Chandrāmśa is in a

1.Ibid., p. 170.

2.Ibid.

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group of rulers whom the Purānas¹ mention after naming Vin-dhyasakti, known to our historians as the founder of the Vākāta-kas. On the one hand we are told of the Nāgas of Vidiśā, along with some other monarchs, and on the other we get Vindhyasakti's son Pravīra and Pravīra's four sons. Then we are informed of the passing away of the Vindhyaka family and provided with a list of various subsequent rulers and dynasties who are not distinguished in terms of time and whose beginnings must therefore be taken as simultaneous. Among them are the Guptas.

Pargiter's full text² on the Nāgas of Vidiśā runs: "Bhogin, son of the Nāga king Sesa, will be king, conqueror of his enemies' cities, a king who will exalt the Nāga family. Sadachandra, and Chandrāmśa who will be a second Nakhavant, then Dhanadharman, and Vahgara is remembered as the fourth. Then Bhutinanda will reign in the Vaidiśā kingdom."

As Sesha enters only as the royal father of Bhogin and is not directly put forth as a king of this period, it is with Bhogin we must commence, setting him in time on a level with Vindhyasakti in the post-Āndhra epoch. Sadāchandra being the same as Chandrāmśa, we have three kings following Bhogin's name. But since here Chandrāmśa is called the second barber, a first one has to be put before him on a level with Bhogin in time. Evidently this barber did not sit on the throne and thus remains excluded from the list of kings. The kings after Bhogin are only three. And yet there is the curious fact that Varigara, mentioned next to Dhanadharman who is placed after Chandrāmśa, "is remembered as the fourth". However, the puzzle remains as long as we think of "the fourth" in terms of kinghood. Taking our cue from the word "second" in connection with Chandrāmśa, we can clear up the mystery by regarding Vahgara as the fourth "Nakhavan". Then with Dhanadharman as the understood third, we have a quartet of "barbers", the last three of whom we may count either as successive or as contemporaneous, either as a continuing three-generationed family of "barbers" after the first or as three sons following a father.

If we accept the latter case, the eldest son Chandrāmśa would rule in the seat of Bhogin's government (and, before Bhogin's, Sesha's), the others in minor localities under him. All the three

1.Pargiter, op. cit., pp. 72-3.

2.Ibid.

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sons would constitute the next generation after Bhogin (and after the first "barber") - that is, on a time-parity with Vindhyaśakti's son Pravīra. The second generation after Bhogin - that is, on a level of time with Pravīra's four sons - would be Bhutinanda. As nothing is said of his end we may assume that during his reign the Vindhyakas would pass away and the Guptas arise.

If Bhutinanda belongs practically to the same generation as Chandragupta I, Chandrāmśa would precede the latter in time exactly as Xandrames preceded Sandrocottus, and be a powerful monarch in the Indian interior in the middle of 326 B.C. when Alexander halted at the Beās and when, as we know from Plutarch (LXII)¹ and Justin (XV.4),² Sandrocottus was not yet a king. And the fact that Chandrāmśa's father, the first "Nakhavān", is not enumerated as a king identifies further the circumstances with those of Xandrames and supports the chronological position we have assigned to Xandrames.

Here we may appropriately touch on the common notion that Sandrocottus waged war against Xandrames to win Palibothra from him. According to our picture Xandrames had no Palibothra to lose as he was never its possessor. Also, Sandrocottus could have waged no war against him: he could have fought only with Bhūtinanda - and, again, not over Palibothra but only the "Vaid-iśā kingdom". The Classical accounts, taken in a straightforward manner, completely bear us out. Nowhere do we read of Sandrocottus going to war with Xandrames. And the manner in which he became king of Palibothra and of the Prasii is never explicitly mentioned.

There are only three passages referring to his warlike activities. The shortest is of Appian (2nd century A.D.).' It brings in Seleucus Nicator's attempt to invade India in c. 305 B.C.: "He crossed the Indus and waged war on Sandrocottus, king of the Indians who dwelt about it, and he made friends and entered into relations of marriage with him." A little longer passage is in Plutarch (loc. cit.):⁴ it touches also on Seleucus. After speaking of the huge army credited to the "kings" of the Gangaridai and the

1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 199.

2.Ibid., p. 193.

3.McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian (Calcutta, 1920), pp. 9-10.

4.The Classical Accounts.... pp. 198-9.

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Prasii, Plutarch adds: "Nor was this any exaggeration, for not long afterwards Androcottus, who by that time had mounted the throne, presented Seleucus with 500 elephants, and overran and subdued the whole of India with an army of 600,000 men."

From Appian we learn simply that Sandrocottus ruled the Indus-region in c. 305 B.C. Plutarch does not locate the "throne" Sandrocottus mounted before that year and, if he is to be taken literally, Sandrocottus became an all-India emperor after the confrontation with Seleucus. But, as he enters Plutarch's narrative with his immense military forces appropos of the kings of the Gangaridai and the Prasii we may infer that his throne was not unconnected with the Prasii who are always associated with him in Classical accounts. Even Plutarch indirectly makes the association.¹ For, just after saying that even up to his day the altars which Alexander erected to commemorate his farthest point in India were visited by the kings of the Prasii, Plutarch brings in Sandrocottus a second time: "Androcottus himself, who was then but a youth, saw Alexander himself and afterwards used to declare that Alexander could easily have taken possession of the whole country..." And, since we know from Strabo (XV.1.36;² 11.1.9³) that Seleucus's ambassador Megasthenes was sent to Sandrocot-tus's court at Palibothra, we may assume that Sandrocottus before his confrontation with Seleucus was already king of the Prasii no less than of the Indians who dwelt about the Indus. But we are left in the dark as to how he made this city his capital. From Plutarch we may even conjecture that in the period after Alexander's departure from India Sandrocottus took possession of Xandrames's kingdom. For, the reason Sandrocottus gave Alexander for his assessment of the latter's chances was the unpopularity of the wicked low-born king who was the Macedonian's chief antagonist. Xandrames is not named here; but his presence is evident. Still, whether Sandrocottus came into conflict with Xandrames himself or with some successor of his would depend on when in the post-Alexandrine period the conflict occurred.

Pointers to the solution of this problem as well as to that of some

1.Ibid.,

2.Ibid., p. 262.

3.McCrindle, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (Westminister 1893). p. 408.

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others can be discerned in the long passage Justin (XV, IV)¹ has on Sandrocottus's arrival at kingship. As usually translated it goes: "Seleucus Nicator waged many wars in the east after the partition of Alexander's empire among his generals. He first took Babylon, and then with his forces augmented by victory subjugated the Bactrians. He then passed over into India, which after Alexander's death, as if the yoke of servitude had been shaken off from its neck, had put his prefects to death. Sandrocottus was the leader who achieved their freedom, but after his victory he forfeited by his tyranny all title to the name of the liberator, for he oppressed with servitude the very people whom he had emancipated from foreign thraldom. He was born in humble life, but was prompted to aspire to royalty by an omen significant of an august destiny. For when by his insolent behaviour he had offended Alexander,² and was ordered by that king to be put to death, he sought safety by a speedy flight. When he lay down overcome with fatigue and had fallen into deep sleep, a lion of enormous size approaching the slumberer licked with its tongue the sweat which oozed profusely from his body, and when he awoke, quietly took its departure. It was the prodigy which first inspired him with the hope of winning the throne, and so having collected a band of robbers,³ he instigated the Indians to overthrow the existing government.⁴ When he was thereafter preparing to attack Alexander's prefects a wild elephant of monstrous size approached him, and kneeling submissively like a tame elephant received him on its back and fought vigorously in front of the army. Sandrocottus having thus won the throne was reigning over India when Seleucus was laying the foundation of his future greatness. Seleucus having made a treaty with him and otherwise settled his affairs in the east, returned home to prosecute the war with Antigonus."

Leaving aside the prodigies and noting that the phrase - "he instigated the Indians to overthrow the existing government" - has

1.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 192-3.

2.Majumdar's text has "Nandrus" here and the note to it: "Nandrum (Nanda) has been here substituted for the common reading Alexandrum (Alexander) on the authority of Gutschmid (cf. M.I., p. 327, fn. 1.). But the original reading is now looked upon as the correct one."

3.Majumdar's note: " 'Mercenary soldiers' would be a better translation."

4.An alternative reading is: "he solicited the Indians to support his new sovereignty." See An Advanced History of India by R. C. Raychaudhuri, R. C. Majumdar and Kalikinkar Datta, p. 99.

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an alternative reading, namely, "he solicited the Indians to support his new sovereignty", we may tabulate the sequence of events thus:

(1)Sandrocottus, born in humble life, meets Alexander and is insolent with him. (Perhaps he twitted him with uncomplimentary reflections on the Macedonian military temperament which could not go on to the Ganges in spite of the odds in the foreigners' favour, as we gather from what Plutarch makes him say afterwards.)

(2)Alexander wants him to be punished with death and he takes flight.

(3)He conceives the ambition to become a king.

(4)He collects an army of mercenaries, incites the Indians to overthrow "the existing government" and back his own "new sovereignty".

(5)After Alexander's death he succeeds in fighting and killing the foreign prefects and freeing the Indus-region from Greek rule.

(6)He becomes king there, acts the tyrant and is ruling over India when Seleucus is preparing his own great future.

(7)He meets Seleucus's invasion of the Indus-region, and the foreigner strikes a treaty with him.

Now the question of questions is: Whose is "the existing government" which Sandrocottus wants overthrown in his own favour? Vincent Smith¹ and H.C. Raychaudhuri² take it to be the government of Xandrames and they rest their case on the word "thereafter" (deinde in the Latin). Raychaudhuri writes: "The use of the term deinde ('thereafter','some time after') in connection with the war against the prefects of Alexander suggests that the acquiescence of Indians in a change of government and the establishment of a new sovereignty is quite distinct from the war with the Macedonian prefects. There was an interval between the two events, and the Macedonian war came some time after the change of government among Indians." The last-mentioned event is what Raychaudhuri calls "assumption of sovereignty" in "the plains and uplands of the Indian interior" before the same "in the Lower Indus Valley".

Raychaudhuri's analysis teems with illicit inferences. First of all, what is there in Justin to allow his interpreter to speak of "change

1.The Early History of India (London, 1934), p. 45, fn. 2.

2.An Advanced History of India, p. 100.

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of government among Indians", as if Justin's "existing government" signified an Indian government which is to be distinguished from the government by the Macedonian prefects? The mere fact that the Indians were instigated to overthrow the "existing government" cannot render the government itself Indian. After all, the Macedonian prefects were governing Indians, and to get rid of their sway it is the Indians under them who had to rise up. Again, Sandrocottus's "new sovereignty", which he solicited the Indians to support, need not mean that the old sovereignty which he wanted them to cease acknowledging was of another Indian -namely, Xandrames - and not of the Macedonian prefects.

Secondly, to instigate the Indians to overthrow the existing government is not necessarily the same as their acquiescence in a change of government, as if a new government were already established by Sandrocottus. The phrase can very well mean no more than agitation on Sandrocottus's part among the Indian subjects for a change of rule. Also, to solicit support for a new sovereignty is not inevitably equivalent to the establishment of a new rule. Justin may simply signify that Sandrocottus proposed himself as a new sovereign and sought to rally the Indians to his cause.

Thirdly, if Sandrocottus prepared to attack the prefects "some time after" the instigation or solicitation, there is no logical implication that the latter act was not done as a preliminary to his campaign against the foreigners. Suppose even he actually became a king somewhere before launching on that campaign. Then too, with a new government set up by him, he might be only bringing about the antecedents required for the move against the prefects. These antecedents could be in the Lower Indus Valley itself and not in the plains and upjands of the Indian interior. That is how Mookerji' sees the situation "A careful analysis of the details given by Justin indicates that Chandragupta, having collected an army, first installed himself as king. He then fought with the prefects of Alexander and defeated them." Mookerji interpolates no war in the Indian interior between Sandrocottus's assembling troops and his terminating the prefects' domination. The other war Mookerji² designates as "Chandragupta's next task". In quoting Justin about

1."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 58.

2.Ibid., p. 59.

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Sandrocottus's instigation of the Indians he' inserts an explanatory word thus: "the existing (Greek) government."

Whether Sandrocottus actually installed himself as king or not, surely a preliminary to fighting or defeating the prefects was needed: an army had to be collected, a successful anti-government action organized, an alternative leadership claimed and confidence in it created. And some lapse of time was absolutely unavoidable between the two stages of the venture against the Macedonians, an interval indispensable for consolidating the one and leading on to the other. This interval, instead of being separative, would really be connective. So deinde, "thereafter", "some time after", casts our mind back to the first stage and puts the second into relation with it rather than cleaving them apart as distinct. Justin's narrative knits together Sandrocottus and the foreign-ruled Indians and their liberation by him and his stepping as ruler into the foreigner's shoes, as various elements of a single theme of war in which it is illegitimate to read a change of government in the Indian interior.

The very language in which Justin expresses that stepping into the foreigners' shoes clinches our contention. Towards the end of the narrative, after the description of Sandrocottus's elephant-mounted war with the prefects, we are told: "Sandrocottus having thus won the throne..." And, towards the beginning of the passage, there is an omission in the rendering we have quoted. When Sandrocottus is said to have been the leader who achieved the freedom of the Indians from the yoke of servitude to Alexander's governors we find nothing more than: "after his victory." Of course, the suggestion is that he became the Indians' master and started oppressing them too. But the actual words in the Latin original are very explicit in conveying the sense of mastery. They are: "Siquidem occupato regno."² They are in complete conformity with the later phrase about winning the throne, whose Latin original is: "Sic acquisito regno."³ Not only victory but also enthronement ("regnum"="kingly status") is said at the very start by Justin to have been accomplished. Hence twice we have the statement that Sandrocottus became king as a result of vanquishing the prefects. And, in between the two versions of the same declaration apropos of the fight with the foreigners, we have

1.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 52.

2.Vincent Smith, loc. cit..

3.Ibid.

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the switch-back story of how Sandrocottus came "to aspire to royalty". What he had aspired to is obviously realized in this winning of the throne. And, as if to leave us in no doubt, the switch-back story itself has the phrase: "It was the prodigy which first inspired him with the hope of winning the throne." Moreover, this phrase, which is the leit motif of the war with the prefects, is immediately followed by the one about collecting an army and instigating or soliciting the Indians. What he did on collecting an army was, therfore, to start oh the course against the Macedonians, which ended in throne-winning. Even to think of his actually becoming a sovereign before defeating them is to fly in the face of clear-cut assertions that actual sovereignty was consequent on the victorious campaign against the prefects. And if no sovereignty at all predated this campaign, all talk of Sandrocottus's effecting a change of government in the Indian interior is out of place. Right from the commencement up to "sic acquisito regno" is the tale of a single war, the one in the Punjāb. Nationalist-contra-Macedonian agitation, self-proposal as future king and plea for Indians' backing it - these alone precede the Macedonian war.

As for a war in the Indian interior, Mookerji, no doubt, like Raychaudhuri, accepts it, but - as he clearly affirms later - it is for him subsequent to the victory in the Punjāb. We too must accept it as being such. Justin's text offers no particulars. The sole place where we can read any other kingship than the one in the Indus-region is in the expression continuing the mention of throne-winning in that region: "Sandrocottus...was reigning over India when Seleucus was laying the foundations of his future greatness." The actual Latin for the reigning over India is: "Indiam possidebat."¹ The verbal turn stands for: "...was in possession of India." But in any case the rule in the interior followed the one in the Punjāb and we do not know how it came about. Justin, like Appian and Plutarch, is wanting in any sign about either a fight with Xandrames or the mode of coming into possession of Palibothra.

Yet we get an important chronological clue. According to Justin, Sandrocottus liberated the Punjāb after Alexander's death. Alexander died in June 323 B.C. Mookerji² says: "The task [of

1.Ibid.

2."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 58.

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liberation] was not probably completed before 317 B.C., for Eudemus, the commander of the garrison in Western Punjāb-,...left India in that year with all his forces to join the coalition of the Eastern Satraps never to return again." Consequently, all affairs pertaining to the Indian interior are likely to have come to a head after 317 B.C. Between this date and 325 B.C., when we first hear of Xandrames, there are 9 years and we have no gauge of how much later than 317 B.C. Sandrocottus got occupied with affairs of the interior. It is very probable that Xandrames was no longer king of the Gangaridai at that time and that Sandrocottus replaced his successor who then was master of Vidiśā.

As neither Xandrames nor his successor ruled over Palibothra, Justin's chronology leaves its occupation by Sandrocottus vague. But our negative vision gets filled in the context of identification of Sandrocottus with the founder of the Imperial Guptas. What we know of Pātaliputra between the fall of the Āndhras and the rise of the Guptas would not permit us to look at Xandrames as king of Palibothra or to conceive Sandrocottus as fighting for it.

With regard to Chandragupta I, there are three facts facing us in this context: (1) according to the Purānas the territories which the Guptas enjoyed, when their power started, included "the Māgadhas" and therefore Pātaliputra; (2) Chandragupta I married the Lichchhavi princess Kumāradevī, whose image and name regularly appear on his coins as if to justify further by his association with her his right to the new title Mahārājadhirāja ("Supreme King of Great Kings") which none of his ancestors had borne and which he took on the strength of his conquests; (3) an inscription published by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indrajit' clearly shows the Lichchhavis ruling at Pātaliputra in the period preceding that of the Guptas. From this trio of facts we may reasonably infer that Chandragupta I came into possession of Pātaliputra by marrying the Lichchhavi Kumāradevī. No previous sovereign like Xandrames enters the picture of the Guptas' founder becoming king of Pātaliputra.

However, with our seeing in Chandrāmśa the Indian equivalent of Xandrames, we may end on an irony of historical vision. Although Xandrames cannot be identified with any member of the Nanda dynasty founded by Mahāpadma and so Sandrocottus

1. The Indian Antiquary, IX, p. 7.

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cannot be brought into comtemporaneity with the last of the Nandas known to the Purānas, we still have the extreme likelihood of a Purānic Nanda-sounding king confronting him in the dominion over which Xandrames had presided: Chandrāmśa's successor, Bhutinanda.

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SUPPLEMENT THREE

CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA, CHANDRAGUPTA I AND

THE GREEK PICTURE OF SANDROCOTTUS

A COMPARATIVE GLANCE AT THE RIVAL CLAIMS

Even apart from the weighty chronological tilt from Megasthenes favouring the founder of the Imperial Guptas instead of the founder of the Maurya dynasty as the Indian original of the Greeks' Sandrocottus in the time of Alexander and his immediate successor Seleucus Nicator, there are substantial considerations to support the former and not the latter Indian monarch.

The most obvious and perhaps the most decisive point is the information by Strabo (XV.1.36)¹ from Megasthenes apropos of the Prasii: "...the reigning king must be surnamed after the city, being called Palibothrus in addition to his own family name, as, for example, King Sandrocottus to whom Megasthenes was sent on an embassy." Here two kinds of designations are involved: (1) the name of the city goes with that of the king and (2) the king's family name goes with his personal one. The first designation seems to be given prominence but if we look at what Strabo says immediately after by way of comment we can see the equal importance accorded to the second. For, his next words are: "Such is also the custom among the Parthians; for all are called Arsaces, although personally one king is called Orodes, another Phraotes, and another something else." Surely, "Arsaces" is not the name of a city: it serves as the family name.

Nor have we exhausted Strabo's drift by discerning the equality of stress. There is an important subtlety which is liable to be overlooked unless explicitly disengaged. And it is the heart of the matter for us. Strabo has announced the city-name and we thereby know Sandrocottus to have been "Palibothrus". Where is the family-name? Strabo has intended it to be conveyed. His information would be incomplete without it. Yet only "Sandrocottus" is mentioned as an example of what is intended. The unmistakable implication is that the family-name is incorporated in this very term.

Nothing known about the Mauryas agrees with any element of

1. The Classical Accounts..., p. 262.

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Strabo's information. Leave aside being called after the name of their chief city, they are not called by the name of their family, either. The family-name is evidently not incorporated in their current common appellations - Chandragupta, Bindusāra, Aśoka, Daśaratha, etc. It is lacking even in their official announcements. Nowhere in the numerous edicts of Chandragupta Maurya's grandson Aśoka does the dynastic title appear. The three inscriptions we have of Aśoka's grandson Daśaratha are equally void. Well does B. M. Barua¹ remark on the first Maurya whom he takes to be Sandrocottus: "Chandragupta does not appear to have been known to Megasthenes, and, for the matter of that, to most of the Greek writers as a scion of the Maurya family." ("Most" is an unconscious misnomer: "any" would be the mot juste.)

Sometimes it is argued² that the Greeks do mention the Mauryas when they refer to a tribe named the Morieis. But if "Morieis" stands for the clan of Moriyas about which the Buddhist tradition³ speaks and if Sandrocottus is Chandragupta Maurya, it is all the more difficult to understand how the Greek writers never associated it with Sandrocottus. Strange indeed that, aware of such a term, Megasthenes who lived at Palibothra and knew Sandrocottus personally should still omit to introduce it in his report. His ommission ought to lead us to feel certain that Sandrocottus was no Maurya.

A desperate bid to see a Maurya in Sandrocottus may be made by drawing our attention to two things side by side. First, the Mahāvariisatīkā, which connects Chandragupta with the Moriyas, accounts for their name through "Mayura" ("peacock") by a tradition averring that they built in their capital "peacock palaces that were filled and resounded with cries of peacocks".⁴ Secondly, the Greek writer Aelian (XIII. 18)⁵ relates how the extensive parks attached to the palace of Sandrocottus at Palibothra were full of tame peacocks. But can the chronology of Indian history be made to depend on such bagatelles? Besides, peacocks are not the only birds Aelian speaks of: he refers also to domesticated pheasants in the parks and observes that parrots "keep hovering about the king

1.Aśoka and His Inscriptions, Part I, p. 49.

2.Mookerji, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 24.

3.Ibid., p. 22.

4.Varhsatthappakdsini, I, p. 180, quoted by Barua, op. cit., p. 50.

5.The Classical Accounts..., p. 415.

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and wheeling round him."¹

As for the king being termed "Palibothrus", neither any inscription nor any narrative indicates the use of a designation corresponding to it in the time of the Mauryas.

Quite a contrast all round meets us in regard to the Guptas. The family-name "Gupta" is part and parcel of the appellation by which every ruling member of the line is known in their inscriptions. The personal names - Chandra, Samudra, rāma, Kumāra, Skanda, Pūru, Budha, Narsirhha, Vishnu - all carry the suffix "Gupta" in the inscriptions universally accepted as belonging to the line. Among these there is none attributable to the founder himself and we can imagine him calling himself at times merely "Chandra" as well as at other times "Chandragupta", since he was not carrying on an earlier imperial family tradition and so was free either to put forth his personal name alone or else set down together with it the name of the family he was founding. His successors, however, invariably mention him as "Chandragupta" in their epigraphs and such a form must mostly be his own practice. Thus in his case Strabo's statement about Sandrocottus should be regarded as borne out. If the statement implies, as most assuredly it does, that in "Sandrocottus" the family name is already incorporated, it would apply with extra precision to Chandragupta I.

On "Palibothrus" as "surname", D. R. Mankad² has some apt observations: "This only means that the king should be known as Pātaliputraka meaning so and so of Pātaliputra. The practice of distinguishing the personal names of kings by the names of their capitals is found in the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription of Samudra-gupta [the son of Chandragupta I]..." Lines 19 and 20 of this inscription undoubtedly combine names of capitals with those of kings no less than territory-names with king-names. Pishtapuraka-Mahendragiri, Kotturaka-Swamidatta, Erandapallaka-Damana, Kanchika-Vishnugopa, Vengika-Hastivarman, Palakkaka-Ugrasena and Kusthalapuraka-Dhananjaya assuredly fall into the first category³ and provide firm ground for thinking of a combination like Pātaliputraka-Chandragupta. Mankad⁴ is able even to cite

1.Ibid.

2.Purānic Chronology, p. 299.

3.V. D. Mahājan, Ancient India, pp. 393-4, 396-7.

4.Op. cit., p. 299.

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the employment of "Pātaliputra" as a distinguishing prefix in a Gupta inscription: the Udayagiri cave inscription of Gupta Era 82 by the minister Śāba of Samudragupta's son Chandragupta II describes in its 4th line this minister as Pātaliputraka-Śāba. In Aśoka's Rock Edict XIII we have peoples denoted by territorial names or territories by the names of peoples - Keralaputra, Tamraparnya, Satyaputra, Āndhra, Yona, Kamboja, Gandhāra. There is nothing analogous to the practice we note in Gupta times in consonance with the report by Strabo-Megasthenes.

The next point we must ponder in the Greek accounts is that Sandrocottus was "born in humble life" (Justin, XV.IV).¹ Strictly speaking the phrase should signify not only a person without such triumphant royalty as Sandrocottus ultimately enjoyed but also one belonging to a fairly low social status. Yet the man should have no taint of illegitimacy like Xandrames, the issue of a queen's infidelity, and the social status has to be above that of a barber like the father of Xandrames, for Mookerji² has rightly reasoned that if Sandrocottus had himself been illegitimate or had borne the taint of extreme ancestral "meanness" he could not have emphasized to Alexander the detestation in which the then-reigning king of the Indian interior was held by his subjects.

Do we find Chandragupta Maurya "born in humble life" in the way wanted? The Brāhmanical tradition³ makes him at the same time a descendant of the imperial Nanda line and the child of a Śūdra woman. Though the Purānas contain no hint of any kind of birth and merely state that the Nandas were uprooted by the Brāhmana Chānakya who anointed Chandragupta as king, a commentator on the Vishnu Purāna (IV.24, Wilson, IX, 187) brings in Murā as the wife of King Nanda and the mother of Chandragupta and a commentator on the drāma Mudrārākshasa (Acts IV, VI) of the 5th century A.D. goes further and says that while his father was called Maurya and was a scion of the Nanda family his mother Murā was a woman of the Śūdra caste. As the Vishnu Purāna (IV.1012) and the Arthaśāstra (III.7) lay down that the child takes the caste of his father, whether born of conjugal association or not, Chandragupta Maurya of the Brāhmanical tradition, hailing from the family of the imperial Nandas, has to be put out of court.

1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 193.

2.Op. cit., pp. 9-10.

3.Ibid., pp. 15-16, 18-19.

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What about the Buddhist and Jain traditions? Mookerji¹ sums up: "Buddhist and Jain traditions are at one in declaring for him a noble birth." According to the latter,² "Chandragupta was born of a daughter of the chief of a village community who were known as 'rearers of royal peacocks' (mayūra-poshaka-grdme)." This story is at variance with what the Greek account suggests. The testimony of the Buddhist books is still more so and the variance is of the greatest importance since modern scholarship accepts the Buddhist version of Chandragupta's origin. The Mahāvamsa and the canonical work Digha Nikāya summarise the versions. The first³ states that he was "born of a family of Kshatriyas called Moriyas" (Moriyānanām khattiydnām vamse jātam) and the second characterizes⁴ his family as the ruling Kshatriya clan known as the Moriyas of Pipphalivana. "It is now generally accepted," writes Mookerji,⁵ "that the old clan-name Moriya offers a more satisfactory explanation of Maurya, the name of the dynasty founded by Chandragupta, than the supposed derivation from his mother Murā or father named Maurya. We may therefore readily accept the view that Chandragupta belonged to the Kshatriya clan called the Moriyas originally ruling over Pipphalivana which probably lay in U.P." Certainly there is no birth in humble life here.

To rule over a small locality like Pipphalivana as a petty rāja need not contradict the Greek view of Sandrocottus, but to be, as Mookerji⁶ announces, "A scion of the Kshatriya clan of Moriyas, an offshoot of the noble and sacred sect of the Sākyas who gave the Buddha to the world" is scarcely to conform to that view. The Kshatriya caste is attributed to Chandragupta by every Buddhist book. The Divyāvadāna⁷ has no reference to Pipphalivana, yet mentions Chandragupta's son Bindusāra as a lawfully anointed Kshatriya king and his grandson Aśoka as well is described as a Kshatriya.

The first Gupta seems to answer more stringently to the description by the Greeks. He belonged to a family which, though said to

1.Ibid., p. 24.

2.Ibid.,

3.Ibid., p. 22.

4.II. 167.

5."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 56.

6.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 22.

7.Ed. E.B., Cowell and R. A. Neil (Cambridge, 1886), p. 370.

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have exercised rule as small chiefs over some portions of Bihār¹ or of Bengal,² was, as its very name suggests, not Brāhman or Kshatriya but of lowly origin; for, according to the Vishnu Purāna, names ending in "Gupta" are characteristic of the Vaishya and Śūdra castes.³ Then there is the fact of the importance given by the Guptas to the Lichchhavi princess Kumāradevl. Her image and name regularly appear on Chandragupta's coins as if to support by his association with her an extended right to his new title of Mahārājadhirāja ("Supreme King of Great Kings") which none of his ancestors held. "Samudragupta," V. Smith" remarks, "was always careful to describe himself as being 'the son of the daughter of the Lichchhavis', a formula implying the acknowledgement that his royal authority was derived from his mother." Mookerji⁵ writes: "Samudragupta first proudly declares himself as Licchhavi-dauhitra in his inscription, and not as a Gupta-putra, although it is more usual to trace one's lineage on the father's side." As Allan⁶ observes, "it was rather the ancient lineage than any material gain resulting from the alliance that impressed the Guptas, who themselves appear to have been of humble birth." It is rather interesting to find Allan here using an exact equivalent of the Greek phrase: "born in humble life."

R. C. Majumdar⁷ also stresses the Lichchhavi-connection: he says that Samudragupta, the issue of Chandragupta's marriage with Kumāradevī, "is always referred to in the genealogical account of the Gupta records as 'the daughter's son of the Lichchhavis', whereas we do not come across any such reference to the maternal family of the eight or ten other Gupta rulers, mentioned in the same records." However, Majumdar sounds a note of hesitation on the nobility of the Lichchhavis. He argues that the Manusamhitā which regards them as a kind of degraded Kshatriyas (Vrātya-Kshatriya) was held in high respect about the time of the Guptas and therefore the marriage-alliance of Chandragupta was probably valuable from a political rather than a social point of

1.Moreland and Atul Chandra Chatterji, A Short History of India (1945), p. 87.

2.The Classical Age..., p. 2.

3.Wilson's translation, p. 298. Of course Gupta families not Vaishya or Śūdra are known, but they are exceptions.

4.The Oxford History of India, p. 148.

5.The Gupta Empire, pp. 15-16.

6.The Cambridge Shorter History of India (1943), p. 88.

7."The Rise of the Guptas", The Classical Age, p. 3.

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view. Of course the political value need not be underrated in order to play up the social, but neither need the whole thing be vice versa. Raychaudhuri' gives the right outlook on the Manusamhitā's designation of what he calls "the most famous clan of the Vrijian confederacy". He says: "Early Indian tradition is unanimous in representing the Lichchhavis as Kshatriyas... Manu concurs in the view that the Lichchhavis are Rājanyas or Kshatriyas [X. 22]... The obvious conclusion seems to be that the Lichchhavis were indigenous Kshatriyas who were degraded to the position of Vrātya when they neglected Brāhmanic rites and showed a predilection for heretical doctrines."

Although on religious grounds the Manusamhitā may not grant a high status to the Lichchhavis, there could have been no doubt in anyone about their ancient lineage. This lineage must have impressed the popular mind, and when an ancient family had political power it must have figured still more prominently in the general conception and, finally, if the Lichchhavis stood higher socially as well as politically than the Guptas, as they seem to have done, we should expect the latter to make much of the former both socially and politically. At least for Samudragupta, who is definitely known to have expanded his dominions by conquest far beyond the dreams of the Lichchhavis, their political importance could hardly be fundamental. If his father is to be thought of as not a conqueror on his own, this importance might have been for him equal to the social; with Samudragupta himself it was bound to be somewhat subordinate, though not necessarily negligible. Majum-dar's hesitation does not appear well-founded.

The last significant point to be decided for the two Chandragup-tas is military stature. All Greek and Latin documents paint Sandrocottus as a mighty warrior, a hero in his own right, one whose strong arm was felt not only in the Indus-region by the prefects whom Alexander had left behind and by Seleucus Nicator afterwards but also in various other parts of India. However, the one outstanding fact about Chandragupta Maurya is that he was a mere instrument in the hands of a Machiavellian fanatic of a Brāhman named Chānakya or Kautilya. Writes Mookerji:² "The

1.The Political History of Ancient India, pp. 122-23.

2."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp.

59-60.

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Brāhmanical traditions regard Kautilīya (alias Chānakya), rather than Chandragupta, as the chief actor in the great drāma which ended in the extermination of the Nandas. The Purānas credit Chānakya with having destroyed the Nandas and anointed Chandragupta as king. The same view is reflected in Kautilīya Arthaśās-tra and other treatises in ancient India. In the drama Mudrārāksh-asa, the figure of Chandragupta is almost cast into the shade by the brilliant and masterful personality of Chānakya. Stories are also told of the insult offered by the Nanda king to Chānakya and the grim resolve of the latter to uproot the royal dynasty; how he moved about in search of a suitable means to accomplish his ends and at last discovered Chandragupta and made use of him for this purpose." Barua¹ comments: "With regard to the fall of the last Nanda king... the Mahāvamsa and its tikā on the one hand, and the Purānas on the other show a complete agreement in so far as they attribute it to the machination of the Brāhman Kautilya-Chānakya. The Mūlakalpa alone suggests that the fall of the Nanda king was due to the alienation of the feeling of the whole body of ministers inadvertently caused by him." The heroic stature of Sandrocottus the conqueror is utterly absent in Chandragupta Maurya.²

In the actual campaign inspired by Chānakya against Magadha we find in Chandragupta a most immature soldier. To quote Mookerji³ again:

"The Mahāvarhsatīkā tells a story about the initial mistake of his campaigns. The mother of a boy, eating the centre of a cake (chapāti) and throwing away the crust, compares his conduct to 'Chandragupta's attack on the kingdom'. The Jain tradition similarly compares the advance of Chandragupta to a child putting his finger into the middle of a hot pie, instead of starting from the edge which was cool. All this explains how Chandragupta, without beginning from the frontiers, and taking the towns in order as he passed, invaded the heart of the country, only to find that his army

1.Op. dr., I, pp. 43-44.

2.The mention of Kautilya, alias Chānakya, at once the minister of Chandragupta Maurya and the alleged author of the Arthaśāstra, brings up the problem of that political treatise in its bearing on chronology and on the identity of Sandrocottus. At the end of Part Three the problem will be thoroughly dealt with. In Supplement Four to the present Part it is briefly yet not indecisively glanced at.

3."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 59.

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was 'surrounded and destroyed'.

"But Buddhist tradition ascribes to him another error of strategy. This time he commenced operations from the frontiers and conquered many rāshtras and janapadas on the way, but failed to post garrisons to hold his conquests so as to secure his rear which was later attacked. Then the proper course dawned on him. He besieged Pātaliputra and killed Dhana Nanda."

Surely this blunderer cannot be the soldier whom the Greeks themselves admired as the liberator of India from the foreign yoke, one with whom Seleucus Nicator came to almost abject terms including perhaps even a daughter for marriage and whom Plutarch described as overrunning and subduing the entire country.

Here we may be threatened with gagging by the argument:¹ "Aśoka, in his inscriptions, credits himself with only one conquest - namely, of Kalihga. But the geographical distribution of these inscriptions as well as their internal evidence shows that his empire was vast. As his father Bindusāra is not known as a conqueror, his grandfather Chandragupta must have created it. Some Tamil texts refer to an invasion of the South led by the people called the 'Vamba Moriyar' or the 'Maurya Upstarts'. The Mauryas are reported to have advanced as far as the Podiyil Hill in the Tinnevelly District, passing from Konkan through the hills north of Cannanore and the kingdom of Kongu (Coimbatore) on their way. The title 'Upstarts' suggests that the Tamil poets referred to Chandragupta's new-dynastic time. Then there is the inscription of Rudrādaman I at Junāgarh declaring that Saurāshtra was ruled in Chandragupta's time by a provincial governor of this Maurya king. An Aśokan inscription discovered at Sopārā in modern Thana District proves that this region too was a Mauryan province acquired under Chandragupta."

We need not refuse to be impressed by Saurashtra and by Sopara and other locations of Aśoka's edicts. But the picture is not as glowing as it looks. Chandragupta inherited an extensive kingdom from the Nandas, comprising provinces which had belonged to ten Kshatriya dynasties uprooted by Mahāpadma Nanda: Aikshvākus, Pānchālas, Kāśīs, Haihayas, Aśmakas, Kurus, Maithilas, Śurasenas, Vltihotras and Kalihgas.² He had only to hold and not

1.Cf. Ibid., pp. 61-62

2."The Rise of Magadhan Imperialism", ibid., p. 32.

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annex the ten provinces: Kalihga is one of them.' How is it then that Aśoka had to conquer it? Either Bindusāra or Chandragupta himself must have lost it. The conquest of South India up to the Tinnevelly District is a doubtful affair. The very phrase "Maurya Upstarts" seems to indicate a family fairly advanced as a new entity and not just begun: the plural is otherwise inexplicable. If the Imperial Mauryas had anything to do with the achievement, it may be the successors of Chandragupta. And they are likely to be neither Bindusāra nor Aśoka, for, as Majumdar, Raychaudhuri and K. Datta's Advanced History of India (p. 101) tells us, "the southern frontier of the Maurya empire in the days of Aśoka... did not extend beyond the Chitaldrug district of Mysore, and the Pandya realm which included the Tinnevelly district is referred to in the edicts of that emperor as a frontier kingdom." If Chandragupta actually acquired this district, he or his son must have withdrawn from it very soon. Even the association of its conquest with any of the imperial Mauryas is not definite. An Advanced History of India (p. 101) observes: "The achievement is attributed by certain scholars to the Mauryas of the Konkan who belong to a much later date."

It is not only the case of Kalihga that proves to be a puzzle. There is also the case of the Āndhra country. We may be told: "In Rock Edict XIlI the Āndhra nation is distinctly mentioned in the list of subordinate peoples that lived in the dominions of the King . As Kalinga is the sole territorial acquisition mentioned by Aśoka, how did this nation come within his empire? Mahāpadma Nanda did not rule over it. None except Aśoka's grandfather could have annexed it. Would not this feat bring him closer to Sandrocottus's military reputation by constituting at least one clear sign of his conqueror's role?" Unfortunately the answer is No . For, in the time of Sandrocottus the Āndhras were an independent people, though perhaps not outside his suzerainty. "Pliny (first century A.D.), who is usually supposed to have utilised the information supplied by Megasthenes (c. 300 B.C.), speaks of a powerful king of the Āndhra country possessing 30 fortified towns as well as an army of 100,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 elephants." ?So either Aśoka himself annexed the Āndhra country without men-

1.Kharavela's Hathigumpha Inscription also testifies to the possession of Kalinga by "a Nanda king" (ibid., p. 216).

2.Sircar, "The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 194.

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tioning the conquest in his edicts or else Megasthenes and Pliny were talking of a period quite other than that of Aśoka's grandfather. That is to say, either several parts of Aśoka's empire beyond what was inherited from the Nandas need not have been acquired by Chandragupta Maurya or else Chandragupta Maurya was not Sandrocottus.

There is also the question of the Ganges-delta, what is now called Lower Bengal. Did this part of India fall within the conquests of Chandragupta? We know for certain from Megasthenes as reported by Pliny (VI.23)' that the whole extent of the course of the Ganges was ruled over by the king of the Prasii - Megasthe-nes's host Sandrocottus. Sandrocottus, therefore, was master of the Ganges-delta. But, if we go by what we know of Aśoka's empire, we cannot help doubting Chandragupta's possession of it. The Pali Chronicles and the Samanta-pāsādika, as Barua² tells us, include in Aśoka's domain proper the port of Tamralipti. Also, Hiuen-Tsang (to quote Barua³) "was an eye-witness to the existence of four stupas built by Aśoka near the chief town of each of the four divisions of Bengal." However, Barua⁴ adds: "Fa-hian, too, stayed for a long time at Tamralipti, but he has nothing to say about any monument of Aśoka's to be seen there. Thus the testimony of the later Chinese pilgrim lacks corroboration from the itinerary of the earlier visitor." Barua⁵ shows, by considering another testimony of Hiuen-Tsang, the lack of corroboration to be still more significant: "Chola and Dravida, where too the pilgrim saw the stupas of Aśoka, cannot be included in Aśoka's empire. The pilgrim's Chola and Drāvida constituted together the territory of the Cholas, better the Cholas and Pāndyas, which lay, according to R.E. II and R.E. XIII, outside Aśoka's empire." Hiuen-Tsang is here proved incorrect about the location of stūpas. Barua's conclusion⁶ - rather on the temperate side - is that in the absence of any inscription of Aśoka throwing light on the subject the matter must remain in doubt. If Chandragupta, like Sandrocottus, had been in possession of the Ganges-delta, the high uncertainty

1.The Classical Accounts... p. 342.

2.Op. cit.. Part I, p. 65.

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid., pp. 65-66.

5.Ibid., p. 106.

6.Ibid., p. 65.

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about the inclusion of this region in Aśoka's empire would never have arisen.

Thus nothing relating to the sphere of war helps us to identify the founder of the Mauryas with the post-Alexandrine monarch of Palibothra. The situation with regard to the claim for Chandragupta I is much less complicated. There are clear-cut pros and cons. The cons may be put under two heads:

(1)The Purānas introducing the "(Kings) born of the Gupta race" without naming any King openly or giving his reign-length, enumerate a small series of territories under their rule: "along the Ganges, Prayāga, Saketa and the Magadhas".¹ Taking this statement as our basis, we cannot visualize Chandragupta I as Sandrocottus, king of the Prasii, "the tribe of people far superior to all the rest" (Strabo, XV, I.36)² - the Prasii who "surpass in power and glory every other people, not only in this quarter, but one may say in all India" (Pliny, VI.22)³ and whose king Sandrocottus "overran and subdued the whole of India with an army of 600,000 men" (Plutarch, LXII)⁴ before thwarting Seleucus Nicator in c. 305 B.C. and who, not long after Alexander's departure in 325 B.C. from India, had enabled his country to shake off "the yoke of servitude from its neck" by putting Alexander's "prefects to death", and "emancipated from foreign thraldom" the whole Indus-region which they had ruled (Justin, XV.IV).⁵

(2)Looking at the list of the numerous far-flung conquests by Samudragupta, the son of Chandragupta I, in the Allāhābād Pillar inscription, we cannot imagine his father to have had any great kingdom and hence any marked conquests to his credit. Why would Samudragupta break out in so many directions and to such distances if Chandragupta I had already an empire like that of Sandrocottus?

Now for the pros, first as negating the cons and then as providing positive pointers. The Purānic statement, thrown out summarily, evidently deals with the very beginning of the Gupta sovereignty and marks for the context where it occurs the end of the

1.F. Pargiter, The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 73.

2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 262.

3.Ibid., p. 342.

4.Ibid., p. 198.

5.Ibid., p. 193.

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Purānas' dynastic record. But the plural number "Kings" should set us thinking. At least Chandragupta I and his son Samudragupta of "the numerous far-flung conquests" have to be counted. If so, how could the Gupta territories be confined to what is modern Allāhābād, Oudh and South Bihār? In mentioning this limited area the Purānas must have something else than the total conquests or the full kingdom in mind. Their indication must be only to the heartland, the central imperial seat, with which the Gupta kings began their empire fanning out from Pātaliputra. The area mentioned cannot be understood as precisely and finally demarcating the kingdom of Chandragupta I. An extension beyond this area is not ruled out for any Gupta, including Chandragupta I himself.

A direct inscriptional proof of Chandragupta's kingdom being more than the Purānic area is in Samudragupta's own declaration on the Allāhābād Pillar where, without reference to any conquest by himself, certain states paying homage to him are mentioned as situated on the frontiers of his dominions:¹ that is to say, on the borders of the region inherited from his father and not newly acquired. The states to the east are Samatata, Kāmarūpa, Davāka, Kartripura and Nepal. Those to the west are not kingdoms but republics. All of them are beyond Allāhābād, Oudh and South Bihār. Perhaps the most interesting of them for pur immediate purpose is Samatata which "is taken as comprising the delta of the Ganges and Brāhmaputra".² The Ganges-delta is exactly what Sandrocottus exercised authority over and what Aśoka cannot be said with any certainty at all to have inherited from Chandragupta Maurya. On the west, even further than the republics are some independent foreign countries which have entered into respectful relationship with Samudragupta.³ He has not been at war with them. They are the outlying borders of some of the Indian republican states that have accepted his suzerainty. It is as though they were continuing acts of obeisance and service from the past and as though he was continuing "the binding together of the (whole) world by means of the amplitude of the vigour of (his) arm" just as his royal predecessor had done. And such "binding together" extends not only to the north-west: it extends also to the extreme

1.Mahajan, Ancient India, pp. 394, 398.

2.Ibid., p. 398.

3.Ibid., pp. 400-401.

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south - "the people of Sirhhala and all (other) dwellers in islands." He has not fought with them, either. He seems to be merely prolonging an old influence over them with the reassertion of such power as his predecessor on the throne exerted. The naming of Simhala (Ceylon) reminds us that Megasthenes and other Greek writers of Alexander's time have brought in Ceylon-topics under designations like Taprobane, Palaesimundus and Palaeogoni. Pliny (VI.e.22),¹ referring to Megasthenes, even relates these topics to the people over whom Sandrocottus ruled: "The island in former times...was thought to be twenty days' sail from the country of the Prasii..." Obviously Sandrocottus was in contact with Ceylon - and we are directed even beyond Ceylon, for we are informed of "the Taprobane mariners" "making sea-voyages".

No doubt, when we associate Samudragupta's inscription with the post-Alexandrine period we shall have to reinterpret several matters which modern historians have understood in a particular manner suiting their usual chronology. At a later stage we shall undertake the reinterpretation. At the moment what we are concerned with is to demonstrate that, if we identify Sandrocottus with Chandragupta I, the latter's empire can be seen on the strength of the statements on the Allāhābād Pillar to answer to that of the former.

The sole remaining problem is to explain why Samudragupta should have launched on some drastic campaigns of conquest when already Chandragupta as Sandrocottus had established himself over "the whole of India" as Plutarch grandiloquently puts it. Revolts in various parts of a dominion are common history. Apropos of one of the 9 kings of Āryāvarta whom Samudragupta "violently exterminated" - Ganapati Nāga - a historian² writes: "He might have been the leader of the revolt against Samudragupta." Even in the life-time of Chandragupta I, Samudragupta had to take up arms. The first two stanzas of his inscription have practically got effaced, but "from whatever remains..., it appears that Samudragupta fought successfully certain battles during the reign of his father".³ His achievements serve to explain the fourth stanza which "tells us that Samudragupta was nominated by his father to

1.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 345-46.

2.Mahajan, Ancient India, p. 398.

3.Ibid., p. 392.

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succeed him with the following blessing: 'Rule over the world.' "¹

This very blessing would suggest the overflowing of Allāhābād, Oudh and South Bihār by Chandragupta's kingdom. The pride with which Samudragupta's election is expressed would be ridiculous, especially for so grandiose a spirit, if the dominion were such a limited one. Even those historians who do not quite see their way to ascribing a very large kingdom to Chandragupta are yet struck by his assumption of the title Mahārājādhirāja. This title should be sufficient proof of ample territorial expansion. Mookerji² cannot help giving it weight: "The title of 'King of Kings' must have been acquired by his conquests by which he was able to rule over an extensive territory."

And here comes most aptly the challenge of the famous Meherauli Iron Pillar of "Chandra", engraved in a Brāhmi script similar to that of the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription³ and narrating wide conquests not only to the east of what we have called the Gupta heartland but also to the west of it where the scene is "a running fight" in the lower Indus-region. "Chandra's" fame as a conqueror is said to reach up to the "southern seas" and he is credited with winning the title Aikadhirājyam ("Sole supreme sovereignty in the world") which pointedly compares with Chandragupta I's Mahārājādhirāja ("Supreme King of Great Kings") won for the first time in the Gupta family. Controversy revolves round the question whether "Chandra" was the founder of the Imperial Guptas or Samudragupta's son Chandragupta II. We shall survey the controversy in detail in a much later part of our book. But it should be clear that the mention of the Indus-region is extremely reminiscent of Sandrocottus's victory there and that, if Chandragupta I can be likened to Sandrocottus in military prowess, "Chandra" could appropriately be identified with him. Then the inscription would be the crowning sign of Chandragupta I rather than Chandragupta Maurya being Sandrocottus the mighty warrior.

In closing, we may touch, in the context of "the running fight" connected by the inscription with the Indus-region, upon two sensational incidents which Justin⁴ reports as occurring to Sandro-

1.Ibid.

2.The Gupta Empire, p. 12.

3.Ibid., p. 59.

4.The Classical Accounts..., p. 193.

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cottus some time before he raised the standard of revolt against Alexander's governors. Justin begins: "He was born in humble life, but was prompted to aspire to royalty by an omen significant of an august destiny." Then we are told of Sandrocottus's insolent behaviour with Alexander and his seeking safety by a speedy flight because the Macedonian had ordered the death-penalty for him. The sequel runs: "When he lay down overcome with fatigue and had fallen into a deep sleep, a lion of enormous size approaching the slumberer licked with its tongue the sweat which oozed profusely from his body, and when he awoke, quietly took its departure. It was this prodigy which first inspired him with the hope of winning the throne... When he was thereafter preparing to attack Alexander's prefects, a wild elephant of monstrous size approached him, and kneeling submissively like a tame elephant received him on to its back and fought vigorously in front of the army."

The partizans of Chandragupta Maurya, who cannot show him to be a Sandrocottus-like soldier but have to admit the prominence of Chānakya-Kautilya, have tried to trace a connection between this arch-schemer and Sandrocottus by means of Justin's story. Indian tradition has it that Chānakya, after being insulted by the Nanda, repaired to the Vindhyan forest and there met Chandragupta. "Greek and Latin writers," we are informed,¹ "do not mention Kautilya but allude to Chandragupta's encounter with a lion and an elephant, which accords well with his residence in the Vindhyan wilds."

The link proposed is a flimsy and fanciful one which may acquire some little meaning only if there is a corpus of other evidence in favour of the Maurya. But if any weight is to be attached to Justin's narrative we may ask for a passing look at the fact, which is much more relevant than a reference to the Vindhyan forest, that the coins² of the first Imperial Gupta depict on their obverse a goddess seated on a lion. The king-symbol and its divine sources, as indicated by Justin, are both precisely present, seeming to link Chandragupta 1 with the Alexander-fleeing prodigy-visited Sandrocottus. And even Justin's wild elephant offering itself to Sandrocottus for a ride as if it were a tame one may be construed as

1.Majumdar, Raychaudhuri & Datta, An Advanced History of India, p. 98.

2.The Classical Age, p. 13.

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remembered in a coin¹ supposed to have been struck by the first Gupta's great-grandson Kumāragupta I. There a king rides on a splendid elephant. But since, in Mookerji's words,² "there is no clue to connect this coinage with Kumāragupta", we may well conceive the king to be Chandragupta I.

While we are dealing with Justin, we may advert to a few earlier phrases in the same passage, phrases at the end of the allusion to "the yoke of servitude" of Alexander's prefects being "shaken off' from "the neck" of the Indians. Justin continues: "Sandrocottus was the leader who achieved their freedom, but after his victory he forfeited by his tyranny all title to the name of liberator, for he oppressed with servitude the very people whom he had emancipated from foreign thraldom."

This statement finds some echo in an Indian tradition that the Guptas were severe rulers. We need not regard all of them as such nor any one of them as such everywhere and always. However, a belief about their severity persisted up to the time of Albērūnī' who wrote: "People say that the Guptas were wicked powerful people." In the Buddhist Manjusrimūlakalpa⁴ Samudragupta is described as follows: "He was lordly, shedder of excessive blood, of great powers and dominion, heartless, ever vigilant (mindful) about his own person, unmindful about the hereafter, sacrificing animals; with bad councillor he greatly committed sin." A suggestive point here is that the Manjusrimūlakalpa which starts the Guptas with Samudragupta is speaking about the founder of their dynasty.

To round off our survey we should touch upon two more themes. Diodorus Siculus,⁵ supposed to be summarizing Megasthenes, states: "...there are usages observed by the Indians which contribute to prevent the occurrence of famine among them; for whereas among other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil, and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste, among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are

1.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, p. 89.

2.Ibid.

3.Sachau, Albērūnī's India, II, p. 7.

4.Ed. R. Sankyayana, appended to Jayaswal's Imperial History of India, p. 48, verses 649 ff.

5.Book II, 36. The Classical Accounts..., p. 233.

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regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighbourhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain quite unmolested." Majumdar,¹ taking Sandrocottus to be Chandragupta Maurya, expresses surprise: "The statement that 'famine has never visited India' is contradicted by Indian literature which refers to famine even in ancient days. Reference is made, for example, in Jain literature to a terrible famine at the time of Chandragupta Maurya." Majumdar's "example" is drawn, as his footnote shows, from the Cambridge History of India, I, p. 65.

There we find Jarl Charpentier informing us that, according to Jain records, at the time when Chandragupta Maurya "took possession of the throne...a dreadful famine lasting for twelve years devastated the region of Bengal". From Megasthenes-Diodorus we do not quite learn that "famine has never visited India": what we gather is that conditions had been such in the past and still were such in the age of Sandrocottus as to render famine extremely unlikely. But under these conditions what the Jain records convey is almost incredible - unless the age of Chandragupta Maurya was not at all that of Sandrocottus.

Mookerji² makes a rather odd comment on the state of affairs: "Megasthenes' observation...cannot be literally true for all periods of Indian history, for various literary works refer to famines and specially to one that occurred a few years after he left India. But it certainly shows that at the time he wrote there was plenty and prosperity, and famine was a very uncommon thing; at least it did not occur within living memory." The endeavour here, on the assumption of Sandrocottus having been the first Maurya, is to reconcile Megasthenes with Indian testimony. However, if in the Greek ambassador's period nobody could remember any past famine and food was abundant, it is most improbable that soon after his departure from an India well supplied with food a calamity involving twelve years of acute scarcity would visit the land. Besides, how soon in the wake of Megasthenes's exit could the disastrous famine have struck? Megasthenes came to India

1.The Classical Accounts..., Introduction, p. xviii.

2."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 68.

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after Sandrocottus had foiled Seleucus Nicator's attempt to invade India in c. 305 B.C. and the two opponents had made a friendly treaty. How many years later did Chandragupta Maurya cease to be king? Mookerji ends his reign in 300 B.C.¹ So, within 5 years, the ample prosperity to which Megasthenes bears witness vanished totally - an unbelievable reversal of fortune. And surely Megasthenes remained at Pātaliputra for at least a few years if he was to collect the mass of detailed information he has left us of both fact and fancy prevalent in India? There seems no point in saying that during Sandrocottus's reign a dire shortage afflicted the country when Megasthenes had already departed. Clearly, what the Jain books report has no relevance to the epoch of Sandrocottus and Megasthenes. This epoch has economically all the signs of the golden age initiated by the Chandragupta who was the founder of the Imperial Guptas.

The second closing theme is religion. Raychaudhuri² writes: "Jain tradition recorded in the Rājāvalīkatha avers that Chandragupta was a Jain and that, when a great famine occurred, he abdicated in favour of his son Simhasena and repaired to Mysore where he died. Two inscriptions on the north bank of the Kaverl near Seringapatam of about 900 A.D. describe the summit of the Kalbappu Hill, i.e. Chandragiri, as marked by the foot-prints of Bhadravāhu and Chandragupta Munipati. Dr. Smith observes: 'The Jain tradition holds the field, and no alternative account exists.'" Raychaudhuri adds in a footnote that Fleet is sceptical about the Jain tradition. But Mookerji,³ while noting the same, remarks: "Dr. Hoernle... [The Indian Antiquary, xxxi, pp. 59-60], after a critical study of all the Jain Pāttāvalīs, believes in the tradition..." There is no doubt that Chandragupta Maurya followed the Jain religion and no doubt also that, as Mookerji⁴ tells us, even before the time of the Mauryas, "the atmosphere of Jainism had already penetrated into Pātaliputra" and "Jain influence was...predominant in the royal court". If Sandrocottus was the first Maurya, Megasthenes who has references to what we can recognize as Jain ascetics and practices along with an account of

1.Ibid., p. 54.

2.The Political History of Ancient India, 5th Edition, p. 295.

3.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 67, fn.

4.Ibid., p. 66.

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Brāhmanism should evince knowledge of the king's religious leanings. Dating the end of Chandragupta Maurya's reign in 300 B.C. or even slightly later, we should have Megasthenes in the midst not only of the severe famine but also of the monarch's acceptance of Jainism. What do we actually discover? Raychaudhuri in his footnote adds: "According to Greek evidence Chandragupta was a follower of the sacrificial religion." A little earlier he¹ quotes Strabo² on the four occasions when the king appeared in public, one of them being "to offer sacrifices". We cannot mistake the implication that Sandrocottus followed the Vedic Hindu religion and not Jainism. He could not have been Chandragupta Maurya.

All in all, taking both facts and legends, nobody with an unprejudiced mind can fail to be impressed with the claim staked for Chandragupta I as against Chandragupta Maurya for identification with Sandrocottus.

l. Op. tit., pp. 276-77.

2. Hamilton and Falconer's translation of Strabo's Geography, Vol. Ill, p. 106.

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SUPPLEMENT FOUR

AN INTRODUCTORY WORD ON THE ARTHAŚĀSTRA PROBLEM

An indirect argument for the first Maurya may be advanced on the basis of the political treatise Arthaśāstra attributed to his traditional minister who is named Kautilya or Chānakya. A large number of scholars have discussed the question of this document's tallying with or differing from the account of Megasthenes regarding the administration under Sandrocottus.

When we have finished our whole reconstruction of India's ancient history from the starting-point of our equation of Sandrocottus with the founder of the Imperial Guptas, we shall take up the question in some detail, marking the contents of the Arthaśāstra as well as estimating the date which would most fit it in our new chronological scheme. We shall look at both the Mauryan and the Guptan administrations and study them in relation to the governmental set-up indicated by Megasthenes.

At the moment it is pertinent to make just two points. One defines the general attitude today and the other brings to a head one of the difficulties in favouring the Mauryan candidate for Megasthenes's Sandrocottus and avoiding the Guptan for c. 300 B.C.

The first point is R. K. Mookerji's statement:¹ "This book is taken by some as a work belonging to the time of Chandragupta and written by Chānakya to whom he owed his throne. Many scholars, however, regard the present text as of a much later date. It is doubtful, therefore, how far we may regard the system of administration depicted in it as applicable to the Maurya period."

The second point is H. C. Raychaudhuri's observation:² "...the Arthaśāstra...refers to certain high revenue functionaries styled the Samādhartri and the Sannidhātri. No such officials are, however, mentioned in Maurya inscriptions. Greek writers, on the other hand, refer to 'treasurers of the state' or 'Superintendents of the treasury.' " Here Raychaudhuri notes one of the few significant contacts of the Arthaśāstra with the age of Megasthenes but

1."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 66.

2.The Political History of India, p. 283.

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dissociates that book from the Mauryas without realising that at the same time he has dissociated the Mauryas from the immediate post-Alexandrine period where they are commonly taken to start with Sandrocottus.

Half our problem is thus solved. It is a negative gain for us. Whether among the Guptas we can find evidence of the functionaries Raychaudhuri emphasises we shall decide later. Speaking broadly, since the Maurya founder and the Gupta founder are the sole alternatives for Sandrocottus the chances for a positive gain for us seem bright provided we look both closely and widely enough for the administrative features we are in search of.

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-008_ The Traditional Puranic Chronology, Explicit or Implicit, found by Megasthenes and the reconstructed Sequel to it.htm

PART THREE

A RECONSTRUCTION OF ANCIENT INDIAN HISTORY:

AŚOKA AND BEFORE AND AFTER

1

A Selective Resumé

Who was the Indian original of Sandrocottus, the adventurous youth whom the Greeks reported as having met Alexander the Great during his invasion of India in 326 B.C. and as having become king not long after? We have sought a decision between Chandragupta Maurya, the candidate of modern historians, and Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Guptas, the choice of those who go by the traditional-Purānic chronology.

After noting in some detail how this time-scheme can be seen to set Chandragupta I exactly where Sandrocottus stands, we have brought in a compelling logical consideration. The Purānic chronology, which refers to the Kaliyuga Era of 3102 B.C., is proved to have been in vogue by 634 A.D., the date of the Aihole Inscription of Pulakesin II which calculates both with the popular Śāka Era starting from 78 A.D. and with the Kaliyuga Era to which it links the Bharata War. So the Purānic pundits, who are said by modern historians to have arranged their chronology in the centuries just before 634 A.D., would be, according to the modern time-scheme, living face to face with the Imperial Guptas (320-570 A.D.) and yet putting these monarchs - their own contemporaries - in the far-off age of Alexander and in the centuries immediately after him.

Surely, nobody could commit such an extreme "howler". Therefore, the founder of the Imperial Guptas could not have commenced his line in the period currently assigned to him but must have been Sandracottus. Likewise the Purānic pundits must have finalised their chronology during the 4th-3rd centuries B.C.

Along with our elucidation of that chronology and with our reductio ad absurdum of the modern time-scheme for the Guptas, we have made an appeal to the Indica of Megasthenes, the ambassador sent to the court of Sandrocottus in c. 302 B.C. by

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Seleucus Nicator, the principal successor of Alexander the Great in the Orient. A thorough scrutiny of the information from Megasthenes on the chronological scheme of the Indians contemporary with him has provided us with an astonishing detailed parallel to the historical vision we can ascribe to the most ancient pundits of the Purānas from the extant versions of these writings, including the Yuga-Purāna section of the Gārgi-Sarhhitā. One of the most impressive features is the number of kings - 153 or 154 - Megasthenes counts between Alexander or Sandrocottus on the one hand and, on the other, Dionysus whom he mentions as the first Indian monarch. When, taking the help of F.E. Pargiter's collated lists from the Purānas as well as some Purānic genealogies found elsewhere, we count backward from Chandragupta Maurya through the Magadhan line and its predecessors, we do not come anywhere near Megasthenes's number - even though we count up to Manu Svayambhuva, the first traditional king. But going backward from Chandrgupta I, founder of the Imperial Guptas, we get exactly 153 or 154 kings between him and Prithu Vainya who is called the Ādi-rāja, the first consecrated king, in the Purānas and other Indian literature. On comparing what the Greek reports tell of Dionysus in India and what India's tradition says of Prithu Vainya we discover convincing reasons to see the former as variously shadowing forth the latter. Everywhere the vote of the Greek who lived with Sandrocottus himself gets cast in favour of the first Gupta instead of the first Maurya.

We may glance at another happy "coincidence". On the basis of Megasthenes and some subsequent Classical writers, Strabo has drawn attention to an important point about the royal line of the Prasii (Prāchya=Easterner) kingdom, the rulers of Palibothra (Pātaliputra) in the post-Alexandrine age. He informs us that the reigning king, "as for example, King Sandrocottus to whom Megasthenes was sent on an embassy", had, among other items of nomenclature, his family name always going with his personal one. Strabo adds: "Such is also the custom among the Parthians; for all are called Arsaces, although personally one king is called Orodes, another Phraotes, and another something else." This peculiarity means that in the name "Sandrocottus" the family name was included: "Sandro" could be the personal name and "cottus" an indication of the family. Similarly, according to Strabo, the successors of Sandrocottus were characterized: he speaks in the plural of

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the Prasii kings. Such a fact could be marked only for the Imperial Guptas. Each of them bore the family title "Gupta" linked to his own designation: Chandragupta I, Samudragupta, Chandragupta II, Kumāragupta, Skandagupta and so on. The Mauryas were entirely different in this respect. Their founder has "Chandragupta" as wholly his personal name and neither he nor any successor of his carried his family designation as inseparable from his own. In fact, none of them even refers to it. Nowhere in the numerous edicts of Chandragupta's grandson Aśoka does "Maurya" appear. The three inscriptions of Aśoka's grandson-Daśaratha are also lacking in it. Their practice is in so striking a contrast to that of the Guptas that the information proffered by Megasthenes-Strabo cannot but exclude them and focus on the latter.

Our study of the evidence relating to the accession of Sandrocottus has led us to conclude that the Imperial Gupta line was started in 315 B.C. and not, as modern historians hold, in 320 A.D. As for the alleged testimony to the second date by Albērūnī, the Arab scholar who visited India in 1031 A.D., we have found it glaringly misinterpreted by modern historians: it clearly makes the Gupta Era mark the end and not the beginning of the Imperial Gupta line. Albērūnī mentions other eras also starting at a point of destruction or disappearance. Then we dealt with Sylvain Lévi's so-called "synchronism" - based on a Chinese report - of Samudragupta (the son of Chandragupta I), whose reign is currently made to end in 376 or 380 A.D., and the Ceylonese king Sirimeghavanna, dated at present to 352-376 A.D. by the Buddha Era which Geiger postulates as 483 B.C. We cited the frank admission of one of our best historians, H.C, Raychaudhuri, that Geiger's epoch is not explicitly recognised in tradition. The eminent Ceylonese scholar S. Paranavitana was quoted to show that no such era had ever been in vogue and that the introduction of it creates several confusions in chronology. Lévi's synchronism is exposed as a self-contradiction on the part of its proposer who, on the strength of Chinese reports for the 5th-8th centuries A.D. of Ceylonese history, demonstrates the soundness of the traditional Buddha Era of Ceylon, namely, 543 B.C. According to that era Sirimeghavanna gets -dated to 304-332 A.D. But if, as generally assumed, Chandragupta I founded the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. on his accession and if, as is most likely, his accession coincided with his marriage to Kumāradevī, the Lichchhavi princess, how could

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Samudragupta who was Kumāradevī's son be a contemporary of Sirimeghavanna? His Allāhābād Pillar Inscription pictures his father as abdicating and choosing him for his prowess and ability as "worthy to rule this whole world". In 332 A.D., Sirimeghavanna's final year, Samudragupta would be merely 12 years old. Further, the same inscription classes Simhala (Ceylon) as a "vassal state": the Ceylon of Sirimeghavanna was never feudatory to any Indian king. A second smaller Samudragupta looms up in the early part of the 4th century A.D. at the tail-end of the Gupta dynasty as viewed à la Albērūnī. This possibility is regarded as acceptable for a number of reasons.

As the most important side-issue out of many, we have picked out the question of the identity of the king whom the Greeks named Xandrames and who was on the throne inland when Alexander halted at the river Hyphasis (Beās) and Sandrocottus was still uncrowned. In all Indian records there is only one name echoing Xandrames - the powerful Nāga king Chandrarhsa listed by the Purānas in the period just preceding the rise of the Guptas. Closely analysing the Greek evidence we have tried to stake a convincing claim for him.

Against all our apparently irrefutable arguments for Chandragupta I as Sandrocottus, the champions of the modern chronology are expected to point, first and foremost, to the secure seat which Aśoka seems to have around the middle of the 3rd century B.C. So solid in their time-indications the Rock Edicts of this Maurya emperor are taken to be that a veritable dilemma appears to present its formidable horns. On the one hand, our equation has an unanswerable look: on the other, the Rock Edicts give the impression of being incontrovertible.

Believing that the former horn cannot be blunted, we shall undertake to turn the latter. A new interpretation of the Aśokan pointers has to be attempted. Let us then set them forth in their full strength against us.

The Aśokan Support for the Modern Time-Scheme

The famous Rock Edict XIII first confronts us. There are two things here, both connected with the designation "Yona", the Prākrit form of the Sanskrit "Yavana". This designation is understood as derived from the Old Persian "Yauna", which connoted

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"Ionian" and denoted "Greek" in general, in the Achaemenid inscriptions starting from the one of c. 520-518 B.C. at Behistun.

Aśoka had a community of Yonas as his subjects, and in some versions of R.E. XIII he tells us that there is no country in his empire except that of the Yonas where are not found those two religious orders, the Brāhmanas and the Śrāmanas. This exclusive distinction is precisely what we should expect if the Yonas had the Hellenic and not the Hindu Āryān civilisation. But, if thus they were definitely the Greeks, what more natural than that Aśoka should have reigned some time after Sandrocottus, as the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya?

A still greater proof from the same edict is that Aśoka mentions, among the independent powers outside his empire, a group of five rulers, the first of whom he terms "Yona rāja". They are: Amtiyoka, Tulamāya, Amtikini, Magā and Alikasudara. These rulers can be equated to five Greek kings who reigned in the period after Alexander's immediate successors. They were Anti-ochus II Theos of Syria and Western Asia, Ptolemy II Phi-ladelphus of Egypt, Antigonus Gonatas of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus or else his namesake of Corinth.

The reign-period of these kings were 261-246 B.C., 285-247 B.C., 278-239 B.C., 300-258 (or 250) B.C. and 275-255 B.C. or, if Alexander of Corinth is preferred, 252-247 B.C. The reign-periods of Chandragupta Maurya and his son Bindusāra (Aśoka's father) are taken respectively to be 24 and 25 years (according to the Indian Purānas) or 24 and 27 or 28 (according to the Ceylonese Chronicles). So Aśoka would come to the throne either 49 or 52 or 53 years after Chandragupta. Our historians are mostly disposed to put the latter's coronation in 321 B.C. Then Aśoka would be king in 272 or 269 or 268 B.C. According to the Purānas, his reign lasted for 36 years and, according to the Chronicles, 37. Therefore, it extended down to some year between 236 and 232 B.C. and overlapped, wholly or in part, with those of the five Greek kings. Thus there is very good chronologiocal agreement, and modern historians feel quite justified in their time-scheme.

Perhaps even more important than Rock Edict XIII is the recently discovered Aśokan inscription in two languages - Greek and Arāmaic - near Kandahār in Southern Afghānistān,¹ the site

1. The most thorough-going studies, from the standpoint of modern historians, are Serie Orientate Roma XXI, 1958,8, pp. 1-35, Journal Asiatique CCXLVI, 1958,

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most probably of the ancient Alexandria of Arachosia where, as we learn from Strabo (XV.2.9), Alexander had established a Greek colony and which Seleucus Nicator later transferred to Sandrocottus.

The Greek version is in good Greek of the third and second quarters of the 3rd century B.C. (that is, c. 275-225 B.C.) and stands above the Arāmaic version. The matter of the inscription resembles that of R.E.s I and IV and Minor R.E.s I and II. A point to be especially noted is the presence of moral precepts like those in R.E. IV - precepts which in Aśokan edicts never go without a mention of respect towards Brāhmanas and Śramanas. But in the Kandahār inscription there are no Brāhmanas and Śramanas. We are reminded at once of the state of affairs in Aśoka's Yona country.

And the Arāmaic version encourages us. It is sprinkled with Irānian words in the manner of the official proclamations of the Achaemenid emperors from the time of Darius I (522-486 B.C.) onward in the territories of their Irānian subjects. Aśoka's R.E. XIII has the compound "Yona-Kamboja", showing the extremely close association of the Yonas with the Kambojas in his empire, the Kambojas who are known from linguistics as well as from literary evidence to have been thoroughly Irānianized, if they were not themselves Irānians. Hence the Arāmaic version must have been for the Kambojas, and the bilingual inscription as a whole locates Aśoka's Yona-Kamboja.

This inscription is held not only to prove that "Yona" meant "Greek" and that Aśoka's empire included Greek subjects. It is held also to provide an unchallengeable crowning touch to the chronology which places Aśoka in the India of the second generation after Alexander.

Confirmatory of the Kandahār bilingual's testimony are the implications seen in the three other epigraphs also found in Afghānistān in subsequent years. One is a fragment in Greek, picked up from the Kandahār market, translating the end of R.E. XII and the beginning of R.E. XIII.¹ Once more the Greek is of

1, pp. 1-48, Epigraphia Indica XXXIV, I, p.lff., Indo-Asian Culture, April 1960, pp. 357-363.

1. Academie des Inscriptions el Belles-Lettres, Janvier-Juin, Paris, 1965, pp. 126-140; Journal Asiatique, Paris, 1966, Fascicule 2, pp. 132-157.

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the period 275-225 B.C. The remaining two epigraphs are in Aramaic. The one obtained in fragmentary form again from the market of Kandahār in the same year as the Greek inscription incorporates Indian Prākrit words in the Arāmaic text in the manner of the two Aśokan fragments found a long time back at Taxila and Pūl-i-Dārunteh respectively - and, as may be expected from a message addressed not to the Yonas but to the Kambojas, it includes an exhortation to revere Brāhmanas and Śramanas.¹ The other Arāmaic edict, which came to light in 1969 on a rock-face in Laghman (ancient Lampāka) refers to the oasis of Palmyra in the Syrian desert, under its Semitic name "Tadmor", a famous city by which passed the roads leading to the realms of all the five Greek kings with whom the five monarchs listed in R.E. XIII have been identified.² It is as if Aśoka revealed his gate of entry to the Western world where he promulgated his dharma.

Some Anomalies of Aśoka's Present Date

Before we directly tackle Aśoka's Yonas, the five Greek-sounding kings headed by a "Yona Rāja", the Kandahār inscription in Greek and Arāmaic as well as the three most recent epigraphic finds, we may formulate some general reasons to ask for a reinterpretation of this manifold evidence. There are a number of anomalies in putting Aśoka around 250 B.C.

The Greek kings with whose names the five rājas in R.E. XIII have been equated were not the only ones in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. It is not as if Aśoka listed just five rājas who might be Greek and there were just five Greek monarchs in the period allotted to Aśoka. The posing of Alexander of Corinth as an alternative to Alexander of Epirus is itself a proof that the number of Greek monarchs was more than five and it prompts us to ask why one of the two Alexanders, neighbours to each other, was left out. What could have put a check on Aśoka's mighty zeal to spread his dharma'? The question is especially pertinent when we look around a little more. R.K. Mookerji,³ after choosing on the ground of relative importance Alexander of Epirus and not his

1.Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1966, pp. 440-451; Journal Asiali-que. 1966, pp. 437-458.

2.Academie des Inscriptions el Belles Lettres, Janvier-Mars, 1970, pp. 158-173.

3.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 74.

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namesake of Corinth for Alikasudara, remarks: "There were several kings of Asia Minor of equal and higher status whom Aśoka should have mentioned such as Eumenes of Pergama (262-240 B.C.) or, nearer home, Diodotus of Bactria."

How natural would have been the inclusion of Diodotus is shown by F. W. Thomas's remarks¹ in the course of determining the date of R.E. XIII: "The omission of the Bactrian ruler Diodotus, whose independence of the Seleucid empire dates from about 250 B.C., confirms the inference that the edict is not long posterior to the year 258."

Doubly natural would the inclusion have been in view of the recent revision of Bactrian history. C. 250 B.C. is no longer considered valid for Diodotus's declaration of independence. A. K. Narain² writes: "Newell has very ably shown from the numismatic evidence that the break away of Bactria from the Seleucids is to be placed in 256-255 B.C." Diodotus reigned up to c. 245 B.C.³ A glance at the series of the other kings' dates is enough to demonstrate that he and Eumenes fall within the time-span measured by this series. The omission of Eumenes and Diodotus confuses the whole situation, particularly as Bactria where Diodotus reigned is not only next door to India but also known to have been in close touch with things Indian. Indeed, in the very age to which Aśoka has been assigned, we have archaeological evidence of Indo-Bactrian contact. The Bhir mound, the oldest part of the Taxila site, has yielded some fine jewellery, dating from 250 B.C. and associated with a gold coin of Diodotus.⁴ How could Aśoka, round about that time, have slurred over Diodotus and his Bactria?

As for Eumenes, it will not do to build a defence for his omission on the fact that he did not officially declare himself king as did his successor Attalus I. There was no question of his not being recognised as king. At any rate, the point is nominal, for Pergamon had been independent since 281 B.C.⁵ and, whether self-designated king or no, Eumenes ruled his state like one and

1."Aśoka, the Imperial Patron of Buddhism", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 502.

2.The Indo-Greeks, p. 14.

3.V.A. Smith, The Early History of India, p. 235.

4.Journal of the Punjab Historical Society, Vol. Ill, p. 9; Archaeological Survey of India, 1912-13, p. 41, pi. xxxix.

5. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed.), Vol. XXI, p. 143.

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proved his power by defeating at Sardis in 262 B.C. the accredited king Antiochus I of Syria, the father of the Antiochus our historians have made Aśoka's frontager. His case may be compared with that of Pushyamitra, founder of the Śunga line, who never took the title of King but retained his title of "Commander-in-chief even when he had obtained imperial power.¹ This power was sufficiently great for him to have been treated as a regular monarch and most historians do not even know that he called himself merely Senānī.

Furthermore, Eumenes was already known in India from 316 B.C. Diodorus Siculus (XIX.34) reports that in that year the leader of an Indian contingent which had gone to fight under Eumenes in Irān was killed in battle and his two wives competed as to which was to be the sati.²

Our amazement at Aśoka's inconceivable omissions would cease if we refrained from dating him to the post-Alexandrine age. No query could be raised of any kind, were his rājas five border rulers in an age much earlier, about whom we know next to nothing.

Still more strange than Aśoka's blind spot for Diodotus and Eumenes is the absolute ignorance we find about Aśoka in the Classical records concerning the kings in whose domains he is supposed to have propagated his dharma. There was a great liveliness of Indo-Greek contacts in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. And three ambassadors were despatched to the Indian courts from the Greek kingdoms. Seleucus Nicator sent Megasthenes to Sandrocottus; his son Antiochus I sent Daimachus to the son of Sandrocottus whom the Greeks called Amitrachates or Amitro-chades;³ Ptolemy II Philadelphus sent Dionysius to an unspecified king who must be either Amitrachates or his son.⁴ Greek historians have recorded in some detail the dealings of Alexander the Great with Indian monarchs and of Seleucus with Sandrocottus. According to Athenaeus, Sandrocottus sent presents including certain powerful aphrodisiacs to Seleucus.⁵ Both Hegesander

1.Dikshit in Indian Culture, Vol. VI, p. 196.

2.E. R. Bevan, "India in Early Greek and Latin Literature", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 415.

3.Athenaeus XIV, 67 for the former and Strabo III, i, 9 for the latter. Actually. Strabo has "Allitrochades", but that is obviously a mistaken transcription.

4.E. J. Rapson, Ancient India (Cambridge, 1916), pp. 102, 103. 104.

5.H. C. Raychaudhuri, The Political History of Ancient India, 5th Ed., p. 273.

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and Athenaeus are responsible for the piquant report that has become a favourite with our historians: Amitrachates wrote to Antiochus I, asking him to purchase and send him not only sweet wine and dried figs but a sophist, only to be reminded that it was not lawful in Greece to sell a sophist! Drawing upon Megasthenes or some of Alexander's generals, the Classical writers Diodorus, Strabo, Pliny, Curtius, Arrian and Aelian have left us histories chockful of facts and fables about India. But after Sandrocottus and Amitrachates we get no name of any king of their line. Such neglect is in itself a little hard to explain, but we can grant the possibility of some explanation if we do not identify, as our historians do, Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya, Amitrachates with Bindusāra and the son of Amitrachates with Aśoka -Aśoka who is supposed to have established by his dharma-mission greater ties with the Hellenic world than either Sandrocottus or Amitrachates had done. With Aśoka put in the time of those five Greek kingdoms, the neglect becomes wholly unintelligible.

Ptolemy II Philadelphus not only sent an ambassador to India but, as Athenaeus tells us, included in his processions Indian women, Indian hunting dogs, Indian cows and Indian spices on the backs of camels.¹ Epiphanius informs us that the Head of Philadelphus's Library at Alexandria was anxious to translate the books of the Hindus.² But if Ptolemy was Aśoka's Tulamāya, in whose domain as well as in the domains of the four other rājas Aśoka the Buddhist emperor claimed to have spread his precepts of virtue and, as R.E. II records, even instituted hospitals for ailing men and animals, why is there not the slightest hint of Aśoka's activities in the historical passages relating to Ptolemy? How can we account for this complete lack of interest here when interest is abundantly shown in so many Indian things?

It will not help at all to deny the lack by asking: "What about the 'Buddha-head' found in Memphis and dated by Sir Flinders Petrie as far back as the 5th century B.C. when that city was the capital of Egypt under the Persians? Does it not show sufficient Buddhist influence in the land of Ptolemy II Philadelphus?" If any influence is shown by the "Buddha-head", it cannot be attributed to Aśoka's activities or to any similar missionary work which might bring the Dhamma into prominence and keep it in the public eye until the

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 616.

2.D. A. Bhandarkar, Aśoka (University of Calcutta, 1932), p. 163.

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middle of the 3rd century B.C., when Ptolemy ruled over Egypt. If the head (with Gurkha features) is really of Buddha, the influence was not of the kind with which we are concerned but of an accidental, limited, private and temporary nature, for this head is connected by Sir Flinders with members of a hypothetical Indian component of the Memphis-garrison which, according to Herodotus, who visited the city in 453 B.C., consisted largely of Persians but also of "others" - a small component which T. Balakrishnan Nayar, discussing the find, considers to have left in 405 B.C. (long before the time of Philadelphus): "When the Persian occupation ceased, the Indian colony at Memphis also would have ceased."¹

The utmost that has been possible to say on the positive side for our period is communicated by R.A. Jairazbhoy.² After mentioning the statement in R.E. XIII of Aśoka's victories of morality in foreign countries, Jairazbhoy writes: "There is no direct confirmation of this from western sources, but a wheel with trisula upon it was found on a Ptolemaic gravestone in Egypt, and it is thought that the revolving wheels in Egyptian temples referred to by Heron of Alexandria (c. 250 B.C.) may be influences from Buddhist India." But what is thought of the revolving wheels is as good as nullified by Jairazbhoy's very next sentence:³ "Heron (Prop. 31) says that these bronze wheels were placed in the porticoes of Egyptian temples for those who enter to revolve, the belief being that bronze purifies." The whole emphasis shifts from wheels as such to their constituent material, bronze, which has nothing to do with Buddhism. And a little earlier in his book Jairazbhoy⁴ offers us information which makes it gratuitous to connect with Buddhist influences these wheels or that gravestone wheel with triśula upon it:

"The emblem of a sun disk carved in relief on Buddhist monuments, for example, at Amarāvatī ultimately originates in Assyria, and similarly the so-called Buddhist triśula ornament is patterned on the winged solar disk of Assyria. Moreover Mesopotamian sun pillars surmounted by disks (surinnu) which stood at entrances to temples, or were borne by priests of the sun gods, are prototypes

1.The Hindu, Madras (Sunday edition, date not traceable).

2.Foreign Influence in Ancient India (Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1963), p. 63.

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid., p. 58.

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of sun wheels on pillars at the Buddhist stupas."

Whether or not we agree with Jairazbhoy on the origin of Buddhist symbols, it should be clear that even the signs picked out from Ptolemaic Egypt to exhibit in an indirect manner Buddhist influences need have no relation with Buddhism. If they are at all derived and not independently developed, they may well reflect Assyrian religious symbolism.

All in all, there are no positives to go by. Not that the ancient Western world was quite unaffected by Buddhism. The Jewish religious body known as the Essenes, as early as the middle of the 2nd century B.C., seems to have been affected in subtle ways by Buddhist monastic practices, and the early Christians themselves were perhaps tinged with a Buddhist attitude in their stress on fellow-feeling and charity. But there is no ostensible Buddhism even here. And in a still earlier age we can put our finger on nothing appreciable, however subtly, when the grand phrases of the Edicts would lead us to expect a great deal, at least in Syria, Egypt, Cyrene, Macedonia and Epirus.

Could it not then be that Aśoka was totally unconnected with Ptolemy or any Greek king of the 3rd century B.C. but dealt only with non-Greek rājas and their countries adjacent to his empire at a date removed from this period?

The Greeks and Buddhism

There is also the fact that to the whole Greek world Buddhism in any expressible form was an unknown quantity until we reach the 2nd century A.D. "Greece," says R.C. Majumdar,¹ "knew nothing of Buddhism previous to the rise of Alexandria in the Christian era. Buddha is first mentioned by Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-218)." Can we imagine such ignorance if five Greek kingdoms received from Aśoka missionaries who, for all the general humanitarian bearing of their message, were representatives of a great Buddhist emperor?

Matching this lack of knowledge in the Greek world abroad, there is the absence of the slightest pointer to Buddhism from the account given of India by Megasthenes and the generals of Alexander. During Alexander's invasion the Greeks first saw Indian

1. "India and the Western World", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 616.

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religious men at Taxila. From the description of them B. M. Barua¹ recognises in their chief "the leader of a Brāhmanical sect of Gymnosophists (naked ascetics), evidently of Śaivite persuasion and closely allied to the Āījlvikas..." Megasthenes speaks of "Brachmanes and Sarmanes" (Brāhmanas and Śrāmanas). E.R. Bevan² observes: "it has ... been thought that we have in the Sarmanes of Megasthenes the first mention of Buddhists by a Western writer. In the description however there is nothing distinctively Buddhist, and the term çrāmana is used in Indian literature of non-Buddhist ascetics. If therefore the people to whom Megasthenes heard the term applied were Buddhists, he must have known so little about them that he could only describe them by features which were equally found in various sorts of Hindu holy men. His description applies to Brahmin ascetics rather than to Buddhists." Mookerji³ adds that "from the description of these Śramanas" they seem to be "brahmins of the third and fourth Āśrāmas of life and known as Parivrājakas and Sannyāsīs."

In the practice of some Śarmanas, however, we have a hint of Jainism. Barua⁴ says: "Though the Nigranthas or Jainas are not expressly mentioned, their inclusion among the Indian Hylobioi is evident from the reference to the ascetic practice of remaining 'for a whole day motionless in one fixed attitude', say in the posture of one called ubbhatthika in Pali." And from Megasthenes we get in addition to the Hylobioi other differentiations like Pramnai (Prā-mānikas) and Gymnetai. He also mentions more than one specific religious cult - the worship of a Bacchanalian god by the Oxydra-kai (Kshudrakas) and of Heracles (apparently Shiva) by the Sibae (Sibis) and of Krishna under the name again of Heracles by the Souresenoi (Śurasenas) at Mathurā and elsewhere. But the Buddhists could not impress on him any characteristics. And this is most remarkable when we know, as J. Charpentier⁵ says, that Megasthenes spent years at Pātaliputra in the very province, Magadha, where Buddha had developed his chief activity.

1.Aśoka and His Inscriptions. Part I, p. 319.

2."India in Early Greek and Latin Literature'', The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 420.

3.Op. cit., p. 300.

4.Op. cit., p. 241.

5.Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1925, p. 735.

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The milieu of Megasthenes in Magadha seems no part of the period between the death of Buddha and the reign of Aśoka - the period in which two Buddhist Councils had already been convened under royal patronage and the new religion had been steadily, though slowly, on the march. Even in Buddha's lifetime his teaching had extended to at least a couple of provinces outside Magadha - Āvanti and Śūurasena (the home of Megasthenes's Souresenoi) where, as Barua¹ tells us, "important centres of Buddhism were founded..." Megasthenes appears to have come in an age in which Buddhism was suffering a severe slump, as it could if Aśoka (and consequently Buddha) lived centuries earlier, and if Sandrocottus was the founder of the Imperial Guptas who were mostly Vaishnavites or Bhagavatas, worshippers of Vāsudeva-Krishna, and if the Brāhmanical Śungas, Kānvas and Āndhra Sātavāhanas had already reigned before Sandrocottus. And in contrast to the insignificance of Buddhism in the time of Megasthenes we may stress the prevalence of the Guptas' own religion, Vaishnavism or Bhāgavatism, which he noted at Mathura in particular.

As a converse to the information by Megasthenes we may add what we gather from the earliest Buddhist works and the inscriptions of Aśoka. Sircar² writes: "The Buddhist canonical work Anguttara Nikaya gives a long list of religious sects, but does not mention Vasudevaka or Bhagavata. The inscriptions of Aśoka; which speak of Brāhmana, Śrāmana, Ājīvika and Nigrantha, do not refer to the followers of Vasudeva." Aśoka's empire included the places where Megasthenes found Krishna-worship. His omission of this cult implies the practical abeyance of it in the period between Buddha's death and Aśoka's reign, and the complete separation of the time of Aśoka from that of Megasthenes.

It is only the later Buddhist canonical commentaries, the Mahā-niddesa and the Chullaniddesa, that mention "the worship of Vāsudeva and Baladeva (Samkarshana)."³ Evidently, these commentaries point away from the time of both Buddha and Aśoka towards that of Megasthenes. And what Buddha's and Aśoka's time held in contrast to Megasthenes's is indirectly admitted in

1.Op. cit., p. 322.

2."Religion and Philosophy: Vaishnavism", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 437.

3.Ibid..

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F. W. Thomas's remark¹ on the Hinduism in the environment of Megasthenes: "...the greatest share of popular adoration accrued to Ççāiva and Vishnu (under the form of Krishna), whom the Greeks report to us as Dionysus and Heracles respectively. With the former was associated Skanda or Vicakha, the god of war. The Buddhist books and scriptures , which give the preference to Brāhma and Indra, are in this respect archaising."

But why should those books and scriptures archaise? Thomas has no explanation. He thinks of them as doing so because he has put them in the time of Megasthenes and a little earlier. If we remove them from it, make them fairly anterior, no need arises to imagine any archaising. The straightforward thing to do is to accept that in their time Brahmā and Indra were actually given preference and that therefore this time was appreciably earlier than the Greek ambassador's.

Some More Reasons for Reinterpretation

In addition to all this information let us see what, on the authority of Megasthenes, Pliny says about the Āndhras in the age of Sandrocottus - the Āndhras whom Aśoka also mentions in R.E. XIII and to whom the post-Aśokan Sātavāhanas who preceded the Imperial Guptas belonged.

Sircar² has written: "Pliny (first century A.D.), who is usually supposed to have utilised the information supplied by Megasthenes (c. 300 B.C.), speaks of a powerful king of the Āndhra country possessing 30 fortified towns as well as an army of 100,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 elephants." Sircar comments: "This no doubt points to the large extent of the land occupied by the Āndhra people, and it is not improbable that Pliny actually received the information from a later source referring to the Sātavāhana kingdom."

We may remark that it is extremely improbable that Pliny should have interpolated material from another source in his present context without any warning. For, almost immediately after mentioning the great power of the "Andarae", he³ goes on to

1."Political and Social Organisation of the Maurya Empire", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 485

2."The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", op. cit., p. 194.

3.The Classical Accounts of India, pp. 142 & 143.

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say: "But the Prasii surpass in power and glory every other people... their capital being Palibothra , a very large and wealthy city ... The Indus skirts the frontiers of the Prasii .. ." When the Sātavāhana kingdom was at its height, the Prasii - the Prāchyas (Easterners) of Magadha - with their capital at Pataliputra were certainly not the most powerful and glorious people commanding an immense empire. This empire was in existence before that kingdom and after - in the days of the Mauryas and in those of the Guptas. But in the days of the Mauryas the Āndhras were not at all the prominent people pictured by Pliny: if they had been , Sircar who accepts the usual identification of Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya would not have suspected a later source than Megasthenes for Pliny's information. They could be as in Pliny the strongest power next to the Prasii under Sandrocottus - if the Prachyas under the Guptas had just founded their new empire. Although surpassed by the Prachyas they could still rank as more powerful than any other Indian nation.

On approaching Pliny without bias and with the full sense of his context we get a clear indication of the true time of the Āndhra supremacy - namely, a little prior to the rise of Sandrocottus; in which case Sandrocottus must be Chandragupta I, and Megasthenes must have lived centuries later than the Mauryas, the third of whom was Aśoka.

The Āndhras pose a further problem, driving a wedge between the age of Aśoka and that of Sandrocottus. Thomas¹ observes: "It has been actually remarked by Lassen that in a number of cases Megasthenes states the military power of particular provinces; and he infers that these are instances of independent rule. The inference may have been carried too far; but it has an undeniable validity as regards the kingdoms south of the Vindhya mentioned by Megasthenes, namely the Andhras and Kalingas, as well as their western neighbours..." Now, in R.E. XIII the Āndhras, with the Parirndas, are listed as semi-subject peoples, with just the limited independence such as we can argue for the Yavanas and Kambojas. How did they change their status so much if Aśoka was the grandson of Sandrocottus?

Like the Āndhras, the Kalingas too could not have been independent in the time of Sandrocottus if he and the first Maurya had

1. "Chandragupta, the Founder of the Maurya Empire", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 473.

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been identical. For, the first Maurya, who took over the empire of the Nandas, must have ruled over Kaliiiga which was one of the provinces whose Kshatriya dynasties Mahāpadma Nanda had uprooted.¹ The Purānas' attribution of the conquest of Kalihga to Mahāpadma is corroborated by a passage in the Hathigumpha inscription of Khāravela, from which it has been inferred that a Nanda king had conquered Kalihga.²

No doubt, Kalihga must have been lost by Chandragupta's son and Aśoka's father Bindusāra, for Aśoka's inscriptions speak of war upon and subdual of Kalihga. But it was, as Mookerji³ tells us, his one and only conquest. And this must mean an otherwise large inherited kingdom such as he could never have obtained had his grandfather been Sandrocottus whose India knew of several independent parts, the most prominent of which was the country of Megasthenes's "Andarae".

Another difference between the world of Megasthenes and that of the Mauryas may be thrown into relief. In R.E.V Aśoka declares: "For a very long time past previously there was no despatch of business and no reporting at all hours. This, therefore, I have done, namely, that at all hours and in all places... the Reporters may report people's business to me. People's business I do at all places."⁴ Mookerji,⁵ accepting the current equation of Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya, is led to remark: "Aśoka's strictures against his precedessors do not apply even to his grandfather whose devotion to public work is thus described by Megasthenes: 'The king may not sleep during the day-time. He leaves the palace not only in time of war, but also for the purposes of judging cases. He then remains in court for the whole day without allowing the business to be interrupted, even though the hour arrives when he must needs attend to his person' (McCrindle, p. 72). Curtius (VIII.9) adds: 'The palace is open to all comers, even when the king is having his hair combed and dressed. It is then that he gives audience to ambassadors and administers justice to his subjects' (lb., Ancient India, p. 58, n.)."

Sandrocottus, according to Megasthenes and Curtius, did exact -

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 32.

2.Ibid.

3."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire', ibid., p. 61.

4.Bhandarkar, Aśoka, p. 315.

5.Aśoka (Rajkamal Publications Ltd., Delhi, 1955), p. 143, fn. 1.

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ly what Aśoka says his predecessors failed to do. Mookerji is surprised at the discrepancy between the two statements, for he takes Sandrocottus to be Aśoka's grandfather. But both the statements can be correct if Sandrocottus is not Chandragupta Maurya but the founder of the Imperial Guptas. And the discrepancy is an index to a background for Aśoka remote from the time of Sandrocottus.

One more index to a difference of background may be elicited from the name of Sandrocottus's son, which we have already mentioned: Amitrachates or Amitrochades. We may remember Barua's reading¹ of the Sanskrit equivalent for the latter: "Amrita-khāda" ("Eater of ambrosia"). With the Allāhābād Pillar inscription's presentation of Samudragupta, the son of Chandragupta I, as a god in human form this reading accords very well, as does also our own suggestion for Amitrachates, "Amitrachchhettā" ("Mower of enemies"), which is reminiscent of the term "Sarvarajoch-chhetta" ("Mower of all kings") applied to Samudragupta by his sucessors in four inscriptions. Two other proposals have been made for both the names:"Amitraghata" ("Slayer of enemies") and "Amitrakhāda" ("Eater of enemies"). These too suit Samudragupta down to the ground. We may go even a step further and ask whether "Amitrachates" may really be not a title but the actual name of the son of Sandrocottus. The dropping of the letter S as an initial sound in foreign names was a frequent practice among the Greeks. The Sindhu became the Indus and even Sandrocottus became Androcottus in Plutarch (Life of Alexander, LXII) as well as Appian (Syriaca, 55). If Amirachates is a name with an initial S omitted, we have actually Samudragupta to deal with and it sounds very much like a variant of Samitracottus and may be equated with Samudragupta.

However, what fits the king whom Vincent Smith called "the Indian Napoleon" hardly goes well with Chandragupta Maurya's son Bindusāra. Doubtless, the Tibetan writer Taranatha writes that Bindusāra's minister Chānakya helped his monarch to be master of a vast territory. But Barua² comments: "What reliance can be placed on the evidence of so late a chronicler as Taranatha?" And Mookerji³ asserts: "Aśoka's father Bindusāra is not known to history as a conqueror." How then will the names handed down by Athenaeus (XIV.67) and Strabo (II.1.9) be in

1.Op. cit., p. 309, fn. 4.

2."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 61.

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tune with Barua's and Mookerji's own reconstruction of post-Sandrocottus history?

Surely, all that we have said is enough in general to show this history to have no place for Aśoka.

2

Now we may come to those particular issues that are the main supports of the modern chronology of Aśoka.

Aśoka's "Yonas"

The first of these issues is: "Should we not consider as Aśoka's Greek subjects the Yonas who were within his empire in close association with the Kambojas and whose country was the only one in which there were no Brāhmanas and Śramanas?"

The mere resemblance of the Prākrit "Yona", whose Sanskrit is "Yavana", to "Ionian" should not prejudice us. It is curious to find Daradas (Pliny's Dardae) and Kiratas (Cirrhadae of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea) and rāmanas (the geographer Ptolemy's Rhamnai) listed among ancient Indian tribes and to encounter Dardanians and Cretans and Romans in Europe. But we cannot jump to the conclusion that these Indian tribes colonised Europe or that those European peoples came and settled in ancient India.

Again, the mere absence of Brāhmanas and Śrāmanas in the country of Aśoka's subject Yonas is no pointer to Hellenic civilisation alone. In the borderland between India and Irān, where the Yonas were situated, a country could easily be without Brāhmanas and Śramanas because of the Mazdean religion , the Zarathustrian culture and society . A completely Irānianized life would be all that is necessary.

Yavanas or Yonas in Ancient Indian Literature

Even apart from these arguments, there is sufficient matter in ancient Indian literature to demonstrate that "Yavana" or "Yona" did not originally denote Greeks and that Aśoka's subject Yonas were without Brāhmanas and Śramanas not by virtue of any Hellenism but in perfect accordance with what this literature has to say about their non-Greek character.

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At the very start we may note with Sircar:¹ "The earliest use of the Sanskritized form Yavana can be traced in the Ashtādhayāyī oi Pānini (c. fifth century B.C.)..." At the moment we do not have to dispute Sircar's dating as being somewhat late. We may just point out the way in which the great grammarian brings the Yavanas into his Ashtādhyāyī. The actual word is "Yāvānānī" (V.1.49) which the commentators succeeding him - Kātyāyana and Patanjali -have interpreted as "the script of the Yavanas". If Pānini's Yavanas were the Greeks denoted by the Persian "Yauna", we have the implausibility of Pānini being already so familiar with the Greeks as to be able to cite their very script and of his readers taking in their stride his mention of it rather than a less distant mode of writing to exemplify a grammatical rule.

Before tackling the question of Pānini's date, we may also remind ourselves that "Yāvānānī" is not his sole reference to the Yavanas. There is another which has a perfectly Indian traditional bearing and makes a non-Greek connotation of "Yāvānānī" obligatory. A. K. Narain² remarks: "Like other early Indian sources, Pānini associates the Yavanas with the Kambojas." For, as Narain says in continuation, Pānini's ganapātha 178 on his Ashtādhyāyī's II. 1.72 has the phrase: Yavanamundah kāmbo-jāmundah - "shaven-headed Yavanas, shaven-headed Kambojas". The greatest commentators, such as Vamanajayaditya of the Kāsikā and Bhattojldikshita of the Siddhānta-kaumudi, have accepted the phrase as authentic. But what is striking about it is not merely the traditional association of two peoples: it is also the curious manner in which the association is couched. Both Narain³ and Barua⁴ observe how the phrase links up with the story in the Purānas - e.g., the Harivarnsa (XIV. 16) - according to which tribes like the Yavanas and the Kambojas were Kshatriyas who got degraded and were variously punished by King Sagara: the punishment of the Yavanas and the Kambojas was to be always shaven-headed: munddam kritva vyasarjayat Yāvānānām sirah sarvam kambojānām tathai cha - "getting the heads of the Yavanas wholly shaved and also those of the Kambojas (he) expelled them."

It is incredible that Pānini should describe the Greeks as having

1."The Yavanas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 102.

2.The Indo-Greeks, p. 1.

3.Ibid.

4.Op. cit., Part I, p. 99.

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completely shaven heads and incredible too that - as Narain has suggested - his description, positively implying no hair at all, probably meant nothing more than the Greeks' custom of wearing their hair short! A straightforward look should convince us that Pānini's Yavanas no less than his Kambojas were non-Greeks.

And what is particularly noteworthy is that the very first indubitable occurrences of "Yavana" convey to us not only the notion of a script but also the sense of a degraded Kshatriya. This sense, in one form or another, persists down the ages through all ancient Indian literature that touches on the history of the Yavanas. Coming so early, in however elliptical a form, it seems to bear the stamp of a truth and keep the Greeks away.

To what extent it is early is indeed a momentous question, but even if Pānini is considered as late as c. fifth century B.C. and therefore liable to be influenced by the "Yauna" of Darius I and of the Achaemenid inscriptions succeeding his of Behistun in 520-518 B.C., is it not absolutely unthinkable that, so soon after 520-518 B.C., "Yavana" could bear an utterly different and entirely Indian sense, unless Pānini's term had nothing to do with the Greeks mentioned in the Behistun inscription and in its successors?

Of course, if Pānini could recede substantially beyond the fifth century B.C., the most spectacular coup de grace would be delivered to the common coupling of the Greeks with his "Yāvānānī". According to V.S. Agrawala,¹ "the range of Pānini's date is in the opinion of scholars limited to a period of three centuries between the seventh and the fourth century B.C." Thus there has been no chronological unanimity. But most scholars would concur with Agrawala² when at the end of a detailed discussion he places the grammarian around 450 B.C. One of the sharpest dissidents is Ram Gopal³ who has countered every one of Agrawala's arguments - the chief of which are drawn from Indian religious history. On the positive side he has attempted to estimate properly the interval between Patanjali and Katyayana and that between Katyayana and Pānini. On several well-pleaded grounds he is inclined to fix Pānini to about 600-550 B.C.

At a much later stage of our book we shall hold a brief for a date still earlier. At present, if something like this time-bracket at the

1.India as Known to Pānini (Lucknow, 1953), p. 456.

2.Ibid., pp. 456-75.

3.India of Vedic KalpaSūtras (Delhi, 1959), pp. 86-88.

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latest can be justified beyond cavil our immediate purpose will be served. Oddly enough, Agrawala himself puts before us a fact which sets Pānini clear of all Persian influence. It is about the Janapada (province) Gandhāra in which was situated the town of Salatura where Pānini lived. Agrawala¹ writes: "Pānini mentions both the Vedic form Gāndhāri as the name of the janapada and its people in Sūtra IV. 1.169, and its later form Gandhāra in the ganas to IV. 1.133 and IV.3.93.... Pānini knows Gāndhāri as a kingdom (IV. 1.169). It seems that soon after the death of Darius [I] Gandhāra became independent, as would appear from the manner of its mention as an independent janapada."

Here is a piquant paradoxical situation. Gandhāra has to be under Darius I in order that Pānini's "Yāvānānī" should signify "Greek writing". Gandhāra has to be free soon after him in order that it should be the province Pānini knew. But everything cannot be so conveniently arranged. And we can demonstrate the inconvenience from Agrawala's own book.

Darius died in 486 B.C. What do we find soon after him in»the reign of his son Xerxes (486-465)? We hear from Agrawala² that Gandhāra as a part of the Persian empire "continued under the reign of Xerxes, who recruited to his army a contingent of Indians from Gandhāra about the year 479 B.C." Again, after distinguishing Pānini's Āyudhajīvī Sahghas (warrior clans or groups) of "Parvata" from similar Sahghas of "Vāhīka" as those belonging to "the highlands of north-west", "outside the plains of the Vahika country", "which comprised the regions from the Indus to the Beas and the Sutlej", Agrawala³ remarks that the geographical clues we possess from various writers "all together point to the mountainous regions of central and north-east Afghānistān as being the Parvata country". And he⁴ notes: "Arrian mentions these mountainous Indians as fighting in the army of Darius [III] against Alexander at Arbela (Anabasis, III, 8.3-6). It was these Paravatīya Āyudhajīvins that offered stout resistance to Alexander in Bactria and Gandhāra." This implies that the fighters for Darius III from central and north-east Afghānistān included Gandhārians. So Gandhāra comes into the picture right at the end of

1.Op. cit., pp. 49, 446.

2.ibid.,

3.Ibid., pp. 434, 435.

4.Ibid., p. 435.

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the Achaemenids (330 B.C.) just as it does during the time of Darius I. From Agrawala's own pronouncements there seems to be no evidence at all that Gandhāra was independent at any period of the Achaemenid empire from the Behistun inscription's c. 520-518 B.C. onward.

In the interests of greater precision let us inquire about the state of affairs in the reign of Artaxerxes I (465-424 B.C.), which succeeded the reign of Xerxes and which would coincide with Agrawala's epoch for Pānini. Scholarship has disengaged an important fact in relation to the narrative by Herodotus who was in Persia during the reign of Artaxerxes I. Herodotus supplies us with a list of the tributes paid by the various provinces of the Achaemenid empire. "It is generally believed," writes S. Chattopadhyaya,¹ "that the tribute list, as preserved in the account of Herodotus (III.89-95), is clearly from his own time, that of Artaxerxes I..., not, as he states, from the time of Darius." In that list the "Gāndhārians" figure in the empire's seventh province. So Gandhāra around 450 B.C., which Pānini is said to know as an independent janapada, is found to be in Achaemenid hands.

Beyond Darius I we have Cambyses (530-522 B.C.) and his father Cyrus (558-530 B.C.). We have no narrative about the former in connection with Gandhāra, but the latter is credited by Greek and Roman historians with eastern conquests.. The best conclusion from their reports is, in Mookerji's eyes,² Eduard Meyer's: "Cyrus appears to have subjugated the Indian tribes of the Paropanisus (Hindu Kush) and in the Kabul valley, especially the Gandarians."³ From the manner in which Gandhāra stands in the Behistun inscription in a roster of twenty-three provinces in a wide-spread, stable and organized empire, with no sign of any province having been newly acquired, Gandhāra along with the other constituents of the empire seems to have been inherited by Darius from Cyrus without any break in the Persian possession of it. So the independent Gandhāra in which Pānini lived has to go past in time not only the Behistun inscription but also the year between 558 and 530 B.C. marking Cyrus's conquest of it. Darius's

1."The Rule of the Achemenids", The Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXV, p. 156.

2."Foreign Invasions", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 40.

3.Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, III, 97.

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"Yauna" as the source of the Pāninian "Yavana" is left fairly behind.

But can we even say that the period before Cyrus's conquest of Gandhāra will allow "Yāvānānī" to signify "Greek script"? Unfortunately, a dilemma blocks our path. There was no opportunity for Gandhāra to know this script until Cyrus first came into contact with Greece on defeating Croesus of Lydia in 547 B.C. and conquering that country, a portion of Ionia. If Gandhāra was conquered after that date, then as long as it had enjoyed its independence it had come into no relation with Cyrus and consequently acquired no knowledge of the Greek script from Lydia through him. If the independence of Gandhāra was earlier than 547 B.C., there was also no chance for its Pānini to get at this script, all Persia dividing him from Greece by its own lack of connection with Lydia. Therefore, either way, an independent Gandhāra and the Greek script cannot go together during the reign of Cyrus. And, obviously, prior to his reign the second horn of the dilemma would be just as sharp. By no means and at no time can we bring "Yāvānānī" into rapport with the Greeks instead of with an Indian tribe.

A touch of scepticism may meet us here: "If the Greeks could be involved by Pānini's expression, we would have a distant people haunting our mind's eye. But if it refers to the script employed by an Indian tribe, how is it that Pānini who lists a substantial number of janapadas, including the usual companion of Yona - namely, Kamboja - fails to bring in the Yona province, a janapada called Yavana contiguous to Kamboja?"

The sceptic proceeds on the misconception that Pānini set out to give geographical, political, social or cultural information. Pānini did nothing of the sort. He compiled just a masterly grammar: his aim was grammatical analysis and linguistic investigation. Whatever finds place in his treatise serves as an example of rules and verbal structures. All the information provided is a byproduct. Nor is it likely to be exhaustive under any head. No matter how profuse, it is bound to be selective on the whole. In respect of any topic we should do well to remember Agrawal's observation¹ apropos of a certain species of information: "Names of rivers, forests and mountains are noticed not in connection with any social or historical significance, but as examples of linguistic

1. Op. cit., p. 36.

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peculiarity, such as vowel-lengthening (IV.3.117-120) or cerebralisation (VIII.4.4-5)."

At this point.we may relevently comment that comparable to Pānini's overlooking of a possible Yavana janapada is his overlooking of the Ganges among the rivers, although the gana to VII. 157 names a river we know as its tributary: Rathaspā, identical with the Rathasthā of the Vedic period and with the modern Rāmagangā which is still in its upper course known as Rahut or Raput and falls into the Ganges at Kanauj.¹ Again, the omission of a Yavana janapada or of Yavana as a tribe has no momentous overtones any more than has the omission, except for "Yāvānānī", of all the other scripts that, for instance, appear along with "Javanāniya" (=Yāvānānī) in the list of scripts in the Samavayari-ga Sūtra (Samavāya XVIII), to which Agrawala² alludes. The sceptic's procedure would be a case of insensitivity to the fundamentals of the Pāninian approach.

Moreover, even the Yavana tribe cannot be considered quite out of Pānini's sight or definitively divorced by him from its usual companion. Back in 1881 Rajendralala Mitra³ noted that Pānini offers "Yāvānānī as an example to show the use of the affix ānuk to indicate the writing of the Yavanas". Thus Pānini's usage appears not to confine itself to a mere adjectival label: it implies a collectivity called "Yavanas" and so most probably a janapada of them. Mitra⁴ has also a mention of Katyayana, the commentator of Pānini, who is always taken to bring out the earlier grammarian's sense and not to import anything alien: "In Katyayana's Vārttika on Aphorism 175 of the first section of the fourth Book of Pānini, the Yavanas are linked with the Kambojas, showing their near relationship." In fact, for this relationship and its suggestion of a Yavana janapada, no less than of a non Greek-people, neighbouring a Kamboja janapada, we do not have to depend on implications of Varttikas. We have already commented on Pānini's Gana-pātha 178 on his Ashtādhyayī's II. 1.72 - the phrase which translates: "shaven-headed Yavanas, shaven-headed Kambojas." There assuredly is a background of a janapada for the Yavanas as much as for the Kambojas.

1.Ibid., pp. 45, 46.

2.Ibid., p. 312.

3.Indo-Āryāns (Calcutta, 1881), II. p. 177.

4.Ibid., p. 190.

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That the Yavanas were an ancient Indian tribe with a janapada of their own contiguous to that of another tribe, the Kambojas, and that both the tribes were non-Greek - such a conclusion from Pānini can be backed by all other testimony from India. The Buddhist canonical work Majjhima Nikāya is referred to in the Chullavagga which does not mention the Third Buddhist council held in Aśoka's reign, and which is therefore pre-Aśokan. The Majjhima Nikāya, on this showing, is pre-Mauryan.¹ It makes Buddha tell Assalayana (11.149): "Suttante: yonakrambojesu an-hesu cha pachchantimesu janapadesu..." Mookerji² translates; "Have you not heard this: that in the Yona, Kamboja and other countries...?" The Yonas thus are already a state on India's borders during Buddha's life - before even the Persians could develop wide contacts with the Greeks, leave aside their meeting Indians on a substantial scale during and after Alexander's invasion. The very term Aśoka uses - yonakambojesu - is here met with. Again, the Chullaniddesa, which is included in the Buddhist canon and is hence not too late a commentary though not one of the earliest compositions,³ numbers Yona no less than Kamboja as having been a country of the Indian subcontinent before Buddha's birth.⁴ Can we think of an organised Greek colony on a provincial scale in north-west India as early as such a period - actually before Cyrus's campaign against the Ionian Greeks of Lydia?

The Mahābhārata (XIII.33.21) and the Manusamhitā (X. 43-44) not only speak of the Yavanas, together with the Kambojas and some other tribes, as being degraded Kshatriyas: they also speak of them as having lost their Āryān status by not consulting Brah-manas. This explanation reminds us at once of Aśoka's own statement in R.E. XIII singling out the Yonas within the empire as the people who in his day were without the ministrations of Brāhmanas and Śramanas. The statement, which has been taken as a pointer to the Greek nature of Yona society and culture, is really in tune with India's own tradition and shows that what was true about all north-western border provinces, including Yona, held somehow for just that one province in Aśoka's day. Buddhist

1.Pusalker, "The Pali Canon", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 408.

2.Aśoka, p. 161, fn. 8.

3.Pusalker, op. cit., p. 409.

4.B.C. Law, "North India in the Sixth Century B.C.", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 1.

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literature itself has said of the Kambojas, the close associates of the Yonas, the same thing in essence as the Mahābhārata and the Manusamhitā and, by implication, the Ganāpaha. Law¹ tells us: "In the Jātakas we read that the Kambojas were a north-western tribe who were supposed to have lost their original Āryān customs and become barbarous." So Aśoka is merely qualifying in a particular way a common ancient testimony, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, which is far removed from Greek concerns. Since the condition of his Yona country remains the same as in this testimony and simply the condition of its fellow-provinces changes, no Greek shade requires to be imported into Aśoka's statement. To import such a shade is to raise an entirely false and unnecessary issue.

As to the reason why the Yonas, and not the Kambojas or any other related tribes which had all been described in old Indian books as lacking Brāhmana-ministrations, were now alone in that lack, we may propose two approaches. Indian tradition itself suggests the possibility of those ministrations returning to degraded tribes. For, in the midst of their degradation, a shadow of Brāhmanical institutions was yet allowed to fall on them. A long passage in the Mahābharata recounts what the degraded Kshatriyas were required to do by way of religious observance and social duty.² A reversal to Brāhmanas and Śramanas via such observance and duty was always on the cards and several tribes might have made it. On the other hand, the life without the direct presence of Brāhmanas and Śramanas might lead to a complete deviation from the Vedic religion. In the area between India and Persia this deviation could have been towards no alternative religion except the Mazdean. So the Yonas, unlike their companions, may have been totally Mazdeanized by Aśoka's time and become the only people without the Brāhmanas and Śramanas.

Even the Kambojas are reported to have come under Mazdean influence. A Buddhist Jātaka³ attributes to a good number of Kambojas - kambojakānam... bahunnam - a certain religious practice - the killing of insects, moths, snakes and worms - which we may recognize as Mazdean from passages in Mazdean books like

1.Tribes in Ancient India (Poona, 1943), p. 7.

2.Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, 2nd Edition, Vol. I, p. 484.

3.V. Fausboll, Jātaka (London, 1877-97), VI, 208, 27-30. Cf. Law, Tribes in Ancient India, p. 7.

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the Vidēvdāt (XIV, 5-6) as well as from the remarks of Herodotus (I, 140) about the Persian religion. The Jātaka's wording leaves it beyond doubt that not all Kambojas followed this practice and the picking out of the practice indicates that those Kambojas who followed it were Mazdeanized insofar as this practice was concerned. Not all of Mazdeanism need be attributed to them. But, as against the limited Irānianization of the Kambojas in the post-Buddha age, we have an extremely revealing piece of information about the Yonas in Aśoka's time, which takes us beyond the general presumption that they, like their close associates, the Kambojas, must have been Irānianized only to some extent.

In the Junāgarh inscription of the Śaka ruler Rudradaman I, the dam repaired by Rudradāman's engineer is recorded to have been dealt with in Aśoka's time by Aśoka's viceroy in Saurashtra, "the Yavana raja Tusāspha."¹ V. Smith has rightly noted the Persian indication in the name ofthe Yavana (Yona) raja. One may try to make this rāja out to ·be a Persianized Greek, but that would be special pleading on the presupposition that the Yonas in Aśoka's empire must have been .Greeks. The bare fact is the Irānianized name. And Tusāspha the Yavana raja - viceroy of Saurāshtra was a dweller within Aśoka's empire, as were the Yonas who were neighbours to the Kambojas. He cannot but cast on them a Persian tinge and render them more Irānianized than the Kambojas in our eyes. In addition he could easily imply for them a full adoption of the Mazdean religion and prove Mazdeanism responsible for their uniqueness among Aśoka's subjects.

Looked at from any side, this uniqueness stands free of the Greek nuance. It can be accounted for without going outside Indian evidence. The Yonas may legitimately be taken to be Indians Irānianized in toto.

Consequently, the ancient terms "Yavana" and "Yona" must be derived without any appeal to "Ionian". The Sanskrit root yu can make it connote "keeping away, averting" or "mixing, mingling" or else "quick, swift".² So the Yavanas could be "those who are disliked" or "a mixed people" or "men who move rapidly". The last-mentioned sense is favoured by a linguistic peculiarity which allows such alternative forms in Sanskrit as yūśa and jūśa for "soup" or yāmi and jāmi for "sister" and which in Kauśika-sūtra

1.Epigraphia Indica, Vol. VIII, pp. 36 ff.

2.M. Monier-Willaims, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, (Oxford 1899), p. 848.

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makes y do duty for j on several occasions - e.g.., yunaymi (3.1) -and which S.N. Pradhan¹ very appositely elucidates: "Philologists declare that the Y in Yavana may be replaced by J; that is, both Yavana and Javana are permissible and therefore interchangeable. Javana in later Sanskrit literature means 'one who possesses speed'. (Compare Yaska's derivation of Pijavana, Nirukta II, 24, Roth's edition, Gottingen.)"

The explicit interchanging of Yavana and Javana is found in a Buddhist allusion to the script which Pānini named "Yāvānānī". Agrawala² writes: "Yāvānānī... as the name of a script occurs in the Samavayanga Sūtra (Samavaya XVIII) under the form Javana-niya (cf. also the same list in Pannavanā Sūtra)." And in the light of this we make a surprising discovery on referring back to Yaska's derivation. For, Yaska discusses Pijavana while considering it the name of the father of Sudās, a Rigvedic hero who in the Rigveda (VII .18.23) is given the epithet Paijavana. So "Javana" and therefore implicitly "Yavana" is as old as the Rigveda.

Both the connection with "one who possesses speed" and the sense of remote antiquity like the Rigveda meet us in a different way for the Yavanas in the Mahābhārata passage (XIII.33.21) upon which we have already drawn . There the Yavanas are said to be the descendants of Turvasu. "Turvasu" is the Purānic form of "Turvas" mentioned in the Rigveda (VII .19.8) - "Turvas" which , as Pradhan³ tells us, means "one who runs fast. "

We may also associate youthfulness with rapid running and align "Yavana" with the Sanskrit "Yuvan" which has the same root yu and signifies "young". Perhaps this alignment would bring it directly into touch with the Greek "Iaones" which would connote the young or new race from the Aegean islands and the Asiatic coast as opposed to the "Graichoi", meaning "the old" and denoting the original inhabitants of the Greek peninsula. But this alignment would render it superfluous even to entertain the possibility that "Yavana" came from Europe or Asia Minor to India. For, it would be the variant of a term common to the Āryān peoples wherever they were and appearing, as Rajendralala Mitra⁴ enumerates, in the Zend jiwán, the Latin juvenis, the Saxon iong,

1.The Chronology of Ancient India (Calcutta, 1927), p. 95.

2.Op. cit.. p. 312.

3.Op. cit., p. 95.

4.Op. cit.. II, p. 177.

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the Dutch jong, the Swedish and Danish ung, the Gothic yuggs.

We may attend to a further fact which keeps in countenance our idea that "Yavana" or "Yona" owes nothing to the Persian or any other usage indicating the Greeks. Even outside India we have proof that the early use of a term analogous to "Yavana" was not in reference to them. Mitra¹ quotes Rawlinson to show that in the inscriptions of Sargon, dated 708 B.C., the isle of Cyprus, where the Assyrians first came into contact with the power of the Greeks, appears as Yavnan or Yunan, but that the name of this country is said by Sargon to have never been heard of by his ancestors, the kings of Assyria and Chaldaea, from the remotest times. If Yavnan had never been heard of before 708 B.C. in Assyria and Chaldaea, it is not to be supposed that it was better known in the much earlier time of the XVIII Dynasty of the New Kingdom in Egypt, and we can fully credit another piece of information by Rajendralala Mitra:² in the monuments of that dynasty under Tutmosis III and IV and Amenophis HI, the term "Uinim" which, according to Curtius' History of Greece (Ward's translation, 1, p. 45), is the oldest form of "Ionia" is used for all foreign subjects of the Pharaohs. The implication here is not only that Uinim, occurring so much earlier than 708 B.C., covered non-Greeks but that it covered no Greeks at all.

Lastly, there is the proof offered by Dr. I. Olsvanger³ of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, that scholars of Greek itself, as long ago as the early part of the third century B.C., did not consider the Greeks to have been denoted by an early use of the Hebrew analogue of "Yavana". Dr. Olsvanger writes:

"In support of your argument concerning the identity of the Yavanas, I wish to draw your attention to the name Yāvān which appears several times in the Hebrew Bible.

"First in Genesis X, 2,4 (with repetition in I Chronicles I, 5,7). The ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint,⁴ of the Old Testament simply transcribes the name and so does the Latin Vulgate where it appears as Javan. It follows from that that the authors of the Septuagint did not regard the Yāvāns of Genesis as meaning Ionians or Greeks.

1.Ibid., pp. 174-175.

2.Ibid., p. 169.

3.Letter to the author, dated 4.1.1957.

4.C. 270 B.C. (The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1952, p. 1135).

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"Only at a later stage of the Books of the Bible did the word Yāvān accept the meaning 'Greeks'. Thus in the Book of Joel IV, 6: 'And you have sold the sons of Jerusalem to the sons of Yāvān', the Septuagint translates the last phrase by 'Tois Uniois ton Ellenon' and the Vulgate by 'Filiis Graecorum'..."¹

When we read the note of the Jerome Biblical Commentary² on Joel IV.6, it is not difficult to affirm with Mitra the earliest form of "Ionia" to be "Uinim". The note runs: "the Greeks: the Ionians (Yewānim), the Greeks of the Aegean Islands and western Asia Minor." The inflected Hebrew word bracketed here is surely a modulation of the Egyptians' "Uinim" which dates back to 1500-1400 B.C. "Ionian" as a name would seem to predate the Greeks with whom it was later associated. Olsvanger's information combines with Mitra's to leave not even a straw for the modern theory to catch at and save itself from drowning. When Asia Minor and Greece herself never began with identifying the Yavanas with the Greeks, we need have not the slightest hesitation in refusing to assume that India did or to brand as incorrect the old Indian view of them.

Not that "Yavana" or "Yona" never stood in India for "Greek" at any time. But this connotation is first observed in the BesNāgar inscription of the last quarter of the 2nd century B.C. And here, as also in the late Buddhist books, Milindapanha (1st century A.D.), the Dīpavamsa (4th century A.D.) and the Mahāvamsa (6th century A.D.), its connection is with the Greek rulers (c. 190 B.C.-c. 50 A.D.) over portions of India, whose dynasties hailed from Bactria, once a part of the Achaemenid empire, in which the Greeks were known as "Yauna". Naturally in India they got pinned with the labels "Yavana" and "Yona". But, as we learn from Otto Stein's detailed inquiry³ into epigraphs, even in the time of the Bactrian-Greek and Indo-Greek rulers, "Yavana" did not always or exclusively stand for "Greek". He demonstrates that, except for a few cases, personal names of Greeks do not possess the attribute "Yavana", while the term occurs again and again

1.Most scholars date Joel to 400-350 B.C. see The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Original American Edition published by Prentice-Hall, Inc., New Jersey, 1968-Indian Edition published by Theological Publications, Bangalore, 1982). The Old Testament, p. 440, col. 1.

2.The Old Testament, p. 443, col.l.

3.Indian Culture, I, pp. 351-357.

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without any Greek association. Also, "there is no proof that the Yavanas, where they appear in connection with a genitive plural, are 'Yavanas' at all, they may be personal names of members of Indian families or of some corporations."

Hence, where is the least compulsion to read "Greek" in Aśoka's chronologically earlier "Yona" subjects or "Yona rāja" -especially when we have no evidence at all that the immediate successors of Alexander the Great - originating, as they did, from outside any part of the old Persian Empire - were known in India as "Yonas" or "Yavanas"?

After the age of the Bactrian Greeks and Indo-Greeks, "Yavana" is well known to have become a very general designation. Sircar¹ records: "The word Yavana was used in mediaeval Indian literature as a synonym of mlechchha and indicated any foreigner... The Muslim rulers of India are often called Yavanas..."

"Yavana" and "Yona" appear to have had varied uses and it should be nothing of a surprise that in ancient times it pertained to a non-Greek tribe, originally Indian and later fallen from its Āryān Kshatriyahood and gone foreign without the services of Brāhmanas and Śramanas.

Pointers from Greek Accounts

The non-Greek character of the Yavanas in ancient India is suggested also from the accounts of Alexander's invasion of India.

If there was a Greek settlement in India, it must have antedated Alexander's arrival in 326 B.C., for "Yavana" is a term much older. As the Majjhima Nikāya speaks of a Yona border-state in Buddha's time, Alexander should have met the settlement in the course of his advance. But there is no evidence of his meeting any colony of Greeks, whether called "Yavanas" by the natives or named anything else. No doubt, between the rivers Kophen (Kābul) and Indus the people whom the Greeks termed the Nysaioi lay in his path, and his soldiers played with the idea that they were a colony left behind by Dionysus when he returned home from the wandering which, according to a story by Euripides in his Bacchae, had taken him all over the East. However, we may heed what Strabo (XV.7) has to say on the "conquests" of both Dionysus and Heracles: "As for the stories of Heracles and

1. "The Yavanas", op. cit., p. 101 with fn. 2.

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Dionysus, Megasthenes and a few others consider them trustworthy; but most other writers, among whom is Eratosthenes, consider them untrustworthy and mythical, like the stories current among the Greeks." So we see that the mass of serious Greek minds themselves dismissed the very basis for the claim of the Nysaioi's Hellenic ancestry.

And there was even a counter-legend: Diodorus (111.63) reports that more than one Dionysus existed and that the most ancient of them was not a Greek but an Indian and moved from India to every part of the world. Thus, even on the legendary plane, there is a check.

"The Greeks," observes Bevan,¹ "always experienced a keen joy of recognition, when they could connect foreign things with the figures of their legends..." Do we not know how they saw Heracles in Krishna of Mathura and found Dionysus in Shiva of the hills? The Dionysian Nysaioi are also an instance of their Hellenifying tendency. Another instance is provided by Strabo (XV.8): "They further called the Oxydrakai descendents of Dionysus, because the vine grows in their country, and their processions were conducted with great pomp, and their kings on going forth to war and on other occasions marched in Bacchic fashion, which is also a custom among other Indians." In addition to that bubble-pricking last clause, Strabo (XV.58), touching on the presence of the vine east of the Euphrates as a special proof, dryly remarks that most parts of Mesopotamia, Media, Persia and Carmania have good vines. And we may gauge the flimsiness of the Greek fancy from the fact that the Oxydrakai, who are kinned to the Nysaioi as descendants of Dionysus, are universally recognised as the Indian Kshudrakas.

In regard to the town named Nysa, M. de St.-Martin² rightly wrote long ago: "This place ought to be of Median or Persian foundation, since the nomenclature is Irānian, the name Nysa or Nysaya which figures in the cosmogonic geography of the Zend-avesta being one which is far-spread in the countries of ancient Irān." As an alternative, we may think of a settlement of the Indian tribe named Nichya, which Pusalker,³ in detailing the Āryān communities in India during the period of the later Sarhhi-

1."Alexander the Great", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 354.

2.McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes, (Calcutta, 1926), p. 183, fn.

3."Āryān Settlements in India", The Vedic Age, p. 257.

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tās, Brāhmanas, Upanishads and Sūtras, speaks of in connection with the Punjab and Sind. We may then very well echo the phrase of Vincent Smith:¹ "a fancied connection with Dionysus and the sacred mountain Nysa of Greek legend."

We may safely assert: the accounts of Alexander's invasion reveal no Greek colony in India. Judged from them, the pre-Alexandrine Yavanas or Yonas whom Pānini and the oldest Buddhist books mention were not Greeks. And, since Alexander never came across any tribe he could have dubbed, after its Indian name, something like "Iaonoi", even non-Greek Yavanas or Yonas were absent as a distinguishable tribe in Alexander's time. Between Alexander's time and that of Pānini or Buddha a gap existed, during which the Yavanas somehow got submerged as a tribe. Obviously, Alexander had a different background from Pānini or Buddha. And then Aśoka, who cannot be much separated from Buddha, must have also had a background different from Alexander's.

What, in relation to the Yonas, confirms this difference is the fact that even the Kambojas, the recurrent associates of the Yonas, do not appear in the long lists of peoples provided by Alexander's historians or by Megasthenes. On the analogy of "Kambyses", the Greek version of the Persian king-name "Kam-bujiya", we might expect something like "Kambysoi" if the Kambojas were known to them. The nearest we come to it is Arrian's reference² to a people called Kambistholi from whose dominion the river Hydraotes (Ravi) is said to flow. The geographical clue would place the Kambojas well to the east of the Indus in the Punjab - a fantastic location.

The name itself resolves best into "Kapisthali" which in Pānini (IV.1.42) can be an alternative form to "Kapistalā" (VIII.3.91), a place-name - or into his "Kapishthala" (VIII.3.91), a family-name from perhaps the name of a sage, giving rise to the forms (II.4.69) "Kapishthalāh" and "Kapishthalayah", the descendants of Kapishthala. A curious fact noted by Agrawala³ is that Pānini (IV.3.107) mentions the Kathas as northern disciples of Vaisam-payana, probably in Punjab, and that an offshoot of their school is called Kapishtala-Kathas by the Charanavyuhd, and that Arrian's

1.The Early History of India (London, 1924), p. 55.

2.McCrindle, op. cit., p. 198.

3.Op. cit., pp. 323-324.

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Kambistholi are in the same territory as the Kathioi (Kathas) who resisted Alexander's march. Arrian's tribe has nothing to do with the Kambojas. And where the Kambojas geographically should have been we find the Aspasioi (Āśvāyanas) and the Assakenoi (Āśvākāyanas) - tribes whose names were derived from the reputation they enjoyed for the excellence of their horses. The Kambojas - famed as they are in Indian tradition as expert horse-breeders - are surely among them, but their specific existence is submerged, unlike the case with Pānini's references where we find not only the Āśvāyana (IV.1.110) and the Asvakayana (IV.1.99) but also the "shaven-headed Kambojas" and the janapada (state or cultural unit) called "Kamboja" (IV.1.175).

How long the Kambojas remained submerged we cannot quite tell. But in Western reports it is only when we come to the geographer Ptolemy (140 A.D.) that we hear of a place named Tambyzoi to the south of the Oxus - Tambyzoi which Sylvain Lévi¹ identifies with Kamboja on the ground that the word is a Greek transliteration of the Austro-Asiatic spelling of Kamboja. But even Tambyzoi, south of the Oxus, is a far cry from the country contiguous to that of the Yonas on India's north-west in Aśoka's day. The whole combination of Yonakambojesu seems alien as a positive entity to the historians of Alexander and to Megasthenes: it appears to be no part of the milieu of the Macedonian conquest of north-western India. Hence this milieu must belong to an epoch different and distant from Aśoka's.

The Results of Modern Research

Our conclusions from ancient Indian literature and from Greek accounts are not contradicted by any result of modern research. Some scholars have argued for a Greek colony in India before Alexander on the strength of certain coins obtained from Rawalpindi: oriental imitations of the earliest Athenian type, the "Owls", and a batch bearing a helmeted head on the obverse and a cock on the reverse together with the name "Sophytes" in good Greek characters. As Alexander in Punjab came across a king whom the Greeks named "Sopeithes" or "Sophites", the latter coins are attributed to him and he is considered the ruler of a

1. The Indian Antiquary, 1923, p. 54.

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pre-Alexandrine Greek colony in ancient India.

But none of Alexander's historians ever suggested that their "Sopeithes" or "Sophites" of Punjab was a Greek. Alexander mixed with him on very friendly terms, yet not the shadow of a hint is left to us that he was not an Indian king. About all the coins concerned, Mookerji¹ supplies the decisive information: "In 1877 a large hoard of coins was found at Kabadan on the Oxus and was imported to Rawalpindi by dealers. This hoard included the oriental imitations of Owls and Eagles akin to the coins of Sophytes."

R. S. Whitehead's study² of the last-named coins may be summed up: "Sophytes and his coins belong to the Oxus region: they are probably earlier than 320 B.C., the date given to them by Sir George Macdonald. Sophytes must have been a local satrap who asserted his independence on the fall of the Persian empire." In a more recent article than Whitehead's A.K. Narain³ has discussed with expert skill two new coins of Sophytes, one of them representing him as a very young man. Narain offers strong grounds for taking the author of the coins to be a Graeco-Irānian satrap who ruled in north-western Irān under the Achaemenids, became Governor in about 335 B.C. and got reinstated in his office by Alexander just as the Persian Governors Oxyartes and Phrat-phernes are known to have been.

Thus, from every point of view, the existence of Greek Yavanas in pre-Alexandrine India is disproved and consequently that of non-Greek ones established. And if Pānini, Buddha and, with Buddha, Aśoka recede far beyond the age of Alexander it becomes logically impossible for Aśoka's "Yona rāja Amtiyoka" no less than for his subject "Yonas" to be Greek.

But, although this "Yona rāja" outside the empire is shown to be logically impossible, we cannot be said to have historically disposed of the problem raised by him. For, the Greek-sounding Amtiyoka is not alone: he is in the company of four other king-names alleged to be equally Greek-sounding. The multiple manner in which their problem confronts us is a challenge that demands independent investigation.

1.Ancient India, p. 139.

2.Numismatic Chronicle, Sixth Series, III, pp. 60 ff.

3.The Journal of the Numismatic Society of India, 1949, Vol.11, pp. 93-99.

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3

"Yona Rāja Amtiyoka" and the Four Other Rājas

We may begin with remarking that Aśoka terms only Amtiyoka "Yona rāja" and leaves the nationality of the four other rājas unspecified. If he had wanted to term them "Yona" he could easily have done it; or else he could have used a word like "similar". Our historians would understand Aśoka's abstention from Yona-fying them to imply a tacit dittoing of Amtiyoka's nationality for them. But, with as many as four kings concerned, this abstention looks rather significant: it is as though Aśoka cared little for their great number and would have omitted to specify their nationalities even if it had been something else than Yona. Further, in R.E. II, while again terming Amtiyoka "Yona rāja", he mentions neither their names nor their number. And in both R.E.s II and XIII he names Amtiyoka twice, once in his own right and then again in relation to others, as if to give him a special, a central importance and the rest the status of mere appendages. So we may legitimately ask whether anything in the two edicts could provide a clue to a difference in status.

All the recensions of R.E. II, except the one at Girnār, employ the word sāmamtā about the four rājas. The exception at Girnār is sāmīpam, which means "neighbours". In the light of this word the other is taken to connote the same. But independently it could denote, as Bhandarkar¹ reports from Buhler, a shade of inferiority. Buhler renders it: "vassal-kings." And, since it occurs in more places, should we not take sāmīpam to be a non-committal way of implying this shade? Further, should we not search the more elaborate R.E. XIII for a decisive touch?

In that edict, immediately after the mention of Tulamāya, Arhtikini, Maga and Alikasudara, comes a peculiar word.² It is, in the version at Shāhabāzgarhī, nīche: in those at Mānsehrā and Kālsī, nīchaihth. Literally meaning "below, down, downwards", it has been translated as "southwards" because the Chodas and the Pāndyas and the Tāmraparnīyas who are next mentioned were in South India. But in R.E. II Aśoka shows no geographical concern

1.Op. cit., p. 301, n. 2.

2.The Inscriptions of Atoka, edited by DR. Bhandarkar and Surendra Nath Majumdar (1920), p. 52.

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and blandly brings in Amtiyoka and his associates, without any preparation, on the heels of "Tamraparnī" as if Amtiyoka stood still more to the south.¹ Moreover "southwards" as a particular sign of direction would imply that all who were listed before were to the north, but our historians situate all the five rājas to the west: hence "southwards" loses its point. Finally, although "southwards" is not impossible for nīche or nīcham on the analogy of uttara which means "higher" as well as "north", such a use is unknown anywhere else in the whole range of Sanskrit or Prākrit literature. Mookerji² rightly remarks: "The meaning of the word does not seem to be satisfactorily settled."

The same word occurs in R.E. VII, where the form is nīche at Girnār and nīche or nichē at five other places.³ Here Bhandarkar⁴ observes: "Nichā seems to have been used as an adjective... The variant nīche corresponds to Skt. nīchaihih, as suggested by Hultzch, which is often used adjectively." Bhandarkar⁵ and Sircar⁶ take it in the sense of "worthless", Luders and Hultzch⁷ in that of "low" or "mean". This procedure may be followed in regard to R.E. XIII also. The form nīcham is, like nīche, adverbial and equivalent to nīchaihih. If nīche can be used adjectively, why not nīcham? As an adjective, nīcham could well connote in R.E. XIII "lower" or "inferior" and make all the four rājas listed after Amtiyoka the subordinates and satellites of Amtiyoka. Considering their dependent position, Aśoka may not have felt that their nationality needed any mention: they are tagged on to Amtiyoka, so that his nationality alone is of concern to Aśoka. In a situation like this, it would be a matter of indifference to Aśoka whether their nationality were the same as Arhtiyoka's or no. Consequently, there cannot be any presumption that, just because he is called Yona, they must be Yona too if they are not distinguished as something else.

Our theory has not only the advantage of explaining Aśoka's omission: it has also the advantage of being consistent in word-interpretation and of avoiding for nīcham a totally unsupported

1.Ibid., p. 4.

2.Aśoka, p. 163, fn. 3 (contd. p. 169).

3.The Inscriptions of Aśoka,, p. 27.

4.Aśoka, pp. 319, 320.

5.Ibid., p. 319.

6.The Inscriptions of Aśoka, p. 45.

7.Cf. Mookerji, op. cit., p. 148, fn.2.

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usage. But, if our theory is to be preferred, we have at once a state of affairs unhealthy for the assumption that Aśoka was listing a series of Greek kings. Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas and the two Alexanders were not at all subordinate to Antiochus. And if Aśoka lived in their epoch he would certainly know this through the diplomatic relations with them which our historians claim for him. Just as the father and grandfather of Antiochus II are known to have sent ambassadors (Megasthenes and Daimachus) to the Indian court, so also is Ptolemy II Philadelphus reported to have sent Dionysius there. If Aśoka reigned in the 3rd century B.C. he would not fail to be aware of Ptolemy's status and would not go out of his way to dub him a satellite of Antiochus. The sole satisfactory interpretation of nīchaihm disproves the identification of Ptolemy with Tulamāya and hence of the remaining Greek kings with Aśoka's rājas.

Yona Rāja Amtiyoka and Yavana Rāja Tusāspha

The next point we may make is: although Amtiyoka alone and none of his neighbours is called "Yona rāja" in Aśoka's reference to rulers outside his empire, there is, as we have already observed, yet another Yona rāja connected with him: "Yavana rāja Tusāspha" named, in the Junāgarh Sanskrit inscription of the Śaka Rudradāman I, as Aśoka's viceroy in Saurāshtra in-the past. The undeniable Irānianized character of this king-name has served us to give a concrete body to our suggestion that the Brāhmanas and Sramanas may have been absent from Aśoka's Yona province because the Yonas led an Irānianized and Mazdeanized life. Now we can use it as a clue to the non-Greek nature of Yona raja Amtiyoka, Also ; Tusāspha can be our link between the Yonas within Aśoka's empire and the Yona raja outside it. For, Tusāspha is a Yona who is not only within the empire but a rāja as well, and his Irānianized character .passes on to Arntiyoka the non-Greek colour of these Yonas.

No doubt, there have been Śakas with Indian or Indianized names and Tusāspha could be a Greek for all the Irānianization of his name; but, against the background we have sketched and within the context concerned, the comparison with those Śakas becomes purely academic. Even in itself it is merely suggestive and not at all determinative. Just a possibility is conjured up: to accept

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it or not depends on the attendant circumstances.

Under the circumstances attendant here, what Tusāspha drives home to us vis-à-vis Amtiyoka is that we need not go towards Greek countries at just the mention of a Yona rāja. An Irānianized Indian or an Indo-Irānian is all that Amtiyoka may be. But, of course, we must try to show that his name is not necessarily an echo of the Greek "Antiochus".

Can "Amtiyoka" be a Non-Greek Name?

The form "Amtiyoka" is not the sole reading in the edicts. Kālsī gives us "Amtiyoga" or, with one sound slurred, "Atiyoga" which may be read "A(rh)tiyoga". Seen as made up of the components "Amti" and "yoga", this reading can be conjectured as an outlandish name suggesting "he who gets close-joined" or "he who collaborates", a name perhaps not far removed in its structure from a compound Indian appellation like "Antināra" found in the Purānas.¹

What is important to decide here is whether "Amtiyoka" is merely a dialectal form of an original and basic "Amtiyoga" or a name in its own right, a real alternative form. Kālsī, where it is found, has several dialectal peculiarities and on a few occasions it turns the intervocal k to g: for instance, pasopagani in R.E. II. But pasopagani occurs not only at Kālsī: it occurs also in the Dhauli and Jauguda recensions which have a dialectal affinity with the Kālsī and, by a rare influence, it occurs even in the Girnār version. "Amtiyoga", on the contrary, is only at Kālsī: Dhauli and Jauguda give "Amtiyoka" and Girnār "Arhtiyaka".² Again, Kālsī's "yoga"-ending is not only twice in R.E. II but also twice in R.E. XIII. It is a special persistent form which seems to have little to do with dialectal variations.

Its status appears to be akin in its way to that of "Maga" at Girnār in distinction from Shāhbāzgarhī's "Maka" and Kālsī's "Maka". Girnār has hardly any dialectal tendency of its own to change the intervocal k to g. A thing like pasopagani is not in the least characteristic of it. So its "Maga", when neither Kālsī nor

1.E.g., Matsya, XXIV.

2.The Markandeya Purāna mentions a north-western tribe with the terminal sound exactly echoing this Yona king's at Girnār: "Kālatoyaka" (Barua, Aśoka and His Inscriptions, Part I, p. 102).

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Shāhbāzgarhī corresponds to this form, is either a scribe's mistake or a genuine alternative name. Historians who equate Aśoka's Maga to the Greek king Magas take it evidently as a genuine alternative name and "Maka" or "Makā" as a derivation not by a dialectal movement but by a Prākritization. Prākrit (which includes all the Aśokan dialects and several others) converts at times to k what in Sanskrit would be g. Thus the Sanskrit "Nabhaga"¹ becomes "Nabhaka", a tribe-name, in all the recensions of R.E. XIII. In view of this and in view of the consistent character of the "yoga"-ending at Kālsī, we may opine that this ending, like "Maga", can have the status of an original form, a genuine alternative to "yoka" (or "yaka"), and not of a dialectal variation of it. "Amtiyoka" could be a Prākritization of "Amtiyoga" or "A(rh)tiyoga". It might even be an Irānianized aspect of the name of one who might have belonged to a group of Irānianized Indians or Indo-Irānians. In any case, a double form seems legitimate here as with the king commonly identified with Magas.

A name akin to our Yona rāja's we may note in a Kharoshthī inscription from Taxila. F.W. Thomas² reads the inscription: "In Śira A(m)tiyoha, sister of Looda, daughter of a hamśi mother and a hamśa father, deposits relics of the Bhagavat." According to Thomas, the inscription testifies to a thoroughly Indian consciousness. The ties with India are not only in reference to the Bhagavat but also in the rich multiple relevance of the hamśi and hamśa: Thomas observes a fusion of no less than three suggestions here. Almost as significant is the precedence given to "mother" instead of to "father". Such precedence is everywhere in Aśoka's own edicts and we find it even in the Arāmaic part of the bilingual inscription at Kandahār in contrast to the reversal of it, the father-mother order, in the Greek part. However, the names in the Taxila inscription - "A(m)tiyoh"a" and "Looda" - sound strange. Thomas has asked whether they are a distortion of the Greek "Antioche" and "Leontes". Yet our historians have refrained from committing themselves. According to Sircar,³ "no Indian approximations of the names of the Taxila inscription were proposed" but "it is difficult to say whether the names in question are really Greek as F.W. Thomas suggested".

1.Barua, Aśoka and His Inscriptions, Part I, p. 92.

2.The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1916, pp. 284-285.

3.Letters to the author, dated January, 4 and 16, 1958.

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Is there any need to be committed about Aśoka's "A(m)tiyoga" which is certainly affined to the "Antioche"-resembling "A(rh)tiyoha"? Both might be ancient non-Greek names - neither thoroughly Indian nor thoroughly non-Indian - from the border-country between India and Irān.

"Amtikini" as a Non-Greek Name

What would apply to "A(rh)tiyoga" and to its alternative could apply to "Amtikini". "Amtikini" actually finds a curious approximation in the name of an Indian tribe listed by Pliny (VI.23) after Megasthenes, among those on the east side of the Indus: Antixeni. The Girnār form "Arhtikina", which is not so much a dialectal variation as a vocal modification, has an ending as of that in the name "Airikina" by which the city of Eran was known in antiquity.¹

As for the equation to a Greek name, we have a most interesting note by Bhandarkar:² "Arhtekina or Amtikini, as Buhler has remarked, corresponds to the Greek Antigenes rather than to Antigonus. But, as no king named Antigenes is known, Amtikini has been identified with Antigonus Gonatas of Macedonia." Have we not here a bit of a hurry to suit preconceived theory? Why not admit straight away that the name of no Greek king in the 3rd century B.C. answers to "Arhtekina" or "Amtikini"?

"Tulamāya" an Improper Form: no Greek possible for "Turāmaya"

A much more serious fault of procedure - sheer wishful thinking - may be exposed in the matter of Tulamāya and Ptolemy. Out of the three versions of the edict available for the name, the two at Shāhbāzgarhī and Girnār read "Turāmaya" and the one at Kālsī "Tulamāya." Kālsī exhibits invariably the dialectal change of r to l, among other changes that are all termed Māgadhisms, while there is no opposite rule of / becoming r at Shāhbāzgarhī and Girnār. A further point to stress is that at all these three places, as well as at Mānsehrā, the letter /, if originally present in a name,

1.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, p. 48.

2.Aśoka, pp. 49-50.

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remains intact everywhere. Thus the "Alikasudara" of Shāhbāzgarhī reads "Alikyasudala" at Kālsī: the r becomes l but not vice versa and the l in the first half of the name persists as part of the original form. The Girnār version is missing, but Mānsehrā has "Alikasu..." So we may conclude that if "Tulamāya" had been the original form there would have been "Turāmaya" nowhere. And in case some freak tendency to change l to r had been operative or a scribe's mistake had been at work, we could not have had "Turāmaya" at both such widely separated places as Shāhbāzgarhī and Girnār. The double presence establishes beyond all doubt "Turāmaya" as the basic original form and "Tulamāya" as a mere dialectal variation. "Tulamāya", which seems to correspond to "Ptolemy", is an improper form for comparison with the Greek name.

It is the basic "Turāmaya" that has to be compared. But how can we ever equate "Turāmaya" with "Ptolemy"? If "Ptolemy" had been intended, surely the basic original form would have been "Tulamāya" and the l would have stayed unchanged as it does in the first half of "Alikasudara". With "Turāmaya" as basic and original, the equation with "Ptolemy" is impossible and irrational.

Perhaps we shall be queried: "Has not J. Filliozat¹ written: 'The relations between Indians and Greeks were managed through Persian interpreters'? And has not P. Giles² told us that 'in the Old Persian of the Achaemenid inscriptions l is found only in two foreign words, and has otherwise been entirely replaced by r'? So may we not suppose that a Persian interpreter conveyed 'Ptolemy' to Aśoka with an r instead of an l?"

Our answer is: "It would be highly odd that a Persian interpreter should turn a Greek l to an r when conveying names from the Greeks to the Indians and yet correctly convey from the Indians to the Greeks the Indian l by mentioning such names as the Greeks wrote down as Peukelaotis, Sangala, Patala, Malloi, Glaukanikoi, Phegelas, Kalanos. The historian Curtius (XII), recording the meeting between Alexander and the Indian prince Omphis (Āmbhi), actually says that an interpreter was procured, but the official name reported of the Indian prince was 'Taxiles' after the name of his kingdom, Taksaśila. The original l of 'Taksaśila' came

1 Political History of India, translated from the French by Philip Spratt (Calcutta, 1957), p. 119.

2. "The Āryāns", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 74.

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unaltered to the Greeks in spite of the interpreter, who may have been Irānian. There is even a case in which an r seems to come out as / instead of vice versa: the Indian 'Kripā' appears to have been the original of 'Cleophis', the Greeks' name for the queen of the Assakenoi (Aśvākāyana). Moreover, even Persian names themselves with an l have come to us in Greek histories. Arrian (Anabasis,. I.16;VII.3,6) has written of Arbupales, the son of Darius III, and Abulites, the Persian governor of Susa appointed by Alexander, and Artiboles, the son of Mazaeus. Finally, in Giles's own statement we find mention of two foreign words which, having l in them, preserve it in Old Persian. Would we not expect the foreign 'Ptolemy' to keep its l in the mouth of a Persian interpreter - particularly when our historians assume that the foreign word 'Alexander' where both l and r are concerned was properly interpreted so as to result in 'Alikasudara'?"

Besides, with two generations of Greek settlement in Arachosia and with the Indian interior open to the settlers in consequence of the friendly relations between Seleucus and Sandrocottus, why should we not think of either a Prākrit-knowing Greek or a Greek-knowing Indian as an interpreter? And we may remember too that Ptolemy II Philadelphus sent an ambassador to India, Dionysius. Surely the ambassador would at least have seen to the correct communication of his master's name? The presence of Dionysius must make "Ptolemy" the one name that ran no risk at all of being misconveyed. Consequently, "Turāmaya" can have nothing to do with Dionysius and his sovereign: it must belong to another historical context than the age of Ptolemy.

A less trivial argument against us would be: "In R.E. XIII itself there is an l-to-r change, a rhotacism, for 'Pulinda' in the form 'Parirhda' which Girnār gives for Shāhbāzgarhī's 'Pālida' and Kālsī's 'Pālada'. Why cannot 'Turāmaya' be a similar rhotacism?"

While Sanskrit "Pulinda, Paulinda" can equal, as Sircar¹ has contended, Prākrit "Pālinda" or "Pālimda", a rhotacist conversion to "Pārimda" in the Aśokan dialect of Girnār is hardly on the cards and we may with more reason postulate a pure slip on the scribe's part like "Ketalaputo" in the Girnār R.E. II, which Mookerji² calls a mistake for "Keralaputra". Error at times in

1.In Indian Culture, Vol. VIII, pp. 399-400.

2.Op. cit., p. 130, fn. 4.

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writing is admitted in general by Aśoka himself. Sircar,¹ summarizing the Girnār R.E. XIV, recounts Aśoka's mention of the various reasons why some topics have been written incompletely in some places: Aśoka cites as one reason "a fault of the scribe."

A Māgadhism, on account of the royal source in Magadha of the edicts, is more possible at Girnār or Shāhbāzgarhī or Mānsehrā than the opposite: r may turn into l or even get left out but there is no tendency of l turning into r. Bhandarkar,² studying "Pārimda", adverts to the influence of the Magadha court language but categorically declares as a clear fact in the context of all the edicts of Girnār, Shāhbāzgarhī and Mānsehrā before him that if the original has really an l we can never have an r in any version. "Pulinda" may be accepted as the correct tribe-name provided we accept the r of "Pārimda" as "a fault of the scribe".

Even otherwise, even granting "Pārimda" to be somehow a result of rhotacism, its occurrence at Girnār alone, with nothing analogous at Shāhbāzgarhī whose dialect³ differs more from Kālsī's than does Girnār's, can supply no ground for any talk of a rhotacist tendency, however sporadic, in the Girnār, Shāhbāzgarhī and Mānsehrā versions to balance to whatever degree the wholesale contrary trait in the Kālsī.⁴ Matching this Kālsī trait we have wholesale rhotacism in a fragmentary version of R.E. IX discovered not long ago at Sopārā.⁵ In Aśokan versions that use both r and / there is no proof of rhotacism. "Turāmaya" cannot be denied its basic position - especially since, unlike "Pārimda", it occurs not only at Girnār but also at Shāhbāzgarhī.

Moreover, we have to heed Barua's warning:⁶. "It is still uncertain whether Aśoka's Pārindas were the Pulindas of the Purānas. The name Pārinda occurs in the Pali Chūlavarmsa (XXXVIII.29.30) in which Pārinda and Khuddapārinda are mentioned as two sons of a Pandya king. It is possible, therefore, that the Pārindas were racially connected with the Pāndyas." Again, one may see in the Kālsī reading "Pālada a Magadhi-influenced form of Parada". The Paradas, as Barua⁷ reminds us, were a

1.The Inscriptions of Aśoka, p. 56.

2.Op. cit., p.

3.Ibid., p.

4.For a fuller discussion of the point see Appendix at the end of this section

5.Eptgraphia Indica, Vol. XXXII, Part I.

6.Op. cit., p.

7.Ibid., p.

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north-western tribe mentioned in the Mārkandeya Purāna. Raychaudhuri¹ cites also the Vāyu (Ch. 88), the Harivamśa (I. 14) and the Brihat Samhitā (XIII.9). But, as Barua² continues, it should not worry us to find the Paradas in the south with the Āndhras in Aśoka's R.E. XIII, for several tribes like the Chullkas and Mushikas who had their original settlement in the north have been found in the south. We may add: the Pulindas themselves figure both in the Vishnu Purāna³ and in the Mahābhārata (IV.9.40) in the compound Sindhu-Pulindaka, implying that they lived in the north, near the Indus. Nor are the Āndhras in Indian literature invariably set in the company of the Pulindas. The earliest reference to them - in the Aitareya Brāhmana (VII, 18) -puts the Pundras next to them in its tribe-list. If we wish to go by some collocation of countries in Indian literature broadly resembling Aśoka's own list of southern territories - those of the Āndhras, Parirhdas, Chodas (Cholas), Pāndyas, Satiyaputras, Keralaputras and Tāmraparnīyas - we have only the phrase in the Rāmāyana (IV.41.12) - "Āndhrams cha Pundrāmś cha Cholām Pandyams cha Keralan" - followed soon after by a description of the region of the Tamraparni river (IV.41.15). But, as Barua⁴ notes, "we have the Pundras instead of Aśoka's Pārindas, and the Keralas in place of Aśoka's Satiyaputras and Keralaputras." May not Aśoka's "Pārindas" represent a fusion of Paradas and Pundras?

One more facet of the problem may be presented. "Tonda-mandalam... was a province in the empire of Aśoka... and the Pulindas, included in the list of his subject peoples, were perhaps identical with the Kurumbas of Tonda-mandalam. Their name is reflected in Pulinādu and Puliyūrkottam, two ancient territorial divisions of the region. The Vāyalūr Pillar Inscription of Rajasimha mentions the name Pallava after the first seven mythical ancestors from Brahmā to Aśvatthāmā and before Aśoka's name. It may therefore, be argued that there was a Pallava ruler before Aśoka. Further, Pallava may be taken to be a variant of Palada (a form of the name Pulinda in some versions of Aśoka's edicts) and

1.Op. dr., p. 313.

2.Op. cit., p. 90.

3.Law, Tribes in Ancient India, p. 17.

4.Op. cit., p. 74.

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may be regarded as the southernmost people of the Maurya Empire."¹

In the face of all the various possibilities we have sketched, it would be rash to swear that the Parirhdas who go with the Āndhras in Aśoka illustrate a genuine rhotacist trend at Girnār.

The chance of a rhotacism in "Turāmaya" in R.E. XIII may be completely dismissed. We may go still further and assert in the field of epigraphy and numismatics that when Sanskrit or else Prākrit of a type where both l and r occur transcribes a Greek or any foreign name, a clearly audible l of the original as in "Ptolemy" - an l uncombined with a consonant - never changes to r in any instance known to history.

Take the Besnagar inscription of probably the last quarter of the 2nd century B.C. Its author "Heliodorus, son of Dion" becomes "Heliodora, son of Diya".² Or take the names of two Śaka kings of a little earlier date, who use Greek on the obverse and Kharoshthī on the reverse of their coins. We see "Spalirises" of the Greek becoming "Spalirisha" or "Spaliriśsa",³ and "Asilises" becoming "Ayilisha".⁴ In the Besnagar inscription, even an l before a consonant retains its identity: the Prākrit corresponding to "Anti-alkidas", the name of one of the Indo-Greek kings who ruled over a part of India and has left us some coins, is "Amtalikita".⁵ A coin that in the near past came to light of the last of these kings, Heliocles, proves how the clearly audible l resists all pull towards rhotacism. The coin shows the l after a consonant turning into r and yet the clearly audible l remaining the same in the Prākrit for Heliocles: "Heliakreyasa."⁶

Correspondence to "Turāmaya" is not in "Ptolemy" but in Indian and Irānian or else Turkish names. "Tura" is the name of a Vedic seer, the son of Rishi Kavasu.⁷ According to the Nepalese Chronicle, Aśokavadāna,⁸ it is the initial component in the name

1."Dynasties of South India" by R. Sathianathaier, The Classical Age, pp. 256-57.

2.Raychaudhuri, op. cit., p. 271.

3.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 124; Raychaudhuri, op. cit., p. 428.

4.The Age of Imperial Unity, 127.

5.Ibid., p. 115.

6.The Journal of the Numismatic Society of India, Vol. XI, 1949, p. 101.

7.Aitareya Brāhmana, VIII.21; VII.34; IV.27. Also Bhagavata Purāna, IX.22.37.

8.R. Mitra, Indo-Āryāns, Vol. II, pp. 36-37.

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of one of Aśoka's own near-ancestors: Turakuri, a partly dialectal variant of which is Tulakuchi, the name of the same ancestor in the other Nepalese Chronicle, Divyavadāna.¹ "Maya" as a terminal is there in "Asurāmaya", a name well-known in Indian legendary history. In the Irānian Avesta, Tura is one of the three sons of King Thraetona, and a certain Tura is also cited in Yasht XIII.² As for the terminal "maya", E. Benveniste³ writes apropos of the Elamite name "u-ma-ya": " 'u-ma-ya'... ought to be 'humāya', known as a proper noun from Avestan Humayaka (cf. Aramaic Humayeak) fern. Humāyā (Pers. Humaya)."

"Ptolemy" for "Turāmāya" is not only impossible and irrational: it is also superfluous.

In passing, we may quote Zajti Ferenc⁴ to the effect that according to the interpretation of the Avesta, "Tura" and "Hūna" both mean "resistant" and indicate a strong and stubborn opponent. Ferenc traces to the former word the place name "Turan". We may, in addition, point to the name "Turfan" of a place in Chinese Turkestan: its Indian equivalent is "Turapamni"⁵ .We may remark further that the name "Toramāna" of the foreign invader of India, whose coins and inscriptions have been found and who is generally taken to be a Huna chief, father of Mihiraku-la, is not unconnected with "Tura". It has, no doubt, a Turkish ring, but even in the Turkish language it has the variant "Turāman"⁶ linking it to "Turāmaya". Wesendok⁷ has tried to show that "Toramāna" as well as "Mihirakula" is an Irānian name. The Jain Kuvalayamāla (c. 778 A.D.) gives for "Toramāna" the form "Toraraya"⁸ which seems to stand midway between "Turāmaya" and "Toramāna".

The Non-Greek Possibilities of "Magā"

We come now to "Magā, with its alternative "Maka" or

1.Ibid.

2.E. Blochet, J.R.A.S., 1915. pp. 36-37.

3.Journal Asiatique, 1958, I, p. 52.

4.Journal of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, No. 36, 1943, p. 13.

5.Mookerji, Ancient India, map facing p. 484.

6.Sircar, Select Inscriptions, p. 390, fn. 4.

7."Kusan Chroniten und Hephthalite", Klin (1933), p. 345.

8.Cf. Buddhaprakash's "Kalidasa and the Hunas", The Journal of Indian History, Vol. I XXXV, Part I.

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"Maka". The Irānian ring of the last two is clear. "Maka" occurs even as a place-name: a south-eastern province of the Achaemenid empire was called "Maka" (modern Makrān).¹ Again, everybody has heard of the term "Magus" for a Persian priest: we read, in the Purānas, of the Śakadvīpa - Śaka-territory - where dwell the Maga dvijas who worship the sun-god;² we have in India of later times the Maga-Brahmanas, the Persian priests (Magi) who migrated to India and appear to have contributed to the growth of the Ujjain school of astronomy.³ The Mahābhārata (VI.l2,33) enumerates the peoples of Śakadvīpa as Maga, MaŚaka, Manasa and Mandangao And among the variants of "Maga" here we find "Maka".⁴ The form "Maga" is a component of the full designation of the son of a queen Khribanis in Tibet in the period 635-43 A.D.: Maga Thogon Khagan. F.W. Thomas;⁵ remarks that not only Khagan but also Maga is a Turkish title , apparently the same as the Moho which the Chinese apply to certain rulers of Chinese Turkestan round about 700 A.D. Going to more ancient times, we read in the Cambridge History of India⁶ that the inhabitants of the region making up Magadha in Buddha' s time used to call it Maga, a name doubtless derived from Magadha. And we hear even of a "Maga raja" from the Satitkicca Jātaka.⁷ The exact form "Maka" is a constituent of the Indian name "Sivarnaka" which occurs in an Arnrāvatī inscription .⁸

"Alikasudara" as a Non-Greek Name

What about "Alikasudara"? About the names "Alexander" and "Alexandria", S.N. Majumdar⁹ observes: "The hypothetical Sanskrit forms of Alexandros and Alexandreia are, according to Sanskrit phonetics, Alakshandrah and Alakshandrā. In the vernacular, Alakkhandā or Alashanda are the forms expected." In Kautilya's

1.Richard N. Frye. The Heritage of Persia, p. 72.

2.Brāhmanda Purāna, XX. 71 f; Agni Purāna, 119.21.

3.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 144, fn. 1.

4.Mahābharata (Critical Edition by S. K. Belvelkar), Vol. VII. p. 66.

5.Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1927, pp. 63-64.

6.Vol. I, pp. 182-83.

7.Jātaka, Ed. V. Fausboll (London, 1877-97). Vol. V, p. 267-G, 103.

8.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 205.

9.Notes to Cunningham's Ancient Geography of India (1924), pp. 692-93.

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Arthaśāstra¹ we read of a place famous for corals: Alakanda at the mouth of the river SrotasI in the land of the Barbaras. Majumdar finds little difficulty in equating it to Alakshandra and identifying it as the port known as Alexander's Haven. In the Pali Mahāvamsa (XXIX, 30 ff.) and Milindapanhā we have "Alasanda" in which we can easily recognize Alexandria. Such variations from the expected form are natural. But "Alikasudara" seems too great a departure: paradoxically, it is too close to the Greek "Alexander" to be an Indian equivalent of it. And there is no need to bring in "Alexander", either. "Alikasudara" could be a perfectly Sanskrit name Prākritized. "Alika" seems a Prākritization of "Alaka" while "sudara" is easily the Prākrit for "sundara". In Sanskrit "Alaka-sundara" would describe "one whose face is beautiful with forelocks".²

There is also the possibility of a queer nomenclature. "Alika" as itself a Sanskrit term is attested as part of a compound word by what R.C. Majumdar³ writes by way of annotating the geographer Ptolemy's expression (VII.1,8) "Pseudostomos" for an Indian river: " 'Pseudostomos' means false mouth. The Dravidian literature has alemukham (Sanskrit Alikamukham)." Combined with "sudara" (="sundara"), it may point in a semi-Sanskrit semi-Prākrit way to some such concept as "Beauty that deludes and is a snare". If we doubt whether a term pejorative in immediate suggestion could ever go into a man's name, we have only to look at "Alikayu" which is part of the name of a man mentioned twice as an authority in the Kausitaki Brāhmana.⁴

Are the Names Too Odd as Non-Greek Ones?

No doubt, if we take the Aśokan names to be non-Greek the four that out of the five make compounds have a certain oddness. But we encounter many odd names in old historical records, defying explanation. Atiyoha and Looda of a Taxila inscription have already been pointed out: neither foreign nor Indian equiva-

1.P. 86, fns. 7, 8.

2.I owe this information to a letter dated 11.11.1972 from my friend E. Vedavyasa, I.A.S., Special Officer at the time to the Government of Āndhra Pradesh, Rājamundry.

3.The Classical Accounts of India, p. 379, note 8.

4.XXV, 51; XXVIII, 4. See The Vedic Index, Vol. I, p. 39.

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lents have been convincingly suggested. Richard N. Frye¹ refers to the name of the first Kushāna ruler in India:"Kujula Kadphises, the etymology of which is most uncertain." There are also names accepted as Indian and as belonging to historical persons but strangely built and some of them never repeated. Sircar² says: "None of the suggestions regarding the etymology of Sātavāhana and Satakarni is satisfactory." Again, he³ reports: "S.K. Chatterji and Pzryluski have written on the etymology of the name Khāravela. Their views are not satisfactory." In Aśoka's Rock Edict II itself where the Yona rāja Amtiyoka figures we have the designation "Satiyaputra" to denote another frontager. Barua⁴ informed us in 1946: "The name Satiyaputra or Satiyaputras is nowhere met with in Indian literature." Only recently a Tamil-Brahmi inscription was discovered in South Arcot District commemorating a gift by "Atiyan Naduman Anji, the Satiyaputra".⁵ The chieftain mentioned had been a subject of old Sangham poetry but distinguished in no poem by the title found in the epigraph.

If we deem all the unusual compound names which are still unexplained to be part of genuine history, why should we jib at Amtiyoka, Turamāya, Amtikini and Alikasudara when presented as being non-Greek?

Possibly we shall be asked: "Can the historicity of these non-Greeks of yours and of the remaining member of the group, Maga, be confirmed by independent testimony from outside Aśoka? If not, why go beyond Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magas, Antigonus and Alexander?" Our answer should be: "Do we ask for outside confirmation of the historicity of that other Aśokan Yavana rāja, Tusāspha, who requires no Greek correspondence but has left no evidence of his own and is mentioned only once in epigraphy and that, too, not by Aśoka himself? Again, did we not accept up to now without outside confirmation Aśoka's own Satiyaputra?"

1.The Heritage of Persia, p. 229.

2.Select Inscriptions, p. 185, fn. 4.

3.Ibid., p. 206, fn. 1.

4.Op. cit., p. 111.

5."Aśoka and the Tamil country: A New Link" by Dr. R. Nāgaswamy, The Sunday Express. Magazine Section, December 6. 1981, p. 6.

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Coincidences in History

The final objection we are likely to be posed with is: "Whatever fault you may find in relation to Turamāya and Amtikini, you must grant that Amtiyoka, Magā and Alikasudara are rather impressive in their echoes of Antiochus, Magas and Alexander. And in their company Turamāya and Amtikini also may not be rejected as entirely far-fetched for Ptolemy and Antigonus. Would you explain away all this as pure coincidence - and an almost fivefold coincidence at that?"

General echoes are not confined to Greek names. And several Indian or Persian or Perso-Indian names can accidentally echo Greek ones. We have dwelt sufficiently on such counterparts to Magas: we may list a few more. The name "Puloma" which the Matsya Purāna twice gives in its series of the Āndhra kings¹ corresponds closely to "Polemo", the name of a Greek writer subsequent to Megasthenes.² Puliśa, an astronomer mentioned in Indian books, has been equated with Paulus of Alexandria, but "Pauliśa" can be, as Altekar³ avouches, an authentically Indian name and the equation may be quite erroneous. Then there is Devamitra, a king of Ayodhyā,⁴ whose name looks like the Sanskrit for "Demetrius".

As for that triad of pretty close echoes - Amtiyoka, Magā and Alikasudara - in one and the same context, let no one make a unique case out of the situation. In Indian history itself we have the case of the Mahānāman inscription at Bodh-Gayā and the report of the Chinese writer Wang-Hiuen-t'se. In the former we have two monks, Mahānaman and Upasēna, from Ceylon, dedicating "a mansion of Buddha" in the year 269 of an unspecified era. In the latter we have also a Mahānaman and his colleague Upa-, two Buddhist monks from Ceylon, building at Bodh-Gayā a monastery and some stupas in the reign of an Indian king named San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to who has been equated to Samudragupta, one of the Imperial Guptas who had an era of their own to which they do not always give its proper title "Gupta". Sylvain Lévi

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 705.

2.McCrindle. Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian, p. 8, fn.

3."Education, Literature and Sciences", A New History of the Indian People, VI, p. 415. fn.l.

4.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 174.

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observes that, if the same monks are not spoken of, it would be indeed a very odd coincidence. But Vincent Smith,¹ who never doubts that Arhtoyoka and Maga and Alikasudara are Antiochus and Magas and Alexander (of Epirus or Corinth), marshals a number of arguments against the identity alleged by Lévi. And many other historians, whether agreeing or not with him about the era to which the year 269 is to be referred, are at one with him in disagreeing with Lévi's identification. The double resemblance in the monk's names, the common country Ceylon from which they hailed, the common location Bodh-Gayā for a common religious purpose, not to mention the unspecified era, are not allowed to have any weight.

Perhaps the most famous case of multiple resemblance is from Persian history. The sacred book of the Parsis, the Avesta, tells us that the prophet Zarathustra preached his religion of Ahura Mazda at the court of Vistaspa. In Persia the name of Zarathus-tra's God outside the Avesta is found for the first time beyond controversy in the inscriptions of Darius I, and it is found there frequently as if with the enthusiasm of a convert to a new cult. Darius I writes the name with a slight difference in the spelling and as a single word "Aurāmazda"; but these peculiarities may be no more than dialectal. And in one instance² in the inscriptions of his successor, Xerxes, the name has two components, separately declined, as in the Avesta: so the knowledge of the Avestan form is directly proved. A connection for the first time between Zarathustra's religion and the Persian monarchy in the reign of Darius I may reasonably be conjectured, and the conjecture draws extraordinary strength from the fact that the father of this king is known to have been Hystaspes and this king is familiar to the Greeks as Darius Hystaspes. The Greek form "Hystaspes" is the precise equivalent of the Avestan "Vistaspa".

Impressed by these facts as well as several other features of the whole case, including a tradition in Persia about Zarathustra's date, scholars like Jackson, Hertel and Herzfeld have placed the prophet in the 6th century B.C. But Haug, Geiger, Andreas, Meyer, Moulton, Keith, Soderblom, Charpentier, Geldner, Bartholomae, Mills and Benveniste carry him to a fairly earlier date - scholars who yet would not think twice about the identifica-

1.The Indian Antiquary, 1902, pp. 192-97.

2.Ibid., p. 376.

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tion of Aśoka's rājas with post-Alexandrine Greek kings.

Indian scholars too who accept that indentification are seen disagreeing with Jackson, Hcrtel and Herzfeld. Thus Ghosh, in his article on Indo-Irānian relations in the compilation, The Vedic Age,¹ writes about the Irānian tradition which put Zarathustra in the 6th century B.C.: "... according to Eduard Meyer (Geschichte des Altertums, second edition, third volume, p. 110, fn. 3) it is an inexplicable thing that anybody should think so. That Eduard Meyer was right can hardly be doubted, although weighty opinions have been raised against his view. The mention by Assurbanipal about 700 B.C. of Assara Mazas along with seven good angels and seven bad spirits is a clear indication of acquaintance with the reformed Zarathustrian pantheon (See Cambridge History of India, I, p. 76). It is impossible therefore to suggest that Kavi Vistaspa mentioned in the Avesta as the patron of the prophet was no other than the father of Darius I (522-486 B.C.), for in that case the Zarathustrian pantheon could not have been known in Assyria in the days of Assurbanipal." With Meyer, Ghosh carries the Gathas of Zarathustra to c. 1000 B.C. Altekar is prepared to go even a little further back, though still on the hither side of 1500 B.C. Parsi scholars are mostly disposed to agree in general with Herodotus and Aristotle and other Greek writers before Christ, who place the Persian prophet several thousands of years before their own time. AH leave Darius Hystaspes centuries behind.

We also need to make no bones about disregarding the apparent multiple correspondence on our hands and the "weighty opinions" in its favour. We are not forced to accept Aśoka's five rājas as Greeks.

"Even as far as 600 yojanas"

Possibly a last shot may be fired against us: "Aśoka in R.E. XIII mentions the distance within which his five rājas had their kingdoms. He declares: 'Here and in the bordering dominions, even as far as 600 yojanas, where (dwell) the Yona king called Amtiyoka and, beyond this Amtiyoka, the four kings...'² Now, a yojana in ancient India, as J.B. Fleet calculates from Kautilya's Arthaśāstra³

1.P. 224, Note 18.

2.Bhandarkar, op. cit., pp. 330-331.

3.Note on p. 541 of R. Shama Sastry's translation.

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meant approximately 4¹/2 miles. So we get about 2,700 miles - the very distance roughly between India's western borders and Macedonia, t he farthest of the Greek dominions concerned. Who else could the five rājas be save the five Greek kings with whose names theirs have been identified?"

This poser is pretty easy to meet. First, it is not necessary to go 2,700 miles from Aśoka's western borders towards Asia Minor and Europe. His enumeration of bordering dominions does not stop with the lands of those five rājas. After mentioning them he continues with "the Chodas, the Pāndyas, as far as the Tāmraparniyas... "². The 600 yojanas could be in reference to all the countries outside the empire, where the dharma was spread. That is how Barua³ understands the passage. Sircar⁴ also asserts that the construction of the passage allows the interpretation either that together the five kingdoms in the West and the three in the South covered the distance or that the distance was covered only by the western kingdoms.

Even if we go westward or in anyone direction, we are not obliged to go 2,700 miles. The yojana was a varying measure. Monier- Williams⁴ equates it not only to about 4 or 5 English miles but also to about 9 on the one hand and 2¹/2 on the other. Fleet's equation seems to have been favoured at one time especially because the Arthaśāstra was taken to be a work contemporaneous with Chandragupta Maurya but now, according to Mookerji, "many scholars .. . regard the present text as of much later date" .⁵ In parts of it we have a clear difference from Aśokan practice. Barua⁶ points out: "Its mode of dating a record in terms of the regnal years, month, half-month and day ... differs appreciably from that in the inscriptions of Aśoka... It counts the seasons as six and defines each of them (11.20), while Aśoka's phrases tim chātumrnasīsu (P .E. V) clearly suggests the adherence of his inscriptions to the tradition of three seasons." So there is nothing to bind us to 41/ 2 miles for Aśoka's yojana. And historically we should even be justified in choosing 2¹/2 miles. Basham⁷ says apropos of the Arthaśāstra: "It would seem that for practical

1.Bhandarkar, op. cit., p. 331.

2.Aśoka, Part I, p. 109. See also p. 131.

3.Letter to the author, dated 14.2.1957.

4. Op. cit., p. 858.

5."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p 66

6.Atoka, Part II, p. 43.

7. The Wonder that was India, p. 66.

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purposes the shorter yojana was more used than the longer, especially in ancient times." If the Arthaśāstra was posterior to Aśoka's time the still shorter yojana may be more appropriateto his period. 600 yojanas might have been merely (600 * 2 ¹/2 = ) 1,500 miles.

Even if the Arthaśāstra be proved contemporaneous with Chandragupta Maurya, whatever differences may be thought of between the circumstances, physical or psychological, of Aśoka's lifetime and those of his grandfather's can permit us to ascribe to Aśoka the shortest yojana. Rapson¹ has a significant remark: "The yojana has very different values according to the period and the locality in which it is used; but there is good evidence of the use in Buddhist books of a short yojana, equal to about two and a half English miles..." The equation of 600 yojanas to 1,500 miles would be quite appropriate in the case of a king like Aśoka who was a Buddhist par excellence.

Again, we cannot be sure that Aśoka's "Here" connotes the empire as a whole and that the 600 yojanas started from its frontiers. The word which Bhandarkar translates as "bordering dominions" is amta which strictly speaking, connotes "ends, extremities, borders" and J. Bloch² actually translates the opening Aśokan phrase - "hida cha savesu cha amtesu" - by: "Here and on all my borders..." So the contrast may be between some central point within the empire and the empire's peripheries where the foreign dominions commence. This central point could most appositely be Aśoka's own capital city, Pātaliputra, the seat of government which was the one point common to the whole empire and to which everything was related and referred and from where Aśoka issued his edicts as well as sent out his dharma-messengers. In terms of the spread of dharma which is the theme of Aśoka, hida ("here") and amta could represent the starting-point and the ending-line of this propagation as if to say: "Beginning with my own capital and terminating in all lands on my frontiers." Such a contrast would be quite as pertinent as a contrast between the empire as a whole and the bordering dominions.

Moreover, we may note that hida appears twice in this passage.

1."The Successors of Alexander the Great", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 550.

2.Les Inscriptions d'Aśoka, p. 125, quoted in translation in Basham, op. cit, p. 54.

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After referring to the amtas where Amtiyoka and others live, Aśoka goes on to use two expressions together: "hida rājavisavajri" (or "rājavisaye")¹ - that is to say, "here in the king's dominions".² Can we hold the two expressions - the opening word and the rest of the phrase - to be synonyms just because there is no cha ("and") connecting them? If they are synonyms no purpose is served by employing them both now when one of them has already appeared without the other at the very beginning of the passage. Again, if they are synonyms and the second is added to explain the first, why does the explanation come at this place instead of at the very beginning of the list of territories where the dharma-victory was achieved? In place of "Here and in all the bordering dominions" we should have had "Here in the king's dominions and in all the bordering kingdoms" and afterwards the simple "here" should have done duty. Everything seems to indicate a difference between "here" and "the king's dominions" - a technical difference.

The same difference appears to be meant between "the king's dominions" and the succeeding phrases which also begin without a cha: "among the Yonas and Kambojas, the Nābhakas and Nābhapamtis, the hereditary Bhoja rulers, the Āndhras and Pārimdas."³ Why are these tribes particularly named? Mookerji⁴ suggests that the tribal areas indicated by those phrases were separately mentioned in spite of their being included in the king's dominions, because they were not directly under Aśoka's rule but enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy. Barua⁵ subscribes to the same view: "Even within his own empire, we are to discriminate the portion which was at first entirely under his direct rule and subsequently under the rule of himself and his Viceroys, from that which was occupied by the semi-independent tribal territories or states."

If this view is correct, the identification of "here" with "the king's dominions" at the beginning of the passage would hardly cover the whole empire and the identification would be useless. Altogether we may posit three categories. (1) the semi-independent tribal territories under Aśoka's suzerainty, (2) the royal realm in the narrow sense of direct rule, and (3) the capital

1.The Inscriptions of Aśoka, p. 53.

2.Bhandarkar, op. cit., p. 331.

3.Ibid., p. 331.

4."Aśoka, the Great", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 78-79.

5.Op. cit.. Part I, pp. 53-54.

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city where he himself resided and from where he exercised rule over both the portions of his empire. To read any other sense in the three divisions into which his statement falls would be to rob the statement of its pertinence in details.

The third category, the capital city of Pātaliputra, would alone be connoted by "here". And in his two uses of "here" he would be referring from the same capital place, his own seat, first to the various regions outside his empire and, next, to the various regions inside it.

In favour of understanding "here" in this way there is actually an inscription where Aśoka leaves us in no doubt that his capital city is meant. In R.E. V, when the Mānsehrā, Shāhbāzgarhī, Kālsī and Dhauli versions read "here and in all the outlying towns", the king's own town must be their "here". What is more, the version at Girnār reads "at Pātaliputra" instead of "here". Nowhere else does Aśoka give an explicit alternative substitute for "here". So, in its absence, we should stick to the clear equation - made in at least one place - of "here" with his capital, unless the context anywhere compels us to abandon it. Is there any such context?

Apart from R.Es XIII and V, there are three places where "here" occurs: R.E. I, R.E. VI and Minor R.E. of Rūpnāth. In R.E. VI Aśoka speaks of his motive in spreading dhamma -namely, "that I may render some happy here and that they may gain heaven in the next world."¹ Nobody can misunderstand this "here": it is the present world as contrasted to the next. But R.E. I and the Rūpnāth Minor R.E. bring "here" to mean something less than the whole present world, the earthly habitat of all life. In the first,² Aśoka talks of many hundreds of thousands of animals killed formerly in the royal kitchen. Surely they were not killed for himself or his own family, however large it may be. Immediately we think of king Rantideva of the Mahābhārata's Vanaparvan, who was in the habit of distributing meat among his subjects.³ So the people of Pātaliputra get involved in Aśoka's curry-making. They are involved also in the matter of samājas to which the same inscription refers. The samājas are public shows such as Kharavela in the Hāthigumphā inscrip'ion and Gautamiputra Śātakarni in a Nasik cave insciption mention as having been organised in their

1.Bhandarkar. Aśoka. p. 316.

2.Ibid., p. 297.

3.Ibid., p. 21.

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own capitals.¹ Hence when we read, "No life should here be immolated as a sacrifice; nor should any samāja be held",² the natural notion is that "here" which goes with both animal-sacrificing and samāja-holding refers to Aśoka's own capital Pātaliputra.

In the Rūpnāth Minor Rock Edict, we have the phrase: "Have this matter engraved on rocks. Here and far off where there is any stone column, have it engraved on the stone column."³ The turn of expression is analogous to that in R.E. V - "here and in all the outlying towns..."Also, the engraving on stone-columns can be done only within Aśoka's empire and not in foreign countries. If we take "here" to mean the empire, "far off" must point to foreign countries. Consequently "here" can mean nothing except Pātaliputra and "far-off" indicate "outlying towns" or at least other places in the empire.

A general point supporting a uniform interpretation of "here" is that the moment we admit the possibility of an interpretation varying from context to context we land ourselves in uncertainty and controversy. Different scholars have held different opinions about one and the same "here": thus, to Mookerji,⁴ the "here" of R.E. I is Pātaliputra, to Bhandarkar⁵ it is the palace or royal household, to others it is the whole empire or, broadly, the world.⁶ But if even acute scholars cannot agree, what would be the state of mind of average Indians, subjects of Aśoka, reading their great king's announcements? It is difficult to believe that Aśoka left them in doubt, drifting in argument. Either his "here"s clearly signified different things or they signified an identical place no matter how unclearly. If he intended a diversity of meaning he was under the obligation to be exact in his indication: if he was known to have intended the same place he could be as careless as he liked. The very fact that scholars can differ shows his carelessness and this carelessness is, paradoxically, the proof that there was an understanding between him and his common subjects.

If we start from Pātaliputra and adopt the yojana of Vh

1.Ibid., p. 20.

2.Ibid, p. 247.

3.Ibid., p. 370.

4.Aśoka, p. 107, note, 4.

5.Op. cit., p. 298, note 4.

6.Ibid.

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and understand the 600 yojanas to be concerned only with Amtiyoka and his associates, we have for these yojanas a distance of 1,500 miles from the capital. Of course, they are not to be counted as the crow flies: they must be thought of as lying along a road which could not have been quite straight. Pānini (V.1,77) evidently refers to such a road when he mentions Uttarapatha and of goods gathered by that route (Uttarapathena āhritam). "Within India," says Mookerji,¹ "this overland trade-route... must have passed through and linked up her chief cities mentioned by Pānini and Patanjali..." Both Patanjali (commenting on Pānini's rule III.3,136) and the author of the Kāsīkā speak of inland journeys along it, the former naming Saketa and the latter Kausambi as the starting-point of a journey which ended with Pātaliputra.² Some idea of what the road must have been like can be had from the description left us by the Greek historians of India in the immediately post-Alexandrine period. Mookerji³ writes: "We may note the interesting reference made by the Greek writers to the royal road leading from the north-west frontier to Pātaliputra, the precursor of the modern Grand Trunk Road, with a length of 10,000 stades - about 1,150 miles. Megasthenes must have travelled down this road in joining his duties at Pātaliputra as ambassador. 'Every mile of this road was marked by a stone indicating the by-roads and distances.'" Nor is this all that we learn from the Greeks. The road is described⁴ as one existing from earlier times and as having been constructed in eight stages. The first of them started from Peukelaotis (Sanskrit Puskalāvati or Puskaravati, the capital of Gandhāra, modern Charsadda), lying a little to the north-west of Aśoka's Taksaśila, almost at the location of Shāhbāzgarhī. Thus we know that out of the 1,500 miles 1,150 would lie within Aśoka's own empire. Just 350 more remain and they would be precisely the land-route distance we should need in order to put his Yavana rāja Amtiyoka and his associates where they ought to be between his empire and Persia.

However, if we suppose "here" in R.E. XIII to mean Aśoka's empire and if 600 yojanas have to be counted away from it on the west or north-west instead of making them cover foreign lands

1.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 334.

2.Ibid.

3."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 67.

4.Mookerji, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 330.

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both on that side and in the south, we still do not need to move towards Asia Minor and Europe. Going from the north-west frontier through Afghānistān to the territories beyond the Hindu-kush mountains, we can cover by 1,500 miles of winding road from Aśoka's north-west a terrain which could easily have been the field of his foreign missions. Majumdar¹ tells us: "We have evidence to show that Buddhism, and along with it Indian culture, was spread among the Parthians, the Yueh-chi, the Sogdians and various other peoples of Central Asia before the beginning of the Christian era... The Greek writers always cite Bactriana with India and state that thousands of Brāhmanas and Samanas (Buddhist monks) reside there. The recent excavations in Chinese Turkestan have revealed the existence of a large number of flourishing cities with rich sanctuaries... Buddhism was the prevailing religion of all these localities." All the Central-Asian documents found are supposed to be of post-Christian date, but it is of great interest to note that Khotan, which "seems to be a particularly important centre of Indian colonisation", is said in Tibetan tradition to have had its royal dynasty founded by Kustana, a son of Aśoka, and in other Buddhist traditions to have been colonised and ruled by Kunala, another of Aśoka's sons.² Aśoka's five rājas may have included, besides Indo-Irānian ones, some Central-Asian.

Whatever way we look at the problem of these rājas, there is no call to bring in post-Alexandrine Greek kings. And their rejection imports a total unity into the Aśokan passages: the Yonas within the empire who cannot have been Greeks but were degraded Kshatriyas totally Irānianized are uniform now with the Yona rāja Amtiyoka. Arhtiyoka's territory may be considered as an extension of the Yona country in India's north-west and as holding a people akin to or continuous with the Yonas of the empire.

If we may borrow for our purposes from the Buddhist Mahāniddesa³ a term whose exact indication is yet unknown, Amtiyoka was the king of the "Parāmayonas", the farther Yonas. The term is rather apt in view of the one in the Mahābhārata (11.27.23-26) about the extension of the Kambojas: the "Parāmakambojas." According to the Epic (VII.4.5), the Kambojas had their home in

1."Colonial and Cultural Expansion", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 635-639

2.Ibid., p. 640.

3.Pp. 155, 415 (The Pali Text Society).

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Rājāpura. Raychaudhuri¹ comments: "The association of the Kambojas with the Gandhāras enables us to identify this Rājāpura with the territory of that name mentioned by Yuan Chwung [=Hiuen-Tsang] which lay to the south or south-west of Punch." The Parāmakambojas would seem to have been where the geographer Ptolemy (1st century A.D.) put the "Tambyzoi" (identified by Lévi as "Kamboja") - a place to the south of the Oxus. Just as the Yonas of Aśoka's empire neighboured the Kambojas in it, may we not surmise that Amtiyoka's subjects whom we have dubbed the Parāmayonas neighboured the Parāmakambojas?

If we may, we can move on to another plausible conjecture. The immediate neighbourhood of Amtiyoka's territory to that of the Prāmakambojas could prompt us to take as king of the latter the rāja who is the first to be named after the phrase "Param cha tena Amtiyokend''' ("and beyond this Amtiyoka"): Turāmaya.

Thus two out of the five Aśokan kings under discussion would acquire, besides "a name", "a local habitation". But we should not be dogmatic. It is not necessary for our ends to locate any of these rājas in a particular spot: it is only necessary to show Aśokan evidence to be all of a piece and such that its reference to "Yona" in any context would not connect Aśoka with the period after Alexander.

Whatever way we look at the problem of his rājas, strength flows from every quarter to uphold our contra-Greek attitude to their names. Nothing invalidates our finding "Antiochus" indecisive, "Ptolemy" impossible, "Antigonus" inaccurate, "Magas" arbitrary and "Alexander" both unlikely and superfluous.

Appendix

We have dismissed the talk of a rhotacist tendency, in even a sporadic form, in the Girnār, Shāhbāzgarhī and Mānsehrā versions to balance, in however slight a degree, the Kālsī's wholesale contrary trait. To bear out this dismissal in detail, we need a short discussion.

The idea is sometimes entertained that the word arabh four times in the Shāhbāzgarhī, Mānsehrā and Girnār versions of R.E. I and the word arambha twice in these versions of R.E. IV and

1. Op. cit., pp. 148-49.

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once there in R.E. XI are rhotacisms from ālabh and ālarhbha found in the Kālsī versions. There is no justification for this idea. Of course, ālabh or ālambha in the sense of "slaughter for sacrifice" is a legitimate Sanskrit term. It has also the sense of "killing, slaughter" and Monier-Williams (A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 150) dubs ārambha erroneous for ālambha in such a sense. But, when ārabh and ārambha occur seven times between themselves at three distinct places and not at all sporadically and exceptionally but systematically and inevitably, the simplest and most rational hypothesis is surely the bonafide use of them as genuine forms by the scribes concerned: they are not a rhotacist conversion from ālabh and ālambha in a manner which can never be expected in versions where both r and / have their own rights and where, as a rule, there is no change of r to l or vice versa.

Besides, ālabh (Monier-Williams, p. 153) carries always "sacrificing" as an alternative sense to "killing" and every Sanskritist knows that together with ālambha it generally associates "sacrifice" with "killing". But R.E. I (Bhandarkar, op. cit., p. 297) speaks three times of killing for food: no sacrificial association is there, and it is ārabh, as Bhandarkar (p. 299, note 7) points out, that has this exclusive meaning and Monier-Williams says the same, as we saw, about ārambha. In fact, when this edict at its very start speaks of slaughtering and sacrificing, it employs two distinct words in all the versions, words formed from ārabh on the one hand and on the other from hotavya (="to be offered or sacrificed") (Monier-Williams, p. 1301). Thus a word unassociated in itself with sacrifice seems deliberately employed because a special one for the other idea is brought in. This means an intentional avoidance of ālabh. So, instead of ārabh and ārambha being rhotacisms, ālabh and ālambha in Aśoka's usage seem to be not legitimate alternatives but dialectical changes in which l does duty for r. Barua, no less than Bhandarkar, treats ārabh and ārambha as natural forms in Aśoka, needing no comment (Aśoka and His Inscriptions, Part II, pp. 51, 52; Part I, pp. 139, 269).

We may add that Monier-Williams himself speaks only of these forms being erroneous and does not at all suggest a dialectal change - a rhotacism - as causing them. In explanation of the label "erroneous" he puts the letter L which, as p. xxxv clarifies, means "Lexicographers (i.e., a word or meaning which, although given in native lexicons, has not yet been met with in any published text)."

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But actually we have in Aśoka's edicts both the forms. And Barua (Part II, pp. 70, 92) quotes, as parallels to Aśoka's pranarambho (R.E. IV), the phrases "bijagāmalbhūtagāmasamārambha, pasu-nam cha samdrāmbho" from the Buddhist canonical work Digha I, p. 5, the phrase "pasunam samārambha" from the Buddhist Sutta-nipdta, 311, and the phrase "mriga-pasu-pakshi-byāla-matsyārambhān" from Kautilya's Arthaśāstra, IV. 3 (prose treatise). Evidently, ārambha has been used in perfect good faith as an authentic locution and the very question whether it is a rhotacist product appears irrelevant. What applies to it must apply by analogy to ārabh.

4

When was R.E. XIII Inscribed? - Deb's Logical Revision

R.E. XIII is said to have been inscribed when all the 5 foreign kings were alive to Aśoka's knowledge. We have quoted Thomas's inference from the chronology of Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magas, Antigonus and Alexander (of Epirus) that the edict was not long posterior to the year 258 B.C. Aśoka's accession is usually dated to c. 269 B.C. Can we show that the edict in question was inscribed just when, in view of those 5 kings, it should have been? If we can, at least some presumption may be created against us that they might be Greeks. Emile Senart suggested from what he considered the internal evidence of the edict that 13 years were the interval between it and Aśoka's coronation. Such an interval would suit very well the proponents of the modern chronology. Of course it would not be any kind of decisive hammer-blow to the arguments we have adduced but it certainly would not leave these arguments absolutely at ease. A vague touch of the unresolved may linger. On the other hand, if we can substantially undermine Senart's suggestion, we shall set the proposed Greek kings hanging totally in mid-air, for the conjunction seen between them and the date of the edict will vanish.

Bhandarkar,¹ no champion of the traditional-Purānic time-scheme, has yet taken cognizance of a cogent objection against Senart by Hrit Krishna Deb, author of Aśoka's Dhammalipis. He sums up the objection as follows:

1. Aśoka, p. 50. fn.l.

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"Pillar Edict VII is dated [by Aśoka himself] in the twenty-seventh year [of his reign] and is admitted by all to be a resumé of the multifarious measures which Aśoka adopted up till that year for the dissemination of his Dharhma. It is puerile to suppose that P.E. VII is a mere resumé of the domestic measures he adopted for his subjects, and not also of what he did for foreign peoples. The field of Aśoka's activities is all mankind, and he never draws any factitious distinction between his subjects and foreign peoples so far as Dharhma is concerned, his ideal being that of Chakravarti Dharmika Dharmarāja. The carrying out of philanthropic works (R.E. II) and the propagation of Dharhma (R.E. XIII) in the realms of the Greek rulers are such important things that Aśoka would most certainly have made mention of them in P.E. VII, if he had heard, when it was engraved, that they had met with any appreciable measure of success in those foreign countries. The omission is significant, and shows that Rock Edicts II and XIII could not have been promulgated prior to P.E. VII, that is, the 27th regnal year."

Vincent Smith,¹ though a follower of Senart, was still aware of the difficulty and confessed: "I cannot explain the failure to commemorate the foreign missions which occupy a prominent place in the Rock Edicts."

Bhandarkar's Three Arguments for Deb

Bhandarkar adds three arguments in Deb's support. The first points out that Senart's "thirteen years after coronation" marks only the lower limit: what is proved is merely that Rock Edict XIII could not have been promulgated before this time and hardly that it could not have been promulgated after it. "It is true," says Bhandarkar² about the Fourteen Rock Edicts, "that no less than four different dates are found mentioned in this series (R.E. IV, V, VIII and XIII), but it is nowhere stated that this whole set of Dharhma-lipis or any component thereof was inscribed in any particular year. They are dates of the different events alluded to in the different parts of this series, and not of the actual engraving. The latest of these is the thirteenth year of Aśoka's reign, and this has been proposed by Senart as the date when the fourteen Rock

1.The Early History of India, p. 169.

2.Op. cit., pp. 286-87.

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Edicts were incised. The French savant, it is true, has been followed by other scholars, both Indian and European. But this date cannot reasonably be taken as the actual date of the inscribing. All that we can logically conclude is, not that the whole set was engraved in the thirteenth regnal year, but only that it could not have been engraved before that year. We have, therefore, to fix the date for this series on independent grounds."

The second argument¹ runs more directly in favour of Deb's conclusion: "After giving the date of its promulgation P.E. VII ends thus: '...This the Beloved of the gods saith: this Dharhmalipi should be inscribed where there are stone pillars or stone tablets so that it may long endure.' This clearly shows that whatever records [Aśoka] had already engraved were engraved on stone pillars and stone tablets only. There is indeed no reference here to the inscribing of Dharhma-lipis on parvatas or rocks. The idea does not seem to have occurred to him till after the twenty-seventh year of his reign, the date of Pillar Edict VII. This shows that all his Rock Edicts, whether they are the Fourteen Rock Edicts or the Minor Rock Edicts, must have been engraved when the work of inscribing the Seven Pillar Edicts came to an end."

The essential reasonableness of such a sweeping conclusion comes home to us after Bhandarkar² has reflected on the word likh: "...the word likh which means 'to engrave' also means 'to write', and sometimes it is very difficult to understand which sense is intended. Thus R.E. IV has idam lekhāpitarh twice, e.g., in Girnār (J) and (K). Here it no doubt seems tempting to take likh in the sense of 'to engrave'. But if we do so, we shall be compelled to suppose that while this edict was inscribed in the 12th, the next was in the 13th year, because, as a matter of fact, R.E. IV is dated in the 12th and R.E. V in the 13th year of Aśoka's reign. And Senart has adduced some solid grounds to prove that this series of Rock Edicts forms one ensemble and was not engraved in successive additions. Similarly, there is nothing to show that the term likh is necessarily used in the sense of 'to engrave' in the case of iyarh dhammalipi likhitā which occurs about the end of R.E. XIII. It seems safer and better to take likh in the sense of 'to write' in all cases except where there are definite indications pointing to the other sense, such e.g., as where the words chira-thitikā-hotu ['that

1.Ibid., p. 288.

2.Ibid., pp. 283-84.

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it may long endure' or 'in order that it may endure for a long time'] occur as they do in R.E.s V and VI and P.E.s II and VII."

Bhandarkar adds: "In one instance even the engraver, we find, confounded these two senses of the word. Thus in R.E. I, the Dh[auli] and Jaug[uda] versions have parvatasi before lekhāpita in the very first line, and one is therefore inclined to translate the latter by 'caused to be engraved' instead of merely 'caused to be written'. It seems, however, that this reference to parvata was not in the original draft of Aśoka and was inserted locally when it was incised at Dh. and Jaug. For in the same edict further on are repeated the words iyarh dhammalipi.... lekhitā, just where Aśoka says that two peacocks and one deer alone shall be killed for the royal table. He could not have said this, if lekhita had meant engraved', for this series, viz., the Fourteen Rock Edicts, must have been inscribed at different times as their find-spots are situated at different distances from Pātaliputra. They could not have been engraved at one and the same time, that is, at any particular time when Aśoka could make that reference to his royal table. This is possible only if by lekhita is meant 'the writing' and issuing of that edict, because it is only when the edict was drawn up in the palace that he could say that only two pea-fowls and one deer were being slaughtered that day in the royal kitchen. This shows that the reference to parvata at the beginning of R.E. I in Dh. and Jaug. was inserted by local officers at the capital town of Kalihga without understanding what the following word likhāpitā really meant there."

Seeing that the question when the different edicts were inscribed is far from easy to answer in many cases, we should do well to give weight to the formula Bhandarkar quotes: chira-thitikā-hotu. This formula points definitely to engraving on stone, be it rock, pillar or slab; but no regnal year is associated with it in R.E.s V and VI, while R.E. IV's regnal year which is associated with the word "likh" is not associated with an expressed plan for the long endurance of the message, a plan which would directly imply rock-engraving. Hence no sign exists in any R.E. to give the lie to what Bhandarkar reads in P.E. VII's omission of the word parvata, and to prove that any R.E. was engraved before Aśoka's 27th year.

Barua¹ has raised a voice of dissent over likh: "Professor

1. Aśoka and His Inscriptions, Part II, p. 11.

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Bhandarkar opines that wherever a record is said to have been written with a view to its permanence, there the expression 'caused to be written' must he taken to mean 'caused to be engraved.' I have sought to show that wherever a dhammalipi is said to have been written there are phrases to indicate Aśoka's motive to see it long endure (Inscr., ii, p. 22). Behind the very idea of causing something to be engraved in stone was the certainty of its durability (cf. Aiiguttara I., p. 283: pāsāna lekhā chiratthitikā). When Aśoka by way of an apology said (R.E. XIV) that it was not possible to cause Dhammalipis to be 'written' all over his empire owing to its vastness, he must have meant by 'written' engraved, promulgated."

Apart from the plausible suggestion of "engraved" by "written" in the phrase from R.E. XIV, one is not certain what exactly Barua is driving at. Does he mean that whenever Aśoka writes something he implies the wish for its long duration and consequently for its being engraved on long-enduring stone? In that case likh would invariably connote the desire for engraving. This may be so, but the difference can still remain between an explicit and an implicit reference to getting a thing engraved, and the latter will imply an unengraved written order. Barua¹ does not appear to deny such a difference when at one place he touches on the chronology of Minor Rock Edict (Rūpnāth, Sahasram) in relation to P.E. VII: "...Whatever the actual date of the dhamma-savana [religious message], the date of its engraving is posterior to the erection of pillars by Aśoka..." Here sāvana connotes the still unengraved writing. A little later Barua has the phrase: "R.E. VI speaks indeed of giving verbal orders for announcement or proclamation (srāvāpakam)..." Here word of mouth followed by document to be read is the sense, and whether the document be intended to persist permanently or not, Aśoka in the same edict evidently feels the need and the advisability of engraving to ensure permanence, for he ends: "And what little effort I make, - what is it for? (in order) that I may be free from debt to creatures, that I may render some happy here and that they may gain heaven in the next world. For this purpose have I caused this document of Dhamma to be engraved: what for? - in order that it may endure for a long time and that my sons, grandsons and great grandsons

1. Ibid., p. 15.

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may similarly follow me for the welfare of the whole world...."¹

Ultimately, Bhandarkar's distinction is to be adjuged by (1) concentrating on P.E. VII's omission of parvata, (2) realising that in general any vocable in the R.E.s which is understood to connote "engraved" may linguistically be just as well construed "written", and (3) attending to the peculiar contradiction between R.E.s IV and V, in the context of Senart's demonstration of the ensemble engraving of the 14 R.E.s, if likh is not equivalent to "written". This triple test leaves Bhandarkar fundamentally unrefuted by Barua.

Bhandarkar's third argument² is related again to Aśoka's engraving plans. "Aśoka," he writes, "does not seem to have been able to carry out his whole programme of inscribing his edicts. He orders P.E. VII to be engraved on stone pillars and stone slabs. But, so far as we can see, it was incised only on one pillar, viz., the Delhi-Topra Pillar. As to stone slabs, none has been found with this edict inscribed on it. Probably none was engraved. Similarly, he intended inscribing Minor Rock Edicts on stone columns, but this too does not seem to have been done. It does appear after all that Aśoka commenced this work rather late in his life and was not thus able to carry through his whole programme of inscribing his Dharhma-lipis."

Bhandarkar's reference to Aśoka's intention to inscribe Minor Rock Edicts on stone columns can lead us to formulate a fourth argument on his behalf. Earlier we have quoted a phrase from his translation³ of the Rūpnāth Minor Rock Edict: "have this matter engraved on rocks. Here and far off where there is any stone column, have it engraved on the stone column." P.E. VII, aware of stone pillars, is unaware of rocks. Now both rocks and stone pillars are in sight. Is this not a sign of the Rūpnāth Minor R.E. being later than P.E. VII? With it a firm ground can be thought of as cleared for other R.E.s to be later as well.

Mookerji versus Bhandarkar

Mookerji has made an attempt at controverting Bhandarkar by way of refuting his whole position about the Rock Edicts. We must

1.Bhandarkar, op. cit., p. 316.

2.Ibid., pp. 289-90.

3.Ibid., p. 370.

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in fairness quote it. "Arguments from silence," says Mookerji,¹ "are always unreliable and in the present case seem to be specially so. What is stated about the scope or intention of P.E. VII is not stated in the Edict itself, but is a mere assumption. It is inferred from the contents of the Edict. The contents would rather lead one to infer that the Edict was meant to be a resumé of the various domestic measures introduced by Aśoka for the moral uplift of his own people, and not of what he had done for foreign peoples. All these, which are also mentioned in the R.E. [II, V and XIII] are mentioned in this Edict with a degree of elaboration and generalisation that is almost a sure indication that it was issued later than the R.E. The chief officers mentioned in the R.E., viz. the Rajukas and the Dharma-Mahāmātras, are also mentioned in P.E. VII; and the function of these newly created Dharma-Mahāmātras which are fully described in the R.E. are summarised in P.E. VII; the information about the public works of utility consisting of 'wells and trees planted along the roads for the needs of both man and beast', as given in R.E.II, is elaborated and supplemented in P.E. VII in a manner that undoubtedly points to the latter being later than the former; lastly, as instances of generalisation and reference in the P.E. VII to the R.E. may be mentioned the statement that for the spread of the Dharma Aśoka had religious messages (dhamma-sāvanāni) proclaimed (sāvdpitāni) and religious injunctions (dhammānusathini vividhāni) ordained (ānapitāni); along with his Pillars of Piety (dhammathambhāni) and the special officers to preach and expound (paliyovadisamti pavithali-samti) the Dharhma. There is also the other generalised statement in the same Edict that the growth in Dharma of the people may be accomplished in two ways, by Dhamma-niyama, by regulation, and by Nijhati, reflection. Thus the contents of P.E. VII, viewed as a whole, show without doubt that it is meant to sum up Aśoka's moral measures for his people and, as such, it was the last of his Edicts. Above all, arguments from the inclusion or omission of certain matters in the two classes of Edicts cannot be conclusive. Does not Aśoka himself warn us on the point - 'Nacha sarvam sarvatra ghatītam', - 'nor is all suitable in all places'?"

1. Aśoka, pp. 42-3.

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A Refutation of Mookerji

In appraising the force of Mookerji's criticism we may begin by noting that Barua¹ who does not see eye to eye with Bhandarkar is yet unconvinced that Pillar Edict VII is the last edict of Aśoka. He finds reason to place the two inscriptions that are called Separate Rock Edicts later than it. And he also places what is known as Minor Rock Edict between it and the first six Pillar Edicts. Bhandarkar therefore does not appear to be completely vulnerable at Mookerji's hands. Is he vulnerable even where Barua and Mookerji agree? Are there factors in Bhandarkar's favour, which they have failed to reckon with? We are concerned mainly with Rock Edicts II and XIII. In relation to them we may say, first of all, that if Aśoka's domestic measures for the sake of dhamma deserve in his twenty-seventh year a resumé and if the foreign missions date so far back as his thirteenth year we have every right to expect a resumé of them also at more or less the same time. If P.E. VII was meant to be confined to domestic measures of dhamma and hence not to summarize the foreign ones, then where is the summary of the latter? The absence of such a summary is a vacuum that demands to be filled. We have here no simple argument from silence: the silence is logically significant and suggestive - and the vacuum we have spoken of can be filled only by shifting the two edicts from their supposed place to after P.E. VII. There is no summary of the foreign missions either in P.E. Vll or separately because there could have been no success worth mentioning earlier and summarizing afterwards: the success must have come later and was embodied in what may be regarded as at once announcement and resumé.

Mookerji's argument from "elaboration and generalisation", though not quite negligible, is far from happy, for it is not consistently enforced by him. If elaboration is, as he holds on comparing P.E. VII and R.E. II, a sign of the former being subsequent, we should consider R.E. V later than P. E. VII because, on his own showing, the description of the newly-created Dharma-Mahāmātras" is full in the former and skeletonic in the latter. Whether a piece of information is full or skeletonic is hardly a vital issue: both are consistent with the nature of a resumé. What a resumé is essentially intended to do is to gather together scat-

1. Aśoka and His Inscriptions. Part II, pp. 10-18.

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tered things in a final totting up: it may discharge this function in any way it likes. Nor is it always necessary that for it to mention things the things must already have been mentioned elsewhere. If a new work has been done after the mention of several others in earlier edicts, it may figure straight away in the resumés as an additional feature. All that is needed is previous execution rather than previous mention: Aśoka is not gathering up things so much from his edicts as from his life. And Mookerji admits this when he. talks of information being "supplemented". So the fact that P.E. VII informs us about "wells and trees planted along the roads for the needs of both men and beast" should not make us expect a similar piece of information before Aśoka's twenty-seventh year. An edict like R.E. II which does contain such information is not necessarily earlier than P.E. VII. It may very well be later and repeat the information if a special context calls for repetition - as evidently the context of R.E. II does with its combination of the foreign works and the domestic. As for generalizations about the proclamation of religious messages and the ordainment of religious injunctions and special officers to preach and expound the dhamma, they can only involve that the matter of some Rock Edicts precede in a written form P.E. VII and not that P.E. VII was subsequent to the engraving of them. Bhandarkar's distinction between the two meanings of likh should be remembered.

The plea that, since Aśoka warns us that all is not suitable in all places, we should not make much of inclusion or omission of certain matters in the two classes of edicts - the plea is as weak in the present case as the playing down of the argument from silence. All depends on the particular situation in which inclusion or omission is done. And against Mookerji's closing quotation from R.E. XIV (Girnār) we may pit another from the same source: "Puna puna vitum tasa tasa athasa madhurataya kimti tatha pad pajetha" - "Something is said again and again for the sweetness of the topics concerned..." Surely, to a king who said in the Kalinga R.E. I (Dhauli), "All men are my children", if the work of dhamma had been accomplished abroad before P.E. VII, it would have been sweet enough for a resumé repetition just as much as dhamma-work achieved at home.

Mookerji's answer to Bhandarkar cannot be pronounced sufficiently effective. And it loses whatever small value it may theoretically have here and there when we weigh against it some consi-

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derations relating to the query: "What number of years could the foreign missions have taken to reach the results mentioned in R.E.s II and XIII?" Mookerji¹ himself says that the missionary activity in the foreign countries must date from an earlier time than the year assigned to these edicts and more so because it is described in the edicts as having been successful and borne fruit. Face to face with the statement in R. E. XIII that the Kaliriga war, whose cruelties turned Aśoka's mind actively and enthusiastically towards Buddhism, was waged in his 8th regnal year, Mookerji who puts this edict in Aśoka's 13th year knows that he cannot have had more than 5 years for the development of the successful results. Five years seem too few to us, but Mookerji finds them adequate and we may grant that they cannot be immediately dismissed. What can be said by us legitimately is that Mookerji, on his own premises, is illogical in allowing even as many as five years on the evidence of the edicts. Apropos of a statement in R.E. V, he² has the following to tell us.

When Aśoka "had been consecrated thirteen years" he instituted "a special body of officers... called by the new and appropriate title of Dharma-Mahāmātras.... The activities of this department extended over a wide field, even beyond the limits of his direct jurisdiction or administration.... The department had also to send out some officers as Dutas, envoys or ambassadors, carrying Aśoka's religious message to foreign countries both in the north and south". The point now is: If Aśoka's special dhamma-work commenced after the appointment of the Dharma-Mahāmātras and if they alone exercised the office of sending out religious ambassadors to foreign countries and if they were appointed only in the thirteenth year of his reign, how could Aśoka's missionary activity in these countries be described, in an edict promulgated in the very year, as having been successful and borne fruit in a spectacular manner? Assuredly, the time of less than a year is preposterously short. But nothing longer can be allowed if the edict came out in the thirteenth year which is the earliest possible for the origin of the Dūtas. Here Senart's theory meets with a reductio ad absurdum.

In another context Mookerji³ himself has scored a similar point.

1 Aśoka. p. 32.

2.Ibid., p. 29.

3.Indian Culture, Vol. I, pp. 66-68.

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About the translations and interpretations of a certain passage in Minor Rock Edict, where Aśoka mentions an achievement of his own and offers himself as an encouraging example to even the least, Mookerji has declared: "All these translations and interpretations, however literal or true to text, do not yield much sense or significance. They only agree in ascribing to Aśoka the credit of achieving the impossible. It is claimed for him that within the short space of 'a little more than a year' he was able to convert the wild tribes of India to Brāhmanism and to impart to them a knowledge of its gods. It is also as an alternative claimed that within that short interval he was able to make the millions of Indians distinctly religious and godly, or to abolish the battle of creeds, the strife of sects, for which India is notorious to this day. In my opinion, these interpretations, besides condemning themselves by suggestions of the impossible, do a great injustice to the character of Aśoka by letting him appear as a man given to vainglorious boasting." So Mookerji chooses to give a "subjective" interpretation: he makes Aśoka say, "By a little more than a year's exertion, lo! I have made such progress: it is, indeed, the men in Jambudvīpa [the best country, according to the sacred texts, for spirtitual life] who could thus have commerce with gods in such a short time. But let it not be understood that such progress is only for the great, like me..." Now, if a year's religious propaganda is taken to be absurdly inadequate for turning godlike the entire people of just one country, India, or even for making the wilder tribes acquainted with the gods or for harmonizing the warring creeds, how infinitely unreasonable it is to believe Aśoka to be recording a resounding triumph in dharhma-work not only at home but abroad in five countries in less than a year! Here we cannot even choose a "subjective" interpretation. We have either to accept him literally and objectively as claiming the impossible and hence acting as a champion among fatuous braggarts or else dismiss unreservedly the thirteenth year for R.E.s II and XIII.

Mookerji does not touch at all on Bhandarkar's gloss on Aśoka's engraving plans, to which we on our own have sought to bring extra strength. P.E. VII knows only stone pillars: it does not have its eye on rocks, whereas the Rūpnāth Minor R.E. mentions both rocks and stone columns. A before and an after in time seem pointedly suggested as between P.E. VII and R.E.s. In the present context he has not even tried to retort: "If P.E. VII ignores rocks,

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does not your minor R.E. ignore stone slabs? Does not this tend to indicate its earlier existence and tend to blunt your point and render it irrelevant?" But Mookerji elsewhere has tackled the issue in an indirect way, and Barua has met his position. After controverting Hultsch's contention that this Minor R.E. connects with the events of Aśoka's 10th year after accession and that R.E. XIV which is ascribed to the 13th year must have meant the text of this inscription, Barua¹ writes:

"Professor Mookerji employs a much subtler argument to prove an early date of M.R.E., namely, that when it was promulgated, the engraving of a record on a rock or a stone-pillar was just an idea and not a fait accompli. But this is falsified by the fact that the direction as to engraving on Rock or Pillar, occurring at the end of M.R.E. (Rū[pnāth], Sa[hasarām]) is in language and effect the same as that at the end of P.E. VII... Comparing them, none can fail to notice that the direction appended to M.R.E. presupposes the existence of rocks and stone-pillars, while that appended to P. E. VII presupposes the existence of stone-pillars and stone-slabs as engraving material. The direction in M.R.E. does not suggest the use of stone-slabs as engraving material, but that in P.E. VII does, and the reason undoubtedly is that already prior to the engraving of P.E. VII these were used as material for the engraving of the Bhābru Edict."

One may adjoin two further considerations. Stone-slabs, also called stone-blocks, are an item of much less importance than rocks or pillars and their mention or non-mention is not particularly significant. Besides, Minor Rock Edict, which is in 10 recensions, has itself one of its recensions - that at Bairāt - on a slab or block of stone near the place where the Bhābru Edict on a small stone block stood before its removal to the Indian Museum, Calcutta.² So there should really be no question of M.R.E. not knowing of stone-slabs.

Perhaps a final effort will be made to date all the R.E.s earlier than P.E. VII by citing Barua's statement:³ "The Rock Edicts speak nowhere of the stone-pillars (silāthambā)." Here the decisive question is "Do the R.E.s speak at all of any engraving material?" If they do not, their non-mention of stone-pillars has

1.Op. dr..

2.Ibid., p. 5.

3.Ibid., p. 13.

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no relevance to our discussion. Bhandarkar¹ informs us that they do not refer to any specific material but only tell us at times of Aśoka's engraving them in stone for the purpose of making them last. So - "stone" being a blanket-term - even the final effort fails. And it is illuminating to note the reason Bhandarkar gives for the non-mention of any specific material. It comes up apropos of the question whether the Fourteen Rock Edicts or the Minor Rock Edicts were first inscribed. Bhandarkar² writes: "... it deserves to be noticed, as we have seen, that in the Sahasram and Rūpnāth epigraphs Aśoka orders that edict to be inscribed on a parvata, and on a stone pillar wherever it exists. The phrase 'on a stone pillar wherever it exists' shows that these objects were engraved after he had set up his pillars. This also shows that the idea of inscribing parvata or rocks was new to him at that time. It seems therefore that soon after the pillars were engraved Aśoka took up the work of incising Minor Rock Edicts, which must have been followed by that of the Fourteen Rock Edicts. When the latter series was being inscribed, the idea of engraving rocks as well as pillars had become so familiar that Aśoka makes absolutely no reference at all to such material, he makes the general remark that those (Fourteen) Rock Edicts were engraved on stone in order that they might endure permanently."

A psychological sequence is conjured up vis-à-vis Aśoka's attention to the various kinds of material for edict-engraving. Thus one more point is scored in favour of putting R.E.s II and XIII after P.E. VII. In summing up the discussion we may quote Bhandar-kar's words:³ "We are... compelled to infer that Rock Edics II and XIII, in fact the whole set of the Fourteen Rock Edicts, came to be engraved after the Seven Pillar Edicts were promulgated." In connection with his reference to "the whole" we may repeat his statement:⁴ "Senart has adduced some solid grounds to prove that this series of Rock Edicts forms one ensemble and was not engraved in successive additions."

All in all, the case for Deb's contention is quite substantial. Bhandarkar⁵ reverts to it and reaffirms it before trying to fix the

1.Op. cit., p. 289.

2.Ibid., pp. 288-89.

3.Ibid., pp. 287-88.

4.Ibid., p. 283.

5.Ibid., p. 287.

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date for the Fourteen Rock Edicts on the basis of the impossibility of R.E.s II and XIII having been engraved before P.E. VII, which is obviously a summing-up of Aśoka's Dhamma-work before his 27th regnal year. "But we find absolutely no reference made in it to the works of charity he executed in and outside India and which have been described in Rock Edict II or to the successes which crowned his missionary efforts, as we learn from Rock Edict XIII, not only in his empire but also in the dominions of his neighbouring sovereigns, Greek and Indian. Both these matters are of such paramount importance in Aśoka's estimation that he would never have failed to make mention of them in Pillar Edict VII, if he had known about them before the twenty-seventh year, the date of that edict."

Revolutionary Consequences of Deb's Contention -

Bhandarkar's Futile Attempt at Readjustment

If we put Aśoka around the middle of the 3rd century B.C. and date his accession to c. 269 B.C. R.E.s II and XIII must be ascribed to c. (269-27 = ) 242 B.C. Then it becomes irrational to think in terms of Antiocbaus II, Ptolemy II, Magas, Antigonus and Alexander of Epirus as being all alive, as they have to be, along with Aśoka. In brief, even on the current chronology these Greek monarchs must be ruled out - and there are none others to be set in their place. With their exit, no excuse is left for this chronology at all.

Bhandarkar,¹ however, makes a gallant effort to save the chronology: "Supposing that both these Rock Edicts were issued in the twenty-eighth year, the date must correspond to a year when the five Greek rulers were alive. If Alikasumdara of Rock Edict XIII is Alexander of Epirus, this year would fall between 272 and 255, but if Alexander of Corinth is intended, then between 252 [his accession year] and 250 [the year in which Magas most probably died]. The latter supposition is more probable.² So we may take it that the twenty-eighth regnal year of Aśoka corresponds to 251 B.C. If this calculation is correct, Aśoka probably ascended the throne circa 279 B.C. Whatever the actual result of such a calculation may be, it is based upon two things, namely, the date of Rock

1 Ibid., pp. 50-51.

2. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1914. p. 945.

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Edicts II and XIII, and the identification of the Alikasumdara of the latter edict."

Bhandarkar has done his best in respect of those "two things", but "the actual result" of his calculation must play havoc with the modern historical perspective. If Aśoka ascended the throne c. 279 B.C., his father Bindusāra by the estimate which is lower than that of the Buddhist records would be king in (279+25=) 304 B.C. and Aśoka's grandfather Chandragupta would wear the crown, by the estimate accepted by modern historians, in (304+24=) 328 B.C. This is 2 years prior to Alexander the Great's invasion of India and anticipates by 7 years the most eligible date among our scholars for the coronation of Sandrocottus: 321 B.C. The Buddhist figures for the reigns, towards which our historians lean, would make Bindusāra king in (279+27 or 28=) 306 or 307 B.C. and Chandragupta in (306 or 307 +24=) 330 or 331 B.C., even if the Mahāvamsa's 34 years are corrected to 24 as usually done. How then are we to identify Sandrocottus with Chandragupta? And, when Seleucus Nicator attempted to invade India in c. 305 B.C., he must have confronted not the founder of the Mauryas but Bindusāra. Again, Megasthenes who from c. 302 B.C. stayed at the court of Palibothra (Pātaliputra) would have not Sandrocottus but his son as his royal host. All our historical data will have to be jettisoned.

Yes, neither the currently favoured time-scheme nor Bhandar-kar's emendation of it will help. With Aśoka's R.E. XIII, as well as his R.E. II, shifted, as it must be, beyond his 27th regnal year, he ceases to fit into the niche modern historical opinion gives him and the five foreign kings get de-Grecized. Deb's logic and the development from it by Bhandarkar reveal to an extreme degree what we have already laid bare acutely enough - the misfit of Aśoka and his 5 rājas in the post-Alexandrine century.

However, we shall not rudely brush aside all conceivable further objections to our new chronology but accord them full hearing and criticize each within its own particular universe of discourse. In that manner our reconstruction of India's ancient history will acquire a multiple concreteness.

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The Kandahār Inscription

We are now up against the last and, in some eyes, the greatest obstacle to any rejection of post-Alexandrine Greek kings as the rulers of the bordering dominions mentioned in Aśoka's R.E. XIII: the bilingual Aśokan inscription discovered in April 1958 at Kandahār. The obstacle may be summed up: "The two languages are Greek and Aramaic. The Greek is of the type current in the period c. 275-225 B.C. and the text in it is engraved above that in Aramaic. Linguistically the latter resembles in general the epigraphs of the Achaemenid empire in which the Aramaic is sprinkled with Irānian words. It may be taken to have continued the practice after this empire met its doom at the hands of Alexander the Great in 330 B.C., except that the Irānian words here have an Avestan - i.e., Mazdean religious - character. So in general it tallies very well with the chronological indication of the other text, and both of them put us pretty precisely in the post-Alexandrine era to which Aśoka has been assigned by modern historians who identify Sandrocottus of the Greek accounts with Chandragupta Maurya and the Aśokan R.E. XIII's five named rājas, of whom the first is the Yona rāja Arhtiyoka, with five of the Greek monarchs who ruled various parts of Alexander's empire in the wake of its founder's death."

J. Filliozat¹ compares the Kandahār inscription with Aśoka's R.E.s I and IV. Like R.E.I, it speaks of abstention from animal-slaughter and, like R.E. IV, it announces a new and more prosperous era by the establishment of a new behaviour consisting in cessation of animal-slaughter and in obedience to parents and elders. The sole difference between the two announcements is that R.E. IV enjoins good conduct towards Brāhmanas and Śramanas, while the bilingual inscription omits reference to them. As Brāhmanas and Śramanas are prominent again and again in Aśokan texts and would be most expected - nay, inevitable - in prescriptions as here of meritorious behaviour, their omission is too glaring to be accidental. Filliozat informs us that they are omitted because, as Aśoka himself declares in one version of R.E. XIII, they did not inhabit the Yona country and because the

1. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXIV, Part I, p. 1 ff.

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present inscription was engraved for the Yonas - the Yonas who are Greeks and who, by being Greeks, are without Brāhmanas and Śramanas. Filliozat further asserts that the find-spot of the inscription indicates the region of the Alexandria of Arachosia, the colony-city which Strabo (XV.2,9) has reported.

But those who are of Filliozat's mind have to account for the fact that these two religious orders are omitted from the Aramaic version no less than from the Greek. If the Greeks were the Yonas, who were the people addressed in Aramaic and why are they also treated as though they lived without Brāhmanas and Śramanas?

E. Benveniste¹ argues out three propositions, after reflecting on the Aśokan compound yonakambojesu in R.E. XIII, which seems to take the Yonas and the Kambojas together as one whole. The three propositions may be briefly stated thus:

1.The Yonas (Yavanas) within Aśoka's empire were the Greeks settled in the country of the Kambojas, with whom they -though culturally different - formed a single population.

2.The Kambojas were the Irānian autochthones, following the Mazdean religion, of the country round present-day Kandahār.

3.The Greek text of the inscription was intended for the Yonas, and the Aramaic for the Kambojas.

Against these three propositions, which are linked with Filliozat's stand, we may put up four of our own which are at utter variance with them as well as with that stand:

1.The Yonas within Aśoka's empire were not the Greeks and they did not form with the Kambojas a single population.

2.The Kambojas were not Irānians but Irānianized Indians who neither occupied the country round Kandahār nor followed completely the Mazdean religion.

3.The Greek text was intended for the Greeks and the Aramaic for the Yonas who, like the Kambojas, were Irānianized Indians but, unlike the Kambojas, inhabited the Kandahār region and were fully the followers of Mazdeanism.

4.Only the Aramaic text is Aśokan and it was set up in a much earlier age than the Greek, which was engraved in the period c. 275-255 B.C.

1. "Une bilingue gréco-araméene d'Aśoka", Section IV, Journal Asiatique, CCXVI, 1958, 1, Paris, pp. 47-48.

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Could the Aramaic Text have been for the Kambojas?

Benveniste assumes that Indian tradition knew the Kambojas as a foreign people. We have already seen the Manusamhitā (X.43-44) grouping them with some other tribes as degraded Kshatriyas, tribes who lost Vedic rites and customs and thereby became "Dasyus". The Mahābhārata (XIII. 33, 21) calls them an Indian people that became Vriśalas (degraded castes) from seeing no Brāhmanas. Buddhist literature too tells the same story, a loss of original Aryan customs leading to a barbarous state.¹ To clinch all this evidence against original foreignness, we may add Pusalker's pronouncement:² "The earliest mention of Kamboja occurs in the Vamśa Brāhmana of the Samaveda where a teacher Kamboja Aupamanyava is referred to. The sage Upamanya mentioned in the Rigveda (X. 102.9) is in all probability the father of the Kamboja teacher. From the fact that Kamboja Aupamanyava is stated to be a pupil of Madragara, Zimmer infers that the Kambojas and the Madras were close neighbours in north-western India. The speech of the Kāmbojas is referred to by Yāska as different from that of other Aryans and Grierson sees in this reference the Irānian affinities of the Kāmbojas, but the fact that the Kamboja teachers were reputed for their Vedic learning shows them to have been Vedic Aryans, so that Kāmboja was an Aryan settlement. Later on Kāmbojas settled in the north-west of the Indus, and were the Kambujiyas of the Old Persian inscriptions."

The last point is an error, since Benveniste³ categorically tells us in all honesty that although he sees the Kambojas as Irānians the Persians do not know of the name Kamboja at all and he rejects the rapprochement proposed by J. Charpentier between the Kambojas and the name of the Persian king Cambyses, Old Persian Kambujiya. But all the rest of Pusalker's information is incontrovertible. And what Benveniste categorically tells us is extra evidence against the Kambojas being not Indian but Irānian.

On two points Benveniste relies for Irānianizing the Kambojas. First, the passage of the Jātaka which we have dealt with and which ascribes a certain Mazdean custom to "many Kambojas", Kambojakānam... bahunnam. Surely, not all Kambojas and not all

1.Tribes in Ancient India, p. 7.

2."Aryan Settlements in India", The Vedic Age, pp. 259-60.

3.Op. cit., p. 48.

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of Mazdeanism are involved here. The evidence is markedly insufficient. Benveniste's second point is connected with Grier-son's observation on the Kambojas' speech. Benveniste cites Yāska's Nirukta (II, 2.8) to the effect that the Kambojas spoke a language with Irānian words in it (e.g., śavati, "to go"). But does Yāska imply that this language was Aramaic with Irānian words strewing it? Not at all. His distinction of the Kambojas' speech from other speeches known to him can only mean that this speech, as distinguished from those others, carried Irānian words within its Indianness. What Grierson¹ himself deduced from Yāska's context and other data was that the Kambojas must have used either Sanskrit with an infusion of Irānianized words to which they gave Indian inflexions or else a language partly Indo-Aryan and partly Irānian. Grierson is pretty far from Benveniste's linguistic generalization. His Kambojas would never qualify as the people for whom Aśoka got the Aramaic version engraved.

And we should remember Agrawala's remark:² "The Nirukta... is a commentary on a traditional list of Vedic words known as the Nighantu." The Nighantu itself (11.14) lists śavati among the verbs meaning "to go". So the implication of Yāska's statement is: śavati in the sense "to go" is an ancient Vedic verb once in general Indian use but now restricted to the Kambojas who, unlike other sections of the Indian people, have somehow preserved it. Whether originally Irānian or no, this verb cannot make the Kambojas Irānian any more than it can make Irānian the Vedic literature of which the Nighantu took stock. And for Yāska it was not in the least a pointer to any non-Indianness.

How little he considered the Kambojas non-Indian is further evinced by his etymology (doubtless "folk-etymology") of their name - "Kambhoja" to him - in the same context as his comment on śavati. He writes: "Kambhojāh kambalabhojāh kamanīyabho-jāh vā. Kambalah kamanīya bhavati" - "The Kambhojas are fond (bhojāh) of blankets (kambala) or they are fond of pleasant (kamanīya) things. The blanket is a pleasant (kamanīya) thing." Yāska takes "Kambhoja" to be composed of bhoja preceded by an abbreviation, kam, of kambala which is at the same time

1.The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1911, pp. 801-802.

2."Yāska and Pānini", The Cultural Heritage of India (Calcutta, 1958), Vol. I, p. 294.

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kamaniya.¹ This etymology, drawing confirmation from the fact that the Kamboja country was noted for many of the best kinds of blankets,² and basing itself entirely on Indian words, could never have been pertinent to a people thought to be Irānian.

So Benveniste's outlook on the Kambojas and on their relation to the Aramaic text may be wholly ruled out. With its exclusion no intrinsic reason exists to see the Kambojas as devoid of the services of Brāhmanas and Śramanas and therefore to see any inscription omitting these services as having been meant for them. We have also Aśoka's explicit assertion, emphasised by Filliozat, that only the Yona country lacked Brāhmanas and Śramanas. The presence of these religious orders amongst the Kambojas is thus implicitly indicated by Aśoka. We have thus a strong prima facie case against Aśoka addressing the Aramaic version at Kandahār to the Kambojas as well as against their forming a single population with the Yonas.³ Benveniste's proposition that the Yonas were settled in the country of the Kambojas must go by default - unless an incontrovertible argument is found for it.

What does Aśoka's "Yonakambojesu" signify?

Benveniste urges on us the compound yonakambojesu of R. E. XIII. But there is nothing specially Aśokan in this expression. Have we not seen the very same combination in the pre-Mauryan Buddhist canonical work Majjhima Nikāya (11.149), where Buddha, telling Assalayana of several border countries, brings in yonakambojesu? No hint is here of a single Yona-Kamboja country. Nor are the two terms always put together in a compound. For example, the Manusamhitā (X.44) has Kāmbojā Yāvānā.

The Aśokan edicts themselves have a number of compounds putting together various entities without implying the slightest fusion. Can anybody say that the Gandhāras were a single population with the Yonas and the Kambojas because in R.E. V (Girnār) we have the compound yonaKambojagamdharānām? In the same edict the Mānsehrā version reads rathikapitinikana while the Sha-bāzgarhī reads rathikanam pitikanam, clearly implying that the

1.Barua, op. cit., Part I, p. 99.

2.Ibid., referring to B.C. Law, op. cit., p. 2.

3.When we touch on the epigraph known as Kandahār II we shall see what an Aramaic text from Aśoka for the Kambojas would be like.

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two peoples combined in the Mānsehrā are really distinct. In R.E. XIII (Girnār) we find Āndhrapārimdesu: should we say that the Āndhras and Pārimdas had no separate provinces but were inhabitants of the self-same province? In R.E. V (Mānsehrā) we have the word bramanibhyesu where, according to Mookerji,¹ two entirely different and contrasting categories - Brāhmanas and householders - are combined. The Brāhmanas and Śramanas too, for all their common religious purpose, are not a single body and their distinctness is preserved in the passage in R.E. XIII to which Filliozat has referred: bamhane ch[a] samane (Kālsī); but in R.E. IV to which he also alludes we get the combination Brāhmanasa-manānam (Girnār). The combinations in the edicts serve various ends, of which perhaps the convenience of the moment is the most telling. None keeps in countenance the interpretation Benveniste puts on yonakambojesu. Rather, everything makes this word signify that the country of the Yonas was merely contiguous to that of the Kambojas.

This word cannot be cited to explain the absence of the Brāhmanas and Śramanas from the Aramaic text.

The Greeks, the Kambojas, the Brāhmanas and Śramanas

Even supposing the Yonas and the Kambojas occupied the identical province, we cannot account for the absence on the assumption that the Yonas were Greeks. We should have to accuse the Greeks of banishing religious ministrations natural to the natives of the territory the Greeks had settled in. But they are known to have been extremely tolerant of alien creeds and cults. We have already enumerated a host of testimonies to their keen interest in things Indian in both the Alexandrine and the post-Alexandrine epochs. Megasthenes has written in detail of the Brāhmanas and Śramanas themselves. And the very proclivity of the Greeks to look for Hellenism in diverse garbs among other nations would lead them to encourage and keep alive the religious legends and practices of the natives. If there was a Greek colony in Arachosia and there were Brāhmanas and Śramanas among the local Indian population, they would be free to pursue their vocations and would even succeed in Indianizing some of the interested foreigners.

1. Aśoka, p. 140. fn. 1.

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Of course, these facts would not entitle us to say that in an inscription for the Greeks, who had a non-Indian civilization, Aśoka would go out of his way to mention Brāhmanas and Śramanas. But they do entitle us to say that the omission of these religious ministers in the Aramaic text would never be due to the Greeks of the province.

All such omission would be due only to the Yona-character of the very people addressed in that text. So this people could not have been the Kambojas.

Now the problem faces us of two texts in two distinct languages omitting the Brāhmanas and Śramanas. Surely, both the peoples concerned could not be Yonas. And, if that is so, we have to ask: "Could one of the texts be Aśokan and the other not?"

Here our first guide has to be linguistics. The Greek employed is indubitably of c. 275-225 B. C, which includes the time usually assigned to Aśoka's reign. Is the Aramaic of the same period? If the answer is "No", Aśoka may not have belonged to those fifty years.

The Aramaic Text and Its Chronological Pointers

The expert study of the Aramaic text by A. Dupont-Sommer and Benveniste, who have themselves no idea of separating the two texts in time, has brought out three characteristics of the language which cannot but prompt in us such an idea:

(1)Benveniste¹ notes: "Even leaving aside the rather unclear ptytw, we gain five Irānian words of good standard quality: patiz-bata, frabasta, frabasti, hupatyasti, mazišta, a high proportion for a relatively short text. The gain is as appreciable as it was unexpected." This comparatively large number of Irānian words embedded in the Aramaic would seem to distinguish the present text from the usual Aramaic inscriptions found in provinces once ruled by the Achaemenids of Persia from the 6th century down to 330 B. C.

(2)What distinguishes it yet more is the type of the Irānian words. Benveniste continues: "At the date of the inscription, in the middle of the 3rd century B. C, these words indicate, by their form, an Irānian language of ancient type, like Avesta or Old Persian, and not of the Middle Irānian stage: the notation of pati

1. Ibid., pp. 44-45. The translation from the original French is mine.

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with the mute and the final vowel, the notation of the final vowel -i in prbsty, are the principal proofs of this. To define the dialectal position of the language, we have a significant pointer in the form mazišta- which was restricted till now to Avestan." Elsewhere Benveniste¹ speaks of "the rather unclear ptytw" as a word which is definitely Irānian but cannot be elucidated in the light of post-Alexandrine or even Achaemenid Irānian. And the difficulty is even greater with the possible alternative reading: ptytz. Thus there are forms which seem to set the Irānian part of the Aramaic text outside and beyond the whole range of the language known in the period not only after the Achaemenids but also during their rule.

(3) When we look at the non-Irānian element in the text - the strictly Aramaic element - we come across several signs-of archaism. We find Dupont-Sommer² writing things like: "to note the archaic form", "as an archaic ittafal of this root", "it may be explained as corresponding to a form archaic or dialectal", "this form is altogether unprecedented... Is it the survival of an archaic form... ?" Here, again, are surprises in an inscription said to be later than any of the Achaemenid ones - surprises that look very much like indications of an antiquity answering to the suggestions of the Irānian and Avestan component.

The Correct Conclusion

Dupont-Sommer and Benveniste, arguing within the framework of the modern chronology, draw no revolutionary inferences from the above three characteristics of the language of the Aramaic text. But the signs are wide enough for a cleavage between this text and the Greek. Benveniste³ feels uneasy and asks whether we should conclude that in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. the population settled at Kandahār spoke the same language as the Avesta. He answers guardedly: "We need not yet go so far. All that seems allowable to affirm, on the indirect testimony of the inscription, is that the religious language coincided with that of the Avesta, and that Mazdeanism prevailed in this region."

But there is no reason why "the religious language" here should

1.Ibid., p. 36.

2.Section III, ibid., pp. 25, 27, 28, 30.

3.Ibid., p. 45.

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be so much like that of the Avesta rather than some other less ancient form which we might expect in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. The common people would be reached far more readily through the latter language. Benveniste himself cannot avoid the impression of the unexpected and says¹ about the word hupatyasti which he² recognises as composed with hu added to the Avestan Mazdean term patyasti: "That it should appear now at this date..." And when we consider the implications of mazišta and ptytw (or ptytz) we can hardly escape the hypothesis that the Aramaic version belongs to an earlier date than the Greek of the period c. 275-225 B.C. Also, we have to bear in mind that ptytw is not a religious term. It follows the phrase which in Aramaic signifies "ten years"³ and the word in the same place in the Greek text is "elapsed".⁴ So it is not only the religious language that carries the atmosphere of an Avesta-like tongue more ancient than even the Old Irānian of the Achaemenids.

Aśoka and the Language of the Avesta

The prevalence of a language of the Avestan type for all uses in the areas adjoining north-westem India in Aśoka's day would best explain some general peculiarities in the dialect of the Shāhbāzgarhī and Mānsehrā redactions of his edicts and even in that of the Girnār redaction. Here we are much nearer to Sanskrit than in other versions, which are more Prākritized, but Mookerji⁵ well remarks:

"As Michelson has pointed out, this dialect cannot be regarded as a mere lineal descendant of Sanskrit. It presents certain forms which establish its affinity to Avestan rather than Sanskrit: e.g. atikratām (G); susrusā, susrusarām (G) corresponding to Avestan susrusemno; G. srunāru, Shb. śruneyu and M. śruneyu, which agree with Avestan surunaoiti in structure as opposed to Sanskrit śrinoti."

What, of course, concerns us is not Avestan rather than Sanskrit forms but Avestan rather than later Irānian. And their presence

1.Section IV, ibid., p. 42.

2.Ibid., p. 43.

3.Section III, ibid., pp. 22-23

4.Section II, ibid., pp. 36-37.

5.Asoka, p. 244.

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indicates not only the former's general prevalence we have spoken of: it indicates also the antiquity of the Aśokan dialects involved.

Can the Greek Text be Much Later than the Aramaic?

If uninhibitedly we go by all the technical evidence before us we should be obliged to date the Aramaic text far earlier than the Greek and, associating it with the Aśokan language, separate the Greek text from Aśoka. Then the Aramaic would be the sole inscription set up by him. The Greek would be nothing more than a free translation and partial adaptation made of it under different circumstances in the second and third quarters of the 3rd century B. C. by Greek colonists round Kandahār and engraved by them in the empty space above the Aramaic on the rock-face.

But here two searching questions have to be met:

(1)Do not Dupont-Sommer and Benveniste, as well as all the other scholars who have written on the inscription, affirm that the Greek scribe no less than the Aramaic is dealing at first hand with an original Indian model? If the scribes do not depend upon each other, Aśoka cannot be divorced from the period 275-225 B.C. and we must be contented with a cautious and moderate conclusion from the technical evidence we have laid out.

(2)Is it not fantastic to think of a later-date addition to an epigraph - and particularly of such an addition by the Greeks to an epigraph of Aśoka?

Old Epigraphs, Additions to Them, the Greeks and Aśoka

We shall take up the second question first. To suppose a later-date addition to an epigraph of the remote past is not to imagine a state of affairs unparalleled in history. The Allāhābād Pillar Inscription of Samudragupta, son of Chandragupta I, is right under an old one - and the latter is actually an Aśokan epigraph. The inscriptions of the Śaka Rudradaman I and of Skandagupta, great-grandson of Samudragupta, are both on the same Junagarh rock - and they share this rock again with an edict of Aśoka. When two inscriptions of Aśoka himself have received additional matter from other ages, we should not be astonished if a third is supposed to have done the same.

The sole novelty in the present instance would be that the

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matter is a translation and that the later epigraph is put above rather than below the earlier even though it merely translates it.

But when the rock-face shows space available both above and below the Aramaic text, the Greeks' proverbial pride in their own language and their equally proverbial eye for artistic effect can easily be conceived as choosing the upper space even though the lower might be equally convenient. The fact of mere translation need not be given too much weight.

A close look at the lines of the Greek text¹ seems to show that the first four lines are less interspaced than the rest, as though the engraver put them one after another somewhat near lest sufficient space should not remain for the ten more to follow and, then, finding space enough, put those lines a little apart. If the Aramaic were not already engraved, there would be no need to crowd the lines even slightly, for there is space on the rock for an Aramaic text twice the present length.² The tentative crowding would be required only if a fixed height of space were available because the Aramaic stood already there in the middle of the rock.³

Perhaps we shall be asked: "Why should the Greeks of a later age have been interested to put up a version in their own language?" We know that during the seventy-five years or so after Alexander's invasion they were extremely interested in India and things Indian. We may particularly hark back to the eagerness by the Head of Philadelphus's Library at Alexandria to translate the books of the Hindus. To get a translation done of an old Indian semi-religious inscription discovered in Arachosia and to have it engraved on the same rock as the original - this is precisely what we may expect of the Greek Arachosian colony.

L. Robert⁴ tells us that a Greek emigration, in the Hellenistic epoch, always included intellectuals, schoolmasters, rhetoricians, poets, actors, philosophers, doctors, professors of every sort and every qualification, athletes, artists, marble-cutters, stone-engravers. He⁵ adds: "One may be sure that there was in Arachosia, as at Babylon, a gymnasium, with its young men, meeting-

1.Journal Asiatique, CCXLVI, 1958, I., Plate IV, facing p. 8.

2.Ibid., Plate III, facing p. 6.

3.In connection with an Aramaic Aśokan text called the Laghman inscription we shall see the non-sequitur in thinking the Aramaic text to be a sequel to the Greek just because the latter is above it.

4.Journal Asiatique cit.. Section II, p. 13.

5.ibid.

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place for festivals and conferences and conversations." The cultural character natural to a Greek colony is enough to account -more than ever in a period when Hellenic eyes were keenly turned on India - for the engraving of a Greek recension of an Aramaic inscription in the Kandahār-region.

A further query may be posed to us: "If we keep Aśoka where he is generally dated - the middle of the 3rd century B.C. - an inscription of his for the Greeks is natural to that period in the province of Arachosia. But if we shift him considerably back, is it not unnatural to think of the Greeks discovering one of his inscriptions in just that period? Are you not over-exploiting the play of coincidence?"

Not at all if, following the traditional-Purānic chronology, we have put Chandragupta I instead of Chandragupta Maurya in Alexander's time and dated his acession to 315 B.C. For then we get, some time before c. 250 B.C. his son Samudragupta and a little later Skandagupta of the same line. We have noted that both these kings set up their inscriptions together with Aśoka's. So an awareness of Aśoka's inscriptions was common in their age, and if their age was the 3rd century B.C. and the first half of the 2nd the post-Alexandrine Greek colony at Kandahār would not require to live under Aśoka to know of an Aśokan epigraph. What is more, they would be living in an age in which the practice of accompanying Aśokan epigraphs with new ones was nothing unnatural. No, we are not over-exploiting the play of coincidence. Everything falls into a design which is most fitting.

Are Both the Texts Aśokan?

We come now to our first question: the equal, direct, independent relation to Aśoka, which the scholars have affirmed for both the Greek and the Aramaic texts. Yes, they have affirmed such a relation essentially but they have also admitted certain differences and a scrutiny of these can lead to a contradiction of the former.

The Greek has a Hellenic touch more marked than the Irānian touch of the Aramaic which, says Dupont-Sommer,¹ the Aramaic scribe has adapted from the original Indian model "to a lesser degree than the Greek scribe". What is of still greater import is

1. Section III. Ibid., p. 34.

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presented by Dupont-Sommer¹ in the observation: "The Aramaic recension, a little longer, is manifestly closer to the Indian text..." Indeed he is so impressed by this manifest closeness everywhere that even when in one single place the Aramaic is a little shorter he cannot bring himself to infer in the Greek a greater fidelity to the Indian original but postulates a shortness in the latter to match it in the Aramaic and says:² "the Greek scribe... may have wished... to make explicit the passage he was translating." But the closeness appreciated by Dupont-Sommer goes beyond the issue of length or brevity, likeness or unlikeness to Indian ideas and expressions. It extends to being detailed in conscious conformity with Aśokan edicts found elsewhere. There is the capital instance, which Dupont-Sommer³ notes: while the Greek version states in general the king's abstention from slaughter of animals, the Aramaic specifies the killing of only "a few" animals for the king's sake and is thereby almost exactly in accord with the datum of R.E. I that only three animals instead of many were killed daily for the king's curries at the time of the inscription. Such a direct and intimate relation to the contents of a known Aśokan edict is nowhere disclosed by the Greek text.

Thus it is impossible to cut apart the Aramaic text from Aśoka. But, if the Greek is briefer, more generalised and less Aśokanly suggestive in content, why should we not derive it from the Aramaic instead of from an Indian model sent by Aśoka? Dupont-Sommer and Benveniste hold that the Greek no less than the Aramaic makes adaptations straight of Indian concepts and phrases from a common model. But is it not possible that the adaptations by the Greek scribe according to the spirit of his culture are from the Aramaic adaptations? If we can think of him as Hellenizing Indian concepts and phrases, we can equally think of him as Hellenizing those proper to the Avestan-Aramaic mind and tongue.

Dupont-Sommer⁴ writes: "'Piety', ... under the pen of the Greek scribe is a transposition of the idea of dhamma, just as 'Truth' under the pen of the Aramaic scribe." But to adapt dhamma to "Piety" is on a par with adapting "Truth" to "Piety"

1.Ibid.

2.Ibid. p. 28.

3.Ibid., p. 26.

4.Ibid., p. 24.

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especially as Dupont-Sommer¹ informs us about the word for "Truth" in the Aramaic text: "We translate therefore 'Truth', but this word means practically 'religion, faith, piety'."

Benveniste² draws our attention to the sequences "mother-father" and "father-mother" in the Aramaic and Greek versions respectively. About the former he says that it proves for the Aramaic a direct translation from an Indian model, for Aśoka always writes "mother-father", continuing the old Vedic dvandva mātára-pitárā. Then Benveniste argues that since the Greek text is in disaccord with the Aramaic and gives the traditional Greek order of the words, we have a proof that the two versions are independent of each other and go to a common Indian model.

But is there not a slip in Benveniste's logic? If the Aramaic order of the words establishes a direct derivation from an Indian model, how can the reverse order do the same? Conversely, if the reverse order implies a direct derivation, its difference from the Aramaic text which in this case is exactly like the Indian model should also imply a direct derivation from the Aramaic text. Logically, the true inference from Benveniste's observation about the Aramaic phrase is that since the Greek sequence differs equally from the mutually agreeing Aramaic and Indian it could derive from either.

Indeed, every concept and phrase in the Greek can be unobjectionably related to the Aramaic in one way or another. But the opposite of this, though theoretically valid in several instances, is ruled out on the whole because there is no typically Aśokan particularity in the Greek comparable to the Aramaic's detail about only "a few" animals slaughtered. The absence of such a particularity not only makes us unsure that the Greek goes back straight to the Indian original: it also leads us to ask how and from where the Aramaic could get the detail if the Greek's generality was all that was before the Aramaic scribe.

Even the one place at which the Greek is slightly more particular does not carry any Aśokan stamp for Dupont-Sommer to recognize, and he puts the Greek's length over against the compressed and the implicit which he feels obliged to ascribe to the Indian text from what he finds in the Aramaic. So here too we can take the Greek scribe as rendering explicit nothing else than what

1.Ibid., p. 23.

2.Section IV, ibid., p. 42.

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the Aramaic holds in brief. On Dupont-Sommer's evidence we can relate the Greek to the Aramaic just as legitimately as to the Indian.

Thus no sign exists anywhere, in the matter of concept and phrase, that the Greek scribe worked from a non-Aramaic model framed by Aśoka and that his post-Alexandrine age must be Aśoka's. Aśoka and his Aramaic text could be much earlier.

The Sole Objection Possible: Piodasses and Prydrš

Only one proper noun - the name of the king - can provoke a doubt. And as it occurs at almost the commencement of the inscription it has made a strong impression, for the whole text, of a first-hand contact by both the Greek and the Aramaic with Aśoka's own message. Benveniste¹ comments: "The difference between Piodasses of the Greek and the prydrš of the Aramaic shows already that the two texts do not depend on each other. The difference attests two distinct dialectal traditions. The Greek form Piodasses is imitated from the Middle Indian Piyadassi, with a phonetic peculiarity, the internal -o- ... On the contrary the Aramaic prydrš agrees with those edicts (notably of Shāhbāzgarhī) which have the quasi-Sanskrit form Priyadraśi (Skt.-darśi)."

Certainly two distinct dialects are observable in the two forms, but what is implied in the situation cannot be gauged unless we try to reconstruct how the assumed original model could have led to them.

Dupont-Sommer² says: "... every Greek colony, from archaic times down to the Byzantine period, had around it the group of those 'hellenised' by the culture, and it is from them most often that the translators and interpreters were recruited." Such being the case, there would be for the translation and interpretation here a "Hellenised" native of Arachosia, the Kandahār-area in antiquity, knowing Greek as well as the Indian language in which the original model came, just as for the Aramaic version there might be an Irānianised Arachosian knowing Aramaic and the Indian language. But Arachosia belongs broadly to the same region as Shāhbāzgarhī and Mānsehrā where quasi-Sanskrit was in vogue, and actually in the neighbourhoods of Shāhbāzgarhī and Mānsehrā

1.Section IV, ibid., pp. 37. 38.

2.Section III,

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Pūl-i-Dārunteh and Taxila - Aramaic fragments of Aśokan edicts have been found, the one from Taxila using prydrš itself. In this region Priyadraśi would be in the air as the name of Aśoka. How could the name become Piodasses in agreement with another dialect - the language in vogue in Middle India?

Suppose the Greek version was framed not in Arachosia but in Pātaliputra by a Greek-knowing Yukta (Officer) of Aśoka and despatched to its destination. In that case the king's name in it would still be meant for Greeks in Arachosia and assume some form resembling what constantly fell on their ears. The same would be true, were the framer of the version an educated Greek living at Aśoka's court and knowing the court-language. Most probably he would be a member of a family settled in Arachosia since Alexander's time - in other words, for two generations - and there would be no possibility of his employing for the king's name any form except the one he and his fellow-Greeks in Arachosia had heard. Even if by any chance a freakish Piodasses from his hand or from a Greek-knowing Yukta's did issue from Pātaliputra, it would immediately be set right by the Arachosian Greek supervisors to something less unnatural.

It is true that the Greek transcription of Indian proper nouns bears some touches of a Middle Indian medium but never un-mixedly in the age with which we are concerned. These touches are exhibited by at least two out of the three examples quoted by Benveniste¹ to illustrate one of the ways in which the internal o could have entered: Taprobanè for Tāmraparni, Sandarophagos for Chandrabhāgā, Erranoboas for HIrānyavāha. Yet it is notable that the r in the first part of each Sanskrit name is preserved. On the analogy of Taprobanè and Sandarophagos and; we may add, Sandrocottos (Chandragupta), we should expect Priodasses or Piriodasses. Something Sanskrit mixes with something Middle Indian.

The initial Pr itself of a Sanskrit name is seen preserved in the well-known Greek Prasioi for Prāchya, the name of the "Easterners", the people whose capital was Pātaliputra (Greek "Pali-bothros"). Its preservation is also noticed where Strabo (VI.22), based on Megasthenes, mentions a class of Indian philosophers, the Pramnai, who are obviously the Prāmanika. And, in both

Prasioi and Pramnai, even the original a associated with the r 1. Section IV, ibid., p. 38.

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comes through instead of turning into o. Thus Priadasses too could be expected, rendering Piodasses all the more an anomaly.

There is a small yet not insignificant further matter to be reckoned with. Piyadassi is indeed the Indian equivalent of Piodasses, but in no inscription of Aśoka's do we find Piyadassi. At Kālsī and several dialectally related localities, as well as occasionally at Girnār, we have Piyadasi: we never have the form with a double s. Of course, the single s is an orthographic convention of the time , adopted in order to save the trouble of engraving a conjunct which would abound in Prākrit: the actually spoken Middle Indian for the Sanskrit Priyadarśi must have been Piyadassi or Piyadāsi. However, in all copies in Middle Indian of an edict distributed for engraving, the written form would be Piyadasi. Such a copy handed for the Greek text to a translator - be he a Hellenised Arachosian in Arachosia itself or a Greek-knowing Yukta at Pātaliputra or a Prākrit-knowing Greek there - could never have read Piyadassi. And there is no reason why the translator should ignore the universal practice of ,Piyadasi for epigraphs and, in spite of the same form confronting him in his copy, Grecise the name as Piodasses rather than Piodases. Benveniste¹ has been very scrupulous about the phonetic value of prydrš: "The Aramaic script naturally does not let us decide between Priyadraśi and Priyadarśi, but as priyadraśi is alone attested (to the exclusion of -darsiv in the Indian epigraphy of Aśoka, it is for this form that we opt." It is surprising how Benveniste, though never doubting the Greek version to be Aśokan, forgot that Piyadasi is the sole attested form in the epigraphs of Aśoka in India and that it is the form relevant to the discussion of Piodasses as an epigraphic fact. Epigraphically , Piodasses should be considered non-Aśokan.

Hence, even on the assumption that a Middle Indian form might have got into a text intended for Arachosia, Piodasses would be anomalous. And the form most natural for a version got ready for Arachosian Greeks from an Indian original, composed either in quasi-Sanskrit or in Middle Indian for the purposes of engraving, would be - according to all the circumstances we have surveyed -Priadases, if not Priadrases by Priyadraśi's direct influence.

Evidently a man altogether from Middle India and totally ignorant or negligent of the linguistic practice in a place like

1. Section IV, ibid., p. 38.

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Arachosia and of the linguistic trend of the Greeks in regard to Indian proper nouns was responsible for Piodasses. Such a man can hardly fit into a picture of Arachosian Greeks living under Aśoka in the 3rd century E.C., side by side with those for whom the Aramaic text was intended. To explain the Greek text's Piodasses as nothing more than the result of a Middle Indian dialectal tradition is too simple, too abstract. This tradition can be thought of as influencing the Arachosian Greeks only if we separate them from Aśoka and from Aśoka's Aramaic-speaking subjects in Arachosia, and imagine an unusual state of affairs in which a natural equivalent of Priyadraśi would be pushed out.

We can suggest what that state of affairs could be Suppose the Aramaic text is already there from the past and the post-Alexandrine Greeks in Arachosia discover it. An interpreter, knowing both Aramaic and Greek, translates it for them. The Greeks vis-à-vis the alien and unheard-of name Priyadraśi as given by the interpreter, will inquire into the identity of the king bearing it. An inhabitant of Arachosia at a period sufficiently removed from Aśoka's will scarcely be able to throw light on the subject. Several Indians will be called in. The interrogation will go on until the arrival of one who hails from Magadha, the home of Middle Indian. He will be most likely to know about the king who called himself Lājā Māgadhe in the Bhābru Edict. Speaking Middle Indian, this man will, in the course of his informative talk, keep repeating to the Greeks a form which they may represent by Piodasses. Naturally they will defer to his greater acquaintance with Indian things and select his version rather than the other.

On such lines of thought alone can Piodasses be explained, and they leave no ground for tracing the Greek text to an original Indian model despatched by Aśoka. Thus the sole possible linguistic objection fails.

The Aramaic Text's Mazdeanism and the Brāhmanas-Śramanas

We may now positively affirm: "The Aramaic text omits the Brāhmanas and Śramanas because it is meant for the Yonas. The Greek does so because it simply makes an adaptive translation of the Aramaic."

We may further elucidate the raison d'etre of the original omission. The psychology of the Aramaic text with its Avestan

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words is definitely Mazdean and directed towards followers of Mazdeanism. As such, it fully accounts for the omission from it of the Brāhmanas-Śramanas - in contrast to the psychology of Greek culture which never interfered with the religious customs of the non-Greeks and would set no bar to the Brāhmanas-Śramanas being amongst them. Historically, the Mazdean religion was to a great extent a forcible break-away from the Vedic cult. Although retaining the worship of fire, it stressed more than ever the pristine Irānian reversal of the meaning of the Vedic word "deva" and, with a larger insistence, made it signify "demon" instead of "god". We may attend to the remarks of Raychaudhuri¹ on one of the Achaemenid emperors, Xerxes (485-465 B.C.):

"Xerxes refers to the expression of rebellion in lands 'where, before, the Daivas were worshipped; then, by Ahurmazda's will, of such temples of the Daivas, I (the King) sapped the foundations'. The Daiva-worshipping lands may have included the Indian satrapies."

All that the Brāhmanas and Śramanas stood for would be repelled by an over-orthodox section of the ancient Mazdeans.

The Aramaic Text and the "Yavana Script"

When the Yonas are demonstrated to be the recipients of the Aramaic text, a flood of light is immediately shed on Pānini's word: "Yāvānānī." As we have seen, this word of the oldest Indian grammarian has been translated as "the Yavana script" and interpreted as "the Greek script". Now we may well credit the suggestion, first made on the discovery of the Aramaic stone-inscription at Taxila but unsupported by any proof so far, that "Yāvānānī" pointed to the Aramaic script. And, if we attend to the verbal contents of Pānini's Ashtādhyāyi, we shall see that not a single word appears to have been borrowed from the Greek language whereas some contact with the Semitic tongues is undeniable. Let us quote Agrawala:²

"Jābāla denoted a goatherd, and Mahājābāla (VI.2.38) one who was the owner of a big sheep-run. Jābāla does not seem to be a word of Sanskrit origin. It may be traced to a Hebrew word yobel or jobil, signifying ram's horn, whence 'Jubilee'... Hailihila and

1.An Advanced History of India, p. 64.

2.India as Known to Pānini. pp. 220-221, 124.

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mahā-hailihila are words of unknown meaning and origin, mentioned by Pānini as special names of some article (VI.3.38). The word is not explained in any Sanskrit dictionary, nor is there any instance of its being used in literature. It appears that hailihila was a Semitic word appearing in a Sanscritised form, as the name of a poison which was imported from the West. In Arabic halāhila means deadly poison (cf. Hebrew halūl, deadly poison). Steingass derives without reason the Arabic word from Skt. halahala (F. Steingass, Persian-English Dictionary, p. 1506). The Skt. word itself is exotic as shown by its variant spelling, e.g. hālāhala, halāhala, hālahala, hālahāla, hāhala, hāhāla (Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 1899, revised edition, p. 1293). Pānini's hailihila seems to come nearest to the original Semitic form of the word, which may have been Aramaic, the international language of trade and commerce in the Achaemenian world from Syria to Gandhāra. Pānini refers to poisons in general called visha and to the third degree methods of liquidating particular persons marked out as vishya by the administering of poisons."

Agrawala points to the Achaemenid world; but it is unnecessary in order to account for Pānini's Semitic contacts across the frontier. They were a natural continuation of Indo-Semitic exchanges from very ancient times. We may discount as legend the statement of Arrian (Indica, I) that to the west of the river Indus, up to the river Cophes - the river Kābul by which Pānini's own native Salatura stood - the two Indian tribes, the Astakenoi (the people of Pānini's Hāstināyana mentioned in sutra VI.4.174) and the Assakenoi (the Asvakayana of Nadādi gana IV. 1.99) "were in old times subject to the Assyrians" before the period of Median and Persian rule over them. But it is certain that in the times preceding those of the Persian (Achaemenid) Cyrus and the still earlier Medes we get two bits of information proving Assyria and India to have been in touch. Jairazbhoy¹ writes: "The cotton tree was introduced from India into Assyria (c. 700 B.C.) by Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), who is reported to have said that trees that bear fleeces were sheared and shredded for garments... The earliest date [for the Indian peacock's arrival in Assyria] may be 738 B.C., when there is a possible reference to a peacock among the wonderful birds received as tribute by Tiglath Pileser III." Majumdar,²

1.Foreign Influence in Ancient India, p. 30.

2."India and the Western World", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 612.

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gathering "archaeological evidence" of India's contacts with Western Asia, refers "to the figures of apes, Indian elephants and Bactrian camels on the obelisk of Shalmanesar III (860 B.C.)."

Actually, right back to the age of the Indus Civilisation (broadly dated 2500-1500 B.C.) go India's contacts with the Semitic world. A sign in Pānini himself of ancient Indo-Semitic exchanges is the word gonī mentioned as denoting a container or sack (āvapana) made from gonī IV. 1.42), obviously a cloth. "It is unknown in Vedic literature," comments Agrawala,¹ "but occurs in the Brahmajāla Sūtta XV as gonaka, explained as a woollen cloth made from the hair of long-haired goats. It was probably the same as kaunakes, a one-piece loin-cloth worn by the early Sumerians and Accadians, and made of suspended loops of wool hanging from a woollen skirt (Marshall, Indus Valley Civilization, 1.3.3, 342; pi. 95, fig..10). The word seems to have travelled to India through commerce in pre-Pāninian times."

Perhaps it will be said: "To date the Aramaic script so far back in time - and, with it, the Kharosthī and Brāhmī used by Aśoka elsewhere in his empire - is rather unrealistic. Further, can we take the Aramaic language and not just a few Semitic words as current in India's borderland so long ago?"

We find Aramaic fairly on the move when in the year 731 B.C., in the reign of the Assyrian Tiglath Pileser III, there comes, as Philip K. Hitti² tells us, the representation of a scribe recording in Aramaic the plunder from a captured city. But previous to that time the Aramean merchants had already spread their language far and wide. "The Arameans traded in purple from Phoenicia, embroideries, linen, jasper, copper, ebony and ivory from Africa, and in the 'products of the seas', perhaps pearls for which throughout the ages the Persian Gulf has been famous."³ And if we believe, as Hitti⁴ does, that the first mention of the Arameans by Tiglath Pileser I (c. 1100 B.C.), in close association with the word "Akhlamu", merely throws into prominence a people already subsumed under the latter designation in the centuries before, then we may recognise their presence in remote antiquity whenever the Akhlamu - otherwise known as the Ahlamû - are epigraphically

1.India as Known to Pānini, p. 146.

2.A History of Syria (London, 1957), p. 168.

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid., p. 162.

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attested. Here Georges Roux has a lot of information to provide.

"Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 B.C.) claims that he conquered... 'the mountains of the Ahlamû'."¹ "Shalmanesar I (1274-1245 B.C.)... attacked Shatuara, 'King of Hanigalbat' and his Hittite and Ahlamû mercenaries and defeated them."² "The Ahlamû are first mentioned in a mutilated letter from el-Amarna [c. 1400-1350 B.C.³] alluding to the King of Babylon; during the same period their presence is attested in Assyria, at Nippur and even at Dilmun (Bahrain)..."⁴ Bahrain means down the Persian Gulf. Overseas as well as overland the Arameans, in the interests of trade, are likely to have travelled with their language and their script in the direction of Arachosia at an early date.

What is their ultimate antiquity? We may attend to the words "Aramû" and "Arimi", which occur without association with "Ahlamû" in documents subsequent to the time of Tiglath Pileser I.⁵ These words have their counterparts far earlier: "In texts of the Akkadian, Ur III and Old Babylonian periods occasional mention is made of a city Arami and of individuals by the name of Aramû..."⁶ This may be no more than a phonetic resemblance, but the resemblance is so close that we are not debarred from tracing the Arameans even to that period: c. 2371-1595 B.C.

We may add that the association with "Ahlamû" is not quite broken in the times when "Aramû" and "Arimi" stand alone. Ashurnasirpal II (884-859 B.C.) has still the expression "Ahlamû-Aramean."⁷ There seems to be an organic relation between the terms, a doubling as if they were fully designative when both stood together, though either would suffice on its own to designate the same entity.

We may justifiably conclude that the Arameans and their script were known over a wide stretch of the Orient in at least the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C. Here some observations by John Gray⁸ will be in place:

1.Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, (Pelican, Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 248.

2.Ibid., 236.

3.Ibid., Chronological Table 5, col. 6.

4.Ibid., p. 248.

5.Ibid.

6.Ibid., p. 247.

7.Ibid., pp. 259. 261.

8.Archaeology and the Old Testament World (Harper Torchbooks, New York

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"It was the contacts of Palestine and Syria with Mesopotamia and Egypt that awakened the inhabitants to the advantages of a convenient way of writing. The respective systems of cuneiform and hieroglyphics, though great achievements, were yet not the most expeditious way of communicating men's thoughts. Both were syllabic, not alphabetic, and the cuneiform might even be ideographic, a single sign representing a whole word. Thus both were highly complicated and the medium of specialists. In the Ras Shamra Tablets we see a great advance in the simplification of the cuneiform to an alphabetic script of thirty ciphers which, as may be seen from the private correspondence of one of the princes of Ugarit with the queen-mother, could be used for short, informal, personal correspondence. By the middle of the second millenium a similar experiment was made on the basis of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the resulting alphabet was widely used, evidence being found at Byblos, Gezer, Shechem and Lachish, and from the Sinai Peninsula, where the Egyptians mined turquoise and copper. From the Sinai inscriptions, fragmentary and uncertain as they are, a direct line of development may be discerned to legible alphabetic inscriptions in Syria and Palestine in the second half of the second millennium B.C. This group begirfs with the inscription of the king Shaphat-ba'al of Byblos, which is dated by Dunand in the 15th century B.C.¹ though he does not exclude the possibility of a date two centuries earlier."

So the Aramean and allied scripts can go back even to the 17th century B. C. This dating seems a fair middle course between the usual belief that the Aramaic language "appeared at the end of the second millennium B. C. as the tongue of the Aramaeans who had settled in Damascus" and the opinion of "some philologists [who] affirm that it was already in use in the third millennium B.C.".² In regard to the possible touch of Aramean and allied scripts with India, we have to take into account a fact long ago spotlighted by G. Buhler apropos of the Brāhmī script which Aśoka used along with Kharosthl. Today the former is sought to be linked with the as yet undeciphered script of the Indus Valley Civilization. But Biihler's fact has still a genuine force. He pointed out that a certain

and Evanston, 1965). p. 24.

1.M. Dunand. Byblia Grammata (1936), pp. 146-51.

2. Encyclopaedia Americana (New York, 1966), Vol. II,

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proportion of the oldest Brāhmī letters are practically identical with letters on some Assyrian weights and on the Moabite Stone of King Mesa¹ which bears the longest and one of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions.² The striking resemblance must have come about by the contact of India with the Semites (Hebrews, Arameans, Phoenicians) before and not after the time of the Moabite Stone; for the later Semitic forms show insufficient agreement.³ The Moabite Stone was erected, as Hitti⁴ notes, shortly before 842 B.C. We must, therefore, pass beyond the 9th century B.C. for the contact of the Arameans and their likes with Arachosia and its neighbourhoods. And the contact must have been long in order to mould so markedly the Brāhmī script.

The Indus Valley script is itself comparable in part to Semitic signs. To trace links between it and Brāhmī is not to give the lie to Buhler altogether. We merely show the Semitic influence to have been more complex than Buhler suspected.

Kharosthī, of course, is clearly derived from Aramaic. What Buhler drew our attention to in connection with Brāhmī serves to set Kharosthī's derivation against the proper chronological background: the pre-9th-century B.C. period.

There seems no deubt, in view of a variety of considerations, that the Pāninian "Yavana script" is the one we meet with in the Aramaic text at Kandahār, which our analysis of the bilingual inscription has determined to have been for the Yonas.

The True Historical Perspective for the Aramaic Text

Now what remains to be done in relation to this inscription is to formulate the true historical perspective for that text which alone we can attribute to Aśoka and then to arrive at the most likely date for him and for that text.

Benveniste⁵ has expressed his view on the first question thus: "To put this Aramaic text in the historical perspective which accords with it, we should compare it to the documents of Achaemenid date found in Egypt. Two centuries after the Great

1.Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (Calcutta, 1950), pp. 70-1.

2.Hitti, op. cit.. p. 196.

3.Rhys Davids, op. cit., p. .71.

4.Op. cit., p. 195.

5.Section IV, op. cit., pp. 43-44.

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Kings, at the other extremity of the Irānian world, we rediscover the same type of wording, the same titling, the same language equally stuffed with Irānian words. The surprise is just that an inscription set up in a region bordering on India and subject to the power of an Indian sovereign should be in the Aramaic language and find its analogues only in the writings of the ancient Persian satrapies. The use of Aramaic shows that we are in reality in an Irānian province, where were maintained the traditions of the Achaemenid chancelleries. One could conjecture this after the discovery of the Taxila inscription. It is now a certitude."

If our thesis in correct, the Aramaic version still keeps a relationship with the writings of the ancient Persian satrapies, but the relationship gets altogether reversed. It is not the documents of the Achaemenid times discovered in Egypt that provide the precedents of this version: this version itself manifests a style and texture that are repeated in those documents. The use of Aramaic may show that we are in a province, if not Irānian, at least Irānianized, but not that the traditions of the Achaemenid chancelleries are maintained here. These traditions may have formed themselves on an antecedent practice such as we find in our inscription. We know that Xerxes and Darius Hystaspes and perhaps even Cyrus were masters of Arachosia and other regions west of the Indus: even some parts about the Indus were under Persian control and this control continued up to 330 B. C. when Alexander defeated Darius III. We know too that the traditions of the Achaemenid chancelleries in the form that Benveniste has in mind do not go beyond Xerxes (486-465).¹ They could easily have started after the Persian conquerors had seen Aśokan inscriptions in the territories ruled by them. Or else, if they did not see these inscriptions, they must have got acquainted with the official practice in those territories, inherited from earlier Aśokan times.

That the historical perspective of Benveniste needs to be reversed is deducible from the very observations by him on the linguistic pecularities of the Aramaic recension.² In the Middle-Irānian of the post-Alexandrine epoch where this perspective would place that recension, terms like patyasti have not survived and even the notation of pati with the mute and the final vowel and

1. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Edition), Vol. XIX, p. 619; also A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire (Chicago, 1948), pp. 244-45.

2. Section IV, op. cit., p. 36.

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the notation of the final vowel -i in prbsty do not exist, nor does the Irānian of the Achaemenid period itself have a form like mazišta. Benveniste has further underlined the obscure status of the recension's language when he speaks of "the rather unclear ptytw" which is definitely Irānian but cannot be elucidated in the light of post-Alexandrine or even Achaemenid Irānian. And the difficulty seems still greater with the possible alternative reading: ptytz. Benveniste¹ confesses; "ptytz (or ptytw) sets us at the very start face to face with a difficulty which will be in fact the most serious of those we"shall encounter in our study." There is also his statement:² "The word 'dwsy' (Vivify'), supplied with an Aramaic plural, is not Aramaic, but one hardly ever sees an Irānian word, like 'dwš or 'rwš that answers to the sense which the context would suggest: 'disagreement, misfortune' or 'bad action, impiety' or a similar action... One does not find in Irānian the matter for a useful hypothesis." All these puzzles, and the purely Avestan nature of some of them, plus the archaic nature emphasised by Dupont-Sommer of many Aramaic expressions, carry us clean beyond the Achaemenid chancelleries and their Irāno-Aramaic inscriptions in Egypt.

Nor is it true that only in "the documents of Achaemenid date found in Egypt" do we have "the same type of wording, the same titling" as in the Kandahār inscription. Benveniste's "Egypt" is correct, but his "Achaemenid date" is not at all binding for the official verbal turns by which he sets store. The most typical expressions of this type in our text are: "our lord Priyadraśi the King" and "our lord the King". The basic formula here is actually found in Egypt 900 years before the Achaemenid Xerxes. Leonard Cottrell³ mentions the urgent appeals which in c. 1400 B.C. poured forth for troops into Akhnaten's Foreign Office from the Governors of some threatened provinces. The Governor of the coastal city Tunip wrote: "...And when Aziru enters Simyra [another coastal city] he will do as he pleases in the territory of our Lord the King... For twenty years we have been sending to our Lord the King, the King of Egypt, but there has come not a word, no, not one." This type of wording and titling continued in later yet still

1.Ibid.

2.Ibid.

3.The Anvil of Civilization (Mentor, New York. 1956), p. 144.

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pre-Achaemenid epochs, and even outside Egypt. Thus Roux¹ quotes from one Zakir's correspondence with Ashurbanipal (668-631 B.C.): "The disturbance is the fault of the King of Amurru and his land for allowing the money of the king, my lord, to be in the land of Amurru. Let the king, my lord, do as he wishes. The hand of the king, my lord, shall capture him..."

If India's vicinity before the epoch of Xerxes was in touch with the Near and Middle East, as it certainly was, Aśoka's Aramaic text - provided it does not go back too much into antiquity - could certainly reflect the formula employed in Akhnaten's Egypt and elsewhere. The formula seems to have been the standard one all over the Orient and the ancient Persian satrapies merely copied it. These satrapies themselves are not required in the least to account for it.

Like other countries of the pre-Achaemenid Orient, an earlier Persia than of these satrapies comes into the picture conjured up by the Avestan and archaic Aramaic language in our epigraph - a Persia with Semitic connections - and, across this Persia, we see Semitic connections with India.

We have already brought together Persia and Assyria by referring to the tablet of Ashurbanipal which mentions the Zarathus-trian pantheon. There are other facts as well. Sargon (722-705 B.C.) records in a clay prism the names of two conquered princes: Mazdaku and Mastaku - names derived from the Zarathustrian God Mazda. R. Ghirshman² cites the annals of Shalmaneser III to show that the Assyrians knew of the Medes (Madai) in 836 B.C. and of the Persians (Parsua) in 844 B.C. The Parsua are said to have conquered Elam and Anshan. These territories came to be called "Parsa" and from them the Achaemenids hailed.

As for India and Persia, there are passages in the Avesta seeming to indicate a political hold by old Irān on Northern India before the Achaemenids. As Mookerji³ reports, although corroboration or details of this hold have hitherto been lacking, some scholars have taken these passages as genuine evidence. Particularly apt is the Vendidad's reference (1.73) to Hapta-Hindu (Sapta-Sindhu) - the land of the seven-rivered Indus-system - as one of the countries Ahura Mazda created for his own people.

1-.Op. cit., p. 312.

2.Irān (Pelican, Harmondsworth, 1954), p. 90.

3."Foreign Invasions", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 39.

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Juxtaposed, the Avestan passages and our inscription may be seen to throw light on each other.

What we have said about the introduction of Indian cotton and the Indian peacock into Assyria, and shown from the obelisk of Shalmeneser III - all this belongs to the same pre-Achaemenid period. Its testimony to Indo-Assyrian contacts completes our picture.

We have now the period c. 559-1400 B.C. - the time from before Cyrus's accession up to the al-Amarna Letters. And it is meaningful that our epigraph's style of titling and the reference to the Ahlamû, the Arameans, should be found in the same group of documents that are as early as c. 1400 B.C. Obviously, it is not for the first time that such titling was used or that the Ahlamû were on the march. If the latter were already as far south-east as Bahrain in the same age, they must have been spreading out fairly before. We should have nearly eight hundred and fifty years prior to 559 B.C., within which our Aramaic text may have taken shape. In about the middle of these thousand years we have the two earliest dated inscriptions in Aramaic. A votive stele, unearthed four and a half miles north of Aleppo and bearing the name of Ben-Hadad I, is of c. 850 B.C.¹ Earlier yet is a short epigraph from Tell-al-Halaf (Gozen) in North Syria: it dates back to the beginning of the 9th century B.C.² Still more early epigraphic evidence may be indirectly cited. Hitti³ brings the information: "The annals of Ramses III (1198-1167 B.C.) give the Aramaic spelling of the name [for Damascus] 'Tiramaski' corresponding to Aramaic Dar(fortress)-Mesheq." So the inscription at Kandahār which has characteristics tending to place it a little earlier than the votive stele and the Tell-al-Halaf message need not be denied its proper antiquity. The Egyptianized echo of the Aramaic for "Damascus" allows, by its promise of epigraphic possibility, the Aśokan edict to find its true historical perspective.

The Palaeographical Question

Perhaps we shall be challenged: "Can our inscription be regarded palaeographically as more primitive than the Egyptian

1.Hitti, op. cit.. p. 170.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid., p. 165.

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documents mentioned by Benveniste?"

One should not be discomfited if the palaeographical pronouncement were unfavourable to one's thesis. We may pertinently repeat here what we have remarked in a much earlier context -the Gokāk plates of Dejja Mahārāja. Palaeography - the comparative study of old writings - is not an exact science. We may recall Sylvain Levi's opinion¹ that palaeographical tests have little independent value (autorite absolue) although they may be used as a check (controle) upon or a guide (indice) to the interpretation of positive history. In a narrower context Jouveau Dubreuil² has also put palaeography in its true place: he has remarked that it is a bad auxiliary to the chronology of Indian history as very often the documents dated in the same reign differ much from each other and thus its evidence would be mainly suggestive or corroborative but at any rate by itself not conclusive.

Altekar provides us with a significant "slant" on questions palaeographical. Discussing the dynasty known as the Maghas, he³ mentions that "there is a great controversy about the dates of the rulers of this dynasty". Some scholars think the Maghas date themselves in the Chedi Era starting in 248 A.D.; others go in for the Gupta Era of 320 A.D.; still others opt for the Śaka Era of 78 A.D.⁴ Thus the datings would vary by 72, 178 or 242 years. Altekar⁵ favours the Śaka era for reasons which to his mind outweigh the most impressive-looking palaeographical considerations. What is especially to be marked is that such considerations can be countered within the realm of palaeography itself, for there is no final standard in it. Altekar writes: "The most cogent argument in favour of the Chedi or the Gupta era is palaeographical; there is no doubt that the characters of the Magha inscriptions are almost the Gupta characters. This argument however is not a convincing one; for many of the Gupta forms of characters are to be seen in an inscription of Kanishka, dated in the 14th [Śaka] year (92 A.D.); see Epigraphia Indica XXI, 2."

In the case of the Kandahār bilingual, all that we have to go by is

1 Quoted in English by Vincent Smith in The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 31, 1902, p. 196.

2.Quoted in English by Govind Pal in The Journal of Indian History, August 1935. p. 197.

3."New Indian States in Rajputana and Madhyadesa", A.New History..., p. 41.

4.Ibid., fn. 2.

5.Ibid.

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the analogy between our Aramaic version and the documents to which Benveniste refers. The analogy per se does not determine what came earlier and what later. Among the factors that are determinative, palaeography has as little force as in the case of the Magha inscriptions.

The Real Date of Aśoka and of the Kandahār Inscription

Our new historical perspective - pointing possibly beyond even c. 900 of the Tel-al-Halaf inscription - appears to launch us on the way to the traditional-Purānic chronology for Aśoka. Yet we cannot go ahead light-heartedly. For, with Chandragupta Maurya's accession fixed Purānically in 1538 B.C., his grandson Aśoka's has to be after the lapse of his grandfather's reign of 24 years and his father Bindusāra's of 25 by the Purānas. We reach (1538-49=) 1489 B.C. Purānically, Aśoka reigns for 36 years. So his regnal period will be from 1489 to 1453 B.C. The Ceylonese Chronicle Mahāvamsa allots 34 years to the first Maury a, 27 or 28 to the second and 37 to the third. Then Aśoka will reign from 1477 (or 1476) to 1440 (or 1439). But to locate in the 15th century B.C. the Mauryan and his huge empire stretching beyond the Indus to places like Kandahār would fly in the face of all ascertained fact of history and archaeology, including most prominently the end of the Harappā Culture in c. 1500 B.C., the far-flung Indus Valley Civilization which had its reach eastward up to Alamgirpur near Delhi. Neither does Mahāpadma of the Nanda dynasty about 150 years earlier, with his conquests - by the Purānic testimony - of the Aikshvākus, Panchālas, Kāśīs, Haihayas, Kalingas, Aśmakas, Kurus, Maithilas, Sūraśenas and Vitihotras seem the right contemporary of the Indus Valley Civilization in its later days of the 17th century B.C. We have to situate Aśoka as well as his immediate predecessors where they would fittingly stand.

To set him at the right distance from the Imperial Guptas whom we have started in 315 B.C., we have first to consider the proper place of the Āndhra Sātavāhanas between him and them. The Purānas reckon these dynasts as Magadhan monarchs and we have Purānically accorded them 412 years in all. After them we have traced, on the basis of both Megasthenes and the Yuga-Purāna section of the Gārgi-Samhitā, an interval of 75 years in Magadha, during which period - called a "republic" by the Greek annalist -

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the republican Lichchhavi clan into which Chandragupta I married had held sway over Pātaliputra, as shown by an inscription pubished by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indrajit in The Indian Antiquary (XI, p. 7). Down to 490 B.C. from 802 the Āndhras were, in the eyes of the Purānas, masters of Magadha, the province whose capital was this city. But can we accept such a picture, historically and archaeologically?

Modern historians, by and large, refuse to count the Sātavāhanas as Magadhan monarchs. Indeed, in the present state of research there is no evidence in the form of inscriptions or coins for their kingship in Magadha. However, we have hardly anything else to put here in place of their supposed rule. Even in the current time-scheme we are obliged to confess:¹ "The history of Magadha, from the end of the Kānva rule to the rise of the Guptas, three hundred years later, is very obscure." It may be more satisfactory to combine something of the general modern view of the Sātavāhanas with the Purānic and say that, while their seat of empire was the western and central Deccan - Āndhradeśa - they exercised to a fluctuating degree an overlordship of Magadha. At least the Yuga-Purāna, by which modern historians set some store,² states that a "Sātarājā" not only defended the territory of Kalinga against foreigners but also pursued them to Pātaliputra, their recently established headquarters, drove them out and ruled there for 10 years.³ "Sāta," M. Rama Rao⁴ assures us, is a well-known contraction of "Sātakarni", the name of several members of the Āndhra Sātavāhana dynasty.⁵ Sircar⁶ informs us of "Sāta" contracting "Sātavāhana" no less than "Sātakarni", and refers to "certain coins of the so-called 'Malwa fabric' with the legend indicating 'of the illustrious king Sāta'." So some connection of the Āndhras with Magadha may be conjectured. Rama Rao⁷ seems right in inferring: "The Empire of the Sātavāhanas... included at

1 . The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 100.

2.Ibid., p. 106.

3.Studies in the Early History of Āndhradesa by M. Rama Rao (University of Madras, 1971), p. 24. Cf. also Journal of the Bengal and Orissa Research Society, XVI, pp. 18-60 referred to by Rama Rao.

4.Ibid.

5.Ibid., pp. 26-27. Also "Genealogy", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 706-07.

6."The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis"; The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 198, with fn. 4.

7.Op. cit., p. 5.

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times Magadha..." - and V. Smith¹ justified in granting the possibility that "the Āndhras may at some time or other have controlled Magadha".

Besides, if we believe, as we must, that Megasthenes acquired his chronological knowledge from Purānic pundits in the age of the founder of the Imperial Guptas, it is difficult to think of those pundits fabricating baseless tales about a dynasty which preceded the Guptas by a mere 75 years. They may have represented overlordship as direct sovereignty because of adventures like that of Sātarāja, but we cannot conceive them as inventing a connection with Magadha where there was absolutely none. Surely they could not take such liberties with events still fresh in men's memories? We must also remember that the Āndhras were still a powerful people in the period of Sandrocottus. From what Pliny (VI, 22),² founding himself on Megasthenes, reports, the "Andarae" were actually next in power to that king of Palibothra (Pātaliputra). A sheer fantasy about them in relation to Magadha is scarcely credible. And the power they still retained would certainly not entitle the chronologists to speak of the end of their dynasty -except in the very special sense that for the last 75 years before the accession of Sandrocottus to the throne of Pātaliputra they had ceased to have any connection, however indirect, with that throne.

Rapson³ has well conjured up the circumstances in general which led the Purānas to count the Āndhra dynasty as rulers of Magadha. He does not evince any awareness of "Sātarāja" and hence states that "the Āndhras had probably no connexion with Magadha", but explicates what he calls "their only possible claim to a place in its records". He attends to "a conquest which transferred to them the suzerainty previously held by Magadha". His insight runs:

"In order to understand the situation we must consider what the consequences of a triumph of this kind must have been. Under the Nandas and the Mauryas Magadha had established a suzerainty which passed by conquest to the first Çunga king, Pushyamitra, and was solemnly proclaimed by his performance of the 'horse-sacrifice' (açvamedha). This suzerainty, and with it the proud title of chakravartin, 'universal monarch,' was contested successfully by

1.The Early History of India, 2nd Edition (Oxford, 1924), p. 119.

2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 342.

3."The Purānas", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 318.

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the Āndhra king who, as is known from the Nānāghāt inscription of his queen, Nāganikā, celebrated the Açvamedha on two occasions; and... there is good reason for believing that the genealogies preserved in the Purānas have their origin in the proclamation of the king's lineage which accompanied the performance of the sacrifice.

"The rank of a chakravartin must, at this period, have conferred on his family an hereditary distinction which entitled all his successors to be commemorated in the records of Magadha. Imperial and royal dignities of this kind, when once established, are not easily abandoned, however shadowy and unreal they may have become. It must be remembered that the sovereigns of our own country continued to use the title and the arms of France until the beginning of the nineteenth century, nearly two centuries and a half after the loss of Calais, the last of their French possessions. Regarded as historical documents, the British coin-legends of the eighteenth century, with their purely hereditary titles, are as misleading as the Purānas, which, arranging all in one long series, ascribe to Magadha both its own kings and the families of the suzerains of Northern India."

Especially with knowledge of the inroads into Magadha made by personages like Sātarāja and of the obscure fluctuating indefinable conditions in post-Kānva Magadha except for the 75 years of "republican" Lichchhavi rule just before the rise of the Guptas, the background of broad suzerainty Rapson sketches would sustain the Purānas' claim to count the long duration of the Āndhras as a part of Magadhan kingship in the lengthy time-scheme the pundits drew up from the birth of Parīkshit at the end of the Bhārata War to the emergence of the Guptas.

However, modern historians are at variance with our Purānic stand on the length of Āndhra monarchy no less than on the Āndhras' connection with Magadha. They grant them no more than 257 years: the dynasty starts in c. 30 B.C., with Simuka and ends in c. 227 A.D. with Puloma.¹ We have seen no reason to cut down their period so drastically. The Purānas give the impression of being the most historically minded where the Āndhras and the kings of more or less the same time are concerned, which is not unnatural since the pundits were nearest to the Āndhras and to these kings when the dynastic lists were being finally prepared.

1. The Age of Imperial Unity, "Chronology", pp. 701. 702.

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Raychaudhuri,¹ who has freely criticized the Purānas on occasion, has yet this to aver: "The epigraphic or numismatic records of the Sātavāhanas, Ābhiras, Vākatakas, Nāgas, Guptas and many other dynasties fully bear out the observation of Dr. Smith that 'modern European writers have been inclined to disparage unduly the authority of the Purānic lists, but closer study finds in them much genuine and valuable historical information.' " Dr. Smith² was himself inclined to accept "four and a half centuries in round numbers" for the duration of the Sātavāhanas. Nor has he lacked followers in refusing to reduce their reign to a mere 257 years. "There is a wide difference of opinion regarding the duration of the dynasty," reports Rama Rao³ in 1971. In 1974 Mahājan⁴ refers to "a lot of confusion regarding the chronology of the Sātavāhanas." Rama Rao⁵ opts for 456 years, while Mahājan⁶ writes: "we accept the view of Dr. Smith and Dr. Gopalachari that the Sātavāhana dynasty lasted for 460 years."

When we pass beyond the Āndhras the uncertainties increase. Several historians⁷ take the Śungas, the Kānvas and Āndhras to be successive post-Maurya lines as presented in the Purānas in their main statements. But these very historians⁸ who make much of these statements do not hesitate in connection with the earlier Pradyotas and Śiśunaga dynasties to declare that "the Purānas give a distorted account of the political vicissitudes that took place in Magadha after the fall of the Bārhadratha dynasty... and we propose to treat the history of Magadha on the basis of the Buddhist texts, notably the Sinhalese Chronicle Mahāvamsa, rather than the Purānas." In fact, all historians are in a mist here and are free to find whatever way strikes them as the most likely. The authorities we have just quoted have themselves admitted: "we know very little of the history of the Śunga dynasty"⁹ - and confessed about the Kānvas: "We really know nothing of their

1.The Political History of Ancient India, pp. 6-7.

2.The Early History of India, 2nd Edition, p. 119.

3.Op. cit., p. 5.

4.Ancient India, p. 307.

5.Op. cit., pp. 26-7.

6.Op. cit., p. 308.

7.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 99-100.

8.ibid., p. 18.

9.Ibid., p. 98.

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history."¹ Apart from the need to counterbalance with a long preceding period the short duration preferred for the Sātavāhanas, there is no particular cogency in counting the Śungas, Kānvas and Āndhras in succession. Smith, Gopalachari and Mahājan see the Sātavāhanas as running side by side not only with the Śungas and Kānvas but also with the last few Mauryas. Rapson,² while holding that the Śungas did come after the Mauryas, chooses yet to look on them as contemporaries of both the Kānvas and Āndhra Sātavāhanas.

"The Purānas," he³ writes, "have been edited, and, in the process, much of their value as records has been destroyed. Certain incidental statements, however, have escaped the editor; and these seem to show that the Kānvas and the Çungas were contemporary. The Kānvas, who are expressly called 'ministers of the Çungas,' are in some versions, said to have become kings 'among the Guhgas;'⁴ and... the Āndhras are credited with sweeping away not only the Kānvas, but 'also what was left of the Çungas' power'⁵"

Evidently, if the editing was done, the process was already complete by the time of Megasthenes; for, only by taking the three dynasties as successive could the total number of kings which he transmits to us accumulate. The succession must have been necessary in order to support the idea of great antiquity for the initiation of the line leading to the Magadhan kings and to fill the large space between that antiquity and the age of Sandrocottus. Once a very remote period had been posited as the starting-point of Indian history, diverse tactics had to be adopted to get down from the Purānic point of departure through the enormous stretch of years to the Purānic point of arrival, namely, the rise of the Imperial Guptas in 315 B. C.

Beyond the later Āndhras, who must have had something to do with Magadha, the Purānas are in a semi-legendary domain of chronology, and there is no reason why we should always stick to their pronouncements instead of profiting by one or another school of modern scholarship. We may accept the 412 years the

1.Ibid. , p. 99.

2."The Purānas", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 317.

3."The Early History of Southern India", ibid., p. 522.

4.Pargiter. The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, pp. 38. 71.

5.Ibid.

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Purānic calculations yield to us for the length of the Āndhra dynasty, and we may accept the post-Āndhra "republic" of 75 years in Magadha or at least in Pātaliputra which the Purānas of Megasthenes's day must have led him to report and which may be equated to the pre-Gupta rule there of the republican Lichchhavi clan. But we may well credit Rapson as far as the Śungas and Kānvas are involved. Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, facing the Purānic statement that the Āndhra king destroyed not only the Kānvas but also whatever was left of the power of the Śungas, arrived at the same picture as Rapson: he¹ concluded that "when the princes of the Śunga family became weak, the Kānvas usurped the whole power and ruled like the Peshwas in modern times, not uprooting the dynasty of their masters but reducing them to the character of nominal sovereigns". He urged this view in spite of believing that the Purānas' 30 Āndhra rulers did not reign in a line to make up more than 4 centuries but held sway collaterally in different parts of the country during this period and that only about 19 members belonging to the main branch ruled for about 3 centuries (c. 75 B. C.-A.D. 225).² Naturally both he and Rapson considered that the period of 112 years which the Purānas assign to the Śunga dynasty included also the 45 years of rule attributed to the Kānvas: the latter were the de facto rulers during the final 45 years of the Śunga sovereignty.

Such a computation would do away with the earlier "republic" à la Megasthenes, which we, on the suggestion of the Yuga-Purāna, assumed to divide the Kānvas from the Śungas - unless we could call the last 45 years of the latter dynasty's rois fainéants a "republic" in relation to this dynasty. What about the "republic" still earlier of Megasthenes, which, again on the strength of the Yuga-Purāna, we put between the Śungas and the Mauryas? Here too the term may be understood in an indirect sense to cover what Mookerji³ describes as "the disintegration of Aśoka's empire, which was too large to be kept together by his unworthy successors". His several sons set themselves up independently in different parts of the empire.⁴ Even his grandson Dasaratha who has left three short dedicatory inscriptions on the walls of rock-cut

1.Early History of the Dekkan, Section VI.

2.Ibid.

3."Aśoka, the Great". The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 89.

4.Ibid., pp. 89-90.

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caves on the heights of the Nāgārjunī hills can be deemed one of his immediate successors in the eastern provinces, just as another grandson, Samprati, son of Kunāla, stands out as such in the western.¹ On this showing it is very probable that all the names given as those of his successors denote either his sons or grandsons. Then the story of the supposed last Maurya Brihadratha having been assassinated by that king's commander Pushyamitra, who became the first Śunga monarch, could pertain to the period immediately post-Aśokan and need not prevent us from starting the 112 Śunga-Kānva years in a portion of the old empire at the end of Aśoka's life rather than somewhat later. If there is nothing to stop this vision of ours, we can count back by 112 years from the commencement of the Āndhras in 802 B. C. to reach the death of Aśoka in 914 B.C. With 36 years to his reign according to the Purānas (and modern historians) we get his accession in 950 B. C.

If we accept this date we can approximate the year of the Kandahār epigraph. Going by the Deb-cum-Bhandarkar thesis, which we have found most logical, that the 14 Rock Edicts were engraved after Aśoka's 27th regnal year when Pillar Edict VII had been engraved, we can place the bilingual inscription between 923 and 914 B.C.

Thus the very record which was declared to be the crowning touch for the modern identification of Sandrocottus has raised problems whose resolution has enabled it to be the most potent and precise weapon against that identification and in favour of the one to which we are conducted with the help of modern research joining hands with the ancient Indian tradition which would identify Sandrocottus otherwise.

The Date of Pānini's Word "Yāvānāni"

Our new chronology for Aśoka's reign and for the Aramaic component of the Kandahār inscription can serve as a general signpost towards the possible date of the Pāninian "Yāvānānī" which we have referred to the Aramaic script. It shows that the word can go back in time far beyond Cyrus's conquest of Gan-dhara between 558 and 530 B.C. How far it can go has to be determined from several indications. Aśoka has the expression

1. The Oxford History of India by the late Vincent E. Smith. 3rd Ed., edited by Percival Spear (1970), p. 137.

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yonaKambojagarhdharānām in R.E. V (Girnār), which means that Gandhāra no less than Yona and Kamboja was part of his empire, though not a section directly ruled by him but a section in which he had a Viceroy: the inscriptions mention four Viceroys, one of whom was posted at Taxila, the eastern capital of Gandhāra.¹ So Gandhāra was not an independent kingdom such as Pānini has noted; and as Aśoka records only the conquest of Kalihga, Gandhāra must have come to him from the first Maurya who had got possession of the far-flung empire of Mahāpadma Nanda and extended it. Pānini therefore must have lived before the first Maurya or after Aśoka. The known disintegration of the empire on Aśoka's death seems the right milieu, particularly in view of the tradition transmitted by Tāranātha that a "successor of Aśoka, Virasena by name, set up at Gandhāra"² and even more in view of what scholars call "the Mauryan passage" in Patanjali. Bali Nath Puri³ writes apropos of it: "Commenting on the Sutra Jivikārthe cāpanye (V.3.99) [of Pānini] 'in the case of a life-sustenance, serving an object which is an image (pratikrti) the affix ka is not used except when the object is saleable', Patanjali cites as examples the images of Śiva, Skanda and Viśākha, where the rule of affixing ka does not apply. The gold-coveting Mauryas had caused images of the gods to be prepared, but the rule applies only in such cases where these provide living for the person who exhibits them to the householders. Weber was of opinion that 'Pānini in referring to images (pratikriti), that were saleable - that is by their afforded sustenance of life (jivikārthe) - had in his eye such as these that had come down from the Mauryas.' This he cites as the opinion of Patanjali."

It appears very likely that Pānini in a post-Mauryan age was looking at images made notorious in late Mauryan times. In Gandhāra late Mauryan times would be those started by whoever declared this province independent. The grammarian may be put at the end of a period counted from Aśoka's death in 914 B.C. To arrive at some precision we need to consider some other words than "Yāvānānī" in the Ashtādhyāyī and ascertain their chronological bearings.

One of them is concerned with a subject we have touched upon:

1.Mookerji, "Aśoka the Great", op. cit., p. 79.

2.Ibid., p. 90.

3.India in the Time of Patanjali (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1958), p. 10.

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Bhāgavatism, the cult of Vāsudeva-Krishna. And here we have to keep in mind three things. First, none of the pre-Mauryan Buddhist books nor any inscription of Aśoka has the slightest cognizance of the Vāsudeva-cult in the midst of the several religious practices they report of their time. Secondly, Pānini touches on what can be called a tinge of devotion to Vāsudeva without giving him supremacy as an object of devotion or even definitely involving religiousness in the devoted attitude. Here only an elementary tendency towards Bhāgavatism can be affirmed. Hence Pānini must be post-Aśokan by all means yet need not be very much so. Thirdly, what is the indication in the other documents which in the post-Aśokan period can be seen as referring to Bhāgavatism? As we shall note in a later chapter, where we shall cite Pānini's reference too in its proper context, they come subsequent not only to the Mauryan epoch but also to the Sutiga-Kānva epoch, pertaining as they do to the rule of the Āndhras through a number of centuries. They suggest the initial stage of the Vāsudeva-cult but in a more definite manner than Pānini. So we may aver, in anticipation of our later chapter, that the Ashtādhyāyī must stand around 802 B.C., a little before or after the rise of the Āndhras to power-a date too early to allow us even to dream of any connection between "Yāvānānī" and the Greeks.

Pānini, Patanjali and the Mauryas

We may be questioned: "Would not making Pānini practically post-Śunga-Kānva create a veritable paradox with regard to the other famous grammarian, Patanjali? Does not Patanjali mention King Pushyamitra, the first Suiiga, as his contemporary? If the Mauryas' empire became fragmented in 914 B.C., as you have said, and if the Śungas commenced with Pushyamitra at almost the same time, Patanjali turns out to be a predecessor of Pānini. But Patanjali actually comments on Pānini's grammar as on an old document, as you have yourself already shown. Are you not absolutely in the soup?"

Is it really certain that Patanjali makes Pushyamitra Śunga his contemporary? Even after quoting the relevant phrase from Patanjali, Mookerji¹ is content to say no more than that Patanjali was "most probably" a contemporary of Pushyamitra. Vincent

1."The Fall of the Magadhan Empire", op. cit., p. 98.

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Smith,¹ knowing full well the same phrase, is even less sure: Pushyamitra, to him, is "perhaps" Patanjali's contemporary. Puri flatly affirms the contemporaneity of the two in several places -though in one place, after considering all the references to Pushyamitra, he merely says that the grammarian "may have been" the contemporary of the Śunga monarch² - but when Puri brings up the phrase concerned we have a statement which is hardly reassuring: Patanjali, "suggesting the use of the present tense (lat) to denote an action or undertaking which has begun not finished,... cites as an instance: Here we dwell, here we perform (as priests) the sacrifice instituted by Pushyamitra (iha vasāmah -iha Pusyamitram yājayāmah)"³ If this is Patanjali's meaning, we can credit Weber's view, as quoted by Puri,⁴ "that Patanjali did not live at that time, but the memory of the king was still cherished by the Brāhmanas".

All scholars of Sanskrit are cognizant of the Pushyamitra-references and yet several eminent names have shifted Patanjali away from the date assigned to Pushyamitra by most modern historians - c. 187-151 B.C. by Mookerji's reckoning⁵ or 185-149 B.C. by Puri's⁶. Peterson was for the 4th century A.D. for the grammarian, Weber for 25 A.D., Goldstiicker for 140-120 B.C., Max Miiller for 200 B.C.⁷

We are free to relate Patanjali to Pānini by whatever chronology strikes us as appropriate. We shall resolve the problem with greater exactitude when we discuss the growth of Bhāgavatism. But when on the strength of a comment by Patanjali we make Pānini look back in a post-Mauryan age at those notorious images of late Mauryan times, we must forget the modern chronological scheme. In that scheme Patanjali's comment cannot be interpreted à la Weber, for it would plump Pānini straight into the two and a half centuries before Christ - an un-Pāninian context of Bhāgavatism, in which this cult was not budding but in full flower. Patanjali, as we shall see, can and must have his place there, though without necessarily implying Pushyamitra Śunga in that period. The

1.The Oxford History of India, 3rd ed., p. 139.

2.Op. cit., p. 10.

3.Ibid., p. 9.

4.Ibid., pp. 6-7.

5."The Fall of the Magadhan Empire", op. cit., p. 97.

6.Op. cit. p. 11.

7.Ibid., pp. 5-7 with fn. 4 of p. 7.

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Sunga-tradition happened to be popular in those centuries. Witness Kālidāsa, who flourished either under the third Gupta emperor, Chandragupta II Vikramaditya - that is, within a hundred years of Sandrocottus, according to us - or under that hero of legend, Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī, connected with the founding of the era of 57 B.C. One of Kālidāsa's most celebrated plays, Mālavikāgnimitra, deals both with Pushyamitra's son Agnimitra and with Pushyamitra himself.

6

As a pendant to our discussion of the Kandahār inscription we must build a proper perspective of the two Aramaic and one Greek epigraphs discovered soon after that bilingual.

"Kandahār II"

In 1966 a slab broken off from a rock was picked up in the bazaar of Kandahār, mentioning "Priyadraśi" and containing a part of what may be called an Indo-Aramaic edict of Aśoka, whose provenance is supposed to be the old city of Kandahār itself. It has been christened "Kandahār II". It is Indo-Aramaic in the sense that though the script as well as the basic language is Aramaic it incorporates several Indian words. In this it resembles the two fragmentary Aramaic inscriptions that came to light long ago at Taxila and Pūl-i-Dārunteh respectively. It has Irānian words, too, like those inscriptions and like the Aramaic version of the bilingual "Kandahār I"; but the use of Prakrit words shows that it could not have been meant for people completely Irānianized. A semi-Irānianized people must have been addressed. So we have to think what should have been evident from the texts of Taxila, Pul-i-Dārunteh and Kandahār I - namely, that Aramaic was employed for at least two kinds of Aśokan subjects.

We have considered the Aramaic version of the 1958 bilingual to have been for the Yonas. The new epigraph may be regarded as addressed to those close associates of the Yonas: the Kambojas. The proof is this: the new inscription, reproducing in its own way the eighth section of Pillar Edict VII, openly advocates reverence for Brāhmanas and Śramanas in its 6th line.¹ We know from one

1. Journal Asiatique (Paris, 1966), text facing p. 462.

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version of an Aśokan edict that in the country of the Yonas no Brāhmanas and Śramanas moved. Kandahār I omitted these religious orders even where on account of the moral precepts we should most expect a reference to them. Kandahār II does not hesitate to bring them in: bābhanasamanesu. In view of their appearance we should imagine the text's provenance to be not Kandahār itself where the Yonas must have lived but its neighbourhood where the Kambojas were settled. Its coming to hand in the Kandahār bazaar does not necessarily imply the old city as its source. Curios and antiques are breught wherever they would most draw attention, e.g., the coins of Sophytes which were collected in the Peshawar market but which were ultimately shown to have had their origin in Irān. For convenience's sake, however, we may continue to speak of Kandahār II.

The Most Important Issue

The most important issue to resolve is: "Does K II suggest Aśoka's date to be 269-232 B. C, as at present believed or does it support our idea of a substantially greater antiquity?"

Like K I's Aramaic, the language here also exhibits traits which cannot be compared with the known Aramaic inscriptions of the Achaemenid period. Dupont-Sommer¹ dwells on the expression KN' found joined to the Irānian word patiasti which occurs as hūpatiasti in K I. He says that the interpretation of these letters is very difficult. They cannot be explained by resort to Irānian nor can they be taken as a terminal or else as an independent word: in Aramaic they correspond absolutely to nothing known. Dupont-Sommer asks: "One thinks of the word kēno 'right, just, true' attested in Syriac (cf. Hebrew Kēn: Akkadian Kēnu 'firm, right', Kettu 'the truth, the right'); is it a qualifier of patiasti: 'the just obedience'; expression equivalent to hupatiasti 'the good obedience', with this difference that the Irānian prefix hu would be transformed into an Aramaic pseudo-suffix? It would make of patiastikena a hybrid word, trans-Aramaic, rather monstrous, or the element kēna would play, we repeat, the role of a suffix, a role which it never has in Aramaic... " Dupont-Sommer revolves the possibility of reading for the second letter not N but L, making the word mean kulla "all", but he cannot have this reading consistent-

1. Ibid., pp. 458-59.

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ly with another part of the text. He concludes by saying: "We must then consider KN' as a last syllable or an inflexion intimately tied to the word patiasti but what kind of last syllable or inflexion?"

Our scholar's puzzlement is enough to suggest that we are in a world quite apart from the post-Achaemenid where we should have an Aramaic speech affined to that which had prevalence in the Achaemenid empire. We have on the contrary Syriac affinities and the resultant Aramaic is sui generis, carrying us beyond the period in which Aśoka is situated by our historians.

A factor clinching our contention is brought to our notice by Dupont-Sommer himself though without realizing its true import. He¹ tells us: "...in many places a vertical bar appears, which we have to interpret as a bar of separation between the words. The employment of a bar to separate words from one another is an ancient procedure attested in the very old Phoenician inscriptions (for example, the inscription of Ahiram of the 11th century B.C.) and Aramaic ones (for example, the inscription of Zakir, round about 800 B.C.); this procedure is found resumed in our II Kandahār, though in a very irregular fashion - one does not know too well under what influence." Dupont-Sommer adds that the engraver indicates word-separation also by leaving a little space blank or using terminal forms, but in spite of knowing how to combine all these three ways of separation he sometimes entirely neglects them and reverts by a sort of atavism to the ancient breakless script (scripta continua) which creates most grave and annoying difficulties of interpretation for the reader of an almost vowel-less language like Aramaic.

Clearly, the vertical bar and the scripta continua put on our inscription the stamp of a time far beyond the Achaemenid and post-Achaemenid and of a relationship to places far other than the Persian empire and the vicinity of India of the 3rd century B.C.

The Laghman Inscription

1966 disclosed another Aramaic epigraph of Aśoka - now in the valley of Laghman in North Afghanistan. Except for two words -KNPTY and SHYTY - it is all in Aramaic. Its main interest lies in two features: (1) certain numerical indications which seem connected with topography, and (2) the name inscribed at the end.

1. Ibid., p. 445.

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The numerical indications of supposed topography run: "At 200 'bows' it is down there, (the place) called TDMR. It is the route KNPTY, that is to say, (the route) of the Garden (?): more than 120 ('bows'). At TRT', here: 100. Below: 80."¹

Dupont-Sommer² reads TDMR as "Tadmor" and finds this reading, which points to the place more generally known as Palmyra near Antioch, rather appropriate in the inscription. Tadmor, he says "is the distant oasis, the great caravan city which was situated some 3800 kilometres from the place where the inscription has been engraved, and by which passed the old road of India, the old silk road." He continues: "The Aramaic inscription indicates without ambiguity, according to us, one of the most famous relays - 'down there' (tammāh), towards the West - of this famous route. One knows that the name of Tadmor appears in the cuneiform texts, about the beginning of the second millennium B.C., that it figures in the Bible, that Tadmor (or Palmyra) knew in the Hellenistic epoch and finally in the Roman epoch an extremely prosperous period. It is surely a little surprising, at first glance, to encounter this name in an inscription which has for its author the Indian emperor Aśoka, but, to tell the truth, it is not more strange than to read in other inscriptions of the same emperor the name of Antiochus, King of Antioch (Antiochus II Theos), that of Ptolemy, King of Egypt (Ptolemy II Philadelphus), that of Magas, King of Cyrene, brother of Ptolemy, that of Antigonus (Gonatas) of Macedonia, lastly, that of Alexander (either Alexander of Epirus or Alexander of Corinth). To reach Antioch, Alexandria, Cyrene, Macedonia, Epirus or Corinth from India, it would be necessary to pass by Palmyra, and the mention of this celebrated oasis of the Syrian desert in the new Aramaic inscription confers on it a special lustre."

Dupont-Sommer blithely goes on thus because he has accepted the five king-names as undoubtedly those of post-Alexandrine Greek monarchs. But actually the whole numerical and seemingly topographical passage is shrouded in mystery. The curious term SHYTY, which occurs in several places in the Aramaic epigraphs of Aśoka but is an unknown word, is properly interpreted by Dupont-Sommer as "that is to say". For, it always comes between

1.Académie des Inscriptions el Belles-Lettres: Comptes rendus des Séances de l'année 1970. Janvier-Mars, Paris, p. 163.

2.Ibid., pp. 166-67.

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an Indian term and an Aramaic one. Here the unknown quantity KNPTY answers to what in Aramaic seems to be GNT which follows SHYTY. Dupont-Sommer¹ writes: "if this Aramaic word is to be read thus, it means 'the Garden' or 'the Gardens'. Does not this term describe the very valley of Laghman, well irrigated and particularly pleasant, resembling one vast grove?" But Dupont-Sommer has a twinge of doubt: "The exact sense of the Aramaic word cannot be fixed until the term KNPTY, which it translates, is understood. We may note that the first letter, in place of G, could, if required, be read as Y, and the second, in place of N, be read as D or R. The translator here remains embarrassed." So, in fact, we are in uncertainty as to what Aśoka is alluding to. And can this uncertainty leave TDMR in such absolute light as Dupont-Sommer tries to make out?

The shadow upon it takes solid shape as soon as we turn to examine the numerical indications. The word after the number 200 is QŠTN, literally "bows" or else "archers". Dupont-Sommer² observes: "..,the context forces us to give the word the sense of a unit of length serving to measure distances. What exact value? It is indeed difficult to determine." Then the author refers to the well-known Aśokan unit of length, yojana, and, quoting Bloch, comments: "Uncertain measure, varying with the Buddhists from a league to a dozen kilometres." He goes on: "This measure is then rather imprecise. In the Anabasis, Xenophon speaks of 'parasangs', a Persian road-measure of thirty stadia, round about 6 kilometres, whose name is transcribed in Persian farsang. In the Aramaic inscription, QŠTN ought to designate a greater distance, round about 15 to 20 kilometres, perhaps the distance an archer on horseback would cover on the great roads of the Achaemenid empire from one relay to another."

Dupont-Sommer's passage is shot with self-contradictions. He begins by affirming the genuine difficulty of determining the value of the unit of length. He then mentions the Aśokan unit and states its variability. It could be very short or it could be longer, but the utmost length is 12 kilometres. From all this he jumps to the conclusion that the length-unit in the Aramaic inscription must be 3 to 8 kilometres more than the utmost extent we can attribute to the yojana and that the excess would be included in the relay-intervals on the Achaemenid roads. Dupont-Sommer has no

1. Ibid., p. 168.

2. Ibid., pp. 165-66.

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reason or right at all for this leap. It is a sheer non-sequitur.

The ground for it is nothing else than the assumption that TDMR is the far-off Syrian oasis which is some 3800 kilometres from the place where the inscription stands. What we know of the Aśokan length-unit or the Persian "parasang" renders Palmyra impossible. It calls for some other reading of TDMR.

If no such reading is available, we need not be disconcerted. We are in the midst of unknowns: neither KNPTY nor GNT has been clarified. To connect them with the valley of Laghman, as Dupont-Sommer is disposed to do, lands us in incongruities. For, apropos of the expression "YTRY 120", he¹ has to admit in the teeth of his conceiving a connection with Laghman: "120 (bows) more. It seems that the length of the route called KNPTY is indicated from its starting-point up to its end-point. We do not know, alas, either the one or the other. The distance, in any case, must be considerable, if one compares it to that of 200 (bows), which is the distance from the valley of Laghman to Palmyra."

Mark that crucially significant "if". Once we drop the hypothesis of Palmyra we do not have to pass beyond Laghman. When we refuse to do so, we have to end up with a confession like Dupont-Sommer's² in his role as an honest researcher: "All the numerical indications of lines 2 and 3 (bis) remain for us rather obscure."

"Tadmor" has no real raison d'etre. Even acceptance of it would not necessarily force us into the 3rd century B.C. Dupont-Sommer has himself traced the name to a greater antiquity, right back to nearly 2000 B.C., that is about 1050 years earlier than the time we have chosen - 950 B.C. - for Aśoka's accession. But the likelihood is more that the Aramean influence came towards Aśoka than that he extended himself to the Palmyra oasis.

Finally, we may ask: "If Aśoka lived in the 3rd century B.C. and if his outstanding foreign connections in the West were with Greek kings whose names he has Indianized, why does he not use the term known to those kings - namely, 'Palmyra' - rather than the non-Greek 'Tadmor'?" It was precisely the Greek rulers known as the Seleucids, contemporary with the early members of the dynasty founded by Sandrocottus - the Greek rulers of Syria from Seleucus Nicator onwards for three generations - who made old Tadmor prominent under the name "Palmyra" as a site on the

1.Ibid., p. 168.

2.Ibid., p 169.

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east-west trade-route.¹ If Aśoka was the grandson of Sandrocottus and if Tadmor was concerned in the inscription, an Indianized form of "Palmyra" is just what the inscription would yield. To find "Tadmor" instead would itself point us away from connections with the Seleucid kings and from their period in which Aśoka is presently situated.

Now for the name of the "judge" with whose help the inscription was made: "Wašu." Dupont-Sommer² is perplexed by it. It is not an Indian or an Irānian appellation. Considering the language of the epigraph, we should expect it to have an Irānian air about it. But Dupont-Sommer reports: "The name Wašu is not found noticed in the work of Emile Benveniste, Titles and Proper Names in Ancient Irān³ (Paris, Klincksheck, 1966). One encounters in Nabatean, in the inscriptions called Sinaitic, the proper name W'ŠW (CIS, II, 2136, 2315) and also 'WŠW (ibid., 325); one supposes generally that these forms are incorrect for 'WŠW 'Ušu', a proper name extremely frequent in Nabatean (cf. J. Cantineau, Nabatean,⁴ Vol. II, p. 88 sq.)."

We may recollect Gray's information⁵ in regard to the Sinaitic inscriptions. The legible alphabetic inscriptions in Syria and Palestine, beginning with "the epigraph of the king Shaphatha'al of Byblos, which is dated by Dunand in the 15th century B.C., though he does not exclude the possibility of a date two centuries earlier" - these Syrian and Palestinian inscriptions develop along a direct line from "the Sinai inscriptions, fragmentary and uncertain as they are". Thus "the inscriptions called Sinaitic" go back beyond the middle of the second millennium B.C. And such antiquity and association for the name of the "judge" who served to make the Aramaic epigraph are in keeping with the kind of language we have here. Dupont-Sommer⁶ informs us: "As the other Aramaic inscriptions of Aśoka show, this Aramaic language is generally of a rather awkward style, and, at times, of an incorrect grammar." In the post-Achaemenid post-Alexandrine age, and in the proximity of Irān, we should have a very different

1.The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, 1976, VIII, p. 703.

2.Op. cit., p. 169, fn. 1

3.Original French title: Titres el noms propres en Irānien ancien.

4.Original French title: Le Nabatéen

5.Archaeology and the Old Testament World, p. 24.

6.Op. cit., p. 163.

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quality of expression and syntax. All our Aśokan epigraphs in Aramaic betray an archaic gaucherie, a linguistic primitivism, taking us back towards the beginnings of a tongue and that too in an alien locale far from its home. They do not at all suggest an Aśoka of 269-232 B.C.

A few words by way of a general criticism of Dupont-Sommer's interpretation may be added apropos of his assumption that the numerical pointers refer to a unit of length in the word Q§TN. He renders this word as "bows" (or "archers") and starts inquiring what length it connoted. But have we at all a length-unit here? Dupont-Sommer is unaware of the origin and history of the word and of its significance.

Richard N. Frye, the authority on Persia, has an illuminating passage:

"The Achaemenids, by establishing colonies of soldiers in conquered lands and by giving land to civil and military servants, favoured and promoted feudalism. From Akkadian records we hear of two terms in the feudal relationship, ilku and qashtu. The former was the old Babylonian fief or feudal service. But under the Achaemenids, and not attested before Darius I, we find the word qashtu, originally meaning a 'bow' or 'division of land for the support of an archer', given to persons in return for military obligations to the ruler. It would appear that the institution of qashtu was introduced by the Persians while the Babylonian ilku then becomes a monetary or silver obligation, and comes to mean 'ground tax' or simply 'tax'. The qashtu, given as fiefs to families, however were subsumed under a hatru, which was primarily a tax collecting institution with an important official called a shaknu over it."¹

What we gather from Frye is that qashtu stands for a certain piece of territory and is not anything comparable to a yojana or a parasang. As Dupont-Sommer's Aśoka is nearly 300 years later than Darius I, the Persian sense of the term must hold for the Aśoka of modern historians.

With this sense we do not move into greater ultimate clarity in respect of the inscription but we take away all plausibility from Dupont-Sommer's approach which in itself too we have found unacceptably tending, despite his hesitations here and there, to be "slanted" under the compulsion of a particular chronology. And

1. The Heritage of Persia, p. 138.

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all talk of Tadmor - rather arbitrary already - becomes irrelevant. TDMR remains completely cryptic.

How does qashtu bear upon our chronology for Aśoka? Can it at all figure in an inscription dated centuries before Darius I? Although Frye says that the word is first attested in this king's time, he disavows absolute certainty about the earlier time by saying: "It would appear that the institution of qashtu was introduced by the Persians." The opening phrase evinces some doubt. The very fact that qashtu, like ilku, is heard of in Akkadian records suggests a non-Persian background and the possibility of its employment earlier than the Achaemenids. Whether the possibility has been realised or not in the Laghman epigraph depends on whether or not this epigraph has signs of a pre-Achaemenid antiquity which would tend to make qashtu also older. As such signs exist, we may aver that the term is found first occurring in this Aramaic inscription.

However, its meaning might not be the same as in Achaemenid and post-Achaemenid ages. Separated from ilku and neither coloured by nor interfering with this word's sense of "the old Babylonian fief or feudal service", it may even do what it cannot in a post-Achaemenid context. On the analogy of the Sanskrit dha-nuh (bow) which was a measure of length equal to 4 hastas (i.e., 4 cubits or 6 feet), it may even be a unit of measure.¹ Of course, on the same analogy it would hardly provide such length as could carry us to a far place like Tadmor.

Anyway, the term can be present in a document of the late 10th century B.C. We do not need to fear for our Aśokan chronology.

Two Meaningful Facts

In passing we may mention two facts that held a lot of meaning in an earlier discussion of ours. When we treated the bilingual inscription we noted sufficient space above and below the Aramaic text for other texts to be accommodated. We argued that just because the Greek text was above the Aramaic it need not be regarded as contemporaneous with it. It may have been put there later. The present Aramaic text has below it an inscription in quite different characters, a specimen of the famous "petroglyphs" of

1. I owe this idea to my friend David Hopkins.

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Laghman.¹ Above, there is a blank space where a Greek translation or paraphrase can easily be introduced. An Aśokan inscription does not always start right at the top of a rock-face and its being in the middle does not imply that it is there because it follows a Greek or any other version of it. Its position allows several possibilities.

Secondly, if the Greeks were in Aśoka's time as his subjects, why is there in Laghman, which is part of the locality where the Greeks are known to have settled in the 3rd century B.C., no Greek version set up by Aśoka of the Aramaic text although room is available both above and below? The petroglyphs must have come much later than the original Aramaic text. Aśoka could have added a Greek version in the same place or in the place at the head of the rock-face. The absence of it argues against the Greeks having been present in Laghman in Aśoka's time and against this time having been post-Alexandrine in which the Greeks were actually in Laghman.

The case of this inscription is different from that of the epigraphs of Taxila and Pul-i-Dārunteh. The latter two are on stones leaving hardly any room for a Greek version. The opportunity provided by the epigraph and the wasting of it are significant.

The New Greek Inscription

The new Greek inscription was discovered in the Kandahār bazaar in the same year as Kandahār II. It consists of a fragmentary stone piece holding 22 lines which translate or adapt the end of R.E. XII and the beginning of R.E. XIII. There is no Aramaic text accompanying it. Again, Aśoka is called "Piodasses". Most tantalizingly the fragment of R.E. XIII breaks off before the phrases which would settle once for all whether Aśoka's Yonas were Greeks or not. As Emile Benveniste² writes: "At the end we have only the first words: 'and, as with all the peoples, there are found...' One easily completes: 'these groups, Brāhmanas and Śramanas, etc' But here the Indian text presents an interesting discordance between the version of the North-west and the others." We may recall that one of the versions announces that

1.Académie des Inscriptions..., p. 159, PI. II.

2.Le Journal Asiatique, CCL II, Année 1966, Fascicule No. 2, Paris, "Edits d'Aśoka en Traduction Grecque", p. 156.

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these religious communities are found among all the peoples "except among the Yonas". Benveniste¹ comments that this restriction does not appear at Shāhbāzgarhī and he would like to know how the phrase was conceived in this version which he takes to have been meant for the Greeks. What is of moment is to wonder whether the text would have the term "Yonas" or there would be a substitution openly indicating "Greeks". If "Yonas" occurred, we would be certain that the Aśokan Yonas never were Greeks. And we should be certain that the Greek version was an adaptation made of an ancient original by the Indological Greeks themselves of the 3rd century B.C. On the other hand, if we came across an open indication of "Greeks" instead of "Yonas" we could wager that Aśoka had Greeks as his subjects and then our theory would fail. Perhaps a further chance discovery will settle the issue. Meanwhile we must remember how heavily the dice are loaded against them and we have to go by a number of pointers in the new Greek epigraph.

The mere mention of Brāhmanas and Śramanas would not mean that the Greeks might not have been Aśoka's subjects. What we have here is an adapted reproduction of matter pertaining to conditions in far-away Kalinga. We read: "All those who dwell there (in Kalinga), Brāhmanas and Śramanas and others consecrating themselves to Piety..." The Greeks are merely told of happenings elsewhere: they are not themselves asked to revere Brāhmanas and Śramanas. The really important factor is something else and relates to the material on which the Greek version appears and the context of the material.

From Benveniste's articles we have to go to Daniel Schlumber-ger's communication: "Une Nouvelle Inscription Grécque d'Açoka."² Schlumberger conveys the information:

"The text of 1958 was a rock inscription; that of 1964 is engraved on a block which surely belonged to a building.... It is a novelty, a wall inscribed in the Mauryan epoch. Among the texts of Aśoka recovered up to now, the majority are engraved on rocks; and the rest on 'pillars', that is, on monolithic columns of rose sandstone, all drawn from the same quarry, near Benares. One does not know of any inscription of Aśoka engraved on the walls of buildings, for

1.Ibid.

2.Académie des Inscriptions el Belles-Lettres. Comptes rendus des Seances de I'annee 1964, Janvier-Juin, Paris, 1965. pp. 129, 133, 134.

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the simple reason that one does not know of any buildings of Aśoka beyond the stūpas said to be Aśokan, which are in brick and whose Aśokan date would besides, demand to be verified in each case.

"Aśoka got built at Kandahār a construction in freestone, or at least certain parts of it were in freestone: that is what we know today. What type of contruction? Temple, stūpa, palace, rampart or simple support of some terrace or of some utilitarian building, we cannot say. It would be of great interest to know."

The long and short of Schlumberger's reflection is: we are faced with a completely non-Aśokan feature. None of the numerous edicts of Aśoka gives us the slightest hint that he ever got his messages engraved as here on freestone - that is, fine-grained sandstone or limestone easily sawn to specification for construction-purposes. Here obviously is a portion of a building. But even the buildings attributed to Aśoka - a few stūpas - are never in any kind of stone. If anything could render a so-called Aśokan edict non-Aśokan, it would be this unique feature which we have come up against. This feature would be quite natural if we thought of the Indological Greeks of the 3rd century B.C. doing what they might on their own if they had no connection with Aśoka and his practice but were contemporaries of the Guptas.

Stone-structures begin to be in use only in the Gupta period. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri¹ says: "Stone temples of the time are rare. They are unpretentious flat-roofed structures about ten feet square with a porch of still smaller dimensions; their masonry, however, is excellent, the stones being finely dressed and held together with no mortar. The Daśāvataratemple of Deogarh forms a transition to the later style with high śikharas. This temple had a śikhara of about 40 feet. It stood on a raised plinth in the centre of the open terrace. It had a plain interior, but its entrance was exquisitely carved and decorated, the figures of Ganga and Yamuna being carved on the jambs, a typical Gupta feature. When complete, this was doubtless a monument of rare merit, and its sculptural panels were the most superb of their kind."

Sastri's picture shows us the two extreme bands of the Guptan architectural spectrum: stone-building art practised on a semi-primitive scale on the one hand and splendidly deployed on the

1. History of India, Part I - Ancient India (S. Viswanathan, Madras, 2nd Ed., 1953), p. 162.

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other though still not in wide dimensions. What we may infer is that for the first time in India stone-structures came into use, particularly for religious ends, in the Gupta age and was soon developed with artistic skill. The Deogarh temple must not be regarded as a solitary example of a transition to a more sumptuous style. V. Smith¹ perhaps strikes the right note when he tells us: 'The next important and interesting extant stone temple of the Gupta age is one of moderate dimensions at Deogarh.... The panels of the walls contain some of the finest specimens of Indian sculpture.... Fragments, including some beautiful sculptures, indicate that magnificent stone temples of the Gupta age stood at Sārnāth near Benares and elsewhere."

Of course, the Greek building of the 3rd century B.C. could not have been a temple or stūpa, but the non-Aśokan fact spotlighted by Schlumberger is decidedly pro-Guptan.

Conclusion

Looking back at the two inscriptions in Greek mentioning "Piodasses", we may sum up that one of them embodies a special message adapting an Aramaic text which could be an ancient original with the Greek merely a much later paraphrase, while the other is a paraphrase of two already existing Aśokan edicts, made by the Greeks likewise in a period far posterior to the period we have assigned to Aśoka: 950-914 B.C. Neither epigraph can claim to be a particular communication for the Greeks alone. So far no inscription in Greek only and uniquely directed to them has come to hand. If they were the Yonas, the people to whom the Brāhmanas and Śramanas did not minister, we should expect from the great Buddhist emperor some message suited to them and none else. In this respect we stand before a total vacuum.

The two Aramaic epigraphs have also introduced no element encouraging us to bring Aśoka down to the post-Achaemenid post-Alexandrine epoch. Whatever notable traits they have displayed set us in the reverse direction.

1. The Oxford History of India, 3rd Ed., pp. 174-75.

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7

All Aśokan issues that have to do with the Greeks have now been tackled. They are indeed the main issues and the ones with which we are concerned. But it may be both interesting and useful to tackle in brief whatever problem directly related to Aśoka is left over.

Aśoka and the Date of Buddha's Death:

the Ceylonese Traditions

The first problem is the date of Buddha's death (Nirvāna or Parinirvāna, as it is often called). Since Aśoka definitely comes after this event and since this event is taken to have occurred in either 543, 486 or 483 B.C., we may be asked: "Should we be surprised if Aśoka's grandfather Chandragupta Maurya emerged as Sandrocottus and Aśoka stood in the post-Alexandrine epoch along with Antiochus II and company?" What we have to do is to throw serious doubt on all those three dates of the Nirvāna.

543 B.C. was for long the sole accepted date on the strength of the Ceylonese Chronicles and a Ceylonese tradition. But with its help Aśoka can never be satisfactorily made post-Alexandrine. For, in these Chronicles Aśoka, here named Piyadassi, has his coronation 218 years later - that is, in (543-218=) 325 B.C., a date which fails to render him a contemporary of Antiochus II and company.

To avoid this inconvenience, scholars have urged that when the Chronicles spoke of Piyadassi's coronation they had Chandragupta Maurya and not Aśoka in mind. The argument is: "Is not Chandragupta once called Priyadarśi in Act VI of the late Indian drama Mudrārākshasa?"¹ With Chandragupta coronated in 325 B.C., as is surely possible, and with his own reign of 24 years as well as his son Bindusāra's of 27 intervening between it and Aśoka's, Aśoka will naturally fall into just the period wanted. But the fact stares us in the face that nobody except Aśoka is known to be designated Piyadassi in the rest of the Chronicles. Hence the Mudrārākshasa is of no avail.

Besides, now on the top of a sandstone hillock or range of Vindhyan hills near Bhopal we have found edicts that, as H. D.

1. Cf. R. C. Raychaudhuri in Indian Culture, II,

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Sankalia¹ tells us, "make specific mention of the emperor's name as 'Priyadarśi Nama Rājā'. 'Aśoka' was his assumed name." So the rest of the Chronicles is right, and most unlikely to employ "Piyadassi" anywhere as a general honorific for any other king.

Even if the Mudrārākshasa were of any use, the very starting-point - 543 B.C. - of the calculation would still be an artificial construct. Let us not forget what Max Muller² said long ago in comparing the chronologies of the Southern and the Northern Buddhists:

"The Northern Buddhists found their chronology on a reported prophecy of Buddha that 'a thousand years after his death his doctrines would reach the northern countries'. Buddhism was definitely introduced into China in the year 61 A.D.: hence the Chinese fix the date of Buddha's death about one thousand years anterior to the Christian era... If... the starting-point of the Northern Buddhist chronology turns out to be merely hypothetical, based as it is on a prophecy of Buddha, it will be difficult to avoid the same conclusion with regard to the date assigned to Buddha's death by the Buddhists of Ceylon. The Ceylonese possess a trustworthy and intelligible chronology beginning with the year 161 B.C.³ Before that time, their chronology is traditional and full of absurdities. According to Professor Lassen, we ought to suppose that the Ceylonese, by some means or other, were in possession of the right date of Buddha's death; and as there was a prophecy of Buddha that Vijaya should land in Ceylon on the same day on which Buddha entered Nirvāna, we are further asked to believe that the Ceylonese historians placed the founder of the Vijaya dynasty of Ceylon in the year 543 B.C., in accordance with their sacred chronology. We ate not told, however, through what channel the Ceylonese could have received their information as to the exact date of Buddha's death, and although Professor Lassen's hypothesis would be extremely convenient, and has been acquiesced in by most Sanskrit scholars, it would not be honest were we to conceal from ourselves or from others that the first and most

1.Indian Archaeology Today (Ajanta Publications, Delhi, 1979), p. 130.

2.A History of Sanskrit Literature (Edition 1912), pp. 136-137.

3.Cf. Sylvain Levi, as quoted by Vincent Smith in The Indian Antiquary, 1902, p. 199: "There is not, I believe, any reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the Ceylonese dates... from... the... time of Dutthagāmanī, about 161 B.C., although the dates prior to his reign are not to be trusted." (K.D.S.'s note)

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important link in the Ceylonese as well as the Chinese chronology is extremely weak."

Rhoads Murphy¹ has subsequently expressed the same cautious attitude: "The written history of Ceylon begins with an account of the landing of Vijaya, an Aryan-speaking prince, and his seven hundred followers somewhere on the north-west coast at about 543 B.C.... although both the date (which is artificially fixed) and the story are of later origin and border on legend."

Fleet and Geiger, dissatisfied with 543 B.C. for Buddha's death, have tried to prove that this era is a comparatively modern fabrication and that the true date of the event to which it is tied is 483 B.C. "Geiger's date, however," remarks Raychaudhuri,² "is not explicitly recognised in tradition." A. Paranavitana³ rejects the theory that there was a Ceylon era reckoned from 483 B.C. So it would seem that this era is still more a modern fabrication than the other. But even if it were not and had its source in tradition, the tradition would not per se confer historical value upon it any more than on 543 B.C.

The truth in this matter is threefold. First, although the tradition is linked with the fairly detailed treatment of Aśoka by the Ceylonese Chronicles, the latter can hardly be regarded as very trustworthy in matters Aśokan. Sircar⁴ has declared: "There is some palpable and irreconcilable difference between the Ceylonese accounts and the information supplied by Aśoka's inscriptions." One important instance is: the inscriptions reveal Aśoka as directly responsible for the Buddhist missions, whereas these accounts completely ignore his part and attribute the missions wholly to the Buddhist Church. An equally important example may be culled from Barua:⁵ "The main drawback of the traditional narratives is that they have nothing to say about the Kalihga war which was waged in the 8th year of abhisheka [= coronation] and marked the real turning-point in Aśoka's life and career (R.E. XIII)."

Secondly, there is a wide diversity in the dates which have come down to us of Buddha's death from ancient sources: the years

1.The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XVI, No. 2, February 1957, p. 183.

2.An Advanced History of India, p. 58.

3."History of Ceylon: Appendix", A New History..., Vol. VI, pp. 262-63.

4.Letter to the author, dated 7.11.1956.

5.Aśoka and His Inscriptions, Part I, p. 31.

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derived from the Ceylonese tradition are just two out of several in our hands. We shall shortly deal with the diversity.

Thirdly, scholars choose either 543 or 483 B.C. by establishing to their satisfaction some sort of relation between it and the date they accept as certain for Aśoka's accession, a date within the period 275-268 B.C. Once this date is challenged, there is no reason to set any store by the Ceylonese tradition.

How about the "Dotted Record" of Canton?

The same holds for what is called the "dotted record" of Canton, about which Sircar¹ writes: "The most reliable tradition about the date of Buddha's death is 486 B.C., supplied by the Cantonese dotted record of 489 A.D., taken from India to China by Sungabhadra... although scholars now usually accept the date 483 B.C. proposed by Fleet and Geiger."

It is the Chinese priest Tao-Suen who speaks in 664 A.D. of this record² in which up to the year 489 A.D. a dot is said to have been put for 975 years for each year after Buddha's death. Thus the first and only reference to it comes eleven hundred and fifty years after the alleged time of the Nirvāna and a hundred and seventy-five years after the reported dotting ceased. Further, Geiger,³ while appreciating the closeness of 486 B.C. to the date favoured by himself (483 B.C.), makes the observation: "I- would not for my part attach too much importance to the 'dotted Record'. It is singularly improbable that in the course of time - it is a question of nearly a thousand years! - not a single error or oversight should have occurred."

The very fact that most scholars agree with Geiger's and Fleet's date implies their assumption of an "error or oversight" of three years in the "dotted record". But the moment such a slip is admissible, there is no intrinsic ground to think only of three years: any number of slips may have taken place. A restriction to three years is made simply because, in the opinion of most scholars, 483 B.C. gives the best relation of Buddha's death to Aśoka's accession.

1.Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, B Letter, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1949, pp. 127- 128.

2.Indian Culture, Vol. V, p. 316.

3.The Mahāvamsa (Colombo, 1950), Introduction, p. xxvi.

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K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, reviewing a new book on Aśoka¹ in the Sunday Hindu of Madras some years back, wrote quite frankly: "Chronology is always a puzzle in ancient Indian history and the author does not seem to be aware that 483 B.C. for the parinirvāna of the Buddha is itself based on an assumed date for Aśoka's consecration; and the only merit of the 'dotted record' of China is that it yields a date close to that assumed for Aśoka."

The Large Number of Dates in the Field

Moreover, we may suspend belief in the "dotted record", no less than in the two other dates currently in the field, because there are a large number of different dates actually available for Buddha's death. The concentration of scholars on 486 or 483 as alternatives to 543 B.C. has prevented the common student of history from scrutinizing the credentials of the other dates and thereby the possibilities of various epochs for Aśoka.

Particularly the "dotted record" as an article carried from India by a Chinese visitor falls under suspicion. Even apart from the extreme improbability that immediately after Buddha's death the document started being written - unknown to any canonical Buddhist book - and even apart from the extreme likelihood of the document's having been based merely on some tradition of the Parinirvāna, according to which the dots were entered by hindsight from a certain year and carried forward up to 489 A.D. -there is an amazing fact to be noted from what we learn from another Chinese visitor to India: the famous Hiuen-Tsang. Hiuen-Tsang was in India during 630-643 A.D. and not only was a contemporary of Tao-Suen (664 A.D.) in China but also collected all traditions current in his time for the epoch of the PariNirvāna. Sircar² cites four different traditions reported by Hiuen-Tsang: (1) about the end of the 3rd century B.C., (2) about the middle of the 6th century B.C., (3) about the middle of the 7th century B.C. and (4) about the middle of the 9th century B.C. The 5th century B.C. in which Tao-Suen's "dotted record" puts Buddha's death does not figure at all in Hiuen-Tsang's four-faceted report made in the very period in which Tao-Suen lived.

As Hiuen-Tsang gleaned his information during his extensive

1.Romila Thapar's Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Oxford, 1961).

2."The Yavanas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 114, fn. 1.

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travels, we may well conclude that the "dotted record" 's date for Buddha's death had very little vogue in the India of Hiuen Tsang's and Tao-Suen's age. This means also that the closely related 483 B.C., accepted by most scholars, had then no Indian standing to speak of.

Fa-Hien was a Chinese traveller over India in the 4th century A.D., a period when the supposed dots were still being put and which was only a century earlier than Sungabhadra, the alleged Dearer of the Record from India to China. Fa-Hien has no notion of either 486 or 483. Nor does his information tally with any of Hiuen-Tsang's four dates. He refers to an image of Maitreya Boddhisatva having been "set up three hundred years after the Nirvāna of Buddha, in the time of Ping-Wang of the Chou family".¹ H. A. Giles,² his most recent translator, interprets him to mean that Buddha died during the reign-period of Ping - that is, in 770-719 B.C. James Legge,³ one of the early translators, would seem to understand that the death was placed three hundred years before Ping - that is, in the 11th century B.C.

This is a far cry from the Ceylonese tradition as generally known. But that tradition itself is not free from a discrepancy which would render the 11th century B.C. a still more differing chronology. E. J. Thomas⁴ has pointed out that the Sarvastivadins among the Buddhists take Aśoka to have flourished one century after the Nirvāna and that such a tradition may be traced in the Ceylonese Chronicles themselves. Within the current framework of Aśokan history the Nirvāna, according to this date, would fall in the 4th century B.C. and a Japanese scholar quoted by Thomas places it in 386 B.C.

Thomas⁵ has also set down "the tradition of Khotan as reported in Tibetan books".⁶ It places the 50th year (out of 55) in the reign of Aśoka at an interval of 234 years from the Parinirvāna, which means 180 years earlier than Aśoka's accession in contrast to the

1.Beal, Si-yu-ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World (London, 1906), p. xxvi.

2.Records of the Buddhist Kingdoms, Chapter VII.

3.A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms by Fa-Hien (Oxford, 1886).

4.B. C. Law Volume, II, pp. 18-22.

5."Aśoka, the Imperial Patron of Buddhism", The Cambridge History of India, I. p. 503.

6. W. W. Rockhill, The Life of the Buddha and the Early History of His Order (Triibner & Co., London, 1884), p. 233 and the Tibetan texts there named.

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218 mentioned in the Ceylonese Dīpavamsa (VI, 1). The present-day date of Aśoka's accession is c. 269 B.C. So the Parinirvāna would happen in c. 449. But surely the "Tibetan books" do not see Aśoka's time eye to eye with modern historians?

Sircar¹ speaks of "Buddhist traditions of north-western India as recorded in the Milinda-panha", according to which the Indo-Greek king "Menander flourished 500 years after the PariNirvāna, i.e. in the sixth century after Buddha's death". Then Sircar² writes: "It is interesting to note in this connection that Kielhorn suggested an epoch of the PariNirvāna falling in 638 B.C. with which the astronomical details of the date of an inscription (List of Northern Ins. No. 575) work out satisfactorily." Such an epoch would agree with the third out of the four different traditions Hiuen-Tsang reports about the Parinirvāna, and that third tradition, says Sircar,³ would place Menander "between the middle of the second and the middle of the first century B.C." - in consonance with the present-day unanimous dating of "Menander's reign... after [the Bactrian Greek king] Demetrius's death which took place about 165 B.C."⁴

The Ceylonese Dīpavamsa and Mahāvamsa correspond with Hiuen-Tsang's second tradition, but the correspondence is of no use to modern historians who pin their faith on 486 or 483 rather than 543 B.C. On the contrary, if it has any value, it disqualifies their faith by a double disagreement. But actually there is no particular intrinsic value in it any more than in 486 and 483 being so close to each other.

Hiuen Tsang's first and fourth traditions lack parallels - except that his middle of the 9th century seems near to the chronological implication of what the Arab traveller, Albērūnī(1031 A.D.), who made a point of collecting eras and dates, has testified. He⁵ wrote: "In former times Khurāsān, Persis, Irāk, Mosul, the country up to the frontiers of Syria, was Buddhistic, but then Zarathustra went forth from Ādarbaijan and preached Magism in Balkh (Bactria). His doctrines came into favour with King Gushtasp, and his son Isfandiyad spread the new faith both in East and West, both by

1."The Yavanas", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 113-14.

2.Ibid., p. 114, fn. 1.

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid., p. 113.

5.Sachau, Albērūnī's India, p. 21.

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force and by treaties. He founded fire-temples through his whole empire, from the frontiers of China to those of the Greek empire. The succeeding kings made their religion (i.e., Zoroastrianism) the obligatory state-religion for Persis and Irāk. In consequence, the Buddhists were banished from these countries and had to emigrate to the countries east of Balkh... Then came Islam."

Evidently, with his reference to the frontiers of China and the Greek empire, Albērūnī is following the popular Persian tradition which places King Gushtasp (or Vistašpa, as in the Avesta) in the 7th century B.C. - the tradition mainly supported in our own day by A. V. Williams Jackson who dates Zarathustra to c. 660-583 B.C. So Buddha, for Albērūnī, must antedate the 7th century B.C. and, if by the time of Zarathustra, Buddhism had spread from India to "Khurāsān, Persis, Irāk, Mosul, the country up to the frontier of Syria", there must have been a sufficient period between Zarathustra and Buddha to accommodate so much missionary activity. So Buddha must go a few centuries upward from the period of Zarathustra - at least to the middle of the 9th century B.C. if not even to the Chinese date mentioned by Max Muller as being equally credible as the Ceylonese, the date reached by counting 1000 years before 61 A.D.: 939 B.C.

In fact, by the Chinese signpost itself we are not confined to this year. In the eyes of Majumdar,¹ just as historical as the event indicated by 61 A.D., is the relation between China and Buddhism in the account telling us that the Yueh-chi rulers in the Oxus Valley presented some Buddhist texts to the Chinese court in the year 2 B.C. This would fix the Nirvāna in 1002 B.C. But is there any weighty reason to ignore those two other Chinese traditions noted with doubt by Majumdar,² according to which (1) Buddhist missionaries from India proceeded to China as early as 217 B.C. and (2) a Chinese general who led a military expedition in Central Asia in 121 B.C. brought home a golden statue of Buddha and thus made the Chinese first know of Buddhism? These traditions would give us 1217 and 1121 B.C.

Kalhana (Rājatarangini I, 172), states that the PariNirvāna preceded Kanishka by 150 years. Modern historians mostly put Kanishka in 78 A.D., which is dubbed the Śaka Era. Hence, by Kalhana's information combined with their chronology, Buddha

1."Colonial and Cultural Expansion", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 646.

2.Ibid.

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died in 72 B.C. However, for Kalhana Kanishka comes before Gonanda III of Kāshmir, whom he dates 2330 years before his own time which is the 1070th year of the Śaka Era (Rājataranginiī, 52-53) - i.e., (1070+78=) 1148 A.D. So Kanishka passes beyond (2330-1148=) 1182 B.C. Then the Parinirvāna, by its 150 years' precedence, would occur before 1332 B.C.

The Purānic tradition and the Mahābhārata pointers would carry us still more back in time. As we know, the latter sets the Bhārata War 36 years before the hypothesized Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. And the Purānas give dynasty-lengths as well as reign-lengths from the birth of Parīkshit in the year of the Bhārata War. The first Magadhan dynasty is of the 22 Bārhadrathas who reign for 1000 years. It is followed by the 5 Pradyotas with their sum of 138 years. Then come the 10 Śiśunagas whose total duration is 362 years. All these numbers make up exactly the 1500 years which are said in some versions - as against 1015, 1050 and 1115 in others -to elapse from Parlkshit's birth to the rise of the Nandas, the dynasty next in time to the Śiśunagas. The Nandas rule for 100 years. As they begin in (3138-1500=) 1638 B.C., the Mauryas' founder Chandragupta mounts the throne in (1638-100=) 1538. With Chandragupta's reign being 24 years and his son Bindusāra's being 25, Aśoka's accession is in 1489 B.C. We are not told, as by the Buddhist books, the interval between his accession and the death of Buddha nor the name of the pre-Aśokan king during whose reign Buddha died. Hence we cannot calculate on the Buddhist basis¹ of the 8th year of King Ajātaśatru's reign. But if we did we would not be able to go by the Buddhist 218 years as the interval between that year and the accession of Aśoka. In the Purānas Ajātaśatru is the 6th Śiśunaga king. As this dynasty succeeds the Pradyotas, they start after the Bārhadrathas' 1000 years and the Pradyotas' 138: namely, in (3138-1138=) 2000 B.C. The reign-periods of the 5 pre-Ajātaśatru Śiśunagas total (40+ 36+26+40+38=) 180 years. Adding Ajātaśatru's 8, we get 188 for deduction from 2000 B.C. We reach 1812 B.C. for Buddha's death - creating an interval of (1812-1489=) 323 years between this event and Aśoka's Purānic enthronement. But, truly speaking, all we can affirm from the non-Buddhist Indian document is that Buddha died a few centuries prior to 1489 B.C.

Even the Purānic tradition is beaten hollow by the farthest term

1. Ibid., p. 36.

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of the Tibetan chronology. We have already marked Thomas's information from "Tibetan books". Further details emerge from A. Weber's History of Indian Literature:¹ "Among the Northern Buddhists fourteen different accounts are found, ranging from 2422 B.C. to 546 B.C." Max Miiller's History of Sanskrit Literature² lists all of them as having been "current in Tibetan chronology: 2422, 2148, 2139, 2135, 1310, 1060, 834, 882, 880, 837, 752, 623, 576, 546 B.C."

On their own merits most of the computations we have set down so far appear to be as good as any in vogue today. For, we have no certainty at all about the epoch of the Parinirvāna. As K. A. Nilakanta Sastri has stressed, historians have to date Buddha's death by Aśoka's consecration and not vice versa. Buddha will simply move backward or forward with Aśoka. If we identify Sandrocottus with Chandragupta I and put the accession of Aśoka, as we have done, in 950 B.C., the Parinirvāna can be carried backward by either 218 years to 1168 B.C. or fixed in the more plausible of the two Chinese dates distant enough from Aśoka: 1121 B.C., 1217 B.C.

Since 1168 is almost exactly midway between the latter pair, we may for the sake of convenience as well of historical likelihood take it as the most probable and, making it our point de départ, place Buddha's life of 80 years in the bracket: 1248-1168 B.C.

(By the way, on this showing, Ajātaśatru's reign, taken on the Buddhist information, began in (1168—8=) 1160 B.C. and the death of Mahāvlra, founder of Jainism, occurring, as it is said, 3 years before Buddha's, was in 1165 B.C., and his life of 72 years started in 1237 B.C.)

Aśoka and King Devānampiyatissa of Ceylon

The point which, next to the date of Buddha's death, we have to cope with is that the Ceylonese Chronicles make Aśoka a contemporary of King Devānampiyatissa who, by the traditional chronology of Ceylon, reigned in "the period 308-7 B.C. to 268-7 B.C." and, according to Geiger's modification, "from 247 to 207 B.C."³ This king is said to have sent "an embassy with rich presents to the

1.Translated by J. Mann and Th. Zacharias, 2nd Edition, London, 1882, p. 287.

2.P. 139.

3.Ibid., p. 237.

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Mauryan emperor", got investitured as king with the help of "various essentials" despatched by Aśoka for his "formal consecration" and finally accepted Buddhism from "Aśoka's son (or brother) Mahendra, who had become a monk" and "was sent to Ceylon as a Buddhist missionary".¹ We shall be asked: "Do you doubt that Devānampiyatissa lived in the post-Alexandrine age or that he was associated with Aśoka? If you do not, Aśoka must be a post-Alexandrine."

If, as Paranavitana argues, it is legitimate to accept only the traditional Ceylonese chronology, Devānampiyatissa's reign-period 308-7 to 268-7 B.C. immediately puts out of court any association with Aśoka who mounted the throne in c. 269 B.C. by the modern time-scheme and who became a Buddhist after the Kalinga war which took place in the 8th year of his reign. Even by Geiger's chronology the situation hardly improves. For, Aśoka's inscriptions supply no reference either to King Devānampiyatissa or to Mahendra. And the whole story of their relationship may be included among the several points of "palpable and irreconcilable difference between the Ceylonese Chronicles and the information supplied by Aśoka's inscriptions". In that case, may not these Chronicles have foisted on Aśoka's reign Indo-Ceylonese events belonging to the reign of some other Indian king?

A mistaken association of a Ceylonese with an Indian king can be shown as quite possible to the Chronicles. There is the instance of the transfer of a Buddha-relic to Ceylon from Dantapura in the Āndhradeśa by permission of the king of a Nāga country called Manjerikā near the Diamond Sands, i.e., Kanchi. The Buddhist traditions of both Ceylon and Siam attest to it. But, although Siam has adopted the Ceylonese Buddha Era, its dating of the transfer differs widely. "The epoch to which the two traditions refer," says Sircar,² "are irreconcilable. The Ceylonese tradition gives the date as 157 B.C., while the Siamese tradition gives A.D. 310-313." There is a gap of 467-70 years between the two chronologies. In Geiger's scheme, of course, the dates are somewhat later, but the gap is reduced only by 60 years. And, in either view of Ceylonese history, it is Dutthagāmanī who is king of Ceylon at the time whereas by the Siamese dating it is Sirimeghavanna. Historians

1.Ibid., pp. 236-37.

2."The Early Pallavas", The Journal of Indian History. August 1957, p. 183.

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accept the Siamese dating. Thus both Paranavitana¹ and Sircar² tell us that in the reign of Sirimeghavanna the Buddha-relic came to the island from Dantapura. The Chronicles of Ceylon have matched the Indian Nāga king with the wrong Ceylonese monarch. The converse of this would be their matching a Ceylonese monarch with the wrong Indian king - Devānampiyatissa with Aśoka. And we should not be surprised if the substitute for Aśoka were divided from the Mauryan emperor by several hundreds of years just as Dutthagāmanī was from Sirimeghavanna.

Only one question needs to be answered in order to place all these rational possibilities beyond contradiction. Do Aśoka's terms "Tambapamnī" (R.E. II) and "Tambapamnīya" (R.E. XIII) indicate Ceylon, which the Chronicles call Tambapamnī as well as Lankā and Sihala and which Megasthenes calls Taprobanè?

Aśoka's "Tambapamnī" and "Tambapamnīya"

Two scholars - Vincent Smith³ and B. A. Saletore⁴ - have opined that Aśoka was referring not to Ceylon but to the river Tāmraparnī which watered the southernmost region of India, the present Tinnevelly district. Barua⁵, taking stock of Smith's position apropos of the Aśokan word "Tambapamnī", pronounces: "The Tambapamnī of R.E. II may indeed be taken to stand both for the river Tāmraparnī and for the Tāmraparnīs as a people and their territory. But the Tambapamnīya of R.E. XIII stands certainly for the Tamraparnyas as a people and their territory. And all that R.E. XIII contains is nothing but a restatement of what Aśoka has said in R.E. II. The question still is: where to place the Tamraparnyas and their territory?"

Thus Smith and Saletore are technically in error in speaking exclusively of a river; yet the question they have raised by looking to South India instead of to Ceylon is a live one and concerns a riverine region of the mainland and that region's inhabitants as opposed to the island across the sea and the inhabitants of the island.

1."History of Ceylon", A New History..., pp. 257-58.

2."Ceylon", The Classical Age, p. 284.

3.The Indian Antiquary, XLVIII, pp. 48-49; Aśoka (3rd edition), p. 162.

4.Indian Culture, Vol. I, 1934-1935, pp. 669-672.

5.Op. cit.. Part I, p. 112.

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Smith's argument is based ultimately on chronology.¹ In terms of the latest date-calculations by historians we may formulate it as follows. Aśoka's relations with Ceylon did not begin until after the accession of Devānampiyatissa who despatched an embassy to him and to whom Aśoka sent coronation-presents which were followed soon after by the Buddhist mission under Mahendra. As we saw, the date accepted for Devānampiyatissa's accession is, according to Geiger and his school: 247 B.C. (Smith says: "about 251 B.C.") But if five Greek princes - Antiochus, Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas and Alexander - were also recipients of Aśoka's dhamma-dutas, the Rock Edict in which they are all mentioned must have been engraved when they were alive together. "Of these," writes Mookerji,² "the date of the fourth king and the identity of the fifth are somewhat uncertain. According to some scholars Magas of Cyrene died about 250 B.C., while others push back the date by at least 8 years.... As regards Alexander, there were two contemporary rulers of that name, one in Epirus (272-c. 255 B.C.) and the other in Corinth (252-247 B.C.). But if we accept the earlier date of Magas, Alexander can only refer to the king of Epirus. Thus all these kings were jointly alive up to 258 B.C. in or before which one of them died. If the news of his death reached Aśoka two years after the event in, say, 256 B.C., R.E. XIII, which contains this reference and is stated to have been issued in the 13th year of his coronation, could not have been issued later than 256 B.C...." As R.E. XIII is but a restatement of R.E. II, the same must hold a fortiori for the latter. Even if we make Magas die in 250 B.C., the two R.E.s cannot be put later than 248 B.C. Devānampiyatissa is still left out in the cold by the latest calculations. And, as the majority of scholars favour Alexander of Epirus who died in c. 255 B.C., we can take 253 B.C. as the latest date even if Magas died in 250 B.C. This means that six years are yet to go before Devānampiyatissa can appear on the Aśokan scene. (By Smith's date, Devānampiyatissa is too late by a couple of years.) Chronologically, Aśoka's Tambapamnī and Tambapamnīya can never be Ceylon.

Within the conventional framework of Aśokan history, Smith can lead to an extremely credible case. If one opts for the traditional date of Devanarhpiyatissa (308-268 B.C.), Ceylon dis-

1.The Oxford History of India, 3rd ed., p. 121, fn. 2.

2."Aśoka, the Great", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 88.

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appears all the more along Smithian lines. Aśoka turned to Buddhism after the Kalinga war which took place in the eighth year after his coronation and it was subsequent to this conversion that he sent out his dhamma-missions and could have been asked by Devānampiyatissa to consecrate him and so Aśoka would have been able to carry out the consecration not before the period 267-261 B.C. since his accession is dated between 275 and 269 B.C. The period thus obtained would find Devānampiyatissa already dead for one to seven years.

Nobody seems to have given a proper answer to the Smithian argument. And the conclusion from it can be supported in a number of independent ways which have a value of their own and are in themselves convincing and would not be affected if fault could be found here. Barua¹ lays before us a host of facts by which we can definitely rule out Ceylon.

In both the Rāmāyana (IV.41.18) and the Arthaśāstra (11.11) Tāmraparnī is associated with Pāndyakapāta (-kavāta) and is obviously a South-Indian river. The Rāmāyana (IV.41.15) also singles out the South-Indian Malaya mountain as the rocky landmark of the Tāmraparnī-region. The Mahābhārata (VI.6.56) does the same and the Mārkandeya Purāna² too traces the river to this mountain. The Rāmāyana (IV.41.16-17) in addition speaks of dvīpa (island or islands) in the river Tāmraparnī, covered with beautiful sandal woods. Thus there was at least one Tāmraparnī-dvīpa in South India opposite Ceylon. And, in Ceylon, which the Chronicles of that country call Tambapannī, the Chronicle known as the Mahāvamsa (VII.39,43) refers at the same time to Tambapannī as a district, with a town of that very name as its capital. "From these facts," observes Barua, "one cannot but be led to think that Tāmraparnī (better Tamravarni from having copper-coloured sand-beaches), which was originally a riverine region in the southernmost part of South India,... came to denote afterwards, probably in about Maurya time, also the north-western sea-coast of Ceylon between the Nāgadīpa and the river Kalyānī, and ultimately the island of Ceylon."

Thus, unless a country outside India is specifically indicated, the logical inference from a mention of Tambapamnī and Tambapamnīya in the Rock Edicts is to a populated portion of South India,

1.Op. cit., pp. 113-115.

2.B. C. Law, Geographical Essays, p. 101 f.

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the primary Tāmraparnī region, including an island or islands in the river of this name.

The logical inference is all the more binding because, as Saletore points out, the Tāmraparnī river of South India is no obscure geographical entity like the Tāmbaparnī of Gōkarna, which is "a small stream that falls into the sea near Gōkarna in the North Kanara District". "The Tāmraparnī of the South was celebrated in Indian history. The Epics and the Purānas describe it;... Kālidāsa noted it; and it figured in the epigraphs of well-known Karnātaka monarchs... The Brihatsamhitā... mentions one distinctive feature of the river, viz. that pearls were obtained in it." The Rāmāyana (IV.41.17) also associates it with "the coast adorned with pearls"; the Arthaśāstra¹ speaks of the pearls from the river at the place where it falls into the sea; and the Karnataka epigraphs² mention "people purified by the Tāmraparnī".

Why then should Ceylon be at all thought of in Aśoka? Is there a specific indication of it? If Ceylon were meant, we would find Aśoka bringing in the invariable pointer that goes with it in all Indian writings: "wherever by Tambapamnī or Tāmraparnī is meant Ceylon," we learn from Barua, "the word dīpa (dvīpa) or 'island is associated with it." This holds true even for foreigners who drew upon Indian information: "Megasthenes and other Classical writers speak of the sea-girt island of Taprobanè". In one Indian instance,³ "the Nāgārjunikonda inscription, marked F by Dr. Vogel, Tambapamna (Tamraparna) is clearly distinguished from Tambapamnī-dīpa". This clinches the contention that no Indian reference to Tāmraparnī as the country of the Tāmraparnyas or as the people of that country can mean anything except the old equivalent of the present Tinnevelly district or else its ancient inhabitants. And, since Aśoka's edicts are Indian writings, their omission of the word dīpa makes them fall logically in line with all other mentions of Tāmraparnī by writers in India.

As there was an island in the Tāmraparnī-region of South India itself, even the phrase "Tāmraparnī-dvi/?a" need not always de-

1.Mookerji, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 337.

2.Epigraphia Camatica, IX, Dg., 5, p. 26; Dg., 39, p. 49.

3.Epigraphia Indica, XX, p. 22: Tambapamnīdīpa-Pasadakanam theriydnam Tambapamnakanam suparigahi. Barua's translation:"...dedicated to the Theriyas who were converters of the Island of Tāmraparnī (and other countries named) (and those who were Tāmraparnīyas)" {op. cit., p. 115, fn. 2).

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note Ceylon, though generally it must. But, in the absence of the island-qualification, it is impossible that anybody in India writing of Tāmraparnī could have Ceylon in mind.

At most we can argue that the district called Tambapannī in Ceylon may have been intended. But, when the famous Tāmraparnī-region of South India is already there before this district and when this district has for an Indian a much smaller historical importance, we cannot have the slightest doubt that Aśoka referred to the country or the people of India's southernmost part.

Saletore, concentrating on the river Tāmraparnī and its pearls, is led even to question whether Megasthenes could have meant Ceylon. Saletore says: "... it was this same Tāmraparnī thus associated with pearls which Megasthenes had in view when he wrote the following: 'that Taprobanè is separated from the mainland by a river, that the inhabitants are called Palaiogonoi, and that their country is more productive of gold and large pearls than India.' " The value of Saletore's scepticism is vitiated by the fact that'Megasthenes,¹ contrary to McCrindle's translation and interpretation, does not write of Taprobanè being separated from the mainland by a river but refers merely to its division by a river, and the full context of Pliny (VI.e.22[24]), where Megasthenes's report occurs, mentions that "the age and achievements of Alexander the Great made it clear that it (Taprobanè) is an island" and Pliny also mentions from "old writers" "the sea between the island and India". No, Megasthenes's "sea-girt island" is certainly Ceylon. Although the mention of the river and of the large pearls makes it highly probable that Megasthenes is mixing up two accounts, one about the pearl-producing Tāmraparnī with its island or islands and the other about the Tāmraparnī-island across the sea, we cannot blot Ceylon from his view.

However, there is no reason to put Ceylon from Megasthenes into Aśoka's edicts: it is only our present chronology, dating Aśoka after Megasthenes, that suggests for the former's edicts the latter's Taprobanè. And surely this chronology on top of the idea of integrating history with the Ceylonese Chronicles induces Barua to assume Aśoka's connection with Ceylon in the teeth of all the literary and epigraphic data gathered by himself and pointing in the opposite direction. The same two factors compel Smith, for all

1. Majumdar, The Classical Accounts of India, pp. 345-346.

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his anti-Ceylon reasoning from the time of the edicts, to talk of Aśoka's relations with Devānampiyatissa.

The Only Aśokan Argument for Ceylon

Actually, just one single argument for Ceylon has been built directly on Aśoka's edicts. Controverting Smith's position that the Girnār text "ā Tambapamnī" indicates the river Tāmraparnī in Tinnevelly and not the island of Ceylon, Raychaudhuri¹ reminds us that this phrase in R.E. II comes after the mention of Ketalaputra (Keralaputra) and not that of Pāndya. He urges that the expression, "Ketalaputo as far as the Tāmraparnī" is hardly appropriate, because the Tāmraparnī is a Pāndyan river. He concludes: "We, therefore, prefer to take Tāmraparnī to mean Ceylon."

This argument is entirely off the mark on several counts. Smith's argument, as stated by Raychaudhuri² himself, is: "Dr. Smith lately took the word [Tambapamnī] to mean not Ceylon but the river Tāmraparnī in Tinnevelly." According to Raychaudhuri, Smith has not spoken of "a Pāndyan river". How then can Raychaudhuri introduce a concept which is not involved in the discussion and, on the strength of it, refute his opponent? If we begin by calling the Tāmraparnī a river of the Pāndyas, naturally what occurs after the Keralaputras in R.E. II cannot be this river. Smith too must have known a thing so obvious. And there is no indication in Aśoka that Aśoka considered the river Tāmraparnī Pāndyan. What he gives us are just two expressions: the one in R.E. XIII (ā Tambapamnīya) comes after a mention of the Pāndyas, the other in R.E. II (ā Tampbamni) occurs after a mention of the Keralaputras. In Aśoka there is nothing Pāndyan about Tambapamnīya any more than there is anything Kerala-putran about Tambapamnī. Aśoka in fact permits us even less to speak of Tāmraparnī as a river of the Pāndyas than to speak of it as a river of the Keralaputras; for, the word "Tambapamnī" which he employs after mentioning "Keralaputra" is really the one allowing the sense of a river over and above the sense of a people and their territory whereas the word "Tambapamnīya" after "Pāndya" can only mean a people and their territory. To talk, in the Aśokan context, of "a Pāndyan river" is to sidetrack the controversy,

1.The Political History of Ancient India, p. 331.

2.Ibid.

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prejudge the issue and demolish a dummy.

Secondly, Raychaudhuri has proceeded on the same wrong line as Smith and Saletore, taking the issue to lie between a South-Indian river and the island of Ceylon. As Barua has stressed, the "Tambapamnī" of R.E. II and the "Tambapamnīya" of R.E. XIII must mean the same thing. The latter, even if derived from a river's name, cannot denote a river: "it stands certainly for the Tamraparnyas as a people and their territory." Hence "Tambapamnī" too must be accepted in the same denotation, no matter if it allows the "river"-meaning as well as this. Aśoka's term in R.E. XIII renders Raychaudhuri's discussion of a river - be it Pāndyan or non-Pāndyan - absolutely irrelevant and inaccurate. No legitimate conclusion to the island of Ceylon can proceed from it. Raychaudhuri has pursued an altogether false issue.

The true issue is: whatever be the people and the territory meant by Tambapamnī and Tambapamnīya, how does Aśoka relate them geographically to the Keralaputras and the Pāndyas? Since in R.E. II they come after the former and in R.E. XIII after the latter, Aśoka must be putting them - for all practical purposes - equally to the south of the Keralaputras and of the Pāndyas: he intends them to be an entity distinct from both Keralaputra and Pāndya and to be geographically related to both in the same way. This entity may be extreme South India or it may be Ceylon. All depends on whether the one or the other permits the sort of geographical relation Aśoka implies.

Here the deciding factor will be the view we take of the South-Indian river Tāmraparnī. And here we reach the third count on which Raychaudhuri's argument is entirely off the mark. If this river is assumed to be Pāndyan, the whole southernmost portion of India opposite Ceylon gets practically covered by the kingdom of the Pāndyas. For, this river rises in the Western Ghats and flows due south-east. The land for the Keralaputras is just the strip of coast to the west of the Ghats, a strip completely cut off from the neighbourhood of Ceylon. Perhaps, with the Tinnevelly district in the hands of the Pāndyas, we have little reason to keep South Travancore and Cochin out. From coast to coast the Pāndyas would be dominant. In any case, it would be impossible to speak of Ceylon after mentioning Keralaputra: the kingdom of the Pāndyas would stand right between and cut the two apart. And then the geographical order can never be as in R.E. II: "Choda-Pāndya,

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Satiyaputra-Keralaputra, as far as Tambapamnī." It will have to be: "Satiyaputra-Keralaputra, Choda-Pāndya, as far as Tambapamnī." Thus the very assumption made by Raychaudhuri defeats his own conclusion.

Only if the river Tāmraparnī is not Pāndyan we can have the geographical order of R.E. II just as validly as the one in R.E. XIII: "... Choda-Pāndya, as far as Tambapamnīya." But, if the river is non-Pāndyan, it must be in a region of its own, with an independent people about it. In that case, we do not get at all to Ceylon. The Tamraparnyas and their territory, watered by the South-Indian river Tāmraparnī, stand in southernmost India between Ceylon and both the Keralaputras and the Pāndyas, with the same geographical relation to these two South-Indian peoples - a relation exactly answering to what Aśoka implies. Thus Raychaudhuri's conclusion is again falsified, and southernmost India is proved to be visioned in Aśoka's Tambapamnī and Tambapamnīya.

The River Tāmraparnī and the Pāndyas

Here the sole rearguard action open to the school of Raychaudhuri would be his challenge:¹ "Even those who prefer to see in the passage a reference to a kingdom in the Valley of the Tāmraparnī river, have to prove that such a kingdom did exist in the Maurya age apart from 'pāda' [=Pāndya] and Taprobanè, and to explain the particular way in which it is mentioned in Edict II." We may add a further possible protest: "Aśoka would be quite isolated if we understood him to speak of a South-Indian Tāmraparnī-region distinct from the Pāndya country. He gets no support from anywhere - and consequently his Tāmraparnī-region cannot be South-Indian."

But, even if Aśoka were to be quite isolated, we should have to weigh two things: his alleged isolation on the one hand and on the other the impossibility of speaking of Ceylon after Keralaputra when the Pāndya country holding a South-Indian Tāmraparnī river would stretch"right up to almost the west coast and divide Ceylon completely from Keralaputra. Against this impossibility can we say it is equally impossible for that river to have been in a country

1. Ibid., p. 331, fn. 2.

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which was non-Pāndyan? After all, geographical positions change with time: certain parts belong once to one kingdom and then to another and even become independent. S.N. Majumdar¹ remarks on the Kerala and Pāndya territories: "It is needless to add that the boundary varied from time to time; and thus Travancore and Cochin were sometimes in Kerala, and sometimes in Pāndya." It is perfectly on the cards that in Aśoka's day the Tāmraparnī-region may have belonged neither to the Keralaputras nor to the Pāndyas.

In fact, Barua believes that Aśoka does receive support from a couple of sources. He criticises Raychaudhuri² when the latter, before discussing Aśoka's Tāmraparnī, chalks out the extent of the Pāndya country, saying: "The Pāndya country corresponded to the Madurā, Ramnad and Tinnevelly districts, and perhaps the southern portion of the Travancore state... The rivers Tāmraparnī and Kritamāla or Vaigai flowed through it." Barua³ comments: "But it would seem that there was a separate Tamraparnya territory in the southernmost part of the Deccan below those of the Pāndyas on the east and the Keralaputras on the west - a fact which is well attested by Hwen Thsang." Barua⁴ directs us to Beal's translation of the Chinese pilgrim in Buddhist Kingdoms (II, p. 230) "where the country of Malayakūta, i.e. the South Indian Tambapamnī, is placed opposite Simhala and below Drāvida or Southern Chola. In explanation of "Drāvida", we may quote Barua⁵ saying: "The pilgrim's Chola and Drāvida constitute together the territory of the Cholas, better the Cholas and Pāndyas..." If Drāvida can include the Pāndyas, as it should if the Cholas are already listed separately and only their southern section falls under the other term, Malayakūta may well be a distinct Tamraparnya territory. We know from the Mārkandeya Purāna, the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata that the Malaya mountain is the source of the Tāmraparnī river and the main landmark of its region. Hiuen Tsang also refers to "the Sandal-producing Malaya mountain"⁶ as being in Malayakūta. The very name "Malayakūta" is approached

1.Cunningham, Ancient Geography of India. Notes, p. 743.

2.Barua is quoting from the 1932 edition. The edition of 1950 has a slightly different wording which yet changes nothing of the essential substance.

3.Op. cit.. Part I, p. 111.

4.Ibid., fn. 2.

5.Ibid., p. 106.

6.S. N. Majumdar, op. cit., p. 741.

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the nearest by "Malayakoti" which, as S. N. Majumdar¹ informs us, the commentator on the Arthaśāstra gives as a synonym of Kautilya's "Pāndyakavata" (associated with his "Tāmraparnī"). Of course, Pāndyakavata indicates "the door of the Pāndyas", the entrance of the Pāndya country, implying a close historical connection between this country and the river Tāmraparnī. Nobody can deny the connection, but it may be significant that Hiuen Tsang should employ a name which does not remind us of it. Had the Pāndyas lost their prominence in his age so far as the Tāmraparnī-region was concerned?

The possibility of an affirmative answer inheres in the fact that this region, although mostly under the Pāndyas, was one of several chieftaincies and that the Pāndyas ruled it by an overlordship and not as an area indissolubly integrated with their kingdom. We learn from S. Krishnaswamy Aiyangar² that their empire included the chieftaincies of (1) Aay round Podyl hill in the Western Ghats south of the Palghat gap and west of Tinnevelly, (2) Evvi round about the port of Korkai in Tinnevelly and (3) Pehan round the Palnis. In Ptolemy's Geography³ (c. 140 A.D.) we get not only the "Land of Pandion" with its "Cape Kory" (the promontory in the island of Rāmeshwaram) and its "royal city Modoura" (Madura) but also two neighbouring "countries" in which we may recognise two of Aiyangar's "chieftaincies": "country of the Aioi" with "Kottiara, the metropolis" (in South Travancore) and "country of the Kareoi" with "Kolkhoi, an emporium" (Korkai, at the mouth of the river Tāmraparnī) and "the Kolkhic Gulf, where there is the Pearl Fishery". The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea⁴ which is three quarters of a century earlier than the Geography, speaks also of "Colchoi, where the fishing for pearls is carried on", but it ends: "King Pandion is the owner of the fishery." The Geography has no explicit mention of Pandion's ownership of the emporium of Kolkhoi. In any case, a chieftaincy, whether called Evvi or Kareoi, could at any time become independent, and there should be nothing incongruous if in Aśoka's day a chieftaincy called Tāmraparnī or Tamraparnya were independent to the south of the Choda-Pāndyas and the Satiyaputra-Keralaputras.

1.Ibid., p. 740

2.Beginning of South Indian History, pp, 126-128.

3.VII. 1.9, 10, 11.89.

4.59.

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Barua¹ claims that such independence at some time is suggested by the Mahābhārata:² "The Great Epic distinctly speaks of Tāmraparnī as a country south of Pāndya, which in some contexts is included in Drāvida, and locates in it the Gōkarnatiratha and the hermitage of Agastya and his disciples."

A Clue from the Rāmāyana

The Rāmāyana, associating, like the Arthaśāśtra, the Tāmraparnī river with Pāndyakapata (-kavāta) would seem to place it in Pāndyan territory. But its geographical vision of South India is precisely the one which would appear to settle for good the problem whether Aśoka's Tāmraparnī is Ceylon or no. In our discussion of his Parirhdas we quoted from the Rāmāyana. This passage has a collocation of countries remarkably resembling the list of southern territories provided by the edicts - those of the Āndhras, Parirhdas, Chodas (Cholas), Pāndyas, Satiyaputras, Keralaputras and Tambapamnīs (or Tambapamnīyas). The Rāmāyana passage (IV.41.12) runs

Andhrāmścha Pundramś cha Cholām Pāndyamś cha Keralān and is followed soon after by a description (IV.41.15) of the region of the Tāmraparnī river. The sole difference, as Barua³ notes, is: "we have the Pundras instead of Aśoka's Parirhdas, and the Keralas in place of Aśoka's Satiyaputras and Keralaputras." The general succession is too obviously the same to allow the thought of Ceylon even though the Keralas come between the river-region and the Pāndyas. The very word that Aśoka uses after the Keralaputras in R.E. II is the same as the Rāmāyana's after its Keraldn: Aśoka has Tambapamnī, which can stand not only for a people and their territory but also, like the Tāmraparnī of the Rāmāyana, for a river. It is as if Aśoka had the Rāmāyana at the back of his mind or the Rāmāyana echoed Aśoka.

The Ceylon-Mission in the Chronicles

From various directions we converge on the same conclusion.

1.Op. cit.. Part I, p. 115

2.III.88.13-18: Kumāryah kathitāh punyāh Pāndyeshveva nararshabha, Tāmra-parnin tu Kaunteya kirtayishydmi lach chhrinu. Cf. Ibid., III. 118. 3, 4, 8.

3.Op. cit.. Part I. p. 79.

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And with Ceylon removed from the history and geography disclosed by the Aśokan edicts we begin to be struck by some peculiarities of the history and geography of the Buddhist missions disclosed by the Ceylonese Chronicles. All the Chronicles¹ put all the missions together except the one to Ceylon. The latter is said to have been despatched separately, a year after the rest. It seems to belong to a different context and appears as though tagged on here out of piety towards the Buddhist emperor and a sense of consistency with the other missionary activities in his reign.

The impression of a different context increases when we scrutinize the single other country than Lankā, which is taken to be foreign: Suvarnabhūmi, generally identified with Burma. Suvarnabhūmi belongs to a group of countries where the missions went a year before Mahendra went to Lankā. There is some incongruity here. How does a foreign country like Burma get dissociated from Ceylon and assembled with those that are clearly called "adjacent"? Barua² balances against the name "Suvarnabhūmi" the name "Suvarnagiri" which is mentioned in the Mysore copies of Aśoka's Minor Rock Edict as the seat of an Aryaputra Viceroy. Could we not assume that the original name in the Chronicles was "Suvarnagiri" and that it was replaced afterwards by "Suvarnabhūmi"? Barua remarks: "According to the Samanta-pāsādikā and Mahāvamsa, Suvannabhumi was a country which bordered on a sea and which was under the sway of a ferocious rakkhasi, who was evidently its presiding female diety. The text of the Dīpavamsa, as it appears in Oldenberg's edition or in the Samanta-pasadika, preserves the earlier tradition which does not connect Suvannabhumi with any sea or ocean and represents it as a place inhabited by the Pisachas. None need be surprised, therefore, if Suvannagiri were the intended name instead of Suvannabhūmi."

What makes Barua's substitution extremely plausible is a fact which he³ mentions as having been noted by Vincent Smith apropos of the Buddhist missions in Aśoka's time: "... the propaganda in Lower Burma seems to have had little effect. The earliest form of Buddhism in that country, so far as definite evidence goes, was of the Mahāyana kind."

1.Dīpavamsa, VIII, 1 f, XII, 16 f; Mahāvamsa, XII, 1 f; Samanta-pāsādikā, I, pp. 63 f, 69 f.

2.Op. cit.. Part I, pp. 57, 325; II, p. 8.

3.Ibid., Part I, p. 325.

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Barua's substitution would make the first group of countries all of a piece, uniformly "adjacent", and throw Lankā into a totally contrasting category, rendering it still more suspect by isolating it geographically no less than chronologically.

Furthermore, the substitution creates the possibility - so far as Aśoka's own empire is concerned - of passing beyond the discrepancies between the Aśokan account of the dhamma-dutas and the Chronicles' story of missions, and bringing the places mentioned by the story into complete rapport with the find-spots of the edicts. Already a good deal of rapport has been obvious. Kandahār points to the Chronicles' "Yona country"; Shāhbāzgarhī and Mānsehrā to "Kāshmir and Gandhāra" of the Chronicles; Kālsī to their "Himālaya country"; Girnār, Sopāra and Kophal to their "Apar-antaka" and "Mahārāshtra"; Hyderabad and Northern Mysore to their "Vanavāsi and Mahishamandala". "Suvarnabhūmi and Tāmraparnī," says Barua¹, "are the two places that are not explicable by the find-spots of the hitherto discovered inscriptions. Once we assume that Suvarnagiri² was the earlier name on the list replaced later by Suvarnabhūmi, the case for both the places can be met by the inscriptions in which they find mention, one as the official headquarters of the most southern province, and the other as the most southern of the independent countries in South India."

We can now realise that the historical and geographical information in Aśoka's edicts is such as to leave no need or room for the extrapolation of a Ceylon-mission into his life-work from the Chronicles. So Devānampiyatissa of the 3rd century B.C. fades out from the Aśokan scene. And with his disappearance there remains not the shadow of an indication anywhere that Aśoka was contemporaneous with the Greek princes of the 3rd century B.C.

8

A final objection against our chronological changes may be raised apropos of Aśoka's own monuments. It may be alleged that they show distinct derivation from those of the Achaemenids of Persia who immediately preceded the age of Sandrocottus and that

1.Ibid.

2.This may be the same as Suvarnavati, which finds mention in the Hitopadesa, II. 1 as a city in South India: asti Dakshinapathe Suvarnavati noma nagari.

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therefore Aśoka must remain where he is at present situated in time.

The Achaemenids and the Aśokan Monuments

Some resemblances between Achaemenid art and Aśokan are understandable, but Havell and K. de B. Codrington¹ have stressed so many essentially Indian characteristics in both subject and inspiration that the charge of direct derivation cannot be upheld. The resemblances should be explained by the admittedly common traditions inherited by Indian and Irānian cultures. The hypothesis of direct influence occurs only against a background of the current supposition about Sandrocottus.

Even the palace, excavated at Pātaliputra and recognised as the one described by Megasthenes and said by him to surpass those of Susa and Ecbatana, is not taken as directly influenced by those earlier royal dwellings abroad. Spooner suggested that a close parallel to the excavated palace may be perceived in the Achaemenid Hall of Hundred Columns at Persepolis. But his views have not been generally accepted.²

Raychaudhuri³ goes pointedly further in connection with the Pātaliputra palace. After quoting the phrase that with this palace "neither Susa, nor Ecbatana, can vie", he continues with the side-remark found in the Greek reports: "for methinks, only the well-known vanity of the Persians could prompt such a comparison", and adds his own footnotes: "The statement should be remembered by those modern writers who find traces of Persian influence in Maurya architecture." By "Maurya", of course, he means "pertaining to the dynasty of Sandrocottus".

As for the formula of Aśoka's edicts, "Thus saith King Priya-drasi," it may seem an echo of "Thus saith King Darius", and again a direct influence of the Achaemenids may be asserted. But there is really no ground for the assertion. One of the set phrases prescribed by Kautilya in his Arthaśāstra for what is called a royal prajna-pana-śāna ("writ of information") is evam aha ("thus saith").⁴ So Aśoka's formula is definitely of indigenous origin.

1."Aryan Rule", Ancient India (London, 1926), I. pp. 18, 19.

2.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 486, fn. 2.

3.The Political History of Ancient India, Fifth Edition, p. 275 with fn. 3.

4.Mookerji, Aśoka, p. 108, fn. 3.

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And in any case it is such as the literary sense of any country, coupled with the high status of the speaker, would independently invent. Nobody has Suggested that if Darius had not set up his inscriptions Nietzsche could never have entitled his masterpiece Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) or far earlier the Buddhist anthology's name ltivutaka (Thus Spake the Buddha) would never have seen the light of day.

Indigenous origin can be thought of, too, for the Aśokan words lipi and dibi, meaning "writing", for his edicts. They have been compared to the Persian word for "inscription", but the Aśokan terms have a clear Indian parentage. Pānini (IV, 1.49) has used the term Yāvānānī which has been taken to imply lipi and mean "writing of the Yavanas"; he (III, 2.21) has used as well the forms lipikara and libikara for the scribe, and Sanskrit has the word dibira, for .lipikara, from the root diba or dīpa, to "write".¹

An Advanced History of India, edited by Majumdar, Raychaudhuri and Datta, though unaware of the objections to the current chronology and disposed to see several influences emanating from Persian and Greek officials in the Indus-provinces during the Achaemenid rule and the post-Alexandrine period, has yet declared² about these officials: "Whether some important features of the architecture of the Maurya period and certain phrases used in the Aśokan edicts are... to be attributed to their enterprise, is a highly debatable question."

Wood-work and Stone-work at Pātaliputra

A subtler argument to make Aśoka, in relation to the architecture of Pātaliputra, post-Alexandrine may be formulated: "According to Megasthenes, cities on the banks of rivers and in other low-lying spots were built of wood to ensure safety against floods. So Pātaliputra, at the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Son, must have been all of wooden construction in Megasthenes's time. But the royal hall of pillars excavated by Spooner is of stone. And S. K. Saraswati³ has well said: 'Fragments of stone pillars, including one nearly complete, with their round tapering shafts and smooth polish indicate that the great Aśoka was responsible

1.Ibid., p. 136, fn. 5.

2.P. 19.

3."Art: Architecture", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 486.

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for the construction of the hall, or at least for the stone columns which replaced the earlier wooden ones.' Now, if Megasthenes saw only wooden pillars, Aśoka who must have built the stone ones similar in general to his own stone columns came after him and cannot be shifted away from the third century B.C."

We may reply as follows.

The reference by Megasthenes to the wooden construction of river-side cities can pertain only to the basic erections exposed to the water rising at flood-time. It cannot apply to everything within a city. A massive wooden palisade protecting Pātaliputra has actually been dug up, fully bearing out Megasthenes's mention of a huge wall of wood around Palibothra, with towers at regular intervals. With regard to the interior of the city and especially to the royal palace, we have no indication from Megasthenes of the exclusive use of wood. Aelian¹ reports from Megasthenes: "The palace is adorned with gilded pillars clasped all round with a vine embossed in gold, while silver images of those birds which most charm the eye diversify the workmanship." There is no reason to consider these pillars to have been wooden. We must keep in mind that, according to Aelian,² "neither Memnonian Susa with all its costly splendour, nor Ecbatana with all its magnificence" could vie with the palace of Sandrocottus in imperial Palibothra. Surely, those splendid and magnificent cities of Persia were not built all of wood, least of all were their palaces wooden and nothing else. To surpass them, Palibothra and its royal abode must have been a mighty glory of stone-work. And the proper meaning of Megasthenes in the matter of wood is brought out by what Saraswati³ himself records of- the excavated palace: "The palace appears to have been an aggregate of buildings the most important of which was an immense pillared hall supported on a high substratum of wood." The discovery of stone-work in the Pātaliputra-palace, on top of wood-work, need not fix Aśoka to a period subsequent to Megasthenes.

What is more: even if Aśoka belonged to such a period, the stone-work of Pātaliputra would not automatically be Aśokan. For, the very nature of the Aśokan monuments prompts us to go farther back for their stone-work than the period of their inscriptions.

1.Mookerji, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 104.

2.Ibid.

3.Op. cit., p. 486.

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K. A. Nilakanta Sastri¹ has written: "It has been suggested very plausibly that some of these pillars, specially those bearing animals sacred to the Hindu gods - e.g. the bull of Shiva, the elephant of Indra, the garuda of Vishnu (Lauriya Araraj) - may be pre-Aśokan in origin... Aśoka might have used these columns for the propagation of Dharma which was marked by his readiness to bring together all that was best in every faith." Nor is the pre-Aśokan origin of some of the pillars a fair conjecture alone. Aśoka himself (Minor Rock Edict in Rūpnāth Text and Pillar Edict VII) declares that stone columns were already there from the past in his time. And Mookerji², with fine logic, brings us full circle with his remark: "Some of the polished pillars were rightly ascribed by Aśoka to his predecessors who could build a great city, and the most gorgeous palace of the East."

So, in any case, the excavated hall could very well have been there in the day of the Greek ambassador as a wonderful non-Aśokan monument and has no determinative bearing on Aśoka's date. Since polished stone pillars existed before Aśoka, nothing points to the building of this hall by him. And, even if he did install the pillars here, the existence of stone-structures in the period of Megasthenes would allow us to think in the light of our Purānic chronology that what had been erected by Aśoka was according to a practice coming down to this period from more ancient times. Their presence as such lays no compulsion on us to make Aśoka live after Megasthenes or to identify Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya rather than with the founder of the Imperial Guptas.

The Aśokan Monuments, Achaemenid Art and the Middle East

On the strength of Minor Rock Edict in Rūpnāth Text and Pillar Edict VII, we may turn the tables on Achaemenid art. For, we have no means of deciding how far back in time the stone-columns go. We can quite conceive pre-Achaemenid Indian polished pillars being the inspiration to Achaemenid art through Darius's possession of "Ga(n)dara" and "Hi(n)du". And, if their presence in Megasthenes's day takes away all possible cause to render Aśoka post-Megasthenes, we may trace Achaemenid art to Mauryan

1.History of India, Part I (1950), p. 92.

2.Aśoka, p. 94.

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influence itself from an earlier age instead of vice versa.

A clear index to an age like our 950-914 B.C. for Aśoka can be found also in what Jairazbhoy has to say. He is anxious to derive Aśokan art from Achaemenid as well as Hellenic, but the matter he presents actually points us away from both of the latter. After making his comparisons with Persian features, he¹ writes: "We may interpose a note here that the Persian ornaments of the high base and double wreath of sepals at the capital are themselves now known to be of western, ultimately of Egyptian, origin, while the double spiral volutes in the Achaemenid columns have been traced back from the double and triple volutes on the glazed facade of Nebuchadnezzar's palace at-Babylon, to those in the capitals of pilasters in Cyprus and Megiddo."

This admission carries us at once to a remoter time than that of the Achaemenids for parallels to Aśokan art. And, with Aśoka dated to 950 B.C., we get new terms of comparison for the ornaments of his columns - Egypt, Babylon, Cyprus, Megiddo come into view. If those ornaments are at all due to foreign influence, we have sufficient pre-Achaemenid factors and all we need to make them operative is to find relations between India and the Middle East before the Achaemenids conquered "Ga(n)dara" and "Hi(n)du". These relations we have already found when discussing Assyria and India's immediate neighbourhoods.

Apropos of a pair of stone figures of winged lions which were excavated at Patna (old Pātaliputra) and whose purpose, according to Jairazbhoy, "may have originally been to support the throne in the Mauryan palace" as in Persia under the Achaemenids - and apropos of a throne with a lion leg found at Amarāvatī in the first century A.D. but considered by Jairazbhoy as having been "introduced in the Mauryan period from Persia", Jairazbhoy adds: "the theme was endemic in the Middle East much earlier." In nothing here concerned is Achaemenid Persia necessary - provided we can date the Mauryas to a pre-Achaemenid epoch and show a connection in that epoch between the Middle East and India.

It is again with the Middle East, though under Persian rule, that we have analogues to the arrangement of animals and sun-wheels seen on Aśoka's Sārnāth Pillar. Jairazbhoy writes: "On the abacus of the Sārnāth capital the animals consist of a horse, a humped bull, a lion, and an elephant, and they are following the disks

1. Foreign Influence in Ancient India, pp. 44-6, 58.

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round in a circle. Now we have precisely these animals - horse, winged bull, and lion - revolving round a hub in the Nippur tablets from the reigns of Artaxerxes and Darius II (464-405 B.C.). The resemblance would seem to be fortuitous, but for the fact that here too a solar idea is probable, since in other tablets the revolving beasts are simply horses, or in other words the team that drew the chariot of the sun. These tablets must have travelled widely since they were the documents of bankers, Mureshu and sons. We know in fact that among their business tablets are records of their dealings with certain Indian merchants, and there is a reference to a settlement Hi-in-da-ai."

Jairazbhoy suggests that the Aśokan pillar copied the Nippur tablets; but, if Aśoka cannot be fixed down to the middle of the 3rd century B.C., Mureshu and sons are quite likely to have received the design of animals and wheels from the merchants of Hi-in-da-ai who were aware of it from monuments of Mauryan rule in the later half of the 10th century B.C.

We may hark back to a passage we have already culled from Jairazbhoy while discussing alleged Buddhist influence in Ptolo-maic Egypt. It ran: "the emblem of a sun disk carved in relief on Buddhist monuments, for example, at Amarāvatī ultimately originates in Assyria, and similarly the so-called Buddhist trisula ornament is patterned on the winged solar disk of Assyria. Moreover, Mesopotamian sun pillars surmounted by disks (surin-nu) which stood at entrances to temples, or were borne by priests of the sun god, are prototypes of sun wheels on pillars at the Buddhist stūpas." The point we wish to stress is that Aśokan affinities are essentially with Mesopotamian symbolism. Whether derived from it or no, they direct our attention to a time before the Achaemenids and are in no way such as to make Aśoka post-Achaemenid.

As a final touch of irony to the usual comparisons of Aśokan art to Achaemenid we may listen to S. Chattopadhyaya:¹ "It was believed that the lion-figures of the Mauryan age drew their inspiration from the lion of Hāmādān which was taken to be a work of the Achaemenid period. The theory must now be discarded, for it has been conclusively proved that the lion of Hāmādān belongs to the Arsacidan and Sassanid periods." The Arsacids

1. The Indian Historical Quarterly. Vol. XXVI, No. 1. March 1950. p. 111.

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start in 208 B.C. and the Sassanids in 224 A.D.¹ They are post-Aśokan by any chronology.

The Aśokan Pillars, Hellenistic Influence, the Indus Civilization

Of course, the art of the Achaemenids is not the sole source conjectured for the Aśokan pillars. Jairazbhoy has a footnote on the other source. First he makes the statement: "In so far as the actual carving is concerned, the Aśokan lions by no means emulate the artistic conventionalization of those of the Achaemenids." The footnote² goes: "If anything, Hellenistic influence is manifest in the Mauryan lions, in the treatment of cheekbones, moustaches, deeply embedded eyes and freely rendered manes, as others have already observed. Hellenistic rather than Achaemenid origin for the Mauryan lions has been suggested for stylistic reasons. (N. B. Ray, Maurya and Sunga Art, 1945, p. 42f.)."

How far the comparison with Greek art is valid we may decide best by a few references to A. L. Basham. We shall start with his general observations:³ "The capitals of Aśoka's columns, some of which were perhaps made before his reign, are the earliest important sculptures after those of the Indus cities."

Mark first the phrase: "some of which were perhaps made before his reign." It is on a par with Mookerji's assertion of the existence of polished pillars before Aśoka's time. With such pillars possible before Aśoka, Aśoka's own structures are set free not only from the post-Achaemenid world but also from the world of Hellenic sculptures.

Secondly, there is Basham's pointer to "the Indus cities". This pointer to the Harappā Culture is here in a chronological context, but it sets us thinking on many lines. If the Indus cities came to an end in c. 1750 B.C., as is now believed in some quarters, and if Aśoka lived round about 250 B.C., we get a huge gap between the works of Harappān art and the next "earliest important sculptures". We are led to ruminate: "How much more natural it could be if there were not such a wide hiatus in time!" Our 950 B.C. for Aśoka gets an indirect encouragement - all the more if the old

1.The Heritage of Persia by Richard N. Frye, pp. 208 and 236.

2.Op. cit., p. 46.

3.The Wonder that was India, p. 364.

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date for the end of the Indus cities - c. 1500 B.C. - still holds, as Sankalia¹ has cogently argued.

But that is not all. Basham supplies us with a further cue. He² starts with noting: "the famous lions of the Sārnāth column and the less famous but more beautiful bull of the column of Rampur-va are the work of realistic sculptors, owing something to Irānian and Hellenist tradition." However, immediately on the heels of subscribing to the current opinion, Basham makes the revealing observation: "Yet, if we did not know that the possibility of Western influence existed, we might suggest that the animal sculptures of the columns were those of a school directly descended from the engravers of the Indus seals, which show a realistic treatment very unusual for so early a civilization."

The full force of this observation will be realised if we juxtapose the two expressions: "... owing something to Irānian and Hellenist tradition" - "directly descended from the engravers of the Indus seals". Evidently, the more concrete and comprehensive relation is with Harappān art. Now we have not just a chronological context: we have the context of artistic quality and manner. Aśokan art and Harappān would go together - but for the time-gap we put between them, permitting "the possibility of Western influence". What Basham has said implies that only because we place Aśoka in the 3rd century B.C. we are prompted to trace Greek as well as Irānian influences. Transpose him to the second half of the 10th century B.C. and at once we shall connect him with the Indus seals and fully explain thereby whatever in his sculptures is not characteristic of post-Mauryan Indian art.

And Basham's reference to the Indus Valley Civilization is apt in more senses than one. For, this civilization has several features which, like the realistic treatment of the animals on its seals, are unusual for an art so early. Basham³ himself has the following comment on the striking bronze "dancing girl": "this young woman has an air of lively pertness, quite unlike anything in the work of other ancient civilizations." He⁴ also writes: "The red sandstone torso of a man is particularly impressive for its realism.

1.Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan (Deccan College, Poona, 1974), p. 283, col. 2.

2.Op. cit., pp. 364-65.

3.Ibid., p. 121.

4.Ibid., p. 20.

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The modelling of the rather heavy abdomen seems to look forward to the style of later Indian sculpture, and it has even been suggested that this figurine is a product of a much later time, which by some strange accident found its way into the lower stratum; but this is very unlikely, for the figure has certain features, which cannot be explained on this hypothesis." Lately Sankalia¹ has written of "a fresh study": "it was definitely proved on technological grounds that the small sandstone torso from Harappā was Harappān. We can thus confidently say with Sir John Marshall that the Indus artist had anticipated the Greek artist by 2,000 years." In addition we may note the comment of Stuart Piggott:² "the treatment of the heavy lines of the abdomen... is astonishingly similar to some work of Kushan date [c. 40-220 A.D. by the present chronology]."

All this shows that ancient Indian pieces of art could not only be unique in their own time in world-history but also seem of an age more than a couple of millennia later in the same country as well as carry the suggestion of a strong foreign influence from a western country's art that was not even born for the next twenty centuries. The mention of Greece itself as the western country is all the more eye-opening for our discussion of Aśokan art. And when the Aśokan sculptures can be compared in their realistic treatment to the Indus Valley art-pieces which, in Piggott's words,³ have "caused doubts to be thrown on their authenticity as third-millenium work", it is not at all necessary to situate Aśoka for his stone monuments in the post-Alexandrine era rather than in the second half of the 10th century B.C.

How very natural and necessary, on the other hand, it is to set him in that earlier age we may drive home to our minds by keeping before us another of Basham's clear-cut artistic judgments. Referring to Mauryan sculpture he⁴ pronounces: "the earliest sculpture of historical times... shows a generic likeness to that of Harappā."

Here we may appropriately digress a little to a subject we have already touched upon: the pillared palace excavated at Pātaliputra, which Spooner tried to parallel with the Achaemenid Hall of Hundred Columns at Persepolis. We have cited the general criticism

1.Indian Archaeology Today (1979), p. 102.

2.Prehistoric India (Pelican. Harmondsworth, 1960), p. 185.

3.Ibid.

4.Op. cit., p. 364.

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of the suggested parallelism. Now we may point out a possible Indian origin of such a structure.

Walter Fairservis, Jr.,¹ describing the Harappān site of Mohenjo-daro, has dwelt on a structure "known to the excavators as the Assembly Hall". He² writes: "Badly preserved, it is nonetheless one of the most striking monuments at Mohenjodaro. It consisted of a broad pillared hall opening principally to the north, i.e., towards the highest part of the site. Twenty rectangular pillars approximately five feet by three feet in size supported the roof. The pillars were arranged in rows of four with five pillars to each row." After detailing the rest of the important features of the building complex containing the pillared hall, Fairservis³ comments on this complex: "One cannot help but speculate... that it was constructed in response to a formality urged by religion or government. Was it indeed a place of assembly or perhaps a place of audience? Wheeler rightfully refers to the Achaemenid pillared hall of audience, the apadana, in this context, and such a comparison is certainly called to mind.⁴" Thus the Pātaliputra hall, seeming to resemble the Persepolitan apadana, needs really to look back to an original in the Indus Valley Civilization.

Perhaps we shall be admonished: "What about the recent digging at Pātaliputra which, with the NBP [Northern Black Polished] sherds, yielded a good number of polished sandstone pieces, including one large slab showing the typical Mauryan or Persian polish and bearing a palmette and head-and-reel pattern of appropriate type? Doesn't this fix Mauryan art to the NBP period which, by the C-14 test, covers two and a half centuries or so before the Christian era?"

First of all, we may answer that the palmette and head-and-reel pattern is no proof of Achaemenid Persian influence. N. R. Ray⁵ tells us after mentioning the debt which, in his view, Mauryan art owes in some details to Persia and Greece: "The twisted rope design, the acanthus leaf and palmette designs, etc. may, however,

1.The Roots of Ancient India: The Archaeology of Early Indian Civilization (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1971), p. 245.

2.Ibid., pp. 245-46.

3.Ibid., p. 246.

4.Sir M. Wheeler, Early India and Pakistan (Frederic A. Praeger, New York, 1959).

5."Art: Sculpture", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 509.

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have been derived from an older common West-Asiatic heritage."

Secondly, we may answer that, just as Aśokan art has strong antecedents in the art of the Harappā Culture which was many centuries earlier, so also can it be thought to have had a continuation in some respects. Whatever has high polish and fine finish typical of the Mauryan school need not belong to Mauryan times. To quote Basham¹ again: "One beautiful figure, the 'Didarganj Yaksī, bears the distinctive brilliant polish of the school, but the treatment of the figure suggests that it is post-Mauryan." Its date is almost 200 years after Aśoka as at present dated.² So the finding of the polished sandstone pieces together with the NBP sherds at Pātaliputra need not mean that they were Mauryan and that the Mauryas were ruling in the 3rd century B.C., to the middle of which these sherds at their earliest can belong. Room is left for the idea that Sandrocottus was Chandragupta I and that the Imperial Guptas who were aware of Aśoka's fine stone monuments (e.g., the Allāhābād Pillar where the inscriptions of Samudragupta and Skandagupta stand with Aśoka's own) encouraged Mauryan polish. The idea would be debarred only if something definitely sets the Guptas in the 4th-to-6th centuries A.D.

Now a last word in the sphere of art - in relation to another phrase from Basham:³ "the Mauryan school, with its high polish and fine finish." Will Durant⁴ quotes John Marshall as saying about the Harappā Culture's gold and silver bangles, ear-ornaments, necklaces and other jewellery: "so well finished and so highly polished that they might have come out of a Bond Street jeweller's of today rather than from a prehistoric house of 5,000 years ago." Not only the energetic realism in animal-depiction but also the drive towards high polish and fine finish of Aśokan art can be linked with the creative or productive movement of the ancient Indus Valley.

The Aśokan monuments in any aspect do not stand in the way of our reinterpretation of Aśokan data to fix the Guptas where the Mauryas are placed at present.

1.Op. cit., p. 365.

2.Ibid., pi. facing p. 105; also The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 516-17.

3.Op. cit., p. 365.

4.The Story of Civilization, I. Our Oriental Heritage (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1954), p. 395.

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In terms of Aśokan evidence our case against the identification of Sandrocottus with the founder of the Mauryas is completed. By way of a supplement with a positive pointer towards making the founder of the Imperial Guptas the contemporary of Megasthenes we may hark back to our treatment of the Aśokan background as being incompatible with the background of the post-Alexandrine epoch in India. We indicated, among other things, the insignificance of Buddhism in the time of Megasthenes and stressed the prevalence of Krishna-worship in it. We also noted how the canonical Buddhist work, the Anguttara Nikāya which is post-Buddha but anterior to the Mauryas and which lists various religious cults is utterly silent on the Vaishnava and Bhagavata cult of Vāsudeva-Krishna. Aśoka's own inscriptions were found equally silent although they mention several other religious denominations. This is most surprising and must show that Aśoka no less than the Anguttara Nikāya must have come before the day of Megasthenes and Sandrocottus. Thus his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya moves in time still further back beyond the 4th century B.C., where he is usually placed. Now we may briefly glance at the history of the Krishna-worship which Megasthenes speaks of, and consider it in relation to the Guptas. This procedure will determine in a positive way the precise bearing of the Sandrocottus-era.

Sircar provides us with a general look at the development of Vaishnavism and Bhāgavatism.

The Historical Picture of Krishna-worship

The earliest reference to the Vāsudeva-cult "may be traced to the Ashtādhyāyī of Pānini... which offers the rule for the formation of the word 'Vāsudevaka' in the sense of 'a person whose object of Bhakti is Vāsudeva'.¹ Although "Vāsudeva was probably deified at least partially... as early as the age of Pānini,... he may or may not have been regarded as the supreme god".² Along with him was "his friend the Pāndava Arjuna", as seen from "Pānini's rule for the formation of the word Arjunaka in the sense

1."Vaishnavism", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 432.

2. Ibid., p. 437.

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of a person whose object of Bhakti was Arjuna".¹ Besides, it is only likely, not certain, that Bhakti "is to be taken in the sense of religious adoration", for "the word is also used in the Ashtādhyāyī in connection with cakes, and the possibility of the meaning 'fondness' is not altogether precluded".² No more than a devotional tinge can be positively asserted in the attitude to Vāsudeva.

But by the 4th century B.C. at least, Vāsudeva is a full-fledged object of whole-hearted devotion as "is proved by the statement of Megasthenes that the Souresenoi, i.e. the people of the Mathura region, held Herakles in special honour; for there is no doubt that Herakles was the Greek analogue of Vāsudeva-Krishna".³

Originally "a hero of the Yādava clan", Vāsudeva-Krishna, when deified, was "styled Bhagavat".⁴ He was identified with "the Vedic deity Vishnu".⁵ "This was accomplished by the time the Bhagavadgītā was composed, and henceforth the Vāsudeva cult or Bhagavata religion was known also as Vaishnava dharma."⁶

"A Besnagar (old Gwalior State) inscription of the last quarter of the second century B.C. refers to a garuda-dhvaja (column surmounted by the figure of Garuda [Eagle] conceived as the emblem or vahana of Vishnu) raised at Vidiśa in honour of Vāsudeva, the deva-deva (the greatest god), by his Yavana or Greek devotee Heliodorus, an inhabitant of Takshaśilā in Gandhāra, who calls himself a Bhāgavata... Another inscription from Besnagar speaks of the erection of the Garuda column of an excellent temple (prāsādottama) of the Bhagavat (Vāsudeva).

"The Ghosundi (Chitorgarh District, Rājputāna) inscription of the first century B.C. refers to the construction of a pūjā- śilā-prākāra (stone enclosure for the place of worship, or better, an enclosure for the sacred stone called Śālagrāma believed to be typical of Vishnu as the Linga is of Śiva), probably styled Nārāya-navataka, by a Bhagavata performer of the Aśvamedha sacrifice, in honour of Sarikarshana and Vāsudeva who are called Bhāgavat, anihata (unconquered or respected), and sarvesvara (supreme lord)...

1.Ibid., p. 451, with fn. 1.

2.Ibid., 482, with fn. 2.

3.Ibid., p. 432.

4.Ibid.

5.Ibid., p. 435.

6.Ibid.

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"These epigraphs support what is already known from literary evidence as regards Vāsudeva's association with Garuda [Eagle], and therefore with Vishnu, with the Vrishni hero Śankarshana, as well as with Nārāyana, long before the birth of Christ. He is not called Krishna in the earlier epigraphic literature of India, but the use of Krishna as another name of Vāsudeva in such Works as the Mahābhārata, the Ghata Jātaka and the Mahābhāshya should probably be ascribed to a pre-Christian date."'¹

We may observe that when Megasthenes associates not only Methora (Mathurā) but also Cleisobora with the Souresenoi's worship of Heracles we have in the second city-name the word "Krishnapura" and that the name "Heracles" can reduce to "Hari-Krish(na)". Thus, from the 4th century B.C. onwards to the birth of Christ, direct Krishna-worship is certainly in full maturity. It is also widely disseminated. "The Bhagavata religion, which originated with the Yādava-Sātvata-Vrishni people of the Mathura area, appears to have spread to western India and the northern Deccan with the migration of the numerous Yādava tribes".² "The introduction of Bhāgavatism in the far south at a much earlier date is indicated by the relation of the Pāndyas with the Pandavas and Śūrasenas, alluded to in the confused stories narrated by Megasthenes about Heracles and Pandaia, and in the grammatical work of Kātyāyana, and by the name of the Pāndya capital Madurā, adapted from that of Mathurā, the original home of the Vāsudeva cult.'"³

Contemporary with the efflorescence of Bhāgavatism evident from the 4th century B.C. to the beginning of the Christian era we need to have kings quite the reverse in religious environment to Aśoka. No doubt, there is one Aśokan edict on a pillar bearing on its top the figure of a Garuda, but this figure, though suggestive of Vishnu, could not have had such Vaishnava significance in Aśoka's time, as it had later, for the pillar was freely used by him for his own message and there was no preceding Bhagavata association with it as there was with the later Garuda-dhvajas of Besnagar. No counter-indication can be read here to what we gather from Aśoka's inscriptions. These inscriptions prove the abeyance if not absence of Bhāgavatism in his day. Unlike him, the Imperial

1.Ibid., pp. 438-9.

2.Ibid., p. 437.

3.Ibid., p. 439.

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Guptas not only show ample knowledge of Bhāgavatism but are themselves mostly Vaishnavas¹ eager to call themselves Parama-bhāgavatas.² And, what is most suggestive, they reveal the Garuda as peculiarly their own symbol. There is the famous phrase in the Allāhābād Pillar Epigraph in celebration of Samudragupta, the second emperor of the dynasty: Garut-mad-anka, meaning³ either the Gupta coin bearing the Garuda symbol or simply the Garuda seal (for imperial charters). The Meherauli Pillar inscription of King Chandra, which is generally attributed to Chandragupta II, the third emperor in the line, though Chandragupta I may be as suitable a candidate, "refers to the erection of a Vishnu-dhvaja" .⁴ And except for some new types of gold coins issued by Kumara-gupta I and the silver coinage which he introduced for the first time in the central provinces, bearing the symbol of the peacock, the Garuda meets us on the reverse of many Gupta coins.⁵

Looking at the prevalence of Bhāgavatism in both Vidiśa and Takshaśila, over and above Mathurā and the southern Pāndya country, in the four centuries before Christ, and looking at the diametrical opposition of testimony as between Aśoka and the Imperial Guptas about Bhāgavatism, and looking finally at the Guptas' Garuda-emblem, we can hardly escape the impression that they and not the Mauryas were the ruling power in the immediately post-Alexandrine epoch in India.

Particularly strong is this impression when we remember that the Śungas and Kānvas, just like the Mauryas whom they succeeded, had nothing to do with Bhāgavatism and cannot be connected with the growth of this religion in the post-Alexandrine epoch.

Still stronger becomes the impression with the knowledge that even the inscriptions of the Āndhra Sātavāhanas, who succeeded the Śungas-Kānvas and preceded the Guptas, disclose Bhāgavatism in a developing stage which is short of the full efflorescence soon after. Sircar⁶ writes: "...the Sātavāhana record at Nana-ghat... shows that some people regarded Vāsudeva... not as the

1.A New History..., p. 372.

2.Ibid., p. 371.

3.Ibid., p. 148.

4.Ibid., p. 372, fn. 1.

5.Ibid., pp. 304-5.

6."Vaishnavism", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 439.

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greatest of all gods, but only as the equal of Indra and other gods. That another Sātavāhana king... claimed to be equal to Rāma (Baladeva or Sarikarshana) and Keśava (Vāsudeva-Krishna) is also noteworthy." The first inscription is quite early in the dynasty (late 1st century B.C. in the most-favoured modern chronology which starts the Sātavāhanas there), the second not very far from the tail-end (early 3rd century A.D. by the same chronology).¹ Surely, all the Sātavāhanas must come before the period of the Heliodorus-inscription where Vāsudeva is "the greatest god" and even the period of Megasthenes and Sandrocottus when the "Souresenoi" of Mathurā worshipped Heracles and the Vāsudeva-cult had reached as far as southernmost India. The proper place for the Sātavāhanas is more or less with Pānini and the period just after him.

The impression, that the Guptas should be where now the Mauryas are put, grows not only very strong but also inevitable when we observe how the art ascribed to the time immediately after Aśoka - that is, the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. - and reckoned as Mauryan in general with regard to the themes concerned has features joining it at once to the military descriptions of Megasthenes and to certain characteristics of Gupta kingship.

Mookerji² says: "A nearly life-size figure of an infantry soldier armed as described by Megasthenes appears among the sculptures of Bhārhut which are generally taken to date from the age of Aśoka." But the true connection of the sculpture emerges as soon as we listen further to Mookerji. He³ first refers to Strabo's account (XV. 1.55) from Megasthenes: "When (the King) goes to hunt, it is in a kind of Bacchic procession, surrounded by women who form a circle... some of the women are in chariots, some on horseback, some on elephants, fully armed as in war." Mookerji then remarks: "It is interesting to note that there is a representation of a procession in a Bharhut Sculpture (c. 2nd century B.C.) of the figure of a woman riding a horse fully caparisoned and carrying a standard, the garudadhvaja (A Guide to Sculpture in the Indian Museum, I, 24)." So we have Megasthenes confirmed by a sculpture dated to a time shortly after his, but bearing a

1.Ibid., and "Chronology", pp. 701. 702: c. 30 B.C. Simuka and 219-227 A.D. Puloma (Sātavāhana).

2.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 276.

3.Ibid., p. 98.

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prominent characteristic, both political and religious, of Gupta sovereignty: the Garuda-emblem. The royal line of the time appears to have been of the Gupta Vaishnavites or Bhāgavatas.

Bhāgavatism and the Time of Patanjali

While we are about the subject we may touch on Patanjali's relation to Bhāgavatism just as we have done with Pānini's. Pānini with his vision of a side-by-side worship of Krishna and Arjuna bespeaks an initial phase of the new cult. When discussing the age of his word Yāvānānī ("Yavana script") we also indicated how a certain reference to the Mauryas in Patanjali suggested for Pānini a post-Mauryan date within a time-scheme such as we have set up. Since along Rapson's line of interpreting the Purānas we have made the Śungas and the Kānvas contemporaneous with each other and even with the last Mauryas to some extent, Pānini's being post-Mauryan could amount in the abstract to his flourishing in the time of the Śungas and Kānvas but on concrete considerations he could at the earliest flourish only in the opening period of the Āndhra dynasty - the period of the Nanaghat Inscription. His date is most likely to be around 802 B.C. In our estimate of Patanjali's date we made the general observation that he belonged to the period when Bhāgavatism was in full flower. This means the time-bracket 300 to 1 B.C. Now we must attempt a greater precision.

Sircar has alluded to Patanjali in relation to the association of the name "Krishna" with "Vāsudeva". But as the name was already there in the age of Megasthenes we have here no exact chronological pointer except that Patanjali could be prior to the Christian Era. Puri¹ supplies us with a sharper focus. After mentioning the two Besnagar inscriptions he writes about the Ghosun-di stone slab: "It records the erection of a stone enclosure of worship for Bhagavat Samkarsana and Vāsudeva, within the enclosure of Nārāyana, by Bhagavata Gajāyana, son of Parāśati. The Nārāyanavata or the enclosure of the Lord, denotes the compound of a temple or place of worship, while Pujāśilaprākāra stands for Bhagavat Sankarsana and Vāsudeva - evidently referring to a smaller stone enclosure, probably round the images representing Sahkarsana and Vāsudeva within the Nārāyanavata. The cosmic

1. India in the Time of Patanjali, pp. 185-6.

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philosophic god Nārāyana, whose name is not traced in the Mahābhārata, thus completes the trivenī, or the three streams of thought mingling together to form the cult of Vaisnavism."

Here is the only inscription in which we have what Puri terms the trivenī of Vaishnavism. Also, as we know from Sircar, both Sahkarshana and Vāsudeva are called "supreme lord" in it. There is no question of either of them being merely the equal of Indra and other gods as in the Nanaghat inscription which, as Sircar¹ elsewhere says, "begins with an adoration to the gods Dharma, Indra, Sahkarshana and Vāsudeva, the Moon and the Sun, and the four lokapalas, viz. Yama (differentiated from Dharma), Varuna, Kubera and Vāsava (differentiated from Indra)". But now Sankarshana has the precedence of Vāsudeva, though both are equal in divinity and represent one and the same supreme power.

The order is reversed in two late Buddhist manuals. Sircar² writes: a passage occurring in the Buddhist canonical commentaries (c. first century B.C.), called the Mahāniddesa and the Chullaniddesa, mentions the worshippers of Vāsudeva and Bālā-deva (Sahkarshana)." "The association," says Puri,³ "of Vāsudeva with Bālādeva... is also noted by Patahjali." A little earlier Puri⁴ tells us, "Patanjali, besides mentioning the names of Krsna and Janardana, the synonyms of Vāsudeva, also referred to the festive gatherings in the temples of Kesava (Vāsudeva) and Rama (Bālā-rama [Bālādeva]).... There is a reference to the Vyuha [form or phase of the conditioned Spirit] of Krsna and his acolytes..." But Patanjali, as Puri has noted, is silent on Nārāyana, just as are the Mahāniddesa and the Chullaniddesa. So he would seem to come before the Nārāyana-strain of Vaishnavism matured, as well as before Sankarshana could occasionally enjoy prime place, while not being superior to Vāsudeva. He should stand in c. 75 B.C. while the Ghosundi inscription might be put in the period from c. 50 to 1 B.C.

In the same period as this epigraph though a little earlier than it, we may place the Nārayanīya section of the Mahābhārata's Śanti-parvan where "Vāsudeva is identified with Paramatman (Supreme

1.Op. cit., p. 438.

2.Ibid., p. 437.

3.Op. cit., p. 187.

4.Ibid., p. 184.

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Soul) and Sahkarshana with Jivatman (individual soul)".¹

Patanjali, with his allusion to the Vyūha-doctrine, must be posterior to the Bhagavad Gītā, in which there is no reference to the Vyuhas.² The Gītā assorts best with the period from the time of Mêgasthenes to that of the Besnagar inscriptions. And it is also in this period that we may see "the growing popularity of the worship of the avatāras of Vishnu, which became the dominant feature of Bhāgavatism in the Gupta age".³ Perhaps the reign of Samudragupta, whose Allāhābād Pillar Inscription as good as makes him out to be an Avatar, is the right background for the Gītā's final recension.

The Guptas and Buddhism

We may now pick up again the theme of the Guptas' emblem having been displayed in the royal procession depicted at Bhārhut. We should be ready for the challenge: ''Bhārhut, like Bodh-Gayā and Sānchī, is, from the viewpoint of subject-matter, predominantly Buddhist. How do you reconcile this with the sovereignty of the Gupta Vaishnavites and Bhāgavatas?"

Just because of their Vaishnavism and Bhāgavatism, the Guptas need not have been intolerant fanatics. The facts are exactly the reverse.

Altekar⁴ reports: "The Guptas were orthodox Hindus, but the best tribute to their administration has been paid by some contemporary Jain records." Altekar adds that among the officers of the Hindu Gupta emperors "there were some who were Buddhist and one of them is seen making a donation to the Buddhist establishment at Sānchī for the spiritual benefit of his Vaishnava sovereign Chandragupta II. Vainyagupta, one of the later Gupta kings, was a Śaiva and yet he gave a donation to the Mahāyana Buddhist establishment known as Vaivartika Sanghā.

It is possible, however, to exaggerate the Guptas' patronage of Buddhism. We cannot remain quiet when Altekar says: "It is well known how the Buddhist University of Nālandā owed most of its

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 449.

2.Ibid., p. 447.

3.Ibid., pp. 449-50.

4."Religion and Philosophy", A New History..., p. 366.

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prosperity to the patronage it received from the Hindu Gupta emperors....¹ Several monasteries were built to accommodate the growing population of monk-students."² The connection of the Gupta dynasty with Nālandā University is urged on the strength of four pieces of information.

The Chinese scholar Hiuen Tsang, who travelled in India during 630-643 A.D., has written: "Bālāditya-rāja, king of Magadha, profoundly honoured the law of Buddha."³ He also calls Bālāditya "the builder of a great sanghārāma at Nālandā".⁴ Next we learn from Majumdar:⁵ "An inscription found at Nālandā, and belonging to about the middle of the eighth century A.D., also refers to 'Bālāditya, the great king of irresistible valour' who 'after having vanquished all the foes and enjoyed the entire earth, erected a great and extraordinary temple at Nālandā'." The third datum is again from Hiuen Tsang who narrates a victory of his Bālāditya over an impious invader named Mihirakula whose capital was Śakala.⁶ The fourth piece of information is about a late member of the Imperial Guptas:⁷ "Narasimha-gupta issued gold coins of a single type which show that he assumed the title Bālāditya." What are we to conclude?

Majumdar⁸ is right to say that we need hardly doubt that Bālāditya of the Nālandā inscription is the same as Hiuen Tsang's Buddhist Bālāditya. Is Majumdar⁹ right in saying: "His identification with the Gupta emperor cannot be regarded as certain, but seems to be very plausible"? Majumdar speaks of the plausibility because, according to his chronology, the fight between Narasirhhagupta and Mihirakula, if it happened, took place about 530 A.D.,¹⁰ and this was also the age when Nālandā was flourishing as a university centre though a monastery had been there for a long time, as witnessed by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien who

1.Ibid.

2."Education, Literature and Sciences", ibid., p. 398.

3.Majumdar, 'The Imperial Crisis", ibid., p. 200.

4.Ibid., p. 198.

5.Ibid., p. 192.

6.Ibid., p. 196.

7.Ibid., p. 192.

8.Ibid., pp. 192-9.

9.Ibid., p. 193. 10. Ibid., p. 197.

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"visited Nālandā in c. 410 A.D." but saw "no educational activity at the place".¹

Had Hiuen Tsang known of Narasimhagupta's coins he would have agreed with Majumdar. The sole difference would have been in the dating. For, as Majumdar² is himself alert enough to note, Hiuen Tsang, narrating the defeat of Mihirakula, places "this defeat 'some centuries ago' i.e., several hundred years before 633 A.D., when he visited Śakala", whereas by the modern computation the event is to be dated to about 103 years earlier. But perhaps if Hiuen Tsang had been told that a Nālandā flourishing as a university centre could not be shifted backward by hundreds of years or even to Fa-hien's period he would have separated Narasimhagupta Bālāditya from the Buddha-loving patron of Nālandā who appears to belong to that town's university-phase.

What influenced Hiuen Tsang in identifying the latter with the conqueror of Mihirakula was the confusion he made about the Imperial Gupta emperor Budhagupta, who preceded Narasirhha-gupta Bālāditya.³ He read "Buddha" into the first part of this emperor's name and wrote of Bālāditya being the grandson of Buddhagupta and brought in even a typically Buddhist name like "Tathagatagupta" as that of Bālāditya's father.⁴ Gupta history does not recognise any Tathagatagupta nor is it aware of anything Buddhist about Budhagupta. So, even with the modern computation in the field, we have no reason to relate Narasimhagupta with the university-phase of Nālandā. Besides, as we shall see a little later,⁵ apropos of another sweeping assertion of Altekar's, there were several kings named Bālāditya who lived in the period of Nālandā University and had nothing to do with the Gupta dynasty but to whom a deep interest in Buddhism can be attributed. One of them, instead of Narasimhagupta, could have been the Buddha-lover and the patron of Nālandā University.

Yes, we must refrain from exaggerating the patronage of Buddhism by the Guptas. But it cannot be denied that to find Buddhism developing and expanding within India in the three centuries before Christ, we do not need an Aśoka in the 3rd

1.Altekar, "Education, Literature and Sciences", ibid., p. 398.

2."The Imperial Crisis", ibid., pp. 196-7.

3.Ibid., pp. 191-2.

4.India through Chinese Eyes (1957), pp. 135-9, 162.

5.A New History..., p. 156, fn (last para).

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century B.C. It is sufficient to have the Guptas then and later. They perfectly account for the revival of Buddhism after the slump it seems to have suffered for quite a time lasting down to the age of Mêgasthenes. Aśoka is unnecessary for the revival. Besides, it is absurd to talk of Aśoka having to revive Buddhism. He came within a few centuries of Buddha, and two Buddhist Councils had already been convened before his time. The Middle Country in which he lived was the seat of active Buddhist work, the religion had extended to both Śūrasena and Avanti (the former being the same as the home of Mêgasthenes's Souresenoi) where important centres were founded in Buddha's own lifetime, and an attempt had been made also to spread the Gospel of piety and liberation to the people of Śunāparānta.¹ In the age preceding Aśoka, Buddhism should have been in a state not at all requiring revivalist energy on his part. He had merely to continue extending it further. To revive it, one would have to come in another era than the era between Buddha's death and Aśoka's accession, and one would have to be another king than Aśoka.

The very type of king necessary on the heels of the non-Buddhist Mêgasthenes-era to revive Buddhism appears in those who succeeded Chandragupta I whom we have identified with Sandrocottus. Samudragupta, son of Chandragupta I and celebrated lover of learning, may have already started the revival in the period just after Mêgasthenes. But we should be wary of accepting a statement about him like Altekar's:² "Samudragupta was no doubt a staunch Hindu, who took peculiar pride in resuscitating the Aśvamedha sacrifice, but he entrusted the education of his son to Vasubandhu who was a famous and erudite Buddhist scholar." We should be wary because of several reasons.

To realise them we have only to attend to the information supplied by Majumdar:³ "The references to Vasubandhu in Buddhist works throw light on the literary patronage of a Gupta king whose identity cannot be established with certainty. It is said by the rhetorician Vāmana that the son of Chandra-gupta, known as Chandra-prakāśa, was a great patron of letters, and appointed the famous Buddhist scholar Vasubandhu as his minister. If Vasubandhu flourished in the fourth century A.D. and died after the

1.Barua, op. cit., p. 322.

2."Religion and Philosophy", A New History.., pp. 365-6.

3."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", ibid., p. 155.

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middle of that century, as is generally held, we have to take Chandra-gupta as Chandragupta I and regard Chandra-prakāśa as another name of Samudragupta Vāmana's reference to his patronage of letters would be quite in keeping with what Harishena says of the great Gupta emperor."

First of all, there is the question of Vasubandhu's date. In a long footnote, Majumdar¹ writes:

"The whole question has been fully discussed by V. A. Smith in EHI. pp. 328 ff. Takakusu held that Vasubandhu lived from about 420 to 500 A.D. (JRAS. 1905, pp. 43 ff). Against this M. Peri maintained (BEFEO.XI, 339 ff.) that Vasubandhu lived in the fourth century A.D. and died soon after the middle of that century. This view is generally accepted. Takakusu opposed it and reaffirmed his old view (Indian Studies in honour of C. R. Lanman, pp. 79 ff.) For other views see V. A. Smith, op. cit.

"In addition to the passage of Vāmana referred to above in the text we have reference to Vasubandhu's relation with the Guptas in Paramārtha's biography of that Buddhist scholar, which may be summed up as follows:-

"King Vikramāditya of Ayodhya became a patron of Buddhism on account of Vasubandhu's success in religious activity. He sent his crown-prince Bālāditya to Vasubandhu to learn Buddhism, and the queen, too, became one of his disciples. When he came to the throne king Bālāditya in conjunction with his queen-mother invited Vasubandhu (who had gone to his native place, Peshawar) to Ayodhya and favoured him with special patronage (JRAS, 1905, pp. 33 ff.).

"It is generally accepted that Vikramāditya and Bālāditya refer to two Gupta emperors, but it is not possible to identify them so long as the date of Vasubandhu is not definitely fixed.

"An interesting side-issue arises out of the statement in Paramārtha's biography of Vasubandhu that the city of Ayodhya was the residence of both the kings Vikramāditya and Bālāditya. It has been inferred from this that the Imperial Guptas had a secondary capital at Ayodhya, for which, however, there is no other evidence.

"An inscription found at Sārnāth mentions a royal dynasty in which there was more than one king named Bālāditya (Cit. III, 284). It is not altogether impossible that Vasubandhu's patron

1. Ibid., pp. 155-56.

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belonged to this or a similar local dynasty of Ayodhya."

Obviously there are a number of serious uncertainties, which apply to the Imperial Guptas even if they are put in the period following 320 A.D. Vāmana speaks of Chandragupta and Chan-draprakāśa, Paramārtha of Vikramāditya and Bālāditya. To fix on Samudragupta as Vasubandhu's patron is absolutely arbitrary. The uncertainty about Vasubandhu's own date can be gauged by the fact that the only Gupta assuming the title Bālāditya was Narasirhhagupta who, by the modern chronology,¹ lived between 500 and 550 A.D., far removed from Samudragupta's time. Again, it is not even certain that the Gupta line was in the least involved: some local line of Ayodhya is perfectly conceivable. Vasubandhu cannot at all be connected with the Imperial Guptas in general or with Samudragupta in particular merely because of some name-echoes. Even the most striking of these echoes - Chandragupta -has no convincing force in the absence of a clear support by other similar sounds; for in the somewhat elastic period within which Vasubandhu is sought to be placed we have at least three non-Gupta Chandraguptas. There is King Chandragupta of the Pandu-varhsīs, brother of King Tivara of Kosala who flourished c. 565-80 A.D.² There is a prince of the same name mentioned in the Sanjan grant as defeated by Rāshtrakuta Govinda III (c. 794-814 A.D.).³ There is also Chandragupta, a petty ruler at Jālartdhar,⁴ in the very time at present allotted to the Guptas: 320-c. 570 A.D.

Everything considered, nothing obliges us in the smallest degree to associate Vasubandhu with any Imperial Gupta. The Gupta aid to Buddhism must be kept severely clear of Vasubandhu.

The same warning holds for the involvement of the Buddhist Chinese pilgrim, Fa-hien. We are often told how prosperous this pilgrim found Chandragupta IPs empire and how flourishing the followers of Buddhism. But in fact there is no evidence that Fa-hien travelled through the country when the third Gupta emperor was on the throne. Just by assuming Fleet's epoch our historians link Fa-hien's report with the state of India under that king. We understand this feat of fancy the moment we read Majumdar's

1."The Imperial Crisis", ibid., p. 192.

2."Eastern Deccan", ibid., pp. 90, 91.

3.Ibid., p. 91.

4."Religion and Philosophy", ibid., p. 373.

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words:¹ "An idea of the peace and prosperity in the vast empire may be had from the account of the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien who travelled through Chandragupta's wide dominions for more than six years. Unfortunately Fa-hien does not give any account of the political condition of India - he does not evert mention the name of the great Gupta emperor."

We have to stick only to the Gupta inscriptions for our estimate of what condition Buddhism was in during the Gupta regime. And they are quite sufficient to explain both Bhāgavatism and Buddhism in the few centuries before Christ, whereas Aśoka and his successors cannot explain the former at all. Even the latter is somewhat inexplicable if we realise that the dynasty succeeding the Mauryan was of Pushyamitra Śunga and this was contemporaneous with the Kānvas according to Rapson and his school or, according to some other historians, followed by the Kānvas, two dynasties strictly Brāhmanical and unlikely to foster any considerable Buddhist outflowering.

The Buddhist outflowering under the Guptas was a wholly Indian affair and can claim no missionary endeavour in the Western world. We should therefore not be surprised by lack of knowledge of it in the countries of the West, which we know to have been in connection with India in the post-Alexandrine epoch. The ignorance, as we have already said, is amazing if we think of Aśoka sending out dharma-mhsions to Greek States. Moreover, Buddhism under the Guptas would not stand out in opposition to Hinduism: there was a wide-spread spirit of tolerance and harmony. Doubtless, Aśoka too fostered such a spirit, but the very fact that the king was an enthusiastic Buddhist convert would give some front-position to Buddhism, just as the Vaishnavite persuasion of the Guptas did throw Bhāgavatism into relief in their day, making it the chief note in the manifold religious concord.

Unquestionably, all historical issues have not been laid at rest when we have fitted the founder of the Guptas into the Mega-sthenes-era in which, as we have seen F. W. Thomas² remarking, "the greatest share of popular adoration accrued to Śiva and Vishnu (under the form of Krishna)"; but the varied information we have set forth goes to make a huge and many-sided argument

1."The Expansion of the Gupta Empire", ibid., p. 172.

2."Political and Social Organisation of the Maurya Empire", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 485.

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suggesting a solid case for reinterpreting Aśokan evidence in favour of identifying Chandragupta I with Sandrocottus.

10

Now we may hark back to a statement we made in a context indirectly related to Aśoka. Not to deal with the issue raised by it would be to leave a loose end. The issue concerns the Ceylonese Devanāmpiyatissa whom we considered to have been wrongly connected with Aśoka by the Ceylonese: our submission was that what was relevant to another Indian king had been foisted on to Aśoka who can be shown to have had nothing to do with Ceylon. We must now demonstrate how the information the Chronicles offer suits the king who would occupy in our revised vision more or less the same chronological position that Aśoka holds in the current historical scheme.

The Reign-length of Chandragupta I

To ascertain who exactly would be ruling Magadha in c. 269 B.C. and some of the subsequent years now allotted to Aśoka, we must first decide the reign-length proper to Chandragupta I who for us replaces Chandragupta Maurya as king of Pātaliputra in post-Alexandrine India.

Fifteen years or twelve or even less is a common count for him. But if, as is mostly admitted, he and not his son Samudragupta founded the Gupta Era and if his marriage with the Lichchhavi princess Kumāradevī is closely linked in time with this occasion, helping, as that marriage did, to confirm his rise to sovereignty over Pātaliputra, Samudragupta can never be brought to the throne until he had grown sufficiently to deserve the description of him in the Allāhābād Pillar Epigraph. For, there Chandragupta chooses his son as his successor in the midst of a public assembly, joyfully exclaiming, "Thou art worthy, rule this whole world." Majumdar¹ well observes: "We can hardly believe that Samudragupta gave evidence of his prowess and ability and was selected by his father as the fittest prince to succeed him directly before he attained the age of twenty-five to thirty years." So a reign of twenty-five to thirty years for Chandragupta is the minimum we

1. "The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", A New History,... p. 158.

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have to grant. It may be even longer.

All that we know is the interval between his coronation and the coronation of his grandson Chandragupta II. The earliest inscription of the latter is dated the 60th year of the Gupta Era (though without the designation "Gupta") and his own regnal year in it is read by some as pratham (first) and by others as pancham (fifth). With Majumdar we favour the second reading. This means we have 55 years for the reigns of Chandragupta I and Samudragupta. Out of them we are not restricted by any circumstances from allotting to Chandragupta I at least 3 decades.

Samudragupta and Devānampiyatissa

Even if he reigned for no more than 30 years we should have Samudragupta on the throne in (315-30=) 285 B.C. and continuing for 25 years - that is, down to 260 B.C. He would thus cover part of the reign of Devānampiyatissa which, by Ceylon's traditional chronology, would be 308-7 to 268-7 B.C. And, in general, he is fit to be there because he is the one king in Indian history who is explicitly connected with Ceylon by his inscriptional record. There is no question here of anything like Aśoka's ambiguous Tāmraparni and Tāmraparnīya. We know definitely from the Allāhābād Pillar that "the peoples of Simhala and other islands" figured among those about whom, judging by the language employed, Majumdar¹ is led to say: "it may be taken for granted that they sought to win the favour of the great emperor by personal attendance in his court, offering daughters in marriage, and asking permission for the use of imperial coins or soliciting imperial charters confirming them in the enjoyment of their territories."

Not only in general but indeed in particular is Samudragupta fit to be related to Ceylon's Devānampiyatissa. It is the last category of homage in Majumdar's list that points to this fitness - the category of peoples "soliciting imperial charters confirming them in the enjoyment of their territories". For, the situation of Devānampiyatissa, as presented in the Ceylonese Chronicles, is strongly suggestive of a status feudatory to the North-Indian king of his day. S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar,² telling us of this monarch's

1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", The Classical Age, pp. 10-11.

2."Southern India and Ceylon", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 236.

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sending an embassy with rich presents to the Mauryan emperor and receiving from the latter the various essentials for his own formal consecration, which was celebrated with great splendour, gives the footnote: "It looks as if the Ceylonese king sought for investiture at the hands of Aśoka, though the reason is not apPārent..." What Devānampiyatissa did is a spectacular equivalent of Majumdar's final category of homage. The reason which to Aiyangar is "not apPārent" becomes clear in the light of the Allāhābād Pillar. There we have the only North-Indian king known in history to have claimed Ceylon as a vassal state.

And we may add: "Samudragupta's claim not only agrees with our knowledge of that unique event in the annals of Ceylon - the formal consecration of a Ceylonese king by an emperor of North India - but also lends a new colour to the famous 'synchronism' alleged by Sylvain Lévi of Samudragupta and Sirimeghavanna of Ceylon. This 'synchronism' is said to stand side by side with Fleet's determination of the Gupta Era as starting in 320 A.D. It is said to confirm Fleet in framing the first Imperial Guptas in the 4th century A.D. We have shown how Albērūnī's information has been completely twisted: he distinctly declared that the Gupta Era commenced with the end of the Guptas - a celebration of the disappearance of a king-line that had become unpopular.¹ The discussion of Devānampiyatissa naturally brings in Lévi's claim and gives us a chance to deny it."

Already in Part I of our book we have dealt with it in some detail: now we may briefly touch on it by focusing on the issue of Ceylon's status which is relevant to our treatment of Devānampiyatissa.

Samudragupta and Sirimeghavanna

The Chinese writer Wang Hiuen-t'se who was in India in 647-48 A.D. has stated that the king of Chen-tsen (Ceylon) named Chi-mi-kia-po-mo (Sirimeghavanna) offered presents to the Indian king San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to (Samudragupta). Sirimeghavanna, by the traditional Ceylonese Era assuming 543 B.C. as the date of Buddha's Parinirvāna (or death), ruled from 304 to 322 A.D. and, by the Fleet-Geiger hypothesis of an earlier tradition which put the Parinirvāna in 483 B.C., from 352 to 376 A.D. In the current

1. Sachau, Albērūnī's India, II, p. 7.

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chronology, Samudragupta's reign is taken to have ended in 375-76 A.D. So the two monarchs are regarded as contemporaries. The pertinent question for us is: "Have we any sign that Siri-meghavanna's Ceylon was feudatory to a North-Indian king?"

The story¹ about Chi-mi-kia-po-mo and San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to has it that the Ceylonese king, in order to remove all inconveniences to Ceylonese pilgrims visiting Bodh-Gayā, sent a mission to the Indian king with rich presents and asked for permission to build a monastery and a rest-house at that holy place. The Indian king granted the permission, and the Ceylonese king built a splendid monastery to the north of the Bodhi tree. When Hiuen Tsang saw it, it had developed into a magnificent establishment. Referring to the old history of its foundation he says that the Ceylonese king "gave in tribute to the king of India all the jewels of his country". Majumdar² comments: "It is likely that Samudragupta's courtiers regarded the rich presents as tributes, and construed the Ceylonese king's prayer for permission to build a monastery as an 'application for a charter confirming him in the enjoyment of his territories', one of the forms of homage paid by the category of vassal states in which Simhala is included."

The courtiers of Samudragupta must surely know the exact situation. Besides, the direct and king-pinpointing story of Wang has no word like "tribute". Majumdar has taken up Hiuen Tsang's word and turned its particular application into a general feudatory usage. His surmise is quite fanciful in view of the actual facts. If Chi-mi-kia-po-mo was allowed to build a monastery and a rest-house on the territories of San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to by the latter monarch, how do the territories of Chi-mi-kia-po-mo - that is, Ceylon - come into the picture? However rich the presents in appreciation of San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to's generosity with his own territories, they cannot convert far-off Simhala into a vassal state. Sirimeghavanna was a king in his own right, owing allegiance to no other sovereign, and during his rule it is Ceylon that got honoured by India instead of the other way round by the arrival there of the Tooth Relic of Buddha from Dantapura in Kalihga which was a part of Samudragupta's empire. Ceylon under Sirimeghavanna does not and cannot ever equate with the Simhala of the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription.

1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire". The Classical Age. pp. 11-12.

2.Ibid., p. 12.

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Consequently, Wang-Hiuen's San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to must be distinguished from the Allāhābād Pillar's Samudragupta. We should not hesitate to place the latter where we have done - in the age usually allotted to Aśoka. And some other Samudragupta than the great one looms up - a minor namesake of his who would synchronize with Sirimeghavanna before 320 A.D. à la Albērūnī, one of the members of the Imperial Gupta dynasty at the tail-end of its career. Sirimeghavanna as dated by the traditional Ceylonese chronology would be just right with the first 16 years (304-320 A.D.) out of his 28 to fit such a tail-end San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to.

Evidence for Another and Smaller Samudragupta

Do we have any epigraphic or numismatic record to render plausible the figure we have postulated? We have dealt with this theme too in Part One. But, for the sake of completeness, we need to take it up again with some variations to be played upon it.

In general there is a sign of Gupta rulership before 320 without its coinciding with the known predecessors of Chandragupta I, his father and grandfather whom modern historians date before that year. Raychaudhuri¹ writes within the context of the current time-scheme:

"Traces of 'Gupta' rule in Magadha proper, or some neighbouring tract down the Ganges, are found as early as the second century A.D. I-Tsing, a Chinese pilgrim, who travelled in India in the seventh century A.D., mentions a Mahārāja Śrī Gupta who built a temple near Mrigasikhāvana 'which was about forty yojanas to the east of Nālandā, following the course of the Ganges'.² I-Tsing's date would place him about A.D. 175.³ Allan rejects the date, and identifies Śrī Gupta with Gupta, the great-grandfather of Samudragupta, on the ground that it is unlikely that we should have two different rulers in the same territory, of the same name, within a brief period. But have we not two Chandraguptas and two Kumāra Guptas within brief periods? There is no cogent reason for identifying Śrī Gupta of cir. A.D. 175, known by

1.Op. cit., pp. 528-29.

2.Dr. Majumdar in A New History..., VI, p. 129; Dr. D. C. Ganguli, Indian Historical Quarterly, XIV (1938), 332. (Raychaudhuri's footnote)

3.Allan, Gupta Coins, Introduction, p. xv. Cf. Indian Antiquary, X (1881), 110. (Raychaudhuri's footnote).

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tradition, with Samudra Gupta's great-grandfather who must have flourished a century later."

Raychaudhuri's confident conclusion and his pointer to repeating Gupta names embolden us, in our search for a second Samudragupta, to ponder critically a piece of information by Altekar apropos of the "Punjāb during c. 230 to c. 340 A.D." Altekar¹ tells us: "The numismatic evidence shows that the Western and Central Punjāb was being governed during this period by three Scythian houses." "The western part of the province was being ruled" by "the Shāka (not Śaka) dynasty", while "the Shiladas and the Gadaharas were holding sway over the Central Punjāb". "Both these dynasties were ruling... down to the days of Samudra-gupta; for a Gadahara chief is seen putting the name of that emperor on his coins." What we have to weigh with care is the phrase: "down to the days of Samudragupta."

Altekar² continues: "The rule of the Shākas and the Shiladas came to an end in c. 340 A.D. with the rise of a tribe, which is sometimes described as the Little Kushāna and sometimes as Kidāra Kushāna. Its chief Kidāra, whose capital was at Peshawar, was originally a feudatory of the Sassanians.... In course of time, however, Kidāra conquered Kashmir and the Central Punjāb. He now felt himself strong enough to assume independence.... This step, probably taken in c. 355 A.D., evoked imperial anger and reprisal... We find Shapur II encamped at Kabul in 356-57 A.D.... Kidāra was compelled to acknowledge his suzerainty.... We find him sending assistance to his liege lord in 359 A.D.... The closer association with the imperial army probably enabled Kidāra to realise its weak points and he began to mature plans for reasserting his independence. He secured the good will of Samudra-gupta-, who had by this time extended his sphere of influence to the Punjāb, by sending him presents along with professions of allegiance, and delivered his blows against Shapur II in 367-8 A.D."

Let us follow the progress of Kidāra. His starting-point is Peshawar. Next he annexes Kāshmir and the Central Punjāb. The rule of the Shiladas who were in the latter locality ends there in c. 340 A.D. Obviously, the Gadaharas who were in the same locality lost their authority also. At this time there is no presence of

1."The Punjāb, Sindh and Afghanistan", A New History..., p. 20

2.Ibid., pp. 22-23.

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Samudragupta in the vicinity of the Central Punjāb. He appears fairly later at the time Kidāra is preparing to shake off for good the Sassanian overlordship. This means about 360-365 A.D. Kidāra's kingdom would be a "vassal state" then. It is a far cry from the period of the Gadaharas, which is over by c. 340. Samudragupta has nothing to do with it. And the coins bearing the name "Samudra" must be unrelated to him and could have come out anywhere between 230 A.D. and the end of the Gadahara-rule. The rule cannot be said to have continued "down to the days of Samudra-gupta". What is at the back of such a statement is simply the assumption that the "Samudra"-legend coinage is bound to refer to none save the great Samudragupta. A scrutiny of the progressive historical situation as unfolded by Altekar himelf contradicts his own statement. The logic of events drives us to posit a smaller Samudragupta who belongs not to the start but to the termination of the Gupta-line and has some sort of hold over a Gadahara chief. He is one of the last successors of the Śrī Gupta of c. 175 A.D. and the true contemporary of Sirimeghavanna of 304-332 A.D. partly or wholly in the latter's earlier 16 years.

We may be sure that there is a smaller Chandragupta too, either the father or the son of this Samudragupta. For, matching the coins with the latter's name, there are - as we learn from Majumdar¹ - a "Kushāna type of coins" with the name "Chandra".

The final test of whether the Gadaharas could exist in the time modern chronologists fix for the eminent Samudragupta would be our ability to spot them in the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription. If we cannot spot them, they have to be completely severed from him.

The inscription has only one phrase denoting frontier kingdoms of foreign rulers in the north or the west under his suzerainty. It is the compound: Daivaputra-Shāhi-ShāhānuShāhi-Śaka-Murunda. With either side of mid-4th century A.D. for Samudragupta, the first three words of the compound are accepted as "well-known titles borne by the Kushān kings, and may refer to one of them... and the probability is that reference is made here to a Kushān ruler exercising sway over Kabul and a part of the Punjāb, and possibly other territories further to the west".² The choice in particular falls, as we have already seen, on Kidāra of the Little Kushānas.

1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", Ibid., p. 150.

2.Ibid., p. 147.

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Thus the opening trio of vocables excludes the Gadaharas. What about the expression Śaka-Murunda?

It is understood as meaning either "Śakas and Murundas" or -with "Murunda'' serving as a title - "Śaka lords". Jayaswal¹ proposed to include in it not only the Śakas of Western India but also the smaller Śaka chieftains who were the Gadaharas and the two other Scythian tribes in the Punjāb along with them. His view is not accepted. For, the close-knit single compound phrase within which, at the end, the expression Śaka-Murunda occurs suggests rulers contemporary with one another at the time when Samudragupta was suzerain over them. This interpretation is in keeping with that of the two earlier compounds in the inscription, listing 9 tribes in all. Those tribes are understood to be co-existent. Similarly, Śaka-Murunda implies co-existence and contemporaneity with Daivaputra-Shāhi-Shāhanushāhi. In that case, the Gadaharas and the two other Scythian tribes cannot be included in Śaka-Murunda, for they had no kingdoms when the Kushāna Kidara is stated to have acknowledged Samudragupta's overlordship: that is after 360 A.D. Śaka-Murunda is taken to cover either (1) the Śakas ruling in Western India as well as those ruling in and about Sānchi and a foreign Murunda tribe ruling in the Ganges Valley, or (2) simply the Western Śakas.²

It is impossible to accommodate the Gadaharas anywhere in the inscription. They belong to a different historical context: so the "Samudra" coins must connect with some minor Samudragupta synchronizing with Ceylon's Sirimeghavanna - and by the same token the "Chandra" coins go with either his father or his son who was a minor Chandragupta.

We are now free of all immediate hindrances to the synchronization of the great Samudragupta with Devānampiyatissa of Ceylon. And we may remark that in the epoch common to these two a monk named Mahendra might very well have brought Theravadin Buddhism to Ceylon. Such an event would be quite in accord with the Guptas' general policy towards Buddhism and with Samudragupta's patronage of all learning as well as with his declared relations with "Simhala" and "other islands". It would be natural that Buddhism should get encouraged under him and launch a mission to this island in particular.

1.Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society (Patna), XVIII, p. 210.

2."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", A New History.....pp. 147-48.

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Of course, by removing the son of Chandragupta I to the 3rd century B.C. from the 4th A.D., we shall have to throw new light on the meaning of Daivaputra-Shāhi-ShāhānuShāhi-Śaka-Murunda making the phrase suitable to the post-Alexandrine epoch. We shall do the needful in the next chapter. Here we may meet an objection likely to arise regarding the subject with which we have been mainly concerned: Ceylon.

Ceylon in the 3rd Century B. C. and Samudragupta's Simhala

We are sure to be told: "Samudragupta calls Ceylon Simhala. But this name is not as old as the 3rd century B.C. Mêgasthenes who wrote his Indica at the beginning of the same century called this island Taprobanè. And the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (c. 70-80 A.D.) states that the island was called Taprobanè by the ancients but was known in his time as Palae Simoundou. So even up to the 1st century A.D. there is no sign of Simhala. Simhala in the 3rd century B.C. is an anachronism."

The situation is much more complex than this objection indicates. We must bear in mind that Mêgasthenes speaks of the island Taprobanè in connection with a river as well as with pearls. It is indeed very probable, as we have already suggested, that he is mixing up a report of the pearl-producing river Tāmraparnī with a report of the Tāmraparnī-dvīpa. Proceeding to the island of Ceylon in relation to the South-Indian river, he would naturally use for that island the name related to the river. So his choice of "Taprobanè" does not mean that the island had no other name.

As for the Periplus's information, the section in which it is given is acknowledged to be hopelessly corrupt.¹ We can build little on it. But whatever we can build must be after we appreciate the exact state in which the text exists. Hjalmar Frisk² has published a critical edition and there the Periplus (Ch. 61) reads: "the island anciently Simoundou but among the ancient Xareris probane." At the start we must note that the Periplus does not have one single word "Palaesimoundou" but two separate words Palae Simoundou", of which the first is a Greek adverb of time: "anciently".

1.McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy, edited by S. N. Majumdar, 1927, p. 252.

2.Le Periplus de la mer Erythre'e suivi d'une etude sur la tradition et la langue ("Goteborg Hogskolas Arsskrift", XXIII, 1927, 1).

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Next, there is no Greek word like "Xareris". Again, "Taprobanè" is not present but only the last 7 letters of it. We may legitimately reconstruct it from them, but we cannot convert that non-existent Greek word "Xareris" into "it was called". Actually the Periplus suggests two old names: "Simoundou" and "Taprobanè."

The very same information is proffered by the geographer Ptolemy (c. 130-140 A.D.) plus something else. In Louis Renou's critical edition Ptolemy (VII,4,1) says: "Taprobanè, which anciently was called Simoundou, now Salike." Here "Taprobanè" does not figure as anything particularly ancient. It is a name persisting to Ptolemy's time, though the name in currency was "Salike". "Simoundou" is considered an ancient name - "palae", a separate word, serving once more as an adverb of time.

Both the Periplus and the Geography commit a mistake in separating "palae" from "Simoundou" and using the former to mean "anciently". Pliny who lived in 79-23 B.C., about 150 years before the Periplus and nearly 200 before the Geography has the true form. In his Natural History (VI, 85) he makes "Palaesimun-dus" the island's capital town as well as one of its two rivers, on whose bank that town stood. As Pliny drew much of his information on India from Mêgasthenes, it is very likely that the term did occur in the Indica but subsequently got ignored because of Mêgasthenes's emphasis on "Taprobanè". Henceforth the latter was for the Greeks the sole name. But the presence of "Palae-simoundou" is strongly suggested by the term "Palaeogoni" which Mêgasthenes¹ uses for the inhabitants of the island of Taprobanè. No doubt, the two terms are not variants of each other and must mean different things, but they have a structural similarity which makes them tend to imply each other.

S. N. Majumdar,² in consonance with other scholars, has tried to explain the Periplus's "palae Simoundou" by an Indian original: "In Kautilya's Arthaśāstra (II, xi) [Ceylon] has been referred to as Pāre-samudra (an alternative form of which is, according to a sutra of Pānini, Pāre-sindhu) which means 'of the other side of the ocean'. Now a confusion of Pāre-samudra and its synonym Pāre-sindhu produced the Palae Simoundou of the Periplus."

Majumdar has certainly a linguistic possibility on his side; but neither Pāre-samudra nor Pāre-sindhu is a specific term which can

1.Ancient India as Described by Mêgasthenes and Arrian, p. 62.

2.Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy, pp. 392-93.

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be unique to any country, much less to any island: it is a mere generality for all countries, including islands and non-islands, beyond the ocean. It can get attached to Ceylon, as it has in the Arthaśāstra, merely because Ceylon is for India the most important neighbouring place across the sea. It does not suggest a special individual name for Ceylon, nor does it carry any indication of Ceylon's island-character. If we can find another explanation fulfilling these conditions, we may be nearer the truth. And, what is more pertinent to our purpose, we may show the Allāhābād Pillar's "Simhala" to be sufficiently ancient.

The earliest known mention in India of "Simhala" is taken to be in a Nagarjunikonda inscription dated about a 100 years before the time currently ascribed to the Allāhābād Pillar record. But the testimony of Ptolemy should give us pause. Judging from Indian evidence we would not consider "Simhala" older than c. 250 A.D., the present dating of the Nagarjunikonda epigraph. If Ptolemy could precede Indian testimony by over a 100 years we should hesitate to rule out further antiquity.

When we examine the component "Simundus" in the word employed by Pliny, we see that it resembles one of the several antecedents of the modern "Ceylon". These antecedents, according to McCrindle,¹ are: Sailan, Zeilan, Serendiba, Serendivus and Ptolemy's Salike which McCrindle² conjectures to be a mistake for Saline, as it very well may be since Ptolemy's "Salai" for the inhabitants is clearly allied to "Simhala"'s Pali form "Sīhala".³ S. N. Majumdar,⁴ as well as McCrindle, regards all those antecedents as derived from "Simhala". Pliny's "Simundus" is not dissimilar to "Serendivus" which, like "Serendib" and "Sirlediba", has in its last part the Sanskrit "dvīpa" ("island") or the Prakrit dīpa.

Now, the main word "Smha" ("lion") from "Simhala" may be used to build a contracted compound Simhadvīpa instead of Sirhhaladvīpa. Such a compound would be just as valid as the familiar "Simhapura" for a kingdom mentioned by Hiuen Tsang in the Punjāb region.⁵ And it is most interesting to remark that this

1.Ibid., p. 252.

2.Ancient India as Described by Mêgasthenes and Arrian, p. 62.

3.Op. cit., p. 252.

4.Ibid., pp. 252, 391.

5.Walters, I, p. 240.

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kingdom was also called "Simhala". The suffix "la", as is well known, indicates "city", "kingdom", "country", and here it gets dropped when "pura" is used: we do not have "Simhalapura" but "Simhapura". Analogously we may have "Sirhhadvīpa" rather than "Simhaladvīpa" for the island of Ceylon. Then "Simundivus" or "Simundus" would not be an illegitimate foreign transcription: the insertion of the nasal (n) in the second syllable would even be according to the Prakrit tendency marked by S. N. Majumdar¹ himself and once before invoked by him in the course of the Parirhda-controversy: vakra-titvata num. With "Palae" as a prefix, the compound "Palaesimundus" would correspond to the Indian Pāre-simhadvīpa and would have a meaning on the analogy of the "Palaeogoni" of Mêgasthenes which is best explained² in the manner of Goldstiicker by taking "goni" for janās ("a people") so that the whole expression "Palaeogoni" would stand for Pāre-janās and mean "a people on the other side (of the waters)". "Palaesimundus" would similarly stand for "the island of Siriiha on the other side (of the waters)". The compound Pāre-simhadvīpa is not found in Indian literature; but neither is Pāre-janās which is the only reasonable interpretation of the word in Mêgasthenes.

If the above line of thought is correct, we have "Simhala" already in use in the time of Sandrocottus, the father of Samudragupta. And Ptolemy adds "Salike" (="Saline") without knowing "Simhala" 's secret presence in his own "palae Simoundou".

But the correctness of this line of thought is not indispensable. Even if "Palaesimoundou" be born of a mixture of Pāre-samudra and Pāre-sindhu and even if the Greeks after Mêgasthenes knew only "Taprobanè", it does not follow that "Simhala" or its Pali equivalent "Sīhala"³ was not in use from antiquity. As Jacqueline Pirenne⁴ suggests, Ptolemy, instead of saying "now" should have said "also" when he wrote "Salike". Pirenne⁵ indicates the correct position in the naming of Ceylon by referring to the book Christian Topography (XI) written in the 6th century A.D. by Cosmas

1.Op. cit., p. 301.

2.Ibid., p. 253.

3.Ibid., p. 252.

4."Un Probleme-clef pour la Chronologie de 1'Orient: Le Date du 'Periple de la mer Erythree', " Journal Asiatique, Tome CCXLIX, Fascicule No. 4,1961, p. 453.

5.Ibid., pp. 452-3.

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Indicopleustes: "the island is called by the Indians Sielediba, by the Greeks Taprobanè."

This, of course, should not be understood as meaning that the Indians did not employ a designation corresponding to "Taprobanè". They did and they employed still another term, as we shall see. What Cosmas Indicopleustes conveys is simply that a designation corresponding to his "Sielediba" was always there side by side with "Taprobanè" 's Indian equivalent. Just as, even in the 6th century A.D. when he lived, the Greeks still used "Taprobanè", so also even in the early days when "Taprobanè" came into use among the Greeks the Indians employed the native equivalent of "Sielediba". That is the sense we should, with Pirenne, read in the statement of Christian Topography about Ceylon.

The full accurate position in the matter may be learnt from the Pali Mahāvamsa (VII. 7,41,42) which applies three names to Ceylon: "Sīhala", "Lanka" and "Tambapannī". In connection with Vijaya, the traditional founder of the Aryan colony in Ceylon on the day of Buddha's death, the Mahāvamsa mentions the origin of the appellation "Sīhala" for the island. Aiyangar¹ sums up its story: "From Simhavahu or Simhala, the father of Vijaya, the island received the name Simhala-dvīpa, the Arabic Sirendib, the Portuguese Ceilao, and the modern Ceylon." According to this account, "Simhala" is an ancient designation at least as old as 543 B.C., the traditional Ceylonese date of the Nirvāna of Buddha - and we should hardly wonder on finding it in an inscription of the 3rd century B.C.

From various quarters suggestions converge about the antiquity of Samudragupta's "Simhala". And even the supposed indication from the Periplus that such a term was not in vogue in 70-80 A.D. would lose all relevance if the unorthodox thesis of Pirenne,² set forth with considerable acumen, proved to be correct - namely, that the Periplus is to be dated to c. 225 A.D. For, then, the Geography would be anterior to the Periplus and we should have the fact that the latter has still no mention of anything answering to the former's "Salikè". The non-mention would lack significance altogether. May not the same lack of significance apply even if we accept the current idea of the Periplus preceding the Geography?

1."Southern India and Ceylon", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 235.

2.Op. cit., pp. 441-459.

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The Ceylonese Chronicles' Mix-up of Samudragupta and Aśoka

We may now turn back without misgiving to our contention that Aśoka has nothing to do with Ceylon and that the real link is between Samudragupta and Devānampiyatissa to whose island the missionary monk Mahendra went during the former's reign in India.

But how did the Ceylonese Chronicles commit the error of foisting on Aśoka the events that touched Ceylon during Samudragupta's reign in the 3rd century B.C.? One broad psychological clue is in Barua's remark:¹ "The essence of Aśoka's Dharma-vijaya may be shown to have been recorded in the Gupta coin-legends: sucharitair svargam jayati, 'He conquers even the heavens by virtues'. " Another clue is: among the Mauryas, Aśoka is the next important king after a Chandragupta and similarly among the Guptas the undeniably important Samudragupta succeeds a Chandragupta. A third clue is the Chronicles' allotting to Aśoka a reign-period fairly close to the one that would be Samudragupta's by the Purānic chronology. A fourth is from documentary sources.

Is it just a happy coincidence that Samudragupta should have his inscription engraved on the Aśoka Pillar at Allāhābād? The inscription itself calls forth by the character of its description a memory of the Buddhist emperor. As Majumdar² tells us: "It describes the political condition of India and the achievement and personality of Samudragupta with such fullness of details as is not to be found in the record of any other king of Northern India, with the single exception of Aśoka."

Mankad³ carries us one step forward in the comparison when he reports: "Indeed, it has been suggested with considerable force and reason that Samudragupta had actually and intentionally tried to mould his career after the example of Aśoka Maurya. Dr. S. K. Aiyangar says (Ancient India, pp. 247-8): 'The whole series of these conquests (the conquests of Samudragupta) as detailed in one elaborate inscription which has come down to us of this great ruler, had for their object nothing more than the bringing under the control and influence of one suzerain monarch the whole territory included in the area, which in the best of its days

1.Op. cit., p. 287.

2."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire". A New History. .., p. 136.

3.Purānic Chronology, pp. 273-74, 276-77.

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constituted the empire of Aśoka. It must be borne in mind that this record of Samudragupta is indited on a pillar which carries on it an Aśokan inscription as well. Did Samudragupta then emulate the exploits of Aśoka? Did he, in fact, know the history of Aśoka or the extent of his empire and could he have read the document on the pillar of Aśoka? The answer to this question may be given in the affirmative for certain reasons.' In this passage and in what follows in the next two or three pages, by means of able and lucid reasoning a modern scholar proves that both in his temporal and spiritual outlook Samudragupta had followed in the footsteps of Aśoka Maurya.... Aiyangar, with keen insight, has used an argument to show that Samudragupta had read the inscriptions of Aśoka Maurya. He has said that, according to Harisena, Samudragupta has the epithet of Kavirāja, and Kavirāja, according to Rajasekhara, was a title to be conferred on one who was able to make compositions not only in Sanskrit but also in the various dialects of the country. Samudragupta, possessing the title Kavirāja, was thus a good linguist. As such, Aiyangar says, he could have read and understood the inscriptions of Aśoka Maurya."

Samudragupta seems to have had an Aśokan aura. Perhaps the Ceylonese received a Buddhist mission during his reign and later confused him with the Buddhist Aśoka who had become a legend to them.

Who knows if the confusion was not further helped by a curious fact which emerges from the Buddhist narratives in Sanskrit and of which Samudragupta too may have been aware. It is a fact showing an "Aśoka-Samudra" association. Barua¹ tells us that, in a legend transmitted by the Divyāvadāna, Aśoka's first connection with Buddhism was not with the Sangha as a whole but with an individual representative named the Venerable Samudra. Addressing Samudra, Aśoka said: "I take refuge in (thee), the sage, and also in Buddha, the supreme embodiment of qualities as well as the Doctrine taught by the elect." So, in the sense of "Protected by Samudra", Aśoka could have been called "Samudra-gupta".

All in all, it is likely that the Ceylonese Chronicles blended the third Maurya with the second Gupta.

l. Op. cit., I, p. 20.

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Problems of the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription

Face to face with Samudragupta's Daivaputra-Shāhi-Shāhānushdhi-Śaka-Murunda of the Allahabad Pillar Inscription, and even with the constellation of nine obeisance-offering tribes named in it , we are bound to be told :

"Can you put in the 3rd century B.C., in post-Alexandrine India, such an ensemble as is formed by the tribes of the Mālavas, Ārjunāyanas, Yaudhēyas, Madrakas, Ābhīras, Prārjunas, Sana-kānīkas, Kākas and Kharaparikas?

"Can you doubt that when foreigners at the frontier are mentioned, they are the Kushānas and the Śakas? But both these peoples are known to have come to India round about the beginning of the Christian Era. 78 A.D. is generally believed to mark the beginning of the reign of Kanishka, the greatest Kushāna emperor. And surely it is the Kushānas alone who bore the resounding title Daivaputra-Shāhi-Shahānushāhi. It continued right up to their later representatives, the 'Little Kushānas', the chief of whom was Kidāra, a contemporary of Samudragupta by the current dating of the latter.

"The Śakas of Western India - often called the Western Satraps or Kshatrapas and Mahākshatrapas - lasted on through Samudragupta's usually dated reign and ended their rule when Chandragupta II conquered them - Chandragupta II who, after his conquest of them, issued his silver coins in imitation of those of the Satraps. Now, these Śakas date themselves in the era of 78 A.D., which has come to be designated the Śaka Era. How then can Samudragupta's Śaka Murunda exist in the earlier half of the 3rd century B.C. where Samudragupta will have to be pushed up if he is to substitute Aśoka? There he will be a contemporary of the successors of Alexander the Great - Greek kings, some of whom had diplomatic connections with India. Not only Sandrocottus but also Amitrachates, his son, received an envoy from the Greek world. There was even a third envoy, either to him or his father or his son . You have identified Amitrachates with Samudragupta. So . far as the meaning of the name or even the name itself is concerned, your identification has some plausibility; but, with regard to the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription, the new date involved leads to a fantastic contradiction of all ascertained history."

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The Nine Tribes and Post-Alexandrine India

Our general answer is: "Ascertained history and insecure hypothesis are badly mixed up everywhere in this argument, and the conclusions do not inevitably follow."

Let us begin with the tribe-names. Just because all the names do not openly chime with the ones familiar to us from Alexander's historians we do not need to read quite different milieux for them and for those others. We must probe a'little below the surface. Even in the case of the Mālavas who at once recall the Malloi and the stiff resistance Alexander received from them in the Punjāb where in his time they "lived in the land lying north of the confluence of the Rāvī and the Chenab",¹ we get to the full truth only by linking them with the tribes succeeding in the list. For, while they are known in later history as peoples of Western India, their immediate companions in the inscription can be taken to show them in the north-west in Samudragupta's time - located exactly as they should be in the 3rd century B.C., in post-Alexandrine India.

In fact, these companions are not only north-western but also the very tribes we can trace in relation to Alexander's campaign. The Yaudhēyas are mentioned by as old a writer as Pānini² and "the heart of the Yaudhēya territory may have been the eastern Punjāb":³ the Brihat-Samhitā "locates them in the northern or north-western division of India along with the Ārjunāyanas".⁴ Jayaswal⁵ writes: "The find-spot of Yaudhēya coins suggests that an unnamed state beyond the Beas reached by Alexander was theirs." Altekar⁶ agrees with Jayaswal: "The great republic beyond the Beas, of which Alexander's army heard alarming reports in 326 B.C., was most probably the Republic of the Yaudhēyas." Cunningham prefers to identify them with the Ossadioi or Asso-dioi with whom Alexander fought: the latter name he connects with the name Ajudhiya which is a variant for Yaudhēya.⁷

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 163.

2.Ibid., p. 165.

3.Ibid., p. 166.

4.Ibid., p. 167.

5.Hindu Polity, I, p. 67.

6.The Journal of the Numismatic Society, XI, p. 50.

7.Mookerji, Hindu Civilization, II p. 340, fn. 2.

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Their neighbours the Ārjunāyanas who "have been assigned to the region lying west of Agra and Mathura about the Bharatpur and Alwar States of Rājputana"¹ may have been, according to some scholars,² the Agalassoi who fought Alexander after the submission of the Sibae (Sivis) near the Jhelum in the Punjāb and who are called by the Greeks Agesinae or Argesinae, names which McCrindle thought equivalent to "Arjunayana."³

"The Madrakas or Madras... had their capital at Śākala (modern Sialkot in the Punjāb)," writes Sircar,⁴ adding that they "were probably subjects of the younger Porus (Paurava king) in the days of Alexander".

As for the Ābhīras, "the most important section of the people", says Sircar,⁵ " lived in the northern Konkan and the adjoining part of the Maratha country", but about the Ābhīras in Samudragupta's inscription he⁶ says: "it is uncertain whether the reference here is to the Abhira kingdom in the north-western Deccan." He⁷ inclines to place them in central or western India - believing, as he does, that Sarnudragupta flourished in the 4th century A.D .'The moment we put this Gupta emperor in the 3rd century B.C. we have to pay attention to other facts noted by Sircar⁸ himself: "In one context the Mahabharata places the Ābhīras in Aparānta; but in another it associates the people with the Sudras, and assigns both the tribes to the land near vinaśena where the Sarasvatī lost itself in the sands of the Rajputana desert. The Ābhīras are also found in association with the Sudras in Patanjali's Mahābhāshya." Patanjali takes us to the pre-Christian era and the association he and the author of the Mahābhārata make for the tribe joins up with the one noticed in the Greek historians and suggests a new locale. For, as Sircar⁹ mentions: "In the second half of the fourth century B.C. when Alexander invaded north-western India , the

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 162.

2.Ibid., pp. 50-1.

3.Mookerji, op. cit., p. 339, fn. 4.

4."Northern India after the Kushānas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 160, fn. 2.

5.Ibid., fn. 3.

6."The Deccan after the Sātavāhanas", ibid., p. 223.

7."Northern India after the Kushānas", ibid., p. 160, fn. 3.

8."The Deccan after the Sātavāhanas", ibid., p. 221.

9.Ibid., fn. 1.

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Śūdras, called Sodroi by the Greeks, lived in northern Sind to the south of the Punjāb rivers."

As regards the remaining tribes in the same list - the Prārjunas, Sanakānīkas, Kākas, Kharaparikas - Raychaudhuri¹ says that their territories lay probably in Mālwā and the Central Provinces: "The Prārjunas," he adds, "are mentioned in the Arthaśāstra attributed to Kautilya [p. 1194] and are located by Smith [JRAS, 1897, p. 872] in the Narsinhapur District of the Central Provinces. A clue to the locality of the Sanakānīkas is given by one of the Udayagiri inscriptions of Chandra-Gupta II discovered in Eastern Mālwa. The Kākas find mention in the Mahābhārata [VI.9.64] - Rishika Vidabhāh Kākas Tanganāte-Paratariganāh". There is geographically nothing about them to make us doubt the location we have given to the others. Nor is there chronologically anything to demand a revision of our placing Samudragupta a little after Alexander's time.

The Correct Outlook on "Daivaputra-Shāhi-Shāhānushāhi"

When we come to the frontier foreigners of the inscription, the terrain seems to grow difficult, but a bit of keen scrutiny can carry us across. The first point to mark in Samudragupta's compound is the one made by D. R. Bhandarkar:² "... the initial word is not Devaputra but Daivaputra, a Taddhita form which shows that the term cannot stand by itself but must be taken with what follows. If this is a correct view, Daivaputra had better be taken along not only with Shāhi but also Shāhānushāhi..." Samudragupta is referring to one single potentate rather than three in a row. The second point is to ask: "Does any Kushāna carry such a full royal title?"

Only the early members of the group - known as the "Great Kushānas" - are found to have styled themselves "Devaputra": Kujula-kara Kadphises whose territories were conquered by the famous Kanishka I,³ Kanishka I himself who is usually dated to the last quarter of the 1st century A.D. ,⁴ a nameless ruler of the Taxila Inscription of A.D. 79,⁵ and Huvishka, whose dates range between

1.The Political History of Ancient India, pp. 545-46.

2.Quoted by Mahājan, Ancient India, p. 401.

3.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 140, 141.

4.Ibid., p. 141.

5.Ibid., p. 140.

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A.D. 106 and 138 and who is alluded to in a Mathurā epigraph.¹ Another epigraph speaks of "Shāhi Huvishka".² Nobody except Kanishka I is styled both "Devaputra" and "Shaonanoshao" ("Shāhānushāhi"),³ though the latter title's Indian translation along with "Devaputra" is applied to others - e.g. Huvishka and the Taxila Inscription's unknown ruler - but at the end⁴ instead of the beginning as in Samudragupta's epigraph. Kanishka I, however, does not seem to have had "Shāhi" to accompany his two honorifics. The later members of the "Great Kushānas" whose "empire broke up some time after A.D. 230 or 240"⁵-assumed the title "Shaonanoshao" but not "Devaputra", nor were they called "Shāhi".⁶ The "Little Kushānas" in the 3rd quarter of the 4th century A.D. are still poorer in honorifics. Even the greatest of them - Kidāra - who is supposed to have been meant by Samudragupta bore only the title "shā".⁷ Neither "Devaputra" nor any equivalent of "Shāhānushāhi" is found on his coins. Thus Samudragupta's triple designation of a monarch whom our historians take for a Kushāna has no precise parallel in Kushāna history, and - what is crucial to our inquiry - two of the three components of that designation hang in the air if the king in question lived between 350 and 375 A.D.

Further, the Kushānas do not have the monopoly of the title whose Indian echo is "Shāhānushāhi". This echo occurs also in a mediaeval Jain book, Kālakāchārya-kathā, which speaks of Śaka invaders from the west of the Sindhu as "Shāhis" and their overlord as "Shāhānushāhi".⁸ As for the title in another form than the Indian, Rapson⁹ tells us about the Śaka and Pahlava rulers who preceded the Kushānas: "their normal style is 'Great King of Kings', a title which is distinctively Persian ; It has a long history from the Kshāyathiyānām Kshāyathiya of the inscriptions of Darius down to the Shāhān Shāh of the present day. " Rapson adds

1.Ibid., p. 150.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid., p. 148.

4.Ibid., pp. 150, 14-.

5.The Classical Age, p. 54.

6.Ibid., p. 51.

7.Ibid., p. 56.

8.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 155 and fn. 3.

9."The Scythian and Parthian Invaders", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 567.

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that in the Parthian empire the title was probably first assumed by Mithridates II the Great (123-88 B.C.) in imitation of his predecessors the Achaemenids. Rapson uses the word "probably" because, as he says in a footnote, "some numismatists attribute the Parthian coins on which the title first occurs to Mithridates I (171-138 B.C.)."

We may add an observation of Sircar¹ about the Indo-Greek king Hermaeus "who flourished in the first half of the first century A.D." Sircar says that on some coins Hermaeus "is found in association with the Kushāna chief Kujula Kadphises". "The Kushāna chief is endowed with dignified royal titles in the legends of some of his later coins", but on the other coins he is mentioned in the legend without any royal title. This, according to Sircar, "no doubt points to his subsidiary position to the Greek 'king of kings' of Kābul during the early part of his life". Nor, we may finally remark, were the Indo-Greeks the sole Greeks to be considered "king of kings". The earlier Bactrian Greeks also enjoyed the same distinction. Eucratides,² who ascended the throne almost at the same time as the first Mithridates mentioned above, has a coin with the legend Maharajasa rajatirajasa Evukratidasa.³

So we see that in the first few centuries before Christ the equivalent of "Shāhānushāhi" was in common use on the coins of various kings in the wake of the dissolved Achaemenid empire which had set the model for the title. The very title which the Guptas themselves bore - Mahārājadhirāja ("Supreme King of great kings") - is a concentration of the formulas prevalent in that age. And it is interesting to mark that often in that age the formulas figure in Greek. Thus the later coins of Maues, the Śaka (c . 20. B.C.-22 A.D:), have Basilêôs Basileôn along with the Kharosthi Rajadirajasa:⁴ Another Śaka, Ranjuvala (before 15 A.D.), carries the corrupt Greek legend Basilêi Basilêôs Sôteros, "King of kings, the Saviour".⁵ "A large number of coins," writes Sircar,⁶ "found all over the Punjāb as well as in Kandahār and in the Kabul valley bears a particular symbol and a corrupt Greek

1."The Yavanas", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 118, 138.

2.Ibid., p. 108.

3.Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, II, i. xxix n.

4.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 126, fn. 1.

5.Ibid., pp. 134-35.

6."The Kushānas", ibid., p. 140.

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legend Basilêus Basileuôn Sôter Mêgas, 'the King of kings, the Great Saviour', sometimes with the Kharoshthī legend Mahārājasa rājadirājasa Mahātasa tratarasa, 'of the Great King, the King of kings, the Great Saviour.' The issue of these coins "is associated with Wema Kadphises by the use of the nominative instead of the more usual .genitive in the Greek inscription, and of the title Sôter Mêgas, as well as by the similarity in form between certain letters both in the Greek and Kharoshthī inscriptions." About the coins of Kanishka, the successor of Wema Kadphises, and about his family, Sircar¹ informs us: "A striking feature of the coins of Kanishka and his successors... is that, unlike the issue of the earlier foreign rulers of India, they have no Kharoshthī legend on the reverse. Although the script of the legends is a corrupt form of Greek, the language is sometimes Persian; cf. the title Shaonano Shao..."

The use of the Greek language by Śakas and Kushānas or of the Greek script even when the language is different appears to associate pointedly the equivalents of ShāhānuShāhi, like the one on a coin of Eucratides between 171 and 150 B.C., with the presence of Greek rule in India and in her neighbourhood. This is but natural because Alexander and his military and political heirs were the immediate successors of the Achaemenids who had brought into fashion the formula "King of kings". Especially if an heir of Alexander ruled over the old Persian empire he would bulk in the Indian mind as the "Shāhānushāhi" par excellence. Such was Seleucus Nicator.

After the battle of Gaza in 312 B.C. he not only recovered Babylon but brought all the eastern provinces of Alexander's empire under his authority as far as India. Even after losing Alexander's Indian conquests to Sandrocottus and ceding to him in 305 B.C. the Greek satrapies west of the Indus, he remained king over all Persia right up to the north-eastern limit of the Jaxartes. Such too was the son of Seleucus, Antiochus I Sôter (born 324 or 323 B.C.) whom his father made king of the eastern provinces in 293 B.C. and who during this part sovereignty of Seleucus's empire as well as during his own rule of this empire from 281 to 262 B.C. held together those provinces. Antiochus I would be the contemporary of Samudragupta if the latter were identified with Amitrachates, the son of Sandrocottus. Master of

1. Ibid., pp. 147-48.

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all Persia, he would answer precisely to the designation "Shāhānushāhi" no less than "Shāhi", the pair of words that combines two of the several formulas we meet with in the epigraphs of Darius and Xerxes: "the King" and "King of kings".¹ True, we have no coins or inscriptions of Antiochus I with this sort of double designation, but we are here concerned with how he was looked upon in India of the first quarter of the 3rd century B.C. and how his own ambassador Daimachus to Amitrachates represented him as ruler of the Persian kingdom bordering on the Indian monarch's territory. A further fact of great relevance is: "Antiochus I Sôter (324 or 323-262) was half a Persian, his mother Apame being one of those eastern princesses whom Alexander had given as wives to his generals in 324."² No heir to Alexander's eastern conquests deserved more to be called "Shāhi-ShāhānuShāhi" by the contemporary Indian court.

Perhaps there will be a rather peevish objection: "You drew attention to the fact that none of the Kushānas combined 'Shāhi' and 'ShāhānuShāhi' but used only one or the other title. Now you are ready to accept Antiochus I as being indicated by the combination even though the double title was never associated with him. As in his case, why cannot some Kushāna be looked upon by an Indian king as both 'Shāhi' and 'Shāhānushāhi'?"

The objection forgets the highly relevant background of Persia and its monarchy for Antiochus I. The absence of the concerned combination is counterbalanced by the naturalness with which this background would legitimize such a double title for him on the lips of an Indian king. No Kushāna could claim to be the inheritor of the Persian crown which was distinguished by that combination, not to mention that none of the Kushānas had Antiochus I's special claim of being half a Persian.

What about "Devaputra"? Is not the appellation applicable exclusively to the Kushānas? Certainly not. First of all, it is a natural Indian word. With the meaning "God-son" it is found as early as the Rigveda (X.62,4). It also occurs in an entirely religious context in the Gupta period itself. Now the sense is dissimilar but the form is basically the same. An inscription of Budhagupta dated year 157 "of the Guptas" on a stone image of Buddha made by the

1.Olmstead, A History of the Persian Empire, pp. 175, 231.

2.The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1920), Vol. 20, p. 304.

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monk Abhayamitra speaks of him as seated with the gods as his sons (Devaputravato).¹

Then there is a Brāhmī inscription from Mathurā, partly damaged, with no overt relationship to the Kushānas. The extant portion of it has been translated somewhat differently by V. S. Agrawala and D. C. Sircar.² What is common to both the renderings is the expression: "Devaputra Magha." Sircar's general comment³ is: "In the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to be definite regarding the identity of Devaputra Magha, although his title Devaputra as well as the palaeography of the inscription under review would point to his membership of Kanishka's house. In the epigraphic and numismatic records of the Kusana kings of India, we often find the epithet Devaputra associated with other royal titles. Curiously enough it has been used singly in the inscription under review. The absence of any regal title may suggest that Magha was a prince or subordinate ruler.... Elsewhere (The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 176) we have suggested the possibility of the Magha dynasty of Kausambi being 'founded by a lieutenant of the Kusanas (of Kanishka's house) named Magha'. Whether Devaputra Magha, mentioned in the Mathura inscription, had anything to do with the Maghas of Kausambi can hardly be determined in the present state of our knowledge." Sircar is honest in not forcing any inference about who this Magha was, but, while palaeo-graphically placing him in the Kushāna period, he is inclined to link him with the Kushāna Kanishka's house on the strength of the term "Devaputra". But in view of the fact that among the Kushānas it never stands alone we cannot unreservedly endorse the linking. Even the association of other titles need not Kushānize their bearer if a different identification is possible: a single title should definitely give one to think. It should suggest the likelihood of non-Kushānas being Devaputras.

By the way, we may point out in the palaeographical context that in The Age of Imperial Unity (pp. 175-77) Sircar chooses to date the Magha rulers of Kauśāmbī by the Śaka Era of 78 A.D ., which he attributes to Kanishka and by which some of the Magha dates are quite away from the currently believed Gupta times,

1.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, p. 113.

2.Sircar, "A Brāhmī Inscription from Mathura", Bharatiya Vidya, Vol. XLV, 1953, pp. 6, 8.

3.Ibid., p. 9.

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being as early as A.D. 129, 130, 159, 164 and 165 - although Altekar¹ who is of the same opinion about the era has yet noted: "there is no doubt that the characters of the Magha inscriptions are almost the Gupta characters." So Sircar's palaeographical observation cannot be binding on our understanding of "Devaputra".

Finally, a lop-sided outlook on the appellation can result from concentrating not only on the Kushānas who have used it but also on its affinity with the old Chinese "T'ien-tzu" meaning "Son of Heaven". A new prospect opens before us as soon as we listen to Raychaudhuri's remarks:² "The Greeks used titles like 'the divine king', 'the godlike queen', etc... Greek and Chinese influence is clearly discernible in the title of Devaputra." Yes, and the Greeks who used such titles were no other than Alexander and his successors. It may be worth while dwelling a little on the theme.

We read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:³ "The Egyptians had ascribed deity to their kings, and were ready enough to add Alexander to the list. It is also not unlikely that the Persian kings had received some form of divine worship (L. Taylor, Journ. Hellenic Studies, 1927, pp. 153ff.). From the Greeks he certainly received such honours.... The offering of divine honours to the king which was begun under Alexander became stereotyped in the institutions of the succeeding Hellenistic kingdoms. The successors themselves received divine honours. Such worship might be organized and maintained by royal authority. The first proved instance of a cult of the latter kind is that instituted at Alexandria by the second Ptolemy for his father soon after the latter's death in 283-282, in which later, 279-278, he associated his mother Berenice also, the two being worshipped together as theoi Sôteres. Antiochus I followed the Ptolemaic precedent by instituting at Seleucia-in-Pieria a cult for his father as Seleucus Zeus Nicator. So far we can point to no instance of a cult of the living sovereign (though the cities might institute such locally) being established by the court for the realm. This step was taken in Egypt after the death of Arsinoe Philadelphus (271), when she and her still-living brother-husband, Ptolemy II, began to be worshipped together as

1."New Indian States in Rajputana and Madhyadesa", A New History..., p. 41, fn. 2.

2.An Advanced History of India, pp. 125, 126.

3.Vol. 16, pp. 568, 571.

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theoi adelphoi. After this, the cult of the reigning king and queen was regularly maintained in Greek Egypt, side by side with that of the dead Ptolemies. Under Antiochus II (261-246) a document shows a cult of the reigning king in full working for the Seleucid realm with a high priest in each province, appointed by the king himself; the document declares that the Queen Laodice is now to be associated with the king. The official surname of Antiochus II, Theos, suggests that he himself had here been the innovator. Thenceforward, in the Hellenistic kingdoms of the east, the worship of the living sovereign became the rule..."

We may observe that Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 B.C.) is also said to have sent an envoy, Dionysius, to India. He may have come either to the court of Amitrachates or that of his son. But he must have carried to it the royal title, theos adelphos, for the king, signifying literally "Divine Brother" and generally "Divine Son" or "Son of God', Devaputra.

One more quotation on the theme - from the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics:¹ "Both Seleucus and his son Antiochus were worshipped by the Athenian colonists in Lemnos... It is probable that all through the epoch the dynasties of Seleucus and Ptolemy ruled in Asia and Egypt respectively, the Greek cities which were subject to them, and some which were merely allied, expressed their loyalty in a cult. We find at Ilion a priest of Antiochus I soon after his accession...; and a cult of the same king celebrated by Bargylia after his death and by the Ionian Confederacy during his lifetime."

Lastly, we have to determine when exactly the word "Devaputra" as referring to a foreign king was heard on Indian soil. Arrian (VII.2) writes about Alexander in India: "In Taxila, once, he met some members of the Indian Sect of Wise Men whose practice it is to go naked, and he so much admired their powers of endurance that the fancy took him to have one of them in his personal train. The oldest man among them, whose name was Dandamis (the others were his pupils), refused either to join Alexander himself or to permit any of his pupils to do so. 'If you, my lord,' he is said to have replied, 'are the son of God, why - so am I. I want nothing from you, for what I have suffices..."²

1.Edited by James Hastings (T & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1935), Vol. 4. p. 527.

2.Arrian's Life of Alexander the Great, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (The Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1958), p. 226.

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This was evidently in answer to a command translated to Dan-damis (Dandi-Swāmī?) to meet Alexander, "Son of God". In fact, another account¹ preserves the words of the command: "The son of the mighty god Zeus, King Alexander, who is the sovereign lord of all men, asks you to go to him..."

Thus in 326 B.C. Alexander's interpreter used the expression "Devaputra" to Dandamis who in his answer repeated it. India of Sandrocottus knew of Alexander as "Devaputra" and it is extremely probable that the practice of deification among Alexander and his successors led the successor of Sandrocottus, Amitrachates, to use "Devaputra" for both Antiochus I Sôter and Ptolemy II Phila-delphus, both of whom despatched envoys to the Indian court as respectful allies.

Hence, although "Shāhi-Shāhānushāhi" applied with certainty to Antiochus, can we say for sure whether "Devaputra" referred to him or to Ptolemy? There are a number of points which induce us to choose the former.

Antiochus I as Both "Devaputra" and "Shāhi-Shāhānushāhi"

(1)We cannot be definite that the ambassador of Ptolemy II came during the reign of Amitrachates rather than that of his son -and except through the ambassador we have no evidence of contact between Amitrachates and Ptolemy.

(2)Antiochus I had not only his Asiatic kingdom bordering on that of Amitrachates and an official relation with him through his ambassador but also a personal one through letters. Athenaeus (XIV, 67, 652F and 635A)² gives us the anecdote of how Amitrachates wrote to Antiochus I, asking him to buy and have conveyed to him some sweet wine, some figs and a sophist to teach him to argue. Antiochus, forwarding the figs and the wine, explained that sophists were not a marketable commodity among the Greeks. The double relation, on top of his proximity, tilts the Bālānce in favour of Antiochus as against Ptolemy.

(3)Both the personal relation and the official were a continuation of the close contact established between Sandrocottus and Seleucus in 305 B.C. when they met at the Indus (Strabo, XV.724;

1.McCrindle, India as Described by Mêgasthenes and Arrian, p. 124. See also The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 554.

2.The Cambridge History of India, I, pp. 432-33.

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Appian, Syr., 55) - a contact furthered by frequent visits to the Indian court by Seleucus's ambassador Mêgasthenes (Arrian, V.6, 2) and by personal exchanges between the two kings (Athenaeus, O, 32Y, 18D).¹ So it is not for us a choice merely between a newly formed friendship of Antiochus with Amitrachates and a similar friendship of Ptolemy with him. The contact of the former two is a natural development and sequel of an old family-friendship which is more likely than a recent one to figure in an important inscription assigned by us to Amitrachates.

(4) This old family-friendship has certain features which eminently qualify it to figure in that inscription's category of rulers or states or peoples who, although independent, were in a sense homage-bearing. Let us hear Mookerji² tell how the friendship arose and what form it took: "While Chandragupta was busy laying the foundations of his empire in India, the Greek king Seleucus, who had succeeded Alexander in the eastern part of his empire, was moving towards India to recover the lost possessions of the late emperor. But while Alexander had to fight against a divided India, split up into a multitude of states, his successor had to face a united and a much stronger India organised by an able leader. Seleucus reached the Sindhu about 305 B.C. The Greek writers do not give the details of his conflict with Chandragupta, but merely record the result. Seleucus had to purchase peace by ceding to Chandragupta territories then known as Aria, Aracho-sia, and Paropanisadae (the capitals of which were respectively the cities now known as Herāt, Kandahār and Kābul), and probably also a part of Gedrosia (Balūchistān). In return Chandragupta presented him with 500 war elephants. The terms of the peace leaves no doubt that the Greek ruler fared badly at the hands of Chandragupta... The peace was ratified by a matrimonial alliance between the rival parties. This has been generally taken to mean that Chandragupta married a daughter of Seleucus, but this is not warranted by known facts. Henceforth Seleucus maintained friendly relations..."

We may add that Seleucus did not only transfer to Sandrocottus the Greek satrapies west of the Indus: he also acquiesced in the Indian's de facto sovereignty over all the country once held by

1.Ibid.

2."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 60-61..

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Alexander's prefects to the east of the Indus.¹ Of course the transfer was the more important event. But Seleucus had come with the intention of recovering what Sandrocottus had wrested from Alexander's governors in India itself. And it is when we remember this that the transfer of Greek satrapies west of the Indus in addition to acceptance of the Indian's hold over the provinces on the other side takes on its proper colour and shows the homage-bearing attitude on the part of Seleucus. This attitude is hinted at in a remark of George Macdonald:² "There may even have been a nominal and unmeaning acknowledgement of suzerainty.." The "matrimonial alliance" itself - the jus connubium, the right of marriage between the families of Seleucus and Sandrocottus - over and above all the territorial waiving of rights by the former is a sign of the acknowledged nominal suzerainty. We at once recall the phrase in Samudragupta's inscription about the offering of princesses to him by independent rulers to prove their respectful alliance with him. It is as if Antiochus I, among others, sent such an offering to Samudragupta through his ambassador -repeating what his father Seleucus had done in dealing with Sandrocottus, Chandragupta I.

The very despatch of an ambassador could fall within one of the four types of feudatory homage listed by Samudragupta. The first of them reads: "personal service" or "personal attendance".³ It would be performed by proxy when Daimachus came from Antiochus I to Amitrachates. And the homage-gesture would be accentuated by a striking fact repeated now from the time of Amitrachates's father. Just as Sandrocottus received Mêgasthenes from Seleucus without himself sending any representative in return, so too his son got Daimachus from Seleucus's son without a reciprocating move on his own part - a one-way transaction on the diplomatic level which could bear broadly the hue of .a vassal's relationship.

Antiochus I, therefore, fits perfectly into the context of the Allāhābād Pillar. Ptolemy does not bring the necessary background or relevant circumstance.-

1.George Macdonald, "The Hellenic Kingdoms of Syria, Bactria and Parthia", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 431.

2.Ibid.

3.Raychaudhuri, The Political History,... p. 546 and Majumdar, A New History..., pp. 148, 149.

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(5)Although many of Alexander's generals shared in his empire after his death, it is only the family of Seleucus who stood in the very shoes of Alexander vis-à-vis India. Seleucus alone was concerned with the fate of the Indian province of his master and came, as it were, as a second Alexander. Consequently, when he and his son began to be deified and worshipped just like Alexander, they in particular would inherit in India the title by which Alexander made himself known on Indian soil: "Son of God", "Devaputra".

(6)Numismatics also renders the title especially appropriate to the Seleucids. We learn from the Encyclopaedia Britannica:¹ "After his (Alexander's) death his deified portrait appeared on the coins of Lysimachus in Thrace and on the early coins of Ptolemy I in Egypt. It is not till 306 [B.C.] that we have a portrait of a living king on his coins when Ptolemy I appears, still as a god with the aegis of Zeus. Seleucus I similarly puts himself on his coins as Dionysus..." Now, Dionysus is well-known as the Son of Zeus by Semele, and the etymology of the very name is supposed to be: "dio - name of the Thraco-Phrygian sky god resembling Zeus; nys-possibly akin to Lat. nurus. Gr. nyos, and may mean 'child' or 'son'; hence perhaps 'son of god' ".² It is very likely that Seleucus's coins came to the Indian court. Historians have noted that Antiochus minted some of his coins according to Indian measures in order to facilitate trade with India. And Seleucus's numismatic identification of himself with Dionysus, "Son of God", may easily have made his deified family carry at the Indian court the title "Devaputra" in direct and prominent continuation of Alexander's self-deification with the same term in India.

Furthermore, in connection with Antiochus I, there is here an item of nomenclature worth noting. We have mentioned Bhanr darkar's observation that the term "Daivaputra" instead of "Devaputra" is a Sanskrit Taddhita form. Now we may cite Raychaudhuri's remark:³ "As to the form Daiva see Achaemenian inscriptions of Xerxes, and forms like Bhaimarathi (instead of Bhīmarathī)." The first part of the remark points straight to Persia, where Daiva rather than Deva was the natural vocable, and, pointing to Persia, this part focuses our attention not on any Kushāna but on the half-Persian son of Seleucus.

1.Vol. 16, p. 619.

2.Ibid.

3.The Political History..., p. 546, fn. 7.

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So the equation is complete: Antiochus I is Samudragupta's "Daivaputra-Shāhi-ShāhānuShāhi".

Who were Earlier - the Kushānas or the Guptas?

Our next concern in strict relation to the Allāhābād Inscription is Samudragupta's phrase: "Śaka Murunda." But a small sidetrack is in order since we have put aside the usual association of the preceding phrase with the little Kushānas. These members of the Yueh-chi tribe were the successors of those Yueh-chis who first ruled in India, the Great Kushānas whom the current time-scheme sets from the beginning of the 1st century A.D . to the end of the 2nd: in other words, the Great Kushānas fairly precede the age of the Guptas as at present calculated from the era marking in our opinion their end and distantly succeed the Gupta Era we have computed to be their beginning. What is their proper place?

From a comparative study of the two dynasties' coins an impressive opening argument can be built for the priority of the Kushānas. We have to meet this argument squarely if we are to situate the Great Guptas earlier. Altekar¹ indicates the case for the Kushānas very well:

"In the realm of numismatics, conservation was a very strong force in ancient times; the early gold issues of the Guptas, therefore, closely resemble those of the later Kushānas, to whose imperial position they succeeded in the north. The obverse of the Kushāna prototype, the king standing and offering incense at the altar, is very common in the earlier stages of the Gupta coinage. The Hindu king is also seen wearing the Kushāna overcoat and trousers. His name is written perpendicularly under the arm, as on the Kushāna prototype. The reverse is again a close copy of the Kushāna type, which has [the goddess] Ardoksho seated on a high-backed throne. The Kushāna monograms also reappear with only slight variations (cf. Kācha-type).

"There was, however, a definite move to Hinduise the type soon afterwards. The Greek legend on the Kushāna prototype was replaced by the Brāhmī one from the very outset. The peaked Kushāna cap was never put upon the head of the Gupta emperor. Ardoksho on the reverse was Hinduised usually by transforming her into the goddess Lakshmī and seating her on a lotus. Lakshmī,

1. "The Coinage", A New History..., pp. 302-03.

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that was thus introduced on the reverse, was destined to figure on the gold coinage for more than a millennium; we find her not only on the coins of the Chedis and Gāhadavālas, but also on some coins of Mahmudbin Sam.

"The Kushāna prototype, king offering incense at the altar, lingered on for a few decades, but side by side with it, the Gupta mint masters introduced a number of original artistic types. Samudra-gupta's new types were the Archer type, the Battle-axe type, the Conch type, the Tiger-slayer type and the Aśvamedha (Horse-sacrifice) type. Chandra-gupta II added the Lion-slayer, the Horseman and the Chhatra (Royal umbrella) types. The coins of most of these types are quite original in their conception and show no foreign influence whatsoever..."

R. K. Mookerji¹ has a good summary formula along the same lines: "The degree of Indianization of the Gupta coins is a key to their chronology." But Mookerji next raises a question which is destined to prove most disturbing; He continues: "From this point of view, what are known as 'Chandra Gupta coins'... cannot be attributed to Chandra Gupta I because...they show a degree of independence of Kushān models which makes them later than several other types of coins issued by his successor, Samudra Gupta." Among the latter's coinage Mookerji picks out the "Standard type" and says: "This is the commonest type of Samudra Gupta's coins, the closest copy of Kushān coins, and, therefore, the earliest type of Gupta coins." He² adds: "The Rev. is a downright copy of the late Kushān Ardochsho Rev. Ardochsho is seen seated, facing on a high-backed throne, holding cornucopia in 1. arm and fillet in outstretched r. hand."

Reverting to the "Chandra Gupta coins", Mookerji³ comments:

"If Chandra Gupta I had issued any coins, they should have been, as the earliest Gupta coins, of the Standard type... No such coins of Chandra Gupta I have been discovered. On the other hand, the Chandra Gupta type is more Indianized than the Standard type of Samudra Gupta, as shown (1) in the figure of the queen added on the obv. and (2) in the lion taking the place of the throne, though its dependence on Kushān technique is seen in traces of the back of the meaningless throne being still kept up.

1.The Gupta Empire, p. 31.

2.Ibid., p. 32.

3.Ibid., p. 33.

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"Further, the goddess seated on a lion first appears on the reverse of the Lion-slayer type of Chandra Gupta II coinage. Therefore, Chandra Gupta I type should be considered as the immediate predecessor of this type of coins of Chandra Gupta II."

Referring to the alliance made by Chandragupta I with the Lichchhavis whose princess Kumāradevī he married, an alliance "of which even his illustrious progeny was so proud, and constantly making mention in their inscriptions," Mookerji¹ declares: "The importance of the alliance...is also celebrated by the issue by Samudra Gupta of special coins commemorating the event..." The "Chandra Gupta coins" are ascribed to the son of Chandragupta I and Kumāradevī and this celebration of his Pārents' marriage is dated to the end of his reign, just before his own son, Chandragupta II, ascends the throne. A rather odd timing, one would think. But how is it possible to avoid it?

Now comes the surprise of the whole situation - from no other historian than Altekar himself who has laid down the same principles of Gupta coin-chronology as Mookerji. He² tells us:

"With the assumption of the imperial title Mahārājadhirāja Chandra-gupta I started his gold coinage. The view of Allan³ that the coins bearing the figures of Chandra-gupta and his queen Kumāradevī on the obverse are commemorative medals struck by Samudra-gupta is untenable. Chandra-gupta I owed his imperial status, to a considerable extent, to the valuable assistance that he had received from the Lichchhavi relations of his wife; it was, therefore, but natural for him to issue throughout his reign a joint coinage, whose type would be acknowledging the Lichchhavi help in a suitable manner. Had Samudra-gupta issued these coins as commemorative medals, the name of the commemorator would naturally have appeared somewhere upon them, as it does on the admittedly commemorative issues of Agathokles and Eukratides. As it is, Samudra-gupta's own name is conspicuous by its absence on these coins.

"On the obverse of the coins of Chandra-gupta I, we see the king and his queen Kumāradevī standing and facing each other; the king is probably giving the marriage ring to his consort. The names of both are engraved by their sides. On the reverse there is

1.Ibid., p. 15.

2.Op. cit., pp. 301-02.

3.Catalogue of Coins of the Gupta Dynasties...(London, 1914), pp. Ixiv-lxviii.

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Durgā seated on a lion. The legend is Lichchhavayah, which is probably in acknowledgement of the help the Guptas had received from their Lichchhavi relations."

Majumdar¹ lends his weight to Altekar's thesis: "Mr. Allan's contention that these [coins] were struck by Samudra-gupta to commemorate the marriage of his Pārents is hardly convincing. The view, held by the old numismatists, that these coins were issued by Chandra-gupta jointly with the Lichchhavis and their princess Kumāradevī, who was his consort, has been very ably defended by Dr. Aiyangar and Dr. Altekar.²"

Raychaudhuri³ chooses to strike a Bālānce: "There is a difference of opinion among scholars regarding the attribution of these coins... It is difficult to come to any final conclusion till the discovery of coins whose attribution to Chandra Gupta I is beyond doubt."

Obviously the argument à la Mookerji has not completely satisfied Raychaudhuri; but he has not explained how one would attribute coins to Chandragupta I in an indubitable way. Mookerji⁴ begs the question: the coins have to be "the closest copy of the Kushān original". He refuses the possibility of any independence at the start of the Guptas. Evidently, Raychaudhuri does not agree: else he would not hold the matter to be still undecided. What would be the alternative to Mookerji's demand? Could Raychaudhuri mean coins with Chandragupta's name yet without the Kumāradevl-Lichchhavi motif and the lion-poised Durgā? But how would this motif and the goddess Simhavāhanā in themselves render any coin dubious? Unless one makes up one's mind beforehand that the slightest departure from the Kushāna model signifies a late period, there is no conceivable criterion. Raychaudhuri's hesitation to come down on one side or the other implies lack of critical thought on the subject and must involve at the back of his mind a recognition of Chandragupta's right somehow to differ from the so-called "Kushān original".

As we have hinted, to date - as Mookerji does - the "Chandra

1."The Rise of the Guptas", A New History..., p. 128.

2.Numismatic Supplement to the Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal New Series, Calcutta, XLVII, pp. 105 ff; Journal of Indian History, Madras, VI, Suppl. pp. 101 ff.

3.The Political History of Ancient India, Fifth Ed., 1950, p. 530, fn. 4.

4.Op. cit., p. 32.

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Gupta coins" as "the immediate predecessor" of "the Lion-slayer type of Chandra Gupta II coinage" where appears "the goddess seated on a lion" is a queer reading of Samudragupta's intention. Samudragupta is made to celebrate his Pārents' marriage at the close of his own life and after he had issued his own various coin-types, instead of at the very beginning when as the son of his father's Lichchhavi wife rather than of any other of less important standing he would justify the event recorded in his Allāhābād Pillar Inscription, namely, his father's selection of him as successor in preference to other princes who are said to have resented it. The extremely late dating is absurd in the context of Samudragupta's life. A less pointless occasion cries out to be discerned.

Raychaudhuri's ambiguous neutrality' diminishes no whit the strength of Altekar's and Majumdar's position and a realistic assessment of historical circumstances strengthens it. Nor is Aiyangar the sole other supporter. Vincent Smith,¹ ascribing the coins to Chandragupta I as a sign of his recognition of dependence on his wife's people, gives the footnote: "That seems to me the natural interpretation of the coin legends. Mr. Allan, of the British Museum, regards the coins as having been struck by Samudragupta in honour of his parents, a view which I cannot accept." A. L. Basham, who was entrusted with revising a part of Smith in the 1970 edition of the latter's Oxford History of India published after his death, leaves Smith's opinion intact and unanhotated unlike his procedure at some places where he comments in the light of new research. This tacitly makes Basham a concurring party. Even in 1954 Majumdar² could boldly inform us: "The view that the coins were issued by Samudra-gupta.. .is no longer held by any scholar."

But if the anti-Mookerji team is right, the entire theory that the Guptas imitated the Kushāna coins and progressively Hinduized them suffers a shock. Altekar does not seem to realize how his brief for Chandragupta I lands him in serious self-contradiction. It appears impossible for him to give up his powerful criticism of Allan: it should be equally so for us to accept his own expose of what he terms conservatism in the realm of numismatics and to acquiesce in Mookerji's criterion of chronology for the Gupta coins. Consequently, the view that the Guptas followed the

1.The Oxford History of India, Third Ed., 1970, edited by Pert, al Spear, p. 165, fn.

2."The Rise of the Guptas", The Classical Age, p. 4, fn. 2.

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Kushānas in time is, to say the least, flung into the melting-pot.

This conclusion cannot be averted by arguing that the position of Kumāradevī to her husband's right on the coins goes against all suggestion of the husband as their issuer. True, A. K. Narain¹ has shown by quoting various authorities that Indian custom demands the wife to be invariably to the husband's left - except at marriage. But what Narain should lead us to infer is simply that we cannot interpret the coins as a normal joint issue of Chandragupta I and Kumāradevī indicative of a joint rule. Provided we do not so interpret them, there is nothing to make us carry them over to any point in Samudragupta's reign. Obviously they are commemorative of the occasion of marriage. As such they can be ascribed to the first Gupta and our conclusion in relation to the time of the Kushānas can stand.

Neither can the reference to a remnant of Ardoksho's portrayal - "the back of the meaningless throne" - help a return from the melting pot to the solid state. What looks like a fragmentary back may not be one at all: it may be some additional feature we cannot explain. If we compare it to what we have in Samudragupta's Standard type which has Ardoksho in full - we can perceive that the mint-master has an appreciably different detail: he shows four vertical poles instead of two short as in the standard type. Only our preconception may conceal from us some subtle meaning here. Moreover, is the high back itself characteristically Kushāna? Mookerji² has said: "Both the Tiger and Lyrist types are the most Indian of Samudra Gupta's coins." Yet about the Lyrist type he³ writes: "The Obv. shows King seated... on a high-backed couch..."

An extra point of sufficient importance to be made - when we keep in sight the so-called full Ardoksho of the Standard type - is that Altekar⁴ is wrong to use the adjective "Roman" in speaking of "the Roman goddess, seated Ardoksho" figuring in the coins of Kanishka III (c. 180-210 A.D. on the assumption that Kanishka I flourished around 78 A.D., the conventional Śaka Era). Perhaps the Romanizing of Ardoksho is by sympathy with the figure of "Roma" on the reverse of the coins attributed to a successor of

1.The Journal of the Numismatic Society, Vol. XIV, 1957, Part II, pp. 135-44.

2.Op. cit., p. 36.

3.Ibid., p. 35.

4."The Punjāb, Sindh and Afghanistan", A New History..., p. 15.

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Kanishka I: Huvishka (between 106 and 138 A.D.)?¹ As the Roman influence in India cannot go too far back in the pre-Christian centuries and is certainly later than the immediate post-Alexandrine age, a Roman Ardoksho would militate against placing Chandragupta I and his successor as early as we have done. But actually it is a mistake to Romanize this goddess.

Richard N. Frye,² the specialist in matters Persian, writes of Kushāna coins "where Hellenistic or Roman deities, such as Heracles, Hephaestos, Serapis, are pictured as well as Irānian gods and goddesses such as Mithra, Ardoxsho, Atar and Verethragna". Another expert, J. Duchesne-Guillemin,³ dealing with the same subject, lists "Ardoxsho" strictly among the Irānian divinities that came to the fore with the general Irānianization of coin-legends in the later part of Kanishka's rule. At another place,⁴ this expert informs us: "Some have sought to draw important conclusions from what appears to be a female Mithra [on a Kushāna coin]. The name is certain. But as the type is exactly the same as that of Ardoxsho, a woman carrying a cornucopia, Cumont concluded this as an engraver's mistake. However, Bussagli and Gnoli would rather see in this a tendency, of which there are other instances, to merge the two deities." If Ardoksho is definitely not Roman and if out of four lines two lingering as though from the back of her throne are the sole sign suspected of her vaguely haunting from the Kushāna time the coinage of Chandragupta I, this coinage which throws into confusion the hypothesis of the derivation of Gupta numismatics from the Kushānas may be taken to prove that the Guptas need not have been posterior to the Kushānas. They may be considered as affected by Persian ideas in general for a time in the wake of several centuries of Persian sovereignty to the immediate west of the Indus before Alexander's invasion and then by the Graeco-Persian cultural influence coming with that invasion and increasing with the contact - attested by a number of Classical reports - between Sandrocottus's dynasty and the Persia-possessing semi-Persianized royal family of Seleucus Nicator.

1.Sircar, "The Kushānas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 150.

2.The Heritage of Persia, p. 230.

3.The Religion of Ancient Irān, translated by K. M. JamaspAsa from the French (Bombay, 1973), p. 165.

4.Ibid., p. 166.

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Vincent Smith¹ cites one instance of Persia's cultural influence from Mêgasthenes's account of Sandrocottus: "We are told... that the ceremonial washing of the king's hair was made the occasion of a splendid festival when the courtiers offered rich presents to the king. That observance recalls the Persian hair-washing ceremony on the sovereign's birthday, described by Herodotus." In the same context, Smith, holding that though the Arthaśāstra attributed to Kautilya belongs as a whole to a date later than Megasthenes's, some parts of it point to the Greek ambassador's period, remarks that the Arthaśāstra's rule about the king's consulting physicians and ascetics while being "seated 'in the room where the sacred fire has been kept' seems to be an indication that Magian ritual was honoured..." If he is right, we have an independent confirmation of Persia's cultural influence which would be deducible from the incense-fed fire-altar on the Gupta coins. But here we may discern a mingling of the foreign influence with India's own practice of the fire-cult. In any case there is no call to dub this feature of the coins a relic from the Kushānas.

The coat-and-trousers can certainly be acounted for by Persian influence in the immediate post-Alexandrine epoch. Besides, to regard them as nothing else than a blind copy from Kushāna numismatics would be absurd. Would the Guptas show themselves to their subjects in coat-and-trousers on their coins if they never wore them at any time? Altekar² naturally infers "from the effigies of the Gupta emperors on some of their coins" that "overcoats, coats and trousers were often worn by the Indian kings". Furthermore, the coins do not always picture the kings as peace-time figures who would wear dhoti and turban but frequently as warriors and conquerors. In dealing with the time of Sandrocottus Mookerji³ has drawn our attention to "a nearly life-size figure of an infantry soldier armed as described by Megasthenes" which "appears among the sculptures at Bhārhut which are generally taken to date from the age of Aśoka": that is, the age in which Aśoka is conventionally put - c. 269-232 B.C. - but which for us would be part of Samudragupta's reign. The soldier⁴ wears what

1.The Oxford History of India, 3rd Ed., p. 103.

2."Social and Economic Conditions", A New History..., p. 353.

3.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 276.

4.The Age of Imperial Unity, Plate XVI, Fig. 37.

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Mookerji¹ in his book on the Guptas calls a "close-fitting cap" such as we see on the heads of both Chandragupta I and Samudragupta in the early coins, and there is armour on the legs and no trace of anything like a dhoti. In his earlier book Mookerji² goes on to quote Cunningham's report of military figures sculptured at Sānchī, usually dated to the 1st century A.D. "In one of them," says Cunningham, "... the soldiers wear a tight-fitting dress and kilt... The swords are short and broad and tally with the description of Megasthenes." As for the Kushāna dress, Smith,³ employing the Kushāna tribe-name, says: "The Yueh-chi princes... dressed in long-skirted coats..." The coat of Kanishka, the greatest Kushāna, as seen in his coins as well as in his famous headless statue,⁴ comes down below the knees. But, in the Chandragupta I coins and in Samudragupta's Standard or Battle-axe type, the coat-front stops at the waist.⁵

A wholesale imitation of the Kushānas is nowhere to be marked even in the early Gupta coinage. The peaked Kushāna cap is absent everywhere. In the Standard type itself, which Mookerji deems the closest to the Kushāna model, he⁶ has observed not only a quite non-Kushāna "close-fitting cap" but also the Garud? (Eagle) which is unmistakably a Gupta symbol and he has called the altar "Tulasīvrindavana, a completely Indian feature". In "some specimens" he notes "the king wearing shorts and full socks", and in all specimens "the jewellery worn by the king is Indian".⁷ The "standard" itself is not otiose. Mookerji⁸ writes: "... the Standard indicates the conquered territories where the flag of victory was planted. It is also appropriately associated with the legend Parākramah ['Mighty']."

Finally, is it indeed Ardoksho on the Gupta coins? Mookerji et al. use that name because the Kushāna coins have it for the same or similar figure. The Gupta figure, which Mookerji⁹ identifies variously as Durgā, Lakshmī or Sarasvatī on account of suggestive

1.The Gupta Empire, pp. 31, 33.

2.Chandragupta Maurya..., p. 276.

3.Op. cit., p. 155.

4.Ibid., Plate ii facing p. 182, Plate 8 facing p. 155.

5.The Gupta Empire, Plate I facing p. 24, Plate II facing p. 25.

6.Ibid., p. 31.

7.Ibid., p. 32.

8.Ibid.

9.Ibid., pp. 31-36.

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signs, need not be designated Ardoksho at all. The only item which relates her to Ardoksho is the cornucopia in her right hand. Because of the cornucopia Sircar,¹ noting Ardoksho on the reverse of Huvishka's coin-types, terms her "the goddess of abundance". Mookerji² particularizes the cornucopia as "the horn of plenty, the horn of the goat Amalthea by which Zeus was suckled" and which "is represented in art as overflowing with flowers, fruit and corn" and "thus... is a pre-eminently foreign feature" on the Gupta coins as well as on the coins of the Kushānas. Undoubtedly, the cornucopia is a Greek touch, but in the immediate post-Alexandrine age it would be very natural, as much so as Indo-Persian ones. Hence the cornucopia could easily go with some Persian goddess who could be fused with Indian female divinities and who could be a pre-Kushāna counterpart of the Kushāna period's Ardoksho.

Duchesne-Guillemin³ indicates Ardoksho to be the the same as the Avestan goddess Asi Vanuhi of "good fortune" mentioned in Yasht 17 as bringing "riches... to the houses of the devout". There is also, as Duchesne-Guillemin⁴ tells us, the Avestan Pārendī, "goddess of abundance", who corresponds to "the Vedic Pūramdhi". Whatever superhuman power the name "Ardoksho" stood for in - to quote Duchesne-Guillemin⁵ again - "Bactriana of the Kushāns", where she "enjoyed great popularity", is covered precisely by those two feminine deities of the Avesta. It is they who, in combination with the Greek cornucopia-motif and with the traits of Indian goddesses, take on Gupta coins the form which reappears as Ardoksho on Kushāna issues and which Mookerji, guided by the present-day chronology, dubs "a downright copy of the late Kushān Ardochsho". The moment we turn the chronology the other way round and look about us with eyes sensitive to the manifold cultural currents mingling in an earlier epoch, the picture totally changes.

All in all, on the strength of the coin-depictions there is no reason to make the main initial Guptas start after the Great Kushānas and flourish on the heels of the Little Kushānas. We may well regard the Kushāna dynasty as imitating in a number of

1."The Kushānas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 150.

2.Op. cit., p. 32.

3.Op. cit., p. 28, 141.

4.Ibid., p. 128.

5.Ibid., p. 141.

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respects the Guptas on some of their coins, rather than vice versa.

The weights of the coins have little significance in themselves apart from the depictions. About the Kushāna coinage we have statements like Smith's¹ that Kadphises II struck "gold coins agreeing closely with the Caesarean aurei in weight", or Sircar's:² "Some scholars believe that Kanishka's gold coinage was suggested by the Roman solidus..." The impression we get is not of any inevitability of influence: the Kushānas might have adopted on their own the weight they did. The choice of weight depends on convenience and capacity and mere resemblance does not argue straight copying. In fact, the aureus weighs 124 grains or 8.035 grammes,³ while the Kushāna coins "weigh 120 grains on the average".⁴ The early Gupta coins have the same weight as the latter,⁵ but this too need not be mere imitation and the tendency towards originality manifests itself in a marked difference from the Kushāna practice over the years. Altekar⁶ observes: "The weight standard of the later Kushāna and Scythian coins is the same as that of the earlier Imperial Kushānas." In contrast we may study Altekar's account⁷ of the weight of the Gupta gold coins: "... in the reign of Chandra-gupta II it was raised to 124 gr. Some types of Kumāra-gupta weigh as much as 132 gr. Skanda-gupta raised the weight to 144 grains and thus transformed his gold coins into suvarnas of the traditional Indian standard of eighty ratis." In the light of this trend of change the initial near-similarity to the Kushāna weight is of little moment.

But the straight leap of Kumāragupta's coins from 124 to 132 grains cannot but be meaningful since it immediately joins them to ancient Persian coinage, "the famous gold darks with the figures of kneeling archer on them".⁸ Mookerji⁹ relates: "The standard gold coin of ancient Persia was the Daric, weighing about 130 grains, probably first minted by Darius [522-486 B.C.]." And it is curious that the largest variety of coin-legend among Kumāra-

1.The Oxford History of India, Third Edition, p. 158.

2."The Kushānas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 144, fn. 2.

3.Ibid., p. 139.

4.Altekar, "The Coinage", A New History..., p. 296.

5.Ibid., p. 304.

6.Ibid., p. 296.

7.Ibid., p. 304.

8.Frye, op. cit., p. 140.

9.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 350.

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gupta's gold issues comes in the Archer type, 6 kinds as against 5 in the Horseman type and 4 in the Lion-slayer type.¹ The Daric affinity should not be surprising. Of all the Persian kings after Cyrus, who were connected with the Indus region, Darius I had most to do with it and there is extant even a Daric struck in India in c. 337 B.C.² But the Daric affinity whisks us away from the post-Kushāna period to a substantially pre-Kushāna one.

What about the Dīnāra?

The only point that can cause some concern is the use, by the Guptas, of the coin named the dīnāra. We may be told: "The dīnāra is based on the Roman denarius aureus and the latter could not have been known in India earlier than about the last quarter of the 1st century B.C. because the earliest denarii found by archaeologists in India are of Augustus whose reign started in 31 B.C."

But is it quite certain that the Indian dīnāra comes from the Roman denarius? F. Spiegel³ tried to derive, from the Greek form "denarion" of the Roman coin, the term "danare" found in the Avesta for a dry measure or weight. But surely "danare" is older than "denarion"? We may suggest that the Indian dīnāra originally comes not from the Roman denarius but from the Avestan danare. From danare we can derive a modified form daenara,⁴ then the Old Persian dlnnar, the Indian dīnāra and the modern Persian dinar. If we commence the Guptas from 315 B.C., there should be no historical incongruity in this etymology. And from the fact that the Gupta epigraphs speak of the dīnāra only in the time of Chandragupta II (e.g., No. 7 of Fleet's Gupta Inscriptions⁵) we may guess danare to have denoted at the start the weight to which this emperor raised the initial 120 grains: 124 grains. As we can gather through Altekar's account, the dīnāra-value did not stay constant in the hands of the Guptas and touched the daric-value after a while until ultimately, as Fleet's No. 64 proves,⁶ the

1.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, pp. 86-88.

2.Smith, op. cit., PL 5, fig. 1.

3.Commemoration Volume I, p. 363.

4.Geiger, Civilisation of the Eastern Irānians in Ancient Times, translated by Darab Dastur Peshotan Sanjana from the German, Vol. II, p. 137.

5.Mookerji, op. cit., p. 51.

6.Ibid., p. 31.

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Irānian-sounding dīnāra became interchangeable with the Hindu-named suvarna, a gold coin of "eighty ratis" - quite a quantity away from the Roman denarius aureus of a fixed 124 grains.

In the period of the Kushānas when the gold coins they struck were of a weight almost that of the denarius aureus, which by then had become fairly current in the East, the word "dīnāra" got associated with the foreign currency. The association does not disqualify danare, through daenara, from being the real Pārent of the Gupta dīnāra.

Rather, we should say "one of the real parents". For, danare brought explicitly the element of weight along with its name. The material aspect - both stuff and size - of the dīnāra together with the general sound of the coin's name may be traced to a gold ornament or a gold seal referred to in works like the Unādi-sutra as "dīnāra". According to the author of the Unādi-sutra, the word is derived from "dlna" which means "poor", and "ri", indicating "to go", the whole connoting "what goes to the poor". By the conventional chronology, Brāhmanic literature in the style of the Sutras is roughly dated between 600 and 200 B.C. With the Guptas starting in 315 B.C. the date would naturally go further into antiquity. No matter how much of a late-comer, this "dīnāra" could serve as part origin of their coin.

Even if we granted the coin's derivation from the Roman denarius of 124 grains and said that its weight underwent change in the course of time, we would not need to say that the Roman currency reached India only as late as the reign of Augustus. The heavy denarius is a considerably old coin. At first it was minted of silver in 268 B.C., and later the gold denarius was of the same weight as the silver.¹ No doubt, the earliest gold denarii we have discovered in India are of Augustus, but it is not true that no Roman coins earlier than those of Imperial Rome have been found here. As M. S. C. Vidyabhusana² admits, "several Roman coins of the Consulate period have been discovered in the Manikjāla stūpas and in the Hazara district of the Punjāb". These coins are said to have been "very probably brought to India by traders several years after they had been prepared in Rome". Vidyabhūsana postulates "traders" because, according to him, "it is almost

1.Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language (1956), p. 697, col. 2.

2.Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1906, p. 1.

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certain that Rome did not attempt to spread eastwards till the later years of the Consulate" and "it was only in the reign of Augustus that the conquest of Asia by Rome began". But there is no reason to think that no one except Roman traders could have brought the coins to India or that stray Roman traders could not have done it much before the reign of Augustus. Through such agents or those non-Romans who were at the same time in contact with Rome and with India, the Consulate coins could very well have come. Against the background of the Manikjāla stūpas and the Hazara district of the Punjāb no convincing evidence exists that an influx of pre-Augustan denarii before the 1st century B.C. was not possible.

In fact, the possibility of sporadic trade-contact or else occasional contact of culture between Rome and India is from 264 B.C. onward, for it is in 264 B.C. that the first Punic War took the Romans to Africa and it is at about the same time that Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt is known to have sent an ambassador to India and to have had cultural communication with this country through Indian books in the Alexandria Library.¹ We know,² further, that Indian processions used to go through Ptolemy's streets and Ptolemy's successors too were in touch with things Indian. Again, a Greek colony, with multi-national elements, flourished in Arachosia (Kandahār region) at this time. Since the earliest Roman denarii go back to 268 B.C., the above circumstances would allow the arrival of a few of these coins into India through various channels and their imitation by the Guptas who, if Sandrocottus was Chandragupta I, may be expected to have been greatly interested in the Western world.

The earliest Gupta mention of the dīnāra seems to have been in the Gadhwa Stone Inscription of Gupta year 88 (Fleet's Gupta Inscriptions, No. 7).³ By our Gupta Era of 315 B.C., the date resolves into 227 B.C., a full 41 years later than the striking of the first silver denarius of 124 grains in Rome and sufficiently subsequent also to the various favourable circumstances we have already listed. So, even if the dīnāra derives from the denarius, we do not have to wait till Augustus's reign for it to appear in India in some form or other of rich metal, and the Guptas do not have to

1.Bhandarkar, Aśoka, p. 163.

2.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 616.

3.Mookerji, op. cit., p. 51.

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be posterior to the Kushānas for the opportunity of imitating it.

The Archaeological Question

What remains is the archaeological question. Do the Kushāna levels at excavated places always underlie the Gupta ones and what are the signs which are assumed to prove the posteriority in time? If it is merely the presence of coins, the case is not established, since coins could be hoards from an earlier age. If it is other artifacts, we must first know for sure what are Gupta artifacts. Evidently, scholars do not take very seriously the bare archaeological precedence. Although "it has been pointed out... that at the excavations at Taxila, coins of the Kanishka group of Kushāna kings were found in the upper (i.e. later) strata of the earth and those of the Kadphises group in the lower (i.e. earlier) strata", "according to some scholars, notably Fleet, Kanishka was a predecessor of Kadphises I and Kadphises II and was the founder of the era of 58 B.C. which ultimately came to be known as Vikram-Samvat".¹ At present the majority of scholars do not favour Fleet and company in this respect, but archaeology as such is hardly a decisive factor against them.

Moreover, in the context of our stand, we must bear in mind that our run of the Gupta dynasty - with some temporary breaks in certain localities such as those where the Kushāna power arose - is from 315 B.C. to 320 A.D., so that some Gupta material would be prior and some posterior to the Kushānas.

The archaeological question does not admit of a simple answer. Besides, archaeology itself is at times a complicated affair. The strata have to be clean-cut and exclude the possibility of a mix-up. Instances are there of radical reversals of archaeological reading. The case of "the walls of Jericho" in relation to the period of the Israelite conquest of Canaan comes from the books of Kathleen Kenyon as a great lesson in complete chronological somersault.²

A Chronological Caution in Passing

Although not directly relevant to our discussion, a certain point

1.Sircar, "The Kushānas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 144 and fn. 2.

2.See especially Digging Up Jericho (Ernest Benn Ltd., London, 1957), pp. 44-46, 261-62, 271.

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is worth making in relation to the Great Kushānas because rarely do historians take note of it when adjusting their chronology. One must not overstrain oneself to establish their time-bracket - from the beginning of the 1st century A.D. to the end of the 2nd. Thus we may be told: "The title Kaisera (Caesar) adopted by Kanishka of the Āra inscription of the year 41 points to a date considerably later than Augustus Caesar who died in A.D. 14".¹ But we may answer in the words of S. K. Dikshit:²

"As to the title of this Kanishka (II), both Prof. Luders and Dr. Sten Konow read it as '[Kajisara', of which the first letter is supposed to be doubtful and can be acutally only conjecturally read. In this connection Mr. N. G. Majumdar states: 'An examination of the stone, which I undertook in February 1924, left no doubt as to the reading of the last four letters "isarasa". We are afraid that it is just possible that these Western scholars have introduced into this reading a conception of their own, and presumed that this late Kusana ruler assumed in imitation - which is the best way of flattery - the Roman title of Caesar. It is strange that such a late emperor should be introducing such an original title when none of his predecessors did it, or anything like it. We believe that there is as little reason for presuming that this ruler assumed the Roman title, as there is for presuming that the Indians of the times of the Kusana emperors used not Indian months, nor even Chinese months, but Macedonian months.' There is probably no 'k' preceding the letters, clearly verified by Mr. N. G. Majumdar, and these letters may therefore stand for nothing else but 'Iśvarasya'."

Dikshit gives the footnote: "Cf. MBh (Bori), V.33.2 where Iśvara appears as a descriptive title (?) of a certain Mahārāja." We may add a fact from the records of the Kushānas themselves: "The Kharoshthī legend on Wema Kadphises' coins has the expressions sarva-loga-iśvarasa-mahiśvarasa.³ The ground sought for the chronology of the Ara inscription's Kanishka by a backlook at Augustus Caesar seems an utterly misguided ingenuity.

1.Sircar, op. cit., p. 144.

2."The Problem of the Kusanas and the Origin of the Vikrani Samvat", Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, XXXVIII. 1957. pp. 100-01.

3.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 140.

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The Correct Outlook on "Śaka-Murunda"

Now we shall attend to Samudragupta's "Śaka-Murunda". How shall we relate it to the India of the 3rd century B.C.?

It is seldom realized that to India's north-west, just beyond the Indus, there were Indianized Śakas living in the time of Alexander and even before him. A clue to them comes in the river-name Maśakāvatī which the grammarian Patanjali mentions in his Mahābhāsya (11.287) and which the Kāśika connects with the considerably earlier Pānini along with other river-names like Pus-karāvatī (IV.2.85; VI.1.219; VI.3.119). Maśakāvatī reminds us, in the first place, of the Massagetai or Massagetae whom the geographer Ptolemy¹ (c. 140 A.D.) lists among the Śakai and puts along the range of Askangka, and whom Herodotus (1.201) too relates to the Śakas (Scythians). Maśakāvatī reminds us, in the second place, of the locality Maśakā which the Mahābhārata, as Agrawala² informs us, includes in its Śakadvīpa together with several other geographical entities like Chaksu (Oxus) and Kumud (Komedia of Herodotus, a mountain in the Śaka country). The Mahābhārata's Maśakā in its turn takes us at once to the time of Alexander, which we consider to have immediately preceded Samudragupta's. We hear of the Assakenoi (Asvakayana) who fought fiercely with the Macedonian invader of their capital which the Greeks (Arrian, Anabasis, IV.26) called Massaga. Agrawala³ equates the Greeks' Massaga with Pānini's Maśakāvatī, just as Mookerji⁴ does. And when we bear in mind S. N. Majumdar's observation⁵ - "The Massagetes were the Maśakās described in Sanskrit Literature as the warrior tribe of the Śakas" - we realize that the people on India's frontiers whose capital was Massaga in the late 4th century B.C. and therefore also in the early 3rd, where we have put Samudragupta, were a section of the Śaka Massagetae.

A proof of this is the way they fought Alexander. According to J. H. Haskins,⁶ scholars, while fully accepting the Massagetae as

1.McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy, edited by S. N. Majum-dar,1927, pp. 284, 318.

2.Op. cit., p. 68.

3.Ibid., p. 73.

4."Foreign Invasions", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 45.

5.McCrindle, Ptolemy, p. 397.

6."The Royal Scythians", Natural History (New York), October 1960. p. 16.

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Scythians, distinguish them in one particular from other Śakas such as the Western tribe whom Herodotus called the Royal Scythians and reported to have proceeded westwards after their defeat in Asia by the Massagetae. This particular is the position of women among them. The women of the Massagetae stood very high. Haskins¹ writes: "We are explicitly told [Herodotus, I. 214] that they were led in battle by a queen." Now let us glance at the battle given by the Assakenoi army of Massaga to the Macedonians. Mookerji² relates: "This army was led by the late King's mother, queen Cleophis... The example of the queen-commander leading the struggle for freedom in person brought the entire womenhood of the locality into the fighting..."

Evidently, Samudragupta's Śakas can be linked to the Massagetae of the hilly regions in the valley of the Kumār, Panjkore and Swat.

The expression "Murunda" may be taken, as by many scholars,³ to be only a Śaka word meaning "lord". Then a separate definition of it would not be required. But we should prefer to regard it, with many other scholars,⁴ as the name of a distinct tribe. The Chinese⁵ have spoken of the capital of Meou-lun (a word equated with Murunda) situated 7000 li from the mouth of the Great River, undoubtedly the Ganges. And Ptolemy's Geography⁶ also speaks of the Maroundai as living a little above the Ganges-delta. But how shall we think of a Murunda-tribe in north-western terms when we know of its existence in the east?

McCrindle⁷ opines that originally the Murundas may have been "a people of Lampāka (Lamghān) at the foot of the Hindu-Koh" who brought gifts to Samudragupta, but he immediately pulls himself back to condemn, with the modern chronology in mind, the theory that Ptolemy's Maroundai were people who, driven from the valley by enemies, had crossed the Indus and advanced southwards till they had established themselves on the Ganges. He tells us that Saint-Martin had disproved this theory "since... Samudragupta... reigned subsequently to the time of Ptolemy, and

1.Ibid.

2.Op. cit., p. 46.

3.A New History..., p. 148.

4.Ibid., p. 147.

5.Ibid., fn. 3.

6.McCrindle, op. cit., p. 213.

7.Ibid.

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they could not therefore have left their ancestral seats before he wrote". Here is a dilemma.

Looking at Ptolemy's Maroundai as well as the Chinese Meoulun, we cannot help considering with historians like Raychaudhuri¹ Samudragupta's Murunda to be connected with them. And yet modern chronology renders it impossible to explain the connection satisfactorily: how could a tribe which was earlier on the Ganges be later in Lamghan? As soon as we desist from placing Ptolemy nearly two hunderd years before Samudragupta instead of nearly-four hundred and forty years after him, the whole difficulty vanishes. We can then consistently connect the people of Ptolemy with the tribe of Samudragupta and think of the former as finally settling on the Upper Ganges after a forced migration into India from Lampāka where they had lived as neighbours to the Śakas of Massaga in the 3rd century B.C. to which we have dated Samudragupta. In the matter of the Murundas, both Samudragupta and Ptolemy are best explained by means of the Purānic chronology.

As for the presence of the Murundas for Alexander's historians, they may be understood as dubbing this tribe no less than the Śakas of the trans Indus area the Assakenoi, because of the racial affinity between the two tribes and their common Indian-Irānian culture.

Yes, Samudragupta's "Śaka-Murunda" can be defined for the India of the early 3rd century B.C. in north-western terms. And if we did not have to look beyond Samudragupta we might stop here . But these terms cannot exhaust his category . His category must cover the Western Satraps also - the Śakas of Western India whose rule was abolished by Samudragupta's son Chandragupta II. If, as claimed , the Western Satraps dated themselves by the Śaka Era of 78 A.D., how can we get Samudragupta into any relation with them in the period before 260 B.C.?

Samudragupta, Chandragupta II and the Western Satraps

Majumdar² says: "It is a significant fact that the long series of coins testifying to the almost unbroken rule of the Western Kshatrapas for more than three hundred years comes to an end between A.D. 388 and 397 and is replaced by coins of similar design issued

1.The Political History of Ancient India, p. 547.

2."The Vikrama Sarhvat and Śakabda", A New History..., p. 167.

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by Chandragupta II." As Chandragupta's dates¹ show that he reigned from the 56th year of the Gupta Era to the 94th, his reign on Fleet's theory would fall between 376 and 414 A.D., precisely covering the last dates of the Śakas of Western India.

In the face of such a conjunction, seemingly devastating to our theory, our counter-attack may be made in Majumdar's own words² elsewhere about the Śaka Era of 78 A.D.: "... the era is not associated with the Śakas for the first five hundred years or more when it is simply called Varsha." This clearly means that the Western Satraps during their career of more than 300 years dated themselves in an era which they have not specified at all. Historians have simply assumed that .these Śakas have used the so-called Śaka Era of 78 A.D. So far as the Śakas' own dating goes we are not pinned down to this era.There is no objection inherent in their own dating to our carrying them where our chronology would situate Chandragupta II. And then they could be in relation to Samudragupta in the period before 259 B.C. and be included in his "Śaka-Murunda".

Perhaps the idea that the Western Satraps were already almost three hundred years old in India when Changragupta II came to the throne in 259 B.C. seems shockingly to contradict accepted history's teaching:³ "The earliest independent Scythian king of Indo-Scythia seems to have been Maues (Moa, Moga)... (c. 20 B.C.-A.D. 22)..." About him and all who followed him in time it is said:⁴ "There is no doubt that the Śaka occupation of the western part of Northern India was principally the work of the Śakas of eastern Irān ... The nomenclature of the early Śakas in India show an admixture of Scythian, Parthian and Irānian elements. This no doubt suggests that the Śakas, before their entry into India, lived for a considerable period of time in the Irānian Śakastān under Parthian rulers when they must have also received a good deal of admixture of blood." As regards the Śaka settlement in eastern Iran , "some scholars believe that, after the dispersal. of the Śaka tribes from the Oxus valley of the Yueh-chi , their main movement, checked by the Greek kingdom of Kābul , went westwards in the direction of Herāt and thence southward to Seistān, It is further

1.Ibid., pp. 166, 172.

2."The Vikrama Sarhvat and Śakabda", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 157.

3.Sircar, "The Śakas and the Pahlavas", Ibid., pp. 124, 125.

4.Ibid., p. 121.

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pointed out that the tide must have been actually flowing from the time when the Śakas had been displaced by the Yueh-chi from their home beyond the Jaxartes in the second century B.C."¹ How the Śakas who poured into Eastern Irān came thence to India is explained:² "The Parthian emperors who were then in possession of eastern Irān struggled hard with the Scythians, and Phraates II (138-128 B.C.) and Artabanus I (128-123 B.C.) lost their lives in the strife. It was Mithridates II (123-88 B.C.) who finally subdued the Śakas. The tide of Scythian movement, thus checked by the Parthians, ultimately flowed towards the valley of the Sindhu."

No doubt, all this has historical substance at its core; but the history of Śaka entry into India is not exhausted by the fact of an influx from a Parthianized eastern Irān, and that history has several mysterious points. The account of the displacement of the Śakas from beyond the Jaxartes by the Yueh-chi we owe to the Chinese³ and, according to the Chinese, "the Śakas were... successively driven by the Yueh-chi from the valley of the Jaxartes to that of the Oxus, and then to Ki-pin."⁴ Ki-pin is either Kāpisa (Kāffiristān) or Kāshmir or a combination of parts of both.⁵ The earliest Śaka ruler of Ki-pin, by the Chinese chronology, dates to a little before 73 B.C.⁶ But, says Sircar,⁷ "the relations of the Śakas of the Ki-pin country... with India proper as well as with the Śakas of eastern Irān, who occupied wide regions of western and northwestern India, are unknown." May it not be that we have no knowledge of the relations because the Śakas of Ki-pin and those of western and north-western India belonged to widely separated epochs?

Another point of mystery is created by the phrase Śaka- Yavana in Patanjali, who is at present dated to 175 B.C.⁸ As Patanjali speaks of the Śakas as having been, like the Yavanas, absorbed into Indian society, Bhandarkar⁹ notes that by 175 B.C. the Śakas must have established themselves in the north-western portion of

1.Ibid., pp. 120-21.

2.Ibid., p. 121.

3.Ibid., p. 122.

4.Ibid.

5.Ibid.

6.Ibid.

1.Ibid., p. 123.

8.Ibid., pp. 121-22, fn. to p. 121; Bhandarkar, Indian Culture, I, pp. 279-80.

9.Op cit.

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India if not within Āryavarta proper. So neither Maues nor any possible scion of the Ki-pin Śakas could have been the first of their kind in India - that is to say, east of the Indus . Patanjali's Śakas may have been part of the Aryan tribes whose degradation is reported by Indian tradition to have occurred in ancient times or else they may have been sufficiently settled descendants of an early invasion.

Still more of an eye-opener - the most dazzling point of mystery, so to speak - is what Agrawala¹ suggests when he draws attention to the Śaka origin of the Sanskrit word "kantha" for "town". All scholars know that it stems from the Śaka " kand" 'or "kanda" as found in the place-names in the Oxus region most associated with the Śakas in old times, place-names like Samarkand, Khaqand, Chinkand, Tashkent, Panjkand, Yarkand. But Pānini, according to Agrawala, gives a string of kanthā-ending place-names in his own Uśīnara country in the heart of the Punjāb: Chihanākanthā, Madarakanthā, Vitulakanthā, Patatkakanthā, Vaidālikarnakanthā, Kukkutakanthā, Chitkanakanthā, the first one in sūtra VI , 2.125 and the rest in Gana. "How such names could be in India," comments Agrawala, "is an unexplained problem. It points to an event associated with Śaka history even before Pānini , probably an. intrusion which left its relics in place-names long before the Śaka contact with India in the second century B.C." And Agrawala's surmise is supported by J. Przyluski's conclusion on an independent inquiry:² "In India there was a Scythian (Śaka) immigration long before the time of Panini which caused a tribal welter in the Punjāb."

History is full of complexities undreamt-of by historians wedded to a pet theory, in the light of which they want to simplify everything. There is no a priori objection to thinking of a Śaka entry into India before Maues. And in the period preceding the 4th century B.C., we have the preconditions for such an entry.

First, we do not need to restrict Śaka occupation of eastern Iran to the time of the Parthian rule there from Mithridates I (c. 150 B.C.) onward. The inscription of the Achaemenid emperor Darius (522-486 B.C.) at Naksh-i-Rustam in c. 515 B.C. refers to no less than three settlements of the Śakas who were his subjects: the

1.India as Known to Pānini, p. 68 f.

2."Nouveaux Aspects de l'histoire des Scythes" Revue de I'Universitaire de Bruxelles, Vol. 42 (1937), pp. 209, 218-223.

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Śaka Tigrakhauda (Śakas with pointed helmets), Śaka Hauma-varga and Śaka Taradaraya (Śakas over, or beyond, the sea).¹ The first-named are probably also mentioned in Achaemenid records "as those who lived beyond Suguda or Sogdiana (modern Bukhara region) and in the works of Herodotus as the neighbours of the Bactrians."² The second group "has been identified by Thomas with the Scythian settlers of Drangiana in the Helmund valley, which afterwards came to be known as Śakastari (the land of the Śakas; Sanskrit Śakasthana; medieval Sijistān; modern Seistāns)"³ The third kind , inhabitants "of the land beyond the sea are usually believed to have been those who dwelt in the Russian steppes to the north of the Black Sea".⁴

The Helmund valley is eastern Irān, which is almost next door to India. So there were Śakas nearby already in 515 B.C. And it is these Śakas who have to be taken as overflowing towards the valley of the Sindhu and coming to our notice as the Kshaharāta and Kārdamaka families. And there is absolutely nothing in these families' nomenclature that bears any inevitable Parthian stamp forcing us to put them in the Parthian period of eastern Irān. The only problem for us is to fix as precisely as possible their earlier date and see whether it falls before the Naksh-i-Rustam inscription and, if it does, whether they fit any of the three Śaka categories listed there and, if they do fit, what circumstances are responsible for the fitting.

At the very outset we may note that it is unconvincing to equate the Śakas "of the land beyond the sea" to the Scythians of the Russian steppes north of the Black Sea. Herodotus (IV. 1-145) in his detailed narrative of Darius's invasion of Scythia to the north of the Black Sea tells us how foiled and frustrated the Persian army was by the Scythians' tricks and how Darius for the safety of his army had to leave this territory without really conquering it. So these Śakas could not be his subjects and we may legitimately ask if the Kshaharātas and Kārdamakas could be his Śaka Taradarayā. All depends on where these families flourished. Sircar⁵ cogently

1. The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 120.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. "The Śaka Satraps of Western India", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 179, 181. 182, 184.

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infers from the archaeological data available that they ruled not only in Sind but also in Malwā, Gujarāt, Kāthiāwār and western Rājputāna. The inscriptions of the Kārdamaka chief Chashtana have been found at Andhau in Kachchha.² Mankad³ has rightly opined that the Śakas living in Kachchha and Kathiawar "could very appropriately be described as Śakas across the ocean, i.e. the Indian Ocean".

But can Darius be considered the overlord of these Satraps? Herodotus (IV.44) tells of a naval expedition despatched by Darius in 517 B.C. under Scylax of Caryanda to explore the Indus down to the sea, and then sail to Egypt. Herodotus continues: "After these persons 'had sailed round, Darius subdued the Indians and frequented the sea ." Mankad¹ thinks the account is not properly worded here. In correction he cites The Cambridge History of India (I, p. 336) on Scylax's expedition: " .. .it seems much more likely that Darius must previously have won by force of arms a firm hold over the territory traversed from the headwaters of the Indus to the ocean, in order to have been able to carry out such an expedition." Mankad agrees with the Cambridge History that Darius was already in possession of the Indian country up to the mouth of the Indus, i.e. the whole of Sind. What , however, he adds is that the words of Herodotus - "Darius subdued the Indians" - should not merely be considered misplaced. His argument is that, though the entire Indus could not have been explored without previously subduing the Indians all about the region, Darius carried out a further subdual and this conquestis expressed by Herodotus while the other is left implicit. Mankad suggests that the Indian regions Darius conquered after possessing the whole of Sind must have been Kachchha and Kāthiāwār. That Darius did not go to the east of Sind is clear to Mankad from the statement of Herodotus (III. 94-98) that to the east was a desert (the Rājputāna desert). Therefore, the Indian regions Darius subdued should be to the south of Sind: Kachchha and Kāthiāwār - the countries where the Western Śakas had their main seat. So Darius from 517 B.C. could have been their overlord

Mankad believes they actually came to India in the wake of

1.Ibid., p. 183.

2.Op. cit., p. 185.

3.Ibid., pp. 184-85.

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Darius's conquest - that is, the conquest he made of what the inscription at Persepolis (c. 518-515 B.C.) and the Hamadan Gold and Silver Tablet inscription as well as the inscription at Naksh-i-Rustam call Hi(n)du.¹ Darius's earlier records, the Behistun inscription (520-518 B.C.) and the Susa palace inscription, mention Ga(n)dāra but not Hi(n)du as one of his provinces.² Hi(n)du is usually understood to have been the northern Punjāb,³ but the narrative of Herodotus directs us to Sind or at least leads us to include Sind in that term. Perhaps Herzfeld⁴ is right in suggesting that the Punjāb is shown by another province-name of Darius -Sattagydia - which Herzfeld derives from Sapta Sindhava, so that Hi(n)du would be Sind, the region of the lower Indus river.

It is tempting to concur with Mankad and have quite a neat picture. But certain chronological considerations militate against it. First is the starting-point of the era the Western Satraps follow. Its initial date may be roughly guessed by putting together three facts we have marked in Part One of our book. (1) The coins of the Satraps end in the year 310 of their era. (2) The reign of Chandragupta II ends in the 94th year of the Gupta Era. (3) The coins of Chandragupta II replacing those of the Satraps were issued in the 90's of the Gupta Era. Evidently, the Satrapal coins ended a little before the years 90-94 of the Gupta Era. If the founder of the Guptas mounted the throne in 315 B.C., those coins ended a little before 225-221 B.C. Then, since they ended in the year 310 of the era of the Satraps, this era must have started somewhat prior to the period reached by adding 310 to 225-221 B.C.: that is, somewhat prior to 535-531 B.C.

Now, at the time Mankad wrote, the earliest date known of the Kshaharātas was the year 41 of an era and of the Kārdamakas the year 52. With these dates as sole evidence of the Satraps' presence in India we could easily take them to have arrived in India on the heels of Darius's addition of Hi(n)du to his empire. C. 517 B.C. could be their starting-point in the new country. And, if their era commenced a little before 535-531 B.C., the earliest known year -41 - of it could be in India after c, 517 B.C. But not long ago a new inscription of Chashtana was unearthed at Andhau and it is dated

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, P.41.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid.

4.Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Irān, I (Berlin, 1929), p. 99.

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the year 11.¹ That is indeed a far cry from the year 52. With their era definitely preceding 535-531 B.C., the Satraps are thus proved to have been in India before the reign of Darius. They must have arrived during the reign of one of the two predecessors of Darius, either Cambyses (530-522 B.C.) or Cyrus (558-530 B.C.). As to their era, its initial year may have begun in their home-land to celebrate some event or it may have celebrated their advent in the new country.

Here we may be asked: "Is there any corroboration from outside the Kshaharātas and Kārdamakas that a Śaka Era was counted from some such year?" In history, certain dynasties may follow eras to which we cannot give any name from outside sources. Thus some scholars take the Maghas of Kauśāmbī to have followed an unknown local era.² An outside corroboration is unnecessary for the historical reality of any era. But, of course, if we can obtain that corroboration, the historical reality acquires a brighter and clearer look.

Unbelievable though it may seem, we have not only a general corroboration independently of the Kshaharātas and Kārdamakas but also, from an outside source, a precise specification of the initial year of their Śaka Era. We have only to revert to a topic already treated when we refuted the claim that the traditional Indian chronology is internally inconsistent and that the dating of the Kaliyuga and the Bharata War does riot come to us in a single coherent voice. We dealt with a pronouncement of Varāhamihira, the author of the famous astronomical works, Panchasiddhāntikā and Brihatsamhitā.

Varāhamihira is the first Indian astronomer to use the phrase "Śaka Era". He has been understood as alluding to 78 A.D. But an entirely new vision dawns on us when we carefully consider it in the context of the most often quoted sentences in the Brihatsamhitā (XIII, 1-4) which refer to the earlier astronomer Vriddha Garga, the traditional cycle of the Seven Rishis and the "period" of King Yudhishthira. Varāhamihira's Śaka Era proves to be not 78 A.D. but 551 B.C. which is eminently compatible with our

1."Andhau Inscription of Castana, Śaka 11" by Shobhana Gokhale, Journal of Ancient Indian History, Vol. 11, parts 1-2, 1968-69 (University of Calcutta), pp. 104-115.

2.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 175, fn 3.

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calculation that the era of the Kshaharātas and Kārdamakas should be a little before 535-532 B.C.

The result is astonishing and caps, crowns and clinches all we have said about the time of the Western Satraps. What remains is to tie up a few loose ends about them. Here we shall deal in some greater detail with a topic we have treated before in the wake of our treatment of Varāhamihira.

Commencing the era of the Western Satraps in 551 B.C., we can conclude from Chashtana's inscription of the year 11 that by (551-11=) 540 B.C. they were already in India, and we know from this date that their entry into the new land was during the reign of Cyrus - 558-530 B.C. Did it have any connection with his activities?

Frye¹ considers it not unlikely that Cyrus, before "he turned his attention to Lydia, probably in 547 B.C.", was "engaged in expeditions in eastern Irān" in order "to consolidate his power". Xenophon, on the other hand, says in his Cyropaedia (VIII, 6, 20-21) that "Cyrus, after reducing Babylon, 'started on the campaigns in which he is reported to have brought into subjection all the nations from Syria to the Erythraean Sea' (i.e. the Indian Ocean)".² Babylon, as Frye³ tells us, was taken in 539 B.C. Here Xenophon contradicts himself, for it is evidently on a certain statement of his own that Frye bases his supposition of pre-547 B.C. expeditions. Xenophon (VI.2, 1-11) has the account of an embassy sent to Cyrus by an Indian king. "This embassy conveyed a sum of money for which the Persian king had asked, and which ultimately served him in a delicate matter of espionage before the war against Croesus [of Lydia] and the campaigns in Asia Minor."⁴ We must aver that Cyrus made two expeditions to the east, one before the conquest of Lydia and the other after. But Xenophon's chronology for the second is incorrect and Stems from a misunderstanding of Herodotus.

What Herodotus (1.153) says is that Cyrus, after organising Persian rule in Lydia, "started eastward on his march to Ecbatana, taking Croesus [whom he had captured but spared] with him. He

1.The Heritage of Persia, p. 105.

2.A. V. Williams Jackson, 'M he Persian Dominions in Northern India down to the Time of Alexander's Invasion", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 330.

3.Op. cit., p. 106.

4.The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 331.

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did not think the Ionians important enough to constitute a primary objective, for his mind was on Babylon and the Bactrians and the Sacae and the Egyptians, against whom he intended to lead an expedition in person."¹ Herodotus recounts how Cyrus's representative, Harpagus, dealt with the Ionians, and then (1.177) adds: "While Harpagus was turning upside-down the lower, or western part of Asia, Cyrus was engaged with the north and east, bringing into subjection every nation without exception. Most of his minor conquests I will say nothing about, but mention only those of his campaigns which gave him the greatest trouble and are in themselves the most interesting."² Actually Herodotus recounts only two campaigns: that against Babylon and the one against the Śakas of the Massagetai tribes, living eastward of the Caspian Sea. But it is illuminating to note two statements of his.

He (1.190) writes that after conquering Assyria, which means the reducing of Babylon, "Cyrus's next desire was to subdue the Massagetae".³ The campaign against these Śaka was the last in the life of Cyrus , for , according to Herodotus (1.214), he lost his life in it. Thus the reduction of Babylon and the unsuccessful fight with the Śaka east of the Caspian Sea occupied the years 539-530 . B.C. Whatever else Cyrus accomplished was, therefore , done before 539 B.C. And that is precisely the testimony of Herodotus (1.178): "Having subdued the rest of the continent, he turned his attention to Assyria ..."⁴ Herodotus did not deem the pre-Babylon conquests worth telling us about , but he is quite clear that they occurred between the Lydian-Ionian engagement (547 B.C.) and the reduction of Babylon (539 B.C.). The whole eastern campaign in the direction of India - subsequent to the subjugation of Lydiais to be accommodated within these 8 years.

What were his achievements here? The Greek writers on the campaign of Alexander the Great hold that Cyrus never reached India - meaning that he never crossed the Indus.⁵ But nobody denies his drang nach Osten. Pliny refers to Cyrus's conquest of Kapiśa (in the Ghorbund valley); and there is the assertion of

1.The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (The Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1960), pp. 75-76.

2.Ibid., p. 85.

3.Ibid., p. 95.

4.Ibid., p. 85.

5.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 40.

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Arrian (Indica I, 1-3) that the Indians between the rivers Indus and Cophēs (Kābul) "were in ancient times subject to the Assyrians, the Medes, and, finally, to the Persians under Cyrus to whom they paid the tribute he imposed upon them".¹ From the Behistun inscription (c. 520-518 B.C.), the earliest record of Darius the successor of Cyrus's son Cambysses who is credited with no campaign in India's neighbourhood, we may infer that the mention of "Gadāra" (Gandhāra) as one of the provinces of his empire indicates his inheriting this province from Cyrus.² "According to Xenophon (Cyropaedia, I. 1.4), Cyrus 'brought under his rule Bactrians and Indians' and extended his sway up to the Erythraean sea."³

As the Indian Ocean (Erythraean Sea), in Xenophon's further words, "bounded the empire of Cyrus on the east",⁴ we may well surmise that the lower Indus valley no less than more northward areas skirting the Indus were part of his dominion. No doubt, the lower Indus valley was lost not long after, for Darius had to conquer it afresh; yet, while Cyrus's sway lasted, assuredly covering the period up to 539 B.C., since he started the Assyrian war after "having subdued the rest of the continent", the Kshaharātas and Kārdamakas must have passed into Sind and then into Kachchha and set up as Kshatrapas and Mahākshatrapas. These designations they considered equivalent to Rājan, a title which, whether they called themselves Kshatrapa or Mahākshatrapa, they invariably used,⁵ and it really denoted their essential status. For all practical purposes they were independent rulers.

If they came into India with the help of Cyrus, they must have nominally acknowledged him, during his hold on Sind, as their overlord. Similarly, when Darius recovered that province and pushed on southward they must have looked upon themselves as his representatives.⁶ But their practical independence is proved not only by the term Rājan but also by what Sircar further tells us

1.Ibid.

2.Ibid., p. 41.

3.Ibid., p. 39.

4.The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 330.

5.The Age of Imperia Unity, pp. 180, 182.

6.An inscription of Nahapāna (Rapson's Catalogue, pp. lviii, clxxxv) of the period 41-46 (=515-510 B.C. according to our Śaka Era), which refers to a gold currency, must be alluding to the darics of Darius. Nāhapāna's own coins were in silver and copper (The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 180).

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about them. Sircar,¹ who would like to show them as feudatories to the Kushānas, has yet admitted that no record of the chief Kshaharāta figure, Nahapāna, refers to his overlord. Nor is there any evidence of who the overlord of the Kārdamakas was. Writing on Rudradāman, Chastana's grandson, Sircar² notes "the absence of any reference to the Kushānas in the records of his time as well as his claim that he himself assumed the title of Mahākshatrapa".

The two families must both have hailed from the same place, the Helmund valley in eastern Irān, first established themselves in the valley of the lower Indus and then penetrated into Kachchha and Kāthiāwār, reckoning their new history in terms of a common era of 551 B.C. which they had either brought from their homeland or started on entering India. What the era meant and how it happened to be common is perhaps best explained by a hypothesis of Mankad's. Mankad³ writes:

"From the coins and inscriptions of these Ksatrapas two families have been traced (i) Bhūmaka-Nahapāna and (ii) Zāmotika-Castana-Jayadaman-Rudradāman, etc. Some scholars consider these two families as unconnected with one another, but Lévi, Sten Konow and some other scholars have suggested that the names Bhūmaka and Zāmotika [also read as Ysāmotika] are identical and refer to one and the same person. They think that ysam or zam of Ysāmotika or Zāmotika is originally the Irānian-Scythian word meaning earth and that Bhūmaka is its Sanskritised form."

Nahapāna and Chashtana would then be brothers and their common era would mark the rise to power of their father under Cyrus during the Achaemenid emperor's first expedition to eastern Irān and India's borderlands before 547 B.C. We have done enough to show the legitimacy of our new scheme of the Śakas . There are , however, four significant challenges to be met. One concerns the contact of the Kshaharāta Nahapāna and the Kardamaka Rudradāman with the Āndhra-Sātavāhana dynasty.

1."The Śaka Satraps of Western India," The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 181.

2.Ibid.,

3.Purānic Chronology, p. 182.

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12

The Śakas and Gautamīputra Sātakarni

Nāhapāna's last inscriptional year is 46 of the era his family followed.¹ We are brought down to (551-46)505 B.C. in our time scheme. There is no inscription or coin of any Kshaharāta after this date. The Kshaharāta coins which Gautamīputra Sātakarni of the Sātavāhana dynasty restruck, as the Jogalthembi hoard proves, are of Nāhapāna and no other later ruler' - a fact which justifies the claim made for Gautamīputra that he " uprooted.the Kshaharāta dynasty".³ Gautamīputra's fight with the Kshaharāta dynasty is evidenced by hisinscription from Nāsik in his 18th regnal year.' The inscription "records the grant of some land that is stated to have been in possession of Rishabhadatta..."⁵ Rishabhadatta was a Hinduised Śaka chief - originally Ushavadāta - who "was the husband of Dakshamitrā, daughter of Nāhapāna, and was the viceroy in the southern province of his father-in-law's dominions".⁶ "It is interesting that the order regarding the grant was issued from a 'victorious camp of the army that was gaining success', and that the Sātavāhana king is represented as stationed at the time at a place called Banākataka (probably situated on a river called Benā) in the Govardhana (Nasik) district. Apparently Gautamīputra's presence in that region at the head of an army was connected with his campaign against the Kshaharātas, which led to the liberation not only of the Upper Deccan but also of considerable parts of western and central India. :"

The usual inference drawn from all these facts is that "in the latter part of, or shortly after, the Śaka year 46" Nāhapāna 'seems to have been defeated and killed"! and that the defeat and slaughter were effected by Gautarniputra "in or shortly after the eighteenth regnal year of the Sātavāhana king".9 The inference does not follow. Gautamīputra's son Pulumāvi's last inscription is in his 24th year: this does not prevent historians from making him live for 5 more years." Nāhapāna could very well have died after Gautamīputra's 18th regnal year if that year fell later than the

1. The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 180, 182.

2. Ibid., p.80, fn. 1.

3.Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 201.

4.Ibid., p. 201. 8. Ibid., p. 182.

5.Ibid. 9. Ibid., p. 201.

6.Ibid., p. 181. 10. Ibid., p. 204.

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Śaka's inscription of the year 46. There need be no practical coincidence of the two dates.

It may also be that Nāhapāna died in the year 46 without having been defeated and killed by Gautarniputra and that his natural death without any male heir left his son-in-law in charge of his empire. Gautamīputra may have extirpated Rishabhadatta and by destroying the last male member connected with Nāhapāna brought aboutthe end of the Kshaharāta dynasty. It is to be noted that Gautamīputra does not mention Nāhapāna: he mentions only Rishabhadatta.

In the light of the true situation, all that we have to see is whether our Purānic dating brings Gautamīputra into just the right relation needed for his contact with Nāhapāna.

The general consensus of the Purānas makes Gautamīputra the 23rd Āndhra-Sātavāhana and after him the consensus is for 7 more kings, thus running the total to 30.' In the course of ascertaining which Purānic number out of several for the full dynastic period of the Āndhras agreed with the Sapta Rishi calculation about them, we had occasion to count the reign-lengths of these terminal 7 according to Pargiter:² 28+7+3+29+6+10+7==90 years. As we have ended the Āndhras in 390 B.C. after commencing them in 802 B.C., Gautamīputra's reign should close in (390+90==) 480 B.C. With a reign of 24 years, a number given by one version of the Matsya Purāna and accepted by modern scholars, he came to the throne in 504 B.C. Ruling in 504-480 B.C., he must be a contemporary of Nāhapāna whose last inscription was in 505 B.C. Gautamīputra's 18th regnal year would be (504-18==) 486 B.C. Nāhapāna would either be killed in the wake of the ouster of his son-in-law Rishabhadatta in that year or he would have died issueless - of old age before it and Rishabhadatta's overthrow would spell the end of the Kshaharāta dynasty.

We may even bring Gautamīputra's victory over Rishabhadatta closer to Nāhapāna's last inscription by a slight readjustment which modern research demands and the Puranic chronology mostly permits. Pargiter³ admits that his 3 years for the 26th Āndhra (Śivaskandha) is more or less conjectural. Sircar⁴ counts 7

1.Pargiter, The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, pp. 36-7.

2.Ibid., pp. 71-2.

3.Ibid., p. 25, Note 7; p. 71, note 19.

4."The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 205.

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years, which seem to be a variant found in the Purānas themselves. It is possible also to add one year to Vāsishthīputra Pulumāvi who succeeds Gautamīputra. Sircar¹ says that according to the Purānas he."ruled for twenty-eight or twenty-nine years". The Pulumāvi who is the last Āndhra can also have at least 1 more year, since an inscription of his, discovered at Myakadoni in the Bellary District, is dated in his 8th regnal year.² So we can date Gautamīputra to 510-486 B.C., shift the Nāsik epigraph to 492 and reduce by 6 years the time between it and 505 B.C. Either way, our chronology proves itself adequate.

What about the other Śaka family, the Kārdamakas? The third of them, Rudradāman, grandson of Chashtana, is the author of the famous Junāgarh inscription dated the year 72. By our Śaka Era the year resolves into (551-72=) 479 B.C. Rudradāman "claims to have twice defeated Sātakarni, lord of Dakshināpatha, whom he did not destroy as he was a near relative".³ Sircar⁴ opines: "This Sātakarni seems to be no other than Gautamīputra. The closeness of relation between the two rulers is explained by the Kānheri inscription which refers to a Kārdamaka princess as the daughter of Mahākshatrapa Ru(dra) who is generally identified with Rudradāman, and as the wife of Vāsishthīputra Pulumāvi and a son of Gautamīputra." It appears certain that a son of Gautamīputra was Rudradāman's son-in-law, for the Purānas list as Pulumāvi's immediate successor a Sivaśrī Sātakarni who may be identified with a Vāsishthīputra Śivaśrī Sātakarni of coins discovered in the Krishna and Godāvari Districts.⁵ But this son cannot himself be the "near relative" whom Rudradāman defeated yet spared. If he were, he would straight away be called "son-in-law" and not "near relative". Besides, when Rudradāman was Mahākshatrapa, Kānheri -where the inscription speaking of Rudradāman's daughter was found - was under him, as the Junāgarh inscription lists among his dominions Aparānta, in which Kānheri is situated; so during his lifetime there could be no "lord of Dakshināpatha" operating from Aparanta.⁶ Nor can Vāsishthīputra Śivaśrī's brother Pulumāvi

1.Ibid., p. 204.

2.Ibid., p. 206.

3.Ibid., p. 183.

4.Ibid.

5.Ibid., p. 205.

6.Ibid., p. 205.

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be such a "lord" from any other province, for Rudradāman names "Sātakarni" and "the two names, Sātakarni and Pulumāvi, are never known to have been borne by a single individual".¹ Finally, we have independent evidence of Gautamīputra Sātakarni at war with the Kārdamakas: Bhagwanlal Indrajit² found a coin of his that had been executed in the style of Rudradāman's father Jayadaman whom he must have defeated, a style which was never imitated by any other Sātavāhana king. Everything converges upon Gautamīputra, and our dating of the Junagarh inscription - 479 B.C. - is precisely such as to eliminate all other candidates. This date is only 7 years later than the last of Gautamīputra's reign, 486 B.C., and falls in the 7th year of the reign of Pulumāvi who in any case is a non-starter in this question because of his name. The reign of Vasishthīputra Śivaśrī Śātakarni is over two decades still in the future (457-450 B.C.).

We may justly consider the first challenge, which has to do with the Śakas and the Āndhra-Sātavāhanas, to have been fully met.

The Hathigumpha Inscription and a Sātakarni

The next challenge is the Hāthigumphā Inscription of the Chedi king Khāravela, ruler of Kalinga. This inscription is dated either to the early part of the 2nd century B.C. or to the later part of the 1st century B.C. In both cases, it is said to refer to a Sātakarni whom Khāravela defied in his 2nd regnal year. It is also said to mention the Chedi monarch's enlarging in his 5th regnal year a canal excavated by a Nanda rāja and he used the phrase ti-vasa-sata which, as Sircar³ tells us, translators interpret as either 300 or 103 years earlier. About this Nanda rāja we get a further phrase which makes him take away to Magadha, obviously at some time in the past, Jain images from Kalinga, which Khāravela succeeds in recovering.

As the Purānas distinctly mention Mahāpadma Nanda of the pre-Mauryan Nanda dynasty of Magadha as a conqueror of Kalinga, Khāravela's Nanda rāja cannot be anybody except Mahāpadma.

1.Ibid., p. 203. fn. 1.

2.Quoted in Shobhana Gokhale's "Andhau Inscription of Castana, Śaka 11", op.cit., p. 110.

3."The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 214, 215, 100.

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If Khāravela can be dated to the later part of the 1st century B.C., and if Mahāpadma may be put 300 years before, we get this monarch just where modern historians place him - in the 4th century B.C., a little prior to Chandragupta Maurya alias Sandrocottus. And the defied Sātakarni will also be where historians, like Sircar, position the third member of the Sātavāhana line: Sātakarni I. Then our chronology of both the Guptas and the Sātavāhanas will have to be thrown overboard. Along with it will have to go our time-scheme for the Western Śakas.

Actually, the Hāthigumphā Inscription poses no danger to us. If Khāravela's Sātakarni belonged to the Sātavāhanas, we have to reckon with three attacks on the dominions of Sātakarni and consider their plausibility face to face with his position as gathered from other evidence. Not only in the 2nd regnal year but also in the 4th and 10th Khāravela attacked territories which were included in the Sātavāhana empire if that empire existed in his day; and each time it was a different territory. Under these circumstances, which show no setback anywhere for the Chedi king, how could Sātakarni I, the third member of the Sātavāhanas, be described in the Nānāghāt inscription of his wife Nāgārnika as Śūrah, Virah. and Daksināpathapati and as the performer of two Aśwamēdha sacrifices and one Rājasūya? Surely , he could not be the Lord of Dakshināpatha after having so many different parts of his kingdom conquered successively by Kharavela? We must remember that the Purānas accord him a reign of merely 10 years: they would all be covered by Khāravela's three expeditions, leaving him no chance to reassert supremacy over the Deccan. Obviously, Khāravela's Sātakarni was the petty ruler of only a small section of the country west of Kalinga, through which the Chedi king, "without even thinking of Sātakarni" , sent in his 2nd regnal year a large army en route-us the banks of the " Krishnabanā" (the river Krshnā) to threaten the city called Rishika- or Mushikanagara. To equate this negligible Sātakarni with the . powerful Sātavāhana monarch whose sway was far-flung and unabated is illogical.

A Sātakarni other than a Sātavāhana or else belonging to an offshoot of^that family is quite conceivable in Khāravela's time. There is a plethora of Sātakarnis known to history, outside the several among the 30 kings of the great line:¹ Vishnukada Chutu-

1. Ibid., p. 209.

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kulānda Sātakarni, Skanda Sātakarni, Vijaya Sātakarni, Kumbha Sātakarni, Krishna Sātakarni. The first named was about 100 years later than the great line in the current time-scheme. Another Sātakarni, not in the above list but figuring in theTalagunda Stone inscription, is by the present reckoning over 200 years later, "apPārently a king of the Chutu family of Kuntala"¹ - Kuntala which, was in the heart of the Kanarese country, practically the same as the district round modern Banavāsi. In lieu of Sātakarni I, some such Sātakarni has to be thought of for Khāravela.

As for the Nanda rāja, 300 years after whom Khāravela is said to come, nothing compels us in the inscription to think of 300 or even 103 years as "earlier" in connection with a canal excavated by a Nanda rāja. There is no "earlier" in the inscription: it is an interpretative word supplied by the reader. We can very well construe the passage as does Sten Konow:² "And now in the fifth year he has the aqueduct, which was shut (or opened) in the year 103 (during the reign of) the Nanda King, conducted into the town from Tanasuliya Vata." Konow makes 103 years stand not for an interval reaching down to Khāravela after a Nanda but for a period counted in some era and hence for an interval between a Nanda rāja and some event prior to the Chedi king's day. Knowing Khāravela to have been a Jain, Konow surmises the computation to be in what is called the Mahāvira Era; but there is no inevitability in the notion. Why should Khāravela refer to the Mahāvira Era when speaking of a Nanda rāja and, despite his evident fervour for Jainism, not once refer to this era when speaking of the various events in his own life? If he did associate it with the Nandas, he would be acting rather strangely under the circumstances. The most natural thing for us is to ask: "Cannot the computation be in the years of the Nanda dynasty itself?"

The Ceylonese Chronicles assign only 22 years to this dynasty, the Purānas 40 according to some versions and 100 according to others. So the Purānic account no less than the Ceylonese suggests a negative answer. But the relevant account in the case of a Jain king would be the Jain account. V. Smith³ tells us that the Jains extend the duration of the dynasty to 155 years. He adds that the number does still greater violence to the reason than the Purānic

1.Sircar, Select Inscriptions, p. 450.

2.Acta Orientate, Vol. I, pp. 14-26; also Raychaudhuri, op. cit., p. 256, fn. 3.

3.The Early History of India, p. 42.

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100; but the point is neither here nor there. We are concerned with what Khāravela is likely to have accepted. And it seems significant that a Jain king should speak of the year 103 in connection with a Nanda and that the Jain accounts should make room for such a number by assigning 155 years to the dynasty.

If one objects that the Jain book tells us of no Nanda Era, we may reply: "The omission of it is hardly in itself a serious argument. No book mentions the so-called Kalachuri or Chedi Era which our historians take as starting from A.D. 248-49.¹ It is inferred only from inscriptions. We have no inscriptions or coins of the Nanda dynasty to decide whether it had an era or not. If the Hāthigumpha inscription suggests an era of theirs, why should we not believe it? The Nanda dynasty is the earliest known conqueror of Kalinga; so it is quite possible that, even if the Nandas themselves did not establish any official era; the people of Kalinga might remember or be made to remember the years of this dynasty either from the time of its inception or from the time of its sovereignty over their country and keep a running count of its career. But, strictly speaking, no Nanda Era need be involved by Khāravela. It is highly probable that the number 103 applies to the reign of only the first Nanda whom the Purānas call Mahāpadma and consider the conqueror of Kalinga. The Purānas, with a total of 100 years for all the Nandas, give 88 to him: the Jain tradition, with a total of 155, may very well have led Khāravela to give him 103 or more.² The ancient mind was not averse to believing in rare cases of extraordinarily long reigns."

Thus the Hāthigumphā inscription turns out to be no obstacle to our Śaka Era of 551 B.C. and to the link we forge between the Sātavāhanas and the Western Satraps in terms of it.

The "Periplus" and Ptolemy on the Śakas and Sātavāhanas

The third challenge founds itself on certain references in that navigational record, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea generally

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 222.

2.Smith's source for 155 must have been the Apāpāpurikalpa or Pāvāpurikalpa. In the Tttthogoli Painannaya we find 150 years, while Meritunga gives 158 (vide Mankad's Purāhic Chronology, pp. 178, 188, 189). But the differences are of no moment for us, since all the figures go beyond 103 and also make it probable that this number applies to one reign only.

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accepted as written between 70 and 80 A.D. by an Egyptian Greek who was a merchant in active trade and personally made a voyage to India - and some statements in a book by the geographer Ptolemy from Alexandria, the famous Geography written in about 140 A.D. on the basis of information collected by Marinus of Tyre a few years earlier.

The Periplus (Cap. 52) speaks of the country called "Dachina-vades" and mentions "Calliena which in the time of the elder Saraganus became a lawful market-town; but since it came into the possession of Sandares the port is much obstructed, and Greek ships landing there may chance to be taken to Barygaza under guard." Dachinavades has been identified with Dakshinapatha, Calliena with Kalyāna near Thānā, Barygaza with Broach, Saraganus with some Sātakarni and Sandares with Sundara Sātakarni who is placed in the Purānic list a few generations earlier than Gautamīputra Sātakarni. Thus the Āndhra dynasty seems to be precisely in the period where it should be if the Mauryas were established in Alexander's time and followed by the Śungas and Kānvas who preceded the Āndhras.

Ptolemy (VII, i, 63, 82) writes of Ozéné as the capital of Tiastenes and Baithana as that of Siroptolemaios. Ozéné appears to be Ujjayinī and Tiastenes to be Chashtana, the grandfather of Rudradāman, who, according to inscriptions at Andhau, was Mahākshatrapa in the year 52, which, if counted from 78 A.D., the commonly named Śaka Era, yields 130 A.D., just the right time for the Geography's information. Baithana seems to be Pratishthāna and Siroptolemaios to be Śrī Pulumāvi, Gautamīputra's son, who, like other kings, has "Siri" before his name in inscriptions. As modern historians date Gautamīputra's death to about 130 A.D., his son would really be the contemporary of Chastana for a few years and reign in the period upon which the Geography bears. So, once again, should we not discredit the Purānic chronology?

The True Interpretation of the "Periplus" and the "Geography"

The best way to begin our answer is to show that the Periplus, which is understood to prePāre historically the right background for the statements contained in the Geography, is actually a poor preparation.

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The Elder Saraganus (Sātakarni) implies a Younger Saraganus. If Sandares is equated with Sundara Sātakarni, we have in him a Saraganus all right, but the Purānic Sundara is not preceded by any Sātakarni, in relation to whom he can be a Younger Saraganus: he is preceded by Purīndrasena, Mantalaka and Hala, none of them specifically called Sātakarni.¹ The Elder Saraganus is missing. In the eyes of some scholars, "Sandares" is not the right name of his successor: the name is "Sandanes", and this potentate appears to have belonged to a different family from that of the Elder Saraganus. McCrindle,² referring to the information to be gained from the Periplus about the place Ariaké mentioned by Ptolemy, writes: "we learn that Sandanes after having made himself master of Kalliena (now Kalyāna), which had formerly belonged to the house of Saraganus the elder, subjected its trade to the severest restrictions..." So the identifications, highly questionable in themselves, with an earlier and a later ruler of the well-known Āndhra dynasty are rendered more debatable. Though one may not be debarred from imagining that successors of the dynasty might have lingered in parts of Mahārashtra after the main family had become extinct, all talk of Sundara Sātakarni and of a Sātakarni predecessor of his can be considered practically irrelevant.

Besides, the historical information in the Periplus is connected with the name of a powerful king Mambarus whose capital was Min-nagara and whose dominion seems to have comprised Kathiawar, Gujarat and parts of Rājputāna³ but who is utterly an unknown quantity. The identification usually suggested - viz. that his name is a mistake for Nambanus which again is a Greek corruption of the name Nāhapāna - is unwarranted if we accept the modern chronology, according to which Nāhapāna comes in the period 119-125 A.D., nearly fifty years after the time of the Periplus, 70-80 A.D.⁴ However, Sircar⁵ has the impression that Mambarus (with a capital named as the early Scythians used to name their chief city) is a Scythian (Śaka) ruler and then it strikes

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 705-6.

2.Ancient-India as described by Ptolemy (Ed. 1927), p. 40.

3.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 178.

4.Ibid., p. 179.

5.Ibid.

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him as "not improbable that Sandares was the viceroy of Mambarus in Aparānta".

The suggestion of Professor Aiyangar in his Beginnings of South Indian History¹ to take Mambarus as Lambodara (Prākrit Lamoboara), one of the Āndhra kings, appeals to S. N. Majumdar² as philologically sounder than taking him to be Nāhapāna. But historically it is equally unsound. Lambodara, as a glance at the Puranic list³ will tell us, is the 7th Āndhra king , more than a century prior to Sundara Sātakarni who should be contemporaneous with the Periplus if Pulumāvi and Chashtana are contemporaneous with the Geography. Sircar's view is the best , but by removing Sundara Sātakarni from the scene it spoils the background required for the Geography .

In that case the seemingly recognisable figures of the Geography grow obscure. An alternative to the equations Tiastenes-Chashtana and Siroptolemaios-Siri Pulumāvi becomes tenable. Even independently of the failure of the Periplus to be evidential in favour of the present chronology, there can be ground for an alternative. But the ground turns into absolute terra firma now. Arid we may confidently offer the possibility that those two names are not personal but dynastic terms. We may recall the Matsya Purāna (271.39):

Paulomāstu tathāndhrāstu mahāpadmāntare punah:

antaram tac chatānyastau sat-trimsat-tu samā stathā.

"Further, the Pulomas (lit., the Puloma-offspring) and the Āndhras at an interval from Mahāpadrna - that interval was 836 years. " Here the Āndhras and the Pulomas stand for the same dynasty: "Puloma" is clearly a dynastic term just as "Āndhra" is. Conse- : quently, it would be quite reasonable to believe that "Siroptolemaios" is a dynastic label for a late scion of the Puloma alias Āndhra line. A great dynasty does not always fade out the moment its central branch is supplanted by another or has gone extinct. Raychaudhuri⁴ writes : "Petty Maurya kings continued to rule in Western India as well as Magadha long after the extinction

1.p. 116.

2.Notes to McCrindle, op. cit., p. 345.

3.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 706-7.

4.The Political History of Ancient India, p. 240.

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of the Imperial line. King Dhavala of the Maurya dynasty is referred to in the Kanawa inscriptions of A.D. 738... Maurya chiefs of the Konkan and Khandesh are referred to in the early Chalukya and Yādava epigraphs. A Maurya prince of Magadha named Purnavarman is mentioned by Hiuen Tsang." The Āndhra line is itself said by the Brahmānda and the Vāyu Purānas (170-71; 99, 357) to have split into 12 branches after the death of Puloma III, the last of the great Āndhras. We should hardly be surprised if petty Āndhras continuing after him were entitled Pulomas with all the more appropriateness. We have already mentioned later Sātakarnis The continuation of the Āndhra Satavahana family is attested also by Kalha.na's Rāiatarangini (IV , 367; VII, 1283, 173-2), where Sātavāhana-kula is given as the name of the Lohara dynasty of Kashmir.

The Śaka family of the Kārdamakas may also have continued in a series of small chiefs and been known as the Chashtanas because of Chashtana who was the first in his own line to be called rāja: they may have reigned as local potentates in the province of their illustrious ancestor. At least a Jain work, TrailokyaPrajnapati,¹ mentions immediately after Naravāhana who is evidently Nāhapāna, a line of kings continuing for 242 years and entitled Bhachchatthana which is clearly a corrupt variant of Chashtana as a dynastic term. The number of years given by the Jain work to the Chastanas is too small for our need. But the usage we want is there to render credible our idea that in Ptolemy's day some descendant of the Kārdamaka Mahākshatrapa of the Andhau inscriptions of the years 11 and 52 - that is, 540 and 499 B.C. - might be holding power in Ujjayinī while a "Puloma" was in authority at Pratisthāna.

The credibility of our idea increases on remembering the testimony of Pliny, based on Mêgasthenes, regarding a powerful Āndhra king, with a large dominion, in about 300 B.C. We stressed that if the Āndhra dynasty had begun later, there could never have been such a king at this time and we took Pliny's statement as a pointer towards the Āndhra chronology deduced by us from the Purānas as well as from Varāhamihira. Now we may stress another aspect: the statement indicates the continuation of the Purānic "Pulomas and Āndhras" beyond the strict termination of thejnain dynastic line with Siri Pulumāvi III prior to the advent

1. Vide Mankad, Purānic Chronology, p. 198.

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of Sandrocottus. We have no reason to believe that they ceased before the epoch of the Geography and that the "Siroptolemaios" of this book was not a dynastic label.

Possibly we shall be reminded: "Is it not curious that, whatever the lack of support from the Periplus, the Geography should chronologically place Tiastenes and Siroptolemaios just where modern historians place Chashtana and Siri Pulumāvi?

We have to ask in our turn: "Does the Geography really do so? Does it indeed give the state of affairs in its own time: 130-140 A.D.? Have its sources genuine directness and immediacy? We can easily show that the answer cannot be 'Yes'."

S. N. Majumdar¹ has indicated the sources of the Geography: "Ptolemy had to rely (and specially so in the case of India of which he had not the slightest personal observation) upon second-hand information - reports of travellers, navigators, works of previous writers and certain Indian sources." McCrindle,² appreciating the value of Ptolemy's account as an antiquarian record, has yet stated: "Ptolemy's information concerning many parts of the earth, whether owing to their remoteness or the conflicting accounts of travellers regarding them, was imperfect in the extreme." Of course the above remarks of both Majumdar and McCrindle refer primarily to the geographical and not the historical part of the book. But the same imperfection of information that was responsible for the erroneous geography is bound to be responsible for a haziness in whatever history got associated with the geographical treatment.

If modern historians are right, the Ozéné of Tiastenes must be within what is called Indo-Scythia - that is, the part of northwestern India which is taken to have been under Śaka rule.³ But Surendranath Roy⁴ remarks that Larike, in which Ptolemy (Sections 62-63) situates Ozéné, is put by Ptolemy clearly outside of Indo-Scythia. Therefore his Ozéné cannot have been in Śaka hands in the 4th decade of the 2nd century A.D. and must have been the capital of Tiastenes (however we may interpret this name) at some time in the past. If Lariké lay, as B. C. Law⁵ also

1.Ancient India as described by Ptolemy, p. XXI.

2.Ibid., p. 3.

3.S. K. Majumdar, op. cit., p. 369.

4.Proceedings of the Indian Historical Congress, 1939, p. 344.

5.Indian Culture, Vol. III. p. 736.

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states, to the east of Indo-Scythia, why should we think of the family of Chashtana, the Śaka Satraps, to have been flourishing in the period in which modern historians set them? Ptolemy's reference may be to a period before A.D. 78 which they regard as the Śaka Era. The Periplus which belongs to the period of this Śaka Era says (Section 48): "Eastward from Barygaza is a city called Ozéné, formerly the capital where the king resided." Even in the time of the Periplus this city was divested of its old glory. McCrindle¹ opines that the king mentioned may have been the traditional Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī. Or he may have been of the line of "Tiastenes", who had returned to Ozéné after the passing of Vikramāditya but had been dispossessed in the time of the Periplus and of the era of 78 A.D. At any rate, Roy's remark spotlights the probability that "Tiastenes" indicates no Śaka occupation of Ozéné in 130-40 A.D. Ptolemy's Tiastenes and Ozéné do not coincide chronologically with the Chastana and Ujjayinī of modern historians.

Only if we take them as we have done we can bring them into touch with the Śaka Chashtana and his Ujjayinī; for then we are not compelled to fit the latter two into 130-40 A.D. A late scion of our Chashtana of 540-499 B.C. might be master of Ujjayinī at whatever time it would be convenient for us to give him. Trusting the Periplus about Ozéné, we should place him somewhere between 57 B.C., the traditional Vikrama Samvat; and 78 A.D., the conventional Śaka Era. We must understand Ptolemy as alluding to matters not of 130-40 A.D. but of a century or so earlier. And with his Tiastenes his Siroptolemaios will be dislodged from where our historians date their Siri Pulumāvi.

Nor would Ptolemy's allusion here to another epoch than his own be quite an exception in his Geography. If with modern historians we put Khāravela in the last quarter of the 1st century B.C. - as we certainly can - Majumdar's words,² apropos of Ptolemy's mention of the city Pityndra which has been identified with the Pithuda of Khāravela's Hāthigumphā inscription, become significant: "We cannot expect to find Pityndra, for it was destroyed by Khāravela a few centuries before Ptolemy who seems to have mentioned it on the authority of his old materials. (The Indian Antiquary,1926, pp. 145-46)."

1. Op. cit., p. 155.

2. Ibid., p. 387.

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The fate of Ptolemy's history is exactly what we should expect from our interpretation of the historical data supplied by the Periplus. If these data, which are likely to be contemporary with the book's author, cannot support the modern chronology, neither can Ptolemy's history. A new constellation of events must swim into our ken.

Greek on Śaka Coins

Fourth and final is the challenge: "How is it that Śaka Satraps from eastern Irān commenced using in India in the late 6th and early 5th century B.C. a legend in Greek on their coins over and above Kharoshthī and Brāhmī writing? Greek on Indian coins in the time of Cyrus (558-530 B.C.) is an impossibility. Surely, then, these Satraps could not be dating themselves by an era of 551 B.C.?"

We have to note what sort of Greek is here and in what historical context the coins were issued. The Greek is corrupt and "later degenerated into a sort of ornament",¹ "a sort of ornamental fringe around the obverse of the coins".² Evidently the use of Greek characters is rather in an elementary stage and hardly an established habit: contact with Greece is proved to be merely incipient and not at all fraught with crucial meaning. And, if we consider the historical context in which, by our dating in the time of Cyrus the entry of the Western Satraps into India, we put these coins, we shall realise that the coins are most likely to be what they actually are like.

We have already shown that Cyrus's campaigns in the Indian borderlands both preceded and followed his conquest of Lydia in 547 B.C. and certainly preceded his reduction of Babylon in 539 B.C. With Chashtana's first available inscription dated in the year 11 of the era of 551, we should assume Cyrus's rule over the territories which extended from Gandhāra to the Indian Ocean and even involved tribute from an Indian king from east of the Indus, to have taken place between 547 and 541 B.C. The point of importance here is that the second phase of the rule came in the wake of Cyrus's possession of Lydia, a Greek state whose king, whom he defeated but spared, was Croesus. "The Lydians," says

1.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 180.

2.Ibid., p. 184.

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Herodotus (194), "were the first people we know of to use gold and silver coinage..."¹ Frye,² like all scholars, confirms Herodotus: "...the Lydians are generally credited with the introduction of coinage on a state scale." Greek coinage thus was given a gate of entrance into Cyrus's Irān. We may also remember that Croesus had the reputation of being the richest man of his time and, once he was allowed to live, he became a close friend of Cyrus, accompanying him everywhere. Herodotus (1.153) informs us that Cyrus "started eastward on his march to Ecbatana, taking Croesus with him."³ It would seem that Croesus was inseparable from Cyrus, for, even on the last expedition of his life - the one against the Śakas east of the Caspian Sea - Croesus was present and Herodotus (1.207), describing a crucial meeting of Persian officers to decide the strategy of the forthcoming battle, reports "Croesus the Lydian" as saying: "My lord, I have already told you that since God has made me your servant I will do all I can to avert any danger which I may see threatening your house..."⁴ Obviously Croesus went wherever Cyrus took his army and we must expect him to have been with his master when the latter, as Xenophon (Cyropaedia, 1.1,4) writes, "brought under his rule Bactrians and Indians" and extended his sway up to the Erythraean Sea, i.e. the Indian Ocean.⁵ We have also to note from Herodotus (1.153) that Cyrus got all the treasures belonging to Croesus collected and conveyed to himself.⁶ The influence of Croesus and his coinage in some form or other on whoever might be minded to strike coins in Cyrus's time was inevitable. Croesus's coins have no Greek writing but are only stamped on one side with the facing heads of a lion and a bull.⁷ But already stray coins - that is, coins not issued on a state-basis as by Croesus - in Greece had begun to have inscriptions on them. One specimen of them has come down to us: "The coin with a stag (unique, British Museum Collection) is remarkable for the Greek inscription reading: 'I am the badge of Phanes,' and was perhaps struck at Ephesus"⁸ in c. 650 B.C. Among the

1.The Histories, p. 52.

2.The Heritage of Persia, p. 140.

3.The Histories, p. 75.

4.Ibid., p. 97.

5.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 39-40.

6.The Histories, p. 75.

7.The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1973, Vol. 16, p. 763, col. 2.

8.The Encyclopedia Americana (New York, 1966), Vol. 20, p. 545, col. 1.

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treasures of Croesus, there must have been coins of various kinds and, although he never used any writing on his own coinage, coins like the one from Ephesus may have been recommended. It should not be a matter of great wonder to find on the satrapal silver and copper issues what Sircar¹ calls "traces of Greek legend".

Perhaps we may wonder why Cyrus himself was not encouraged to issue coins. Here we are somewhat in the dark.- Darius who came to the Persian throne 8 years after Cyrus is well known for his gold darks and silver shekels (Greek sigloi). Probably he was the first Persian to strike coins, but the intimacy between Cyrus and one so coin-minded as Croesus raises a doubt. Just as Darius introduced a reform in the tax-system (Herodotus, III.89) he may have improved the monetary system and enlarged it rather than innovated it. Besides, do we not hear from Xenophon (Cyro-paedia, VI.2.1-11) that Cyrus received a sum of money as tribute from an Indian king even before he embarked on the conquest of Lydia? It seems best to think that at least after that conquest Cyrus had some sort of coinage whose remnants we have not yet chanced upon.

In any case, we have a historical context in which the Satrapal issues, with all their characteristics, would not be misfits. The tendency to use Greek legends on coins seems no unnatural one among the Satraps of the Achaemenid empire, along with the tendency first exemplified by the Kshaharātas and the Kārdamakas to put their own busts upon their coins. It is to "a number of Persian satraps" who "struck coins in their own names" that "belong a number of the earliest and finest portraits on coins".² And the portrait tendency as well as the tendency towards Greek legends reaches its climax,- as it were, in the coins of Sophytes, over which a controversy once raged. Sophytes was once taken to be a Hinduised Greek from some pre-Alexandrine Greek colony in India or an Indian subordinate of Alexander. Now we know that Sophytes was an Irānian satrap ruling in north-eastern Irān under the Achaemenids and that he became a Governor perhaps in 335 or 340 B.C., asserted his independence at the fall of the Persian empire and got reinstated in his office by Alexander.³ The point

1."The Śaka Satraps of Western India", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 179.

2.The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 16, p. 780, col. 2.

3.Journal of the Numismatic Society of India, Vol. XI, pp. 93-99.

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significant for us in general is his coins: they are Irānian issues in pre-Alexandrine days with the issuer's head on them and a workmanship highly imitative of Greek types and an inscription on them in clear Greek characters. Coins of Śaka Mahākshatrapas, showing in late 6th and early 5th centuries B.C. the issuer's portraits and a rudimentary Greek legend which soon became a mere ornament, could be a very natural beginning of such coinage in Indo-Irānian terms.

Thus the last of the challenges may be taken as met within reasonable limits. And Samudragupta, so far as his relations with foreign powers are involved by the Allāhābād Pillar inscription, can stand in time with the successors of Alexander, just as he can with Devānampiyatissa of Ceylon.

13

We have dealt with quite a number of supposed hurdles to our shifting the era of the Imperial Guptas to 315 B.C., from Fleet's epoch for it: 320 A.D. Against our move two other "hurdles" may be set up.

The Challenge of the Testimony of "Gupta Feudatories"

The first hurdle may be seen thus: "The inscriptions and coins of certain Indian rulers become chronologically intelligible only if the Gupta Era mentioned by them or the unspecified era used by them is assumed to be the epoch of Fleet."

Obviously, this objection is too general. We do not deny the existence of the era of 320 A.D., but to us it is the end of the Imperial Guptas, not their beginning - an era followed by those who rejoiced in their end. The objection would be valid only if in the records of any kings regarded at present as feudatory to the Imperial Guptas and as using their era we could find the mention of an Imperial Gupta as overlord.

The Imperial Guptas and the Later Guptas

None of these kings - the Valabhī monarchs, the Maukharis, the rulers of Kāmarūpa and Orissa - have left us the name of any Imperial Gupta in connection with the Gupta Era used or with

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reference to overlordship.¹ Among the chiefs of Bengal, only one seems to have used the name of some Gupta. Majumdar² writes: "The name of a Gupta ruler is invoked as suzerain in a grant of N. Bengal in A.D. 543. Unfortunately the first part of the name is lost, but it might well have been 'Vishnu' and refer to the last Gupta ruler. We do not know how and when the Guptas lost this last stronghold. A land-grant found in the Gayā District in the very heart of Magadha was issued in A.D. 551-2 by Nandana who is called Kumārāmātya Mahārāja. As there is no reference to any Gupta ruler in this record we may conclude that by A.D. 550 the Guptas had ceased to exercise effective authority over the greater part of Magadha. Nandana's title Kumārāmātya, however, shows that like the Viziers of Oudh in the eighteenth century he still dared not throw off nominal allegiance to the Guptas." Majumdar's inferences are legitimate in the context of his beliefs, but once we conceive of the Gupta Era à la Albērūnī everything changes. Instead of thinking of Vishnugupta of the Imperial line we may think of one of those whom our historians distinguish from that line and designate the Later Guptas, and it is most interesting to see that their history satisfies all demands arising from the facts stated by Majumdar.

Majumdar³ himself has told us this history:

"An inscription found at Aphsad near Gayā⁴ gives the following genealogy of the early kings of this dynasty:

1.Krishna-gupta

2.Harsha-gupta

3.Jlvita-gupta

4.Kumāra-gupta

5.Dāmodara-gupta

6.Mahāsena-gupta

7.Mādhava-gupta

8.Āditya-sena.

Although no royal title is given to any of these, Krishna-gupta is called nrpa (king) and similar epithets are applied to his successors.

1.The Classical Age, pp. 61, 62, 67, 68, 70, 90, 91, 92, 93.

2."The Fall of the Gupta Empire", ibid., p. 44.

3."Northern India after the Break-up of the Gupta Empire", pp. 72-76; "Northern India during A.D. 650-750", pp. 126-28, ibid.

4.Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, III, 200.

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The Aphsad inscription describes in very general and conventional terms the military achievements of the first three kings. The third king is said to have carried his arms to the Himalaya mountains as well as to the sea. But there is nothing to show whether these campaigns were undertaken by the Later Gupta rulers as feudatories on behalf of their suzerains or as independent chiefs...

"More details are available about the next king Kumāra-gupta. He defeated the Maukhari king Iśāna-varman who is described as 'a very moon of kings'... That the success attained by Kumāra-gupta was both great and permanent is proved by the facts recorded in the Aphsad inscription that he had advanced up to Prayāga where he died and that his son Dāmodara-gupta again defeated the Maukharis, though he was probably killed or was seriously wounded in the battle. There is no reason to discredit these claims, particularly as the Maukhari records do not claim any victory over their opponents...

"Mahāsena-gupta, the son of Dāmodara-gupta, carried his victorious arms as far as the Lauhitya or Brāhmaputra, and defeated Susthita-varman, the king of Kamarupa or Assam... Mahāsenāgupta... soon fell on evil days...His two sons Kumāra-gupta and Mādhava-gupta found shelter at the court of king Prabhakara-vardhana of Thaneswar, whose mother Mahāsena-gupta, as the name shows, was probably a sister of king Mahāsenā-gupta. The two young princes become attendants of Rājya-vardhana and Harsha-vardhana, the two sons of Prabhākara-vardhana.... Shortly after the death of Harsha... either Mādhava-gupta or his brother seized the opportunity to make himself master of Magadha... Mādhava-gupta must have been fairly advanced in age when he ascended the throne, and his reign was probably a short one. He was succeeded by his son Āditya-sena... Āditya-sena assumed the imperial title of Mahārājadhirāja. There is hardly any doubt that he ascended the throne in the third quarter of the seventh century A.D. We know the names of three successors of Āditya-sena, viz. Deva-gupta, Vishnu-gupta and Jīvita-gupta. They all continued the imperial titles and were evidently rulers of some power..."

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The true Interpretation of the Grants of North Bengal and Gayā District

Some light is thrown on the chronology of the kings preceding Āditya-sena by the fact noted by Majumdar¹ that Iśāna-varman, whom the fourth Later Gupta Kumāra-gupta defeated, flourished in c. 550-576 A.D. With this fact before us we may very well take the name of the unknown Gupta ruler in the grant of N. Bengal in 543 A.D. to have been of Kumāra-gupta himself or his predecessor Jīvita-gupta. As for the title Kumārāmātya Mahārāja assumed by Nandana in the Gayā-District land-grant of 551-2 A.D., one would be tempted to interpret the first half of the title as not only being a component of a familiar designation of an official appointed by a higher authority - a designation essentially meaning a civil governor - but as also being a covert pointer to Kumāra-gupta whose reign overlapping with the time of Iśāna-varman may quite credibly include the date of the land-grant. Even if it does not, another of the Later Guptas can cover it with his reign: the needed candidate would again be Jīvita-gupta.

The sole proviso for these possibilities is that the Later Guptas be proved to have dominated Magadha and other parts of eastern India at the time. On this matter we may quote Majumdar² again : "Āditya-sena, the grandson of Mahāsena-gupta, ruled in Magadha, and so did all his successors. The Aphsad inscription of Ādityasena gives a continuous account of the whole dynasty from the very beginning up to his reign without indicating in any way that it had migrated from a different place. It may , therefore, be presumed that Magadha was the kingdom over which the dynasty ruled from the beginning." Then Majumdar considers some objections and the answers to them and he remarks: "Thus although it is impossible to come to any definite conclusion it seems very reasonable to regard the Later Guptas as rulers of Gauda and Magadha with suzerainty over Mālava." This means that there is no evidence for the Imperial Guptas rather than the Later Guptas, in the two grants mentioned by Majumdar.

1."Northern India after the Break-up...", The Classical Age, p. 70.

2.Ibid., pp. 75-76.

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The Vākātakas and the Imperial Guptas

The one family that mentions the Imperial Guptas are the Vākātakas, but they do not employ the Gupta Era. What they do is noted by Sircar:¹ "The records of the Vākātaka kings are dated in their regnal year and not in any era." They provide us with no clue to placing them side by side with the Valabhl kings, the kings of Bengal, of Kamarupa and Orissa, and the Maukharis. They can be placed in the same centuries before Christ as the Imperial Guptas.

An attempt is made at times to connect the end of the Vākātakas with rulers who are known to have existed in the 6th century A.D., but no success attends it. We can only swim in conjectures. Sircar² admits: "The actual events leading to the fall of the Vākātakas are unknown. They are not mentioned amongst the powers that stood in the way of the Chālukya occupation of the Deccan in the latter half of the sixth century. The early Chālukya monarchs had to subdue the Nālas of the southern Madhya Pradesh and adjoining regions, the Mauryas of the Konkan and the Kalachuris of northern Māharāshtra and the adjacent countries. It is not impossible that the major part of the dominions of both the Vākātaka houses had passed to the Nalas before the middle of the sixth century..." On one nuance of the same point Sircar³ writes again "Whether the Nālas were responsible for the fall of the Vākātakas of Vatsagulma... cannot be determined in the present state of insufficient knowledge. But the suggestion is not altogether improbable." How can it be anything except "altogether improbable" when we are utterly in the dark, and the only source of light - the Chalukya records - has not even a hint about the Vākātakas?

"Gupta-Feudatories" and the Gupta Era of 320 A.D.

Here we may go on to remark that the idea of Gupta-feudatories using the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. is left unsupported also by the fact that certain monarchs' clear independence of any overlord

1. "The Deccan after the Sātavāhanas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 219. For a couple of instances, see The Classical Age, pp. 181, 185.

2.Deccan in the Gupta Age", The Classical Age, p. 187.

3. lbid, p. 190.

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in the period under consideration is not linked organically with their use or non-use of this era. Thus the Later Guptas, who are taken to be feudatories of the Imperial line and whom we may expect because of their name to continue with the Gupta Era even after independence, have left no inscription dated in it. A dated inscription of one of them, Āditya sena, an independent monarch, gives the number 66 which has been referred by our historians to the Harsha Era of 606 A.D., ¹ about which Majumdar² says: "Although in not a single instance has the era been expressly associated with the name Harsha, its existence has been inferred from certain remarks of Alberuni [Sachau's tr., Vol. II p. 5]." On the other hand, Iśāna-varman Maukhari, whose three predecessors are said to have been Gupta-feudatories and who is considered the first Maukhari to set up an independent kingdom,³ is understood by our historians to be still using the Gupta Era on his coins; and even his two successors Sarva-varrnan and Avantivarman, who are allotted the reign periods c. 576-580 A.D. and 580-600 A.D. respectively, are assumed to have used the same era.⁴ Much more pointed is Śaśānka's Gangem plate of the Gupta Era year 300 (620 A.D.) when no Imperial Gupta is even conceivable on Fleet's epoch. Or , better still, take the rock inscription at Tezpur⁵ of Harja-varman, the Kāmarūpa king, of the Gupta Era year 510, which would take us to 830 A.D. It seems we do not really know why the Gupta Era was dropped or continued: the feudatory-hypothesis does not cover the situation adequately and hence we cannot affirm that the Imperial Guptas were in power after 320 A.D.

Some Debatable Inscriptions

There are just a few inscriptions which may seem to provide ground for the belief that the Imperial Guptas reigned from 320 to at least 569 A.D. One is the Sumandala copper-plate⁶ from Orissa.

1."Northern India during A.D. 650-750", Ibid., p. 127.

2."Harsha-Vardhana and His Time", Ibid., p. 115.

3."Northern India after the Break-up...", Ibid., p. 68.

4.Ibid., p. 70.

5.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, p. 16.

6.Epigraphia Indica, XXVIII, pp. 79-85. The Classical Age, pp. 42 &92; p. 42 has the fn.: "An account of this inscription has been published in the Indian Historical Quarterly XXVI, p. 75."

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Here a chief named Dharmarāja acknowledges the suzerainty of a monarch named Prithvī-vigraha who is stated to have been ruling the Kalinga rāshtra, apparently as a viceroy of the Gupta emperors. The phrase in which the date is indicated runs: "varttamāna-Gupta-rājye varshaśata-dvaye panchāśad-uttara." This has to be translated: "In the year 250 of the current sovereignty of the Guptas." If the inscription is dated according to the Gupta Era of 320 A.D., the Imperial Guptas were ruling in (320+250=) 570 A.D. But there is a detail that goes against 320 A.D., a detail based on three other inscriptions.

The first is another copper-plate inscription, discovered in a locality in Puri District, of the Vigraha dynasty¹ to which Dharma-rāja's suzerain belonged. It mentions a monarch named Loka-vigraha and gives the year 280 and shows the monarch to have been holding sway over both Dakshina-Tosall and Uttara-Tosali in evident independence of Gupta sovereignty.

However, two copper-plate inscriptions² of a Mahārāja named Śambhuyaśas belonging to the Mudgala-gotra and the Māna-family show him to be master of not only Uttara-Tosali in 579 A.D. but also Dakshina-Tosall in 602 A.D. on the very likely assumption that the years 260 and 283 are of the Gupta Era. If the copperplate of Loka-vigraha of the year 280 is also of the Gupta Era of 320 A.D., as it should be in consonance with the belief that the year 250 of Prithvī-vigraha belongs to this era, we have in him and Śambhuyaśas two simultaneous sovereigns each in complete control of the two Tosalis.

The paradox would be resolved on shifting either Loka-vigraha or Śambhuyaśas to an entirely different period. As the former joins up with Prithvī-vigraha and as the inscription mentioning this predecessor of his is the sole one in our possession to speak unequivocally of the era of a contemporary Gupta rājya, Loka-vigraha may be disconnected from the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. This means that Prithvī-vigraha may be referred to another Gupta Era, one which counts the years of actual Imperial Gupta sovereignty and not the years from the end of that sovereignty. Thus Prithvī-vigraha may be considered as existing in the year 250 after 315 B.C. i.e., 65 B.C.

1.Epigraphia Indica, XXVIII, pp. 328ff.

2.Ibid., XXIII, pp. 301f and IX, pp. 287f.

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Sircar's suggestion¹ that Loka-vigraha was misstating things and that his claim is to be deemed "an echo of an earlier period when the Vigrahas were actually ruling over the Gonjan-Puri-Balasore region" appears to be an ad hoc device to get out of a compromising position. The natural conclusion would be that the Sumandala inscription of Dharmarāja does not bring the Imperial Guptas into a period which would give the lie to the Purānic chronology of them.

Even if we accept Sircar's rather arbitrary solution, are we compelled to keep Prithvī-vigraha in relationship to the overlords our historians affirm for him? Cannot we take the Guptas involved to have been the Later ones instead of the Imperial dynasty? Admittedly, there is no explicit pointer to the former's sway over Orissa as over Mālwā and further north, yet it would not be illogical to assume it. In the Aphsad Inscription, as Majumdar² recounts, their "third king is said to have carried his arms to the Himalaya mountains as well as to the sea". The concluding phrase is explained by another which mentions "the Lauhitya" or Brāhmaputra as the limit of his triumph in the seaward direction which "leaves little doubt" that by the time of Mahāsena-gupta "the Later Guptas had... strongly established themselves both in Mālwā as well as in the eastern parts of the Gupta empire".³ We have also Majumdar's reference⁴ to Mahāsena-gupta's success "in bringing under his sway, at least for some time, the extensive dominions from Mālvā to Bengal". He⁵ has also observed that "the Later Guptas came into immediate possession of a large part of the dominions of the Imperial Guptas". Kaliiiga in Orissa could easily have been taken by the Later Guptas in their eastward stride. Of course this is an inference, but, surprisingly enough, Majumdar himself carries us no further than inference about Orissa as part of the Imperial Guptas' kingdom. He⁶ says: "hardly anything is known of the history of Orissa during the Gupta period. It would be interesting to speculate why Samudra-gupta advanced to the eastern coast of the Deccan through the hilly region of Kosala

1."Facts of Early Orissan History", The Journal of Indian History, Vol. XXXIV, Part III, p. 271, Dec. 1956.

2."Northern India after the Break-up...", The Classical Age, p. 72.

3.Ibid., p. 73. 5. Ibid., p. 76.

4.Ibid.6. Ibid., p. 92.

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(Chattisgarh), and avoided the more direct and easier route through West Bengal and Orissa. This would be all the more inexplicable if Orissa formed a part of the empire; and it is difficult to believe that he would have proceeded so far south without subjugating Orissa. In any case no royal dynasty ruling over Orissa during the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. is known to us, and we may well believe that it was included in the territory directly administered by the Gupta emperors." So there is as little or as much logic in assigning Orissa to the Later Guptas as to the Imperial ones. On any hypothesis, the Sumandala inscription does not discredit the Purānic chronology for the latter.

Much less do the inscriptions of the Parivrājaka Mahārāja Hastin and his son Samksobha. Fleet argued for a Gupta Era in them, but, really speaking, what they imply is the existence of the Guptas at the time they were made; the era is not definitely shown to be of the Guptas. Even Fleet,¹ though taking the Gupta Era to be most probably there, had to admit: "There is nothing in the expression tending to give the era the name of Gupta era." The expression stands as follows: Śatpānchaśottare abdaśata Gupta nrpa-rājya bhuktau" - " In the year156 while the Gupta kings were ruling." D. N. Mookerji' has remarked: "If the Gupta era was really intended, the expression could have been written as Guptam: pa rāiya bhuktau śatpānchaśottare abdaśata," All that we can say is that Hastinand his son were contemporaries of.the Guptasand using some era which cannot be identified. If there is no conclusive evidence to place them in the A .D. period, they may be placed in the B.C. period where we have put the Imperial Guptas. If there is, we have to ask whether, while using some unidentified era , they cannot be minor contemporaries of the Later Guptas who were definitely in the A.D. period. Seen all round, their inscriptions do not bear out the non-Puranic chronology for the Imperial line.

The Current Chronology Impossible

On the strength of all that we have studied so far we may go to the extent of asking whether the Imperial Guptas can even possibly be placed after 320 A.D. up to nearly the end of the third quarter of the 6th century. What most prompts the question is the

1.Gupta Inscriptions, p. 95.

2.Bharatiya Vidya, Vol. V, Miscellany, p. 108.

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information already got from Majumdar that the Later Guptas were ruling over Gauda, Magadha and Mālvā from the very beginning of their dynasty. Is it not incompatible with this information to posit the Imperial Guptas as rulers over the same provinces? If Āditya-sena, the 8th of the other line, came to the throne, as said by Majumdar, in the last quarter of the 7th century A.D., and if the 4th ruler, Kumāra-gupta who defeated Isana-varman, was on the throne round about 550 A.D., we have about 125 years for four members of the dynasty. So we may with reason put the first of the Later Guptas, Krishna-gupta, another 125 years earlier, in about 425 A.D. The Later Guptas may not have been uninterrupted masters of Magadha, Gauda and Mālwā: they may have had ups and downs - some of which we know of - but they are shown to have been masters in general of dominions which our historians give to the Imperial Guptas. 414 or 415 A.D. is the accession-date allotted to Chandragupta II's son, Kumāragupta I who reigned for 40 years² and was followed by Skandagupta, Kumāragupta II, Purugupta, Budhagupta, Narasirhhagupta, Kumāragupta III and Vishnugupta, the last two being allotted the years between 535 and 570 A.D.³ We are told that the Later Guptas ruled over a powerful principality within Magadha, but this is a supposition made in order to accommodate the modern version of history. We are quite free, on the facts in our possession, to discard it and give them all Magadha. The Imperial Guptas seem not only unnecessary but out of place in the period ascribed to them.

Any Chronological Connection between the Two Gupta Families?

Perhaps a Parthian shaft will be tried on chronological lines: "Does not the run of the Later Guptas where chronologically you with modern historians place them imply for their Imperial namesakes a close connection with them in time?" An answer negating in no way our new chronology for these namesakes can be framed with the help of modern historians themselves.

Majumdar⁴ writes: "The name or surname Gupta is not abso-

1.The Classical Age, pp. 73-75.

2.Ibid., p. 23.

3.Ibid., p. 43.

4."The Rise of the Guptas", ibid., p. 1,

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lutely unknown in ancient Indian history. Names of officials ending in Gupta and queens of the Gupta clan or family are mentioned in old records, particularly of the Śunga and the Sātavāhana period. But whether all of them were connected with a Pārent Gupta clan or there were different families, without any such connection, who assumed the name Gupta, cannot be determined, though the latter view seems more probable. In any case, the particular Gupta family, ruling in the fourth century A.D., cannot be affiliated to any ancient family or clan." Here the central point driven home directly or indirectly is that there were several separate Gupta families and they could be as far apart in time as the Śungas and the Imperial Guptas who were divided by at least 400 years.

The next point to note comes out in Raychaudhuri's statement:¹ "Petty Gupta dynasties, apPārently connected with the Imperial Line [which ended in about the middle of the sixth century A.D.], ruled in the Kanarese district during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D., and are frequently mentioned in inscriptions." Here we see that in the eyes of modern historians the time-factor need not be crucial for relationship. The converse of the fact that related Guptas could be widely separate in time is that unrelated Guptas could be chronologically near as well as that the placing of a Gupta family in a certain period does not necessarily entail a close link in time with those who happen to be known as Guptas, whether they be related or unrelated.

Finally, were it said that if there is a relationship the chances of time-proximity are liable to be more than if there is none, we should reply in the words again of Majumdar to cut the very ground from under this plea. Writing against the background of the modern chronology he² passes on to us the following comment on the hypothesis "that the Later Guptas were descended from the Imperial Guptas": "The similarity of the name-endings, the common names like Kumāra-gupta and Deva-gupta, and the fact that the Later Guptas came into immediate possession of a large part of the dominions of the Imperial Guptas, no doubt favour such a supposition, and it has even been suggested that Krishna-gupta, the founder of the dynasty, was identical with Govinda-gupta, a son of Chandragupta II, whom we know from a Basārh seal and an

1. The Political History of Ancient India, p. 412.

2. Op. cit., p. 76.

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inscription. But there is not enough evidence in support of this identification. On the other hand, we should remember that not even the slightest hint of any such relationship is given in the records of the Later Guptas. It is difficult to believe that the court-poets of the Later Guptas would have missed such a splendid opportunity of glorifying their patrons if they had the least claim to such an illustrious lineage." No relationship exists to render possible any argument for more chances of time-proximity, even apart from the inherent inconclusiveness of the argument. The Parthian shaft is from every angle totally wide of the mark.

14

The second of the two further "hurdles" to the Purānic chronology of the Imperial Guptas is the famous Mandasor Inscription No. 52 in which a Kumāragupta is said to have been "the ruler of the earth" in Mālava Era 493.¹ On the assumption that the era of the Imperial Guptas is from 320 A.D., the reign of Kumāragupta I can be placed in 415-455 A.D. And on the assumption, common to all modern historians, that the Mālava Era is the same as the era of 57 B.C., associated with the traditional king Vikramāditya of the Mālava province, whose capital was Ujjayinī, the year 493 added tp 57 B.C. gives us 436 A.D. - a date fitting into that reign-period.

The Correct View of the Mālava Era

The whole argument apropos of the Mandasor Inscription is vitiated by the common folly of all modern historians in identifying the Malaya Era with the Vikrama Era. There is no intrinsic reason for the identification. What we are justified in holding is that the Mālava Era is identical with the Krita Era found in various inscriptions but not that either of these eras is identical with the Vikrama Era. The Mandasor Inscription of Naravarman² dated 461 and the Negari inscription of some Vaishyas³ dated 482 speak of both the Mālava and the Krita Eras together. But no epigraphic proof exists for equating them with the Vikrama Era. Nowhere do we see the latter mentioned as another name for either of those

1.A New History..., pp. 181-82.

2.Sircar, Select Inscriptions, p. 377.

3.Bhandarkar, List of Inscriptions of Northern India, No. 5.

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two. The threefold equation is made merely because it is convenient for the modern chronology of the Guptas.

The Correct View of the Mandasor Inscription

In the second place the particular chronological situation posed by the inscription is confused by our historians. What the situation is may be gathered from Majumdar's account,¹ though it identifies the Mālava Era with the Vikrama:

"After referring to Kumāra-gupta as the ruler of the earth, [the inscription] mentions king Viśva-varman and his son Bandhu-varman. While this Bandhu-varman was ruling over Daśapura a temple of the Sun-god was built by the guild of silk-cloth weavers in the Mālava year 493 (=436 A.D.). In course of time, under other kings, part of this temple fell into disrepair and so in the year 529 (=472 A.D.) the same guild repaired the temple.

"The main object of the inscription was thus to record the repair of the temple in 472 A.D., and it must have been composed in or shortly after that date. Under ordinary rules of construction, Kumāra-gupta should be understood to have been the overlord at the time the record was set up i.e., in 472 A.D., but most of the scholars have taken the references to Kumāra-gupta in connection with the original construction of the temple."

Among the dissenters who connect Kumāra-gupta with the time of the repair, Majumdar² names two historians and, in consideration of the fact that Kumāra-gupta I who reigned in 415-455 A.D. by Fleet's epoch is ruled out, he adds that these historians "naturally take this Kumāra-gupta to be Kumāra-gupta II".

Anybody approaching the inscription and its object dispassionately must admit that the Kumāragupta concerned has to be connected with the year of the repair. However, by Fleet's epoch it cannot be Kumāragupta II, for the date of his accession is the year 154 of the Gupta Era,³ which, by Fleet's epoch, comes to (320+154=) 474 A.D., a date wide of the mark for our inscription by 2 years. We have somehow to fall back on the earlier Kumāragupta and the Mālava year 493, yet not at the expense of the ordinary rules of construing the inscription's references to "the

1."The Expansion of the Gupta Empire", A New History..., pp. 181-82.

2.Ibid., p. 182, fn. 1.

3."The Imperial Crisis", The Classical Age, p. 29.

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ruler of the earth". In other words, the same Kumāragupta should be taken as such a ruler both in the Mālava year 493 and in the Mālava year 529, during the careers of several local kings of Dasapura. Surely, this is the correct view of the inscription: both the extremes of the inscription's time-count must have the contemporary sovereign's mention. As only one sovereign is brought in, he must cover the two extremes. But how will Kumāragupta I do it? By Fleet's epoch he can cover the year 493, for, by equating the Mālava Era with the Vikrama we get 436 A.D., which falls within Kumāragupta I's 415-455 A.D. The year 529 escapes him, reducing itself as it does by the Vikrama Era to 472 A.D.

Thus the particular chronological situation posed by the inscription excludes either Kumāragupta on the basis of Fleet and consequently excludes that basis as well as the equation of the Mālava with the Vikrama Era. In the context of the modern historical perspective our inscription hangs in the air.

We have to seek another perspective. And we may start by a look at the Mālavas and their emergence into history.

The Mālavas

The Mālavas, who ultimately settled in Central and Western India after a stay in Rājputāna, are an old people. Their republic is mentioned by the historians of Alexander's invasion of India: they were then at the confluence of the Ravi and the Chenab. They were in the same or another region of the Punjāb as far back as the time of Pānini who names them (IV.2,45) among the "warrior communities" of "the land of rivers" (V. 3, 114). The very word "gana" which occurs several times in the inscriptions of the Mālava Era - Mālavanām ganasthityā, Mālava-gana sthitivasāt, Mālavaganānnāta - serves for Pānini to classify them (III. 3, 86) as republics (Samghas). Even according to the modern dating of Pānini, the Mālava Era could easily be as old as any date upward of 500-400 B.C. which is the lowest limit possible for him in the time-scheme favoured by our historians. This era can certainly antedate by a number of centuries the Vikrama Era and may be taken to mark some important event connected with the great love of liberty and independence which the Mālavas are reported by Alexander's historians¹ to have expressed to the Macedonians.

1. McCrindle, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great, p. 154.

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Perhaps a leader named Krita figures in that event and so lends the Mālava Era its other designation.

The True Starting-point of the Mālava Era

Going by the failure of the modern historical perspective for the Mandasor Inscription, we may resort to the sole alternative left -namely, the one that identifies Sandrocottus with Chandragupta I of the Imperial Guptas instead of Chandragupta Maurya. And here our guiding light should be the realisation that Kumāragupta I, with his reign of 40 years from Gupta Era 95 to 135, should compass the 36 years from Mālava Era 493 to 529 of our inscription.

Counting from 315 B.C. as the accession-date of Chandragupta I, we get for the years 95-135 of Kumāragupta I the reign-period 220-180 B.C. Any of the first 4 years of the 40 years could suit our inscription's 36, but it would be in the fitness of things for us to frame these 36 years in the centre of this reign-period, making them run from 218 to 182 B.C. Then, to reach the starting-point of the Mālava Era, we may count either 493 years backward from 218 B.C. or 529 from 182 B.C. We arrive at 711 B.C.

A Test for the New Starting-point

We may check 711 B.C. for the Mālava Era by scrutinising another Mandasor inscription about which Majumdar¹ writes: "An inscription found at Mandasor² records some constructions by Dattabhata, Commander-in-chief of the forces of king Prabha-kara, in the Mālava Samvat 535 (=467-68 A.D.). The inscription mentions emperor Chandra-gupta II and his son Govinda-gupta, and we are told that Dattabhata's father Vayurakshita was the general (senādhipa) of Govinda-gupta. The date of the record places it during or immediately after the reign of Skanda-gupta and presumably Prabhakara was his governor. But it raises several interesting problems. First, as to the position of Govinda-gupta. He is also known to us from a clay-seal at Vaisall which records the name of 'Mahādevi Śrī Dhurvāsvamini, wife of the Mahārājādhirāja Śrī Chandra-gupta, mother of the Mahārāja Śrī Govinda-

1. "The Expansion of the Gupta Empire", A New History..., p. 180.

2. Bhandarkar's List No. 7.

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gupta'. It has been suggested that Govinda-gupta was the governor of Vaiśālī during his father's reign. In that case it is not very likely that he was alive in the year 467-68 A.D., far less that he held any important position in that year. How are we then to explain the reference to him as a great ruler in the Mandasor record which does not even mention the name of the emperor Skanda-gupta? Dr. Bhandarkar has pointed out that 'as Indra is represented as being suspicious of Govinda-gupta's power, the latter seems to have been a supreme ruler'. This would mean that he had rebelled, either against his brother Kumāra-gupta or the latter's son Skanda-gupta..."

The feature we are concerned with in this story arises from the fact that Dattabhata, while speaking of his father in the past tense, speaks of Govindagupta as if he were alive at the time of the inscription. If that were not so, Majumdar would not weigh the problem whether Govindagupta were "alive in the year 467-68 A.D." Majumdar decides that in this year, "the last-known date of Skanda-gupta",¹ Govindagupta's having been alive "is not very likely". How theft is it that Dattabhata suggests the opposite? The plain answer is: the inscription, dated by the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C., fits ill into the present historical scheme, but, as this scheme has no other era to date by and yet cannot separate Dattabhata from the Imperial Guptas, the scheme itself which puts Kumāragupta and Skandagupta in the 5th century A.D. becomes suspect.

Operating with our Mālava Era of 711 B.C. and our Gupta Era of 315 B.C., we get for the inscription the date: (711-524=) 187 B.C. and find that this year comes 7 years before the end of the reign of Kumāragupta I. The possibility of Govindagupta's being alive at this date is certainly much greater than at the end of Skandagupta's reign about 20 years later in or even after Gupta Era 148 or, in our time-scheme, 167 B.C. The inscription of Dattabhata clearly supports this time-scheme rather than the current chronology vis-à-vis the Mālava Era and confirms the starting-point we have given to the latter.

(Any of the other 3 years - 220, 219, 217 B.C. - of Kumāra-gupta's reign open to us for reaching back to the starting-point would serve as well.)

1. Op. cit., loc. cit.

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Yaśodharman as Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī

711 B.C. for the Mālava Era yields also a most illuminating relation with Mālava history as recorded in two other Mandasor inscriptions, one of which is dated the year 589 of the Mālava Era and both of which refer to the magnificent military triumphs of a king of Mālava named Yaśodharman.

Yaśodharman, the Aulikara chief, seeming originally to belong to a family of feudatories under an unknown overlord, rose into prominence by his crushing victory over the formidable king Mihirakula and became the sovereign of an empire which extended from the Himālayas to the Western Ocean, from the river Brahmaputra to the Mahendra mountain and included "those countries which were not enjoyed (even) by the Gupta lords and which the command of the chiefs of the Hūnas failed to penetrate".¹ Now, if 711 B.C. is the commencement of the Mālava Era, the year 589 brings us to (711-589=) 122 B.C. We are not far from the time of the traditional Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī and the era of 57 B.C. associated with his name. Could we say that the legend of Vikramāditya took its rise from the achievements of Yaśodharman?

R. B. Pandey,² who has no thought of identifying the two figures, is struck by the fact that the empire of Vikramāditya as described in the Brihatkathāmanjari and the Kathāsaritsāgara should be paralleled almost uniquely by that of an actual Mālava king. But how shall we relate Yaśodharman to the era of 57 B.C.?

If we could say that he ruled - though not necessarily always over the same extent of empire - from c. 122 B.C. to the year of this era - having a reign of 65 years, not an impossibility for one who may have risen to power very young - and that the era was established by his subjects at his death in grateful memory of his ridding Mālava of its enemies, there would be little difficulty in conceiving an equation between the real master of Mandasor (ancient Daśapura) and the legendary lord of Ujjayinī, both places neighbouring ones in Mālava.

We may even submit a reason for the switch from Daśapura to Ujjayinī in the popular mind. Modern historians seek to explain several aspects of the Vikramāditya-legend by an appeal to some

1.ibid, p. 203.

2.Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī, p. 127.

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attested facts of Gupta history. Bhandarkar¹ was the first to emphasize the significance of the third Gupta emperor, Chandra-gupta II, in the controversy over Vikramāditya. It is well established that Chandragupta II took the title Vikramāditya as well as extirpated the satrap Śakas of Western India. He is also known to have made Ujjayinī a secondary capital after his victory over the Śakas. If Yaśodharman was the original of the legendary Vikramāditya, his Daśapura could easily become that figure's Ujjayinī under the influence of Chandragupta II Vikramāditya's bringing Ujjayinī into eminence towards the end of his reign as computed by us: 259-221 B.C.

As for Yaśodharman's reign of 65 years, we may refer to Merutuhga's Therāvali,² telling the story of the legendary Vikramāditya. It assigns to him a reign of 60 years, a number close enough to ours. But Merutuhga shares the popular belief which attributes the Vikrama Era to the king himself. Popular belief, however, is not backed by all tradition. As we noted earlier, many Jain works³ consider the era as marking the death of Vikramāditya. Majumdar, who has quoted Merutuhga, quotes another Jain source too where we learn: "135 years after Vikrama having passed, again the Śakas expelled Vikramaputra (Vikrama's son or descendant) and conquered the kingdom."⁴ Here the reference is to the so-called Śaka Era of 78 A.D., 135 years prior to which would be 57 B.C., marking the year of "Vikrama having passed", the year of his death. Again, as we observed before, several inscriptions no less than literary compositions count 57 B.C. as Vikramāditya's death-year.⁵ So it is extremely probable that Vikramāditya was Yaśodharman and that the celebrity he won for destroying the Śakas was due to his triumph over Mihirakula who, as we shall presently argue, must have been a Śaka and not, as commonly supposed, a Hūna.

Yaśodharman is generally taken to be a destroyer of the Hūnas, and he may have come into some conflict with them, but actually

1.The Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1900, p. 398.

2.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 155.

3.The Journal of the University of Nagpur, December 1940, pp. 52-3.

4."The Vikrama Sarhvat and Śakabda", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 155.

5.Epigraphia Indica, XIX, Appendix No. 109; XX, Nos. 383, 455; "Inscriptions of Kathiawad", New Indian Antiquary, June 1940, p. 112; Bhāratiya-Prāchina-Lipi-Mālā, p. 170.

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his great inscription¹ mentions no conquest over the Hūnas and merely says that he penetrated where neither "the Gupta lords" nor "the chiefs of the Hūnas" had gone. It gives prominence solely to his victory over Mihirakula who is nowhere in it called a Hūna and whose defeat is mentioned quite separately from the allusion to the Hūnas. Majumdar² has remarked: "In the Mandasor inscription reference is made both to Mihirakula and to the Hūnas, but in a manner which, far from connecting the two, might even suggest a definite distinction between them." Evidently, if an hypothesis alternative to the current one could be elaborated, the distinguishing attitude of the inscription would be more logically explained.

The Hūnas, the Śakas and Vikramāditya

Before we go further, a small point may be disposed of. We may be told: "Vikramāditya, unlike Yaśodharman, is associated only with the Śakas, never with the Hūnas, and never thought of as in possible conflict with them." The answer is that this is a wrong assertion. The Brihatkathāmanjari,³ in recounting Vikramāditya's conquests, includes the defeat, at his hands, of "the mean Hūnas with barbarous hordes". What is true is not the non-association with the Hūnas but their minor role as compared to that of the Śakas in his life. And this is precisely the truth we are prompted to feel in regard to Yaśodharman by the attitude of the inscription.

Mihirakula: Hūna or Śaka?

What are the facts, if any, outside the inscription to favour the Hūna hypothesis about Mihirakula rather than the alternative we propose? Our historians hold him to be the son of a chief from North India who goes by the name of Toramāna and who is mostly regarded as a Hūna; but, while inclining to agree, Majumdar⁴ honestly tells us: "There is no conclusive evidence to this effect... We possess little definite information about him." Equally little ground do we have to take Mihirakula for a Hūna. None of his

1.Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, III, pp. 147-48.

2.The Imperial Crisis", A New History..., p. 197.

3.X, i, 285-86, quoted by Pandey, op. cit., p. 114.

4."The Disintegration of the Empire", The Classical Age, p. 35.

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inscriptions or Toramāna's, says Majumdar,¹ "calls these kings Huns or contains any reference to that people." Majumdar² further admits there is a question whether Toramāna and Mihirakula were Hūna or Kushāna. His final verdict³ goes still further: "... there is no conclusive evidence as to their nationality."

Since the time this was written some new information has come our way. Two seals have been discovered in Kauśāmbi during the excavation of the monastery at Ghositārāma.⁴ One of them is counter-struck with the letters To Ra Ma Na, the other with the legend Hūna-rāja. The inference is likely to be drawn that the reference in either seal is to the same individual. But would such an inference be binding any more than the one commonly drawn that the mention of Mihirakula as well as of the chiefs of the Hūnas by Yaśodharman in the same inscription proves Mihirakula to be a Hūna chief? Just as Majumdar has pointed out the distinct lack of connection between the two mentions, we may emphasise the fact that neither of the two seals connects "Toramāna" and "Hūna-rāja". From Yaśodharman we know that the chiefs of the Hūnas no less than the Gupta lords were contemporaries of Mihirakula. They would naturally be contemporaries of Toramāna, too. It is therefore quite conceivable that the two Kauśāmbi seals speak of two different kings. Conclusive evidence as to the nationality of Toramāna and his son is still wanting.

Nothing prevents us from looking on them as neither Hūna nor Kushāna but as Śaka. Majumdar⁵ has cited an "inscription found at Kura (Salt Range, the Punjāb), referring to Rājādhirāja Mahārāja Toramāna-Shāhi-Jau(bla)." Inscriptions of Mihirakula found in Utuzgen (central Afghānistān) also bear the titles "Saho Zobol" or "Saho Jabula", which A. D. A. Bivar⁶ suggests to have been the official title of the dynasty. Now, "Shāhi" is not only a Kushāna designation. Majumdar⁷ himself, in his summary of Kālā-kachārya-kathā's story of the Śaka conquest of Ujjayinī, speaks of Kālākachārya going to the west of the Sindhu and bringing from

1."The Imperial Crisis", A New History..., p. 196.

2."Minor States in North India during the Gupta Empire", The Classical Age, p. 59.

3."The Imperial Crisis", A New History..., p. 194.

4.G. R. Sharma, The Excavations at Kauśāmbi (1957-59), pp. 15-16.

5."The Imperial Crisis", A New History..., p. 196.

6.Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1954, pp. 112 ff, 115 ff.

7."The Vikrama Sarhvat and Śakabda", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 155, fn.

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there 96 "Shāhi" chiefs who belonged to "Sagakula". Indeed, if we put Mihirakula's defeat by Yaśodharman in 122 B.C. and accept the view of all historians¹ that Mihirakula was in possession of Kāshmir, he fits accurately into the picture which the well-known Sinologist P. C. Bagchi has drawn of the Śaka influx into India a little earlier as reported by Chinese historians.

Scrutinising the Chinese account regarding the movement of the Śakas (whom, by the way, the Chinese call "Saī"²) from the region of Ta-hia to the region of Ki-pin and disputing the identification of Ki-pin with Kābul-Kapiśa, Bagchi³ says: "The route to Ki-pin which the Śaka king followed is clearly stated. He passed the Hien-tu or the hanging pass while moving towards Ki-pin from the original seat in Ta-hia. This route was recognised by Chavannes and Sir Aurel Stein as the Bolor route through the Yasin valley. This was the route which was usually followed by the ancient travellers from the region of Wakhan to the Indus valley and to Kāshmir and Udyana. If we follow the Chinese account literally we are driven to two conclusions: the first that the Śakas who were turned out of Ta-hia by the Yue-chis entered the Bblor route and second that Ki-pin which they conquered was Kāshmir.... This must have taken place before 128 B.C.... The identification of Ki-pin with Kābul-Kapiśa is an impossibility. Lévi and Chavannes were the first to propose the identification of Ki-pin of the Chinese annals with Kāshmir. They pointed out that in a number of Chinese translations of Buddhist texts the translators use Ki-pin for translating the name Kāshmir up to 581 A.D. Since 581 A.D. the Buddhist translations as well as the Chinese documents use the name Ki-pin to denote Kapiśa and not Kāshmir."

Bagchi then shows that the geographical details given in the Chinese account point to Kāshmir, and he adds: "The name Ki-pin itself seems to suggest the same. In Han pronounciation, the first word Ki was definitely a Ka followed by some consonant which might have been an s. Pin was pronounced almost certainly in early time pir or wir. Hence Ki-pin clearly stood for Ka(a)-pir or Ka(s)-wir. This form of the name is also found in the early Greek records in which Kāshmir is either Caspiri or Kasperia. Ki-pin was thus a correct phonetic transcription of the old name of Kāshmir.

1. The Classical Age, p. 35.

2. The Age of Imperical Unity, p. 122.

3. Presidential Address, The Indian History Congress, 1943, pp. 33-35.

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The Śakas of Ta-hia could not have come to Kāshmir via Seistān and the lower Indus valley - they must have come there by the shorter route, i.e., the Bolor route from Ta-hia."

Thus, if Mihirakula's defeat is put in 122 B.C., there is nothing incongruous in considering this king of Kāshmir a Śaka successor to the Śakas who conquered Kāshmir before 128 B.C.

Against this may be urged the remarks of S. N. Sen¹ about the Chinese pilgrim Sung-yun: "Early in 520 A.D. Sung-yun entered the country then under Mihirakula's rule", and he says also: "The contemporary account of Sung-yun of that ill-mannered ill-favoured barbarian warrior is not without interest." From this we may incline to think that Mihirakula could not have lived in the 2nd century B.C. But the fact is that his contemporaneity with Sung-yun is merely an inference inspired by the current chronology. Sung-yun gives no name to any Hūna king of his own day, and if we accept the current chronology and believe that Sung-yun met a Hūna king, all we can say of Mihirakula is, in Majumdar's words:² "It is not... unlikely that he is the king whom Sung-yun met in Gandhāra." If we do not accept this chronology, nothing obliges us to put Mihirakula in Sung-yun's time. Further, the description Sung-yun gives seems to be of a king whom he places not in his own time but two generations prior to himself,³ so that it cannot in any case be applied to Mihirakula.

The contemporaneity of Sung-yun and Mihirakula or, in general, the current dating of the latter is also not binding on us from the account left by Cosmas, surnamed Indicapleustes (Indian navigator), an Alexandrine Greek, in his Christian Topography, a book probably begun in A.D. 535 but not put in its final form till A.D. 547. Cosmas in one place speaks of a White Hun King named Gollas as the Lord of India and an oppressor of the people. Majumdar⁴ comments: "It is generally believed that king Gollas in the above account refers to Mihirakula whose name is also written as Mihiragul." Here a certain semi-echo in the name can be granted; yet the identification hardly forces itself. The characteristic component of the name is surely "Mihira", not "gul". And

1.India through Chinese Eyes (University of Mādras, 1956), pp. 163-64.

2."The Disintegration of the Empire", The Classical Age, p. 36.

3.S. Beal, Si-yu-ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, Vol. I, Introduction, pp. 99-100.

4.Op. cit., p. 36.

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there is a significant fact which works against the conjectured identification. "It must be noted," observes Majumdar,' "that, whereas the chief seat of Hūna power, according to both Sung-yun and Cosmas, was to the west of the Indus, Mihirakula's capital, according to Hiuen-Tsang, was at Sakāla (Sialkot) and that of Toramāna, according to the Jaina book [Kuvalaya-mālā], on the river Chenāb."

Even the name "Mihirakula" has nothing exclusively Hūna about it. It only means: "Of the family of the Mihiras." "Mihira" is the same as "Mer" or "Meher" and signifies "Sun". The Hūnas were indeed sun-worshippers, but the Śakas too were most certainly the same, as we know from the Purānas² where Śaka-dvīpa is the land of the Maga-dvijas who worship the sun-god. The cult of Shiva which Mihirakula, if we may judge from his coins, seems to have practised is also known to be characteristic of the Śakas: the Mahābhārata (VIII. II, 8-38) regards Śaka-dvīpa as a centre of Shaivism.

What makes it still more probable that Mihirakula was of the Śaka group ("Sagakula", as the Kālakāchārya-kathā names it) that came to India and ruled over Kāshmir a little prior to the time of Vikramāditya and that Yaśodharman who defeated him was this very Vikramāditya is that Toramāna whom our historians look upon as Mihirakula's father is put by Kalhana's history of Kāshmir, Rājatarahginī, just one generation before Vikramāditya. Kalhana separates Mihirakula from Toramāna by a good number of generations and hence far beyond any such date as either our historians or we ourselves give to Yaśodharman. But if, as is almost certain, Toramāna is Mihirakula's father, the Śaka-destroyer and era-inspirer Vikramāditya of Rājatarahginī (III) must belong to the same time as Yaśodharman.

In another way too Kalhana leads to the conclusion that the time of Yaśodharman was the same as Vikramāditya's. Hiuen Tsang³ has described king Bālāditya's fight with Mihirakula. Kalhana (III) suggests the contemporaneity of Bālāditya and Toramāna. He states that Toramāna forbade the currency of the coins with the name "Bāla" within his territory and largely circulated the dīnāra

1."The Imperial Crisis", A New History..., p. 198.

2.Agni, 119-21; Brāhmanda, XX.71; Kurma, 1.48. 36-37.

3.Sen, op. cit., pp. 135-39.

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coined by himself. D. N. Mookerji¹ remarks: "It is evident therefore that Toramāna ruled for a few years contemporaneously with Bālāditya." And hence not only can Toramāna's son Mihirakula be considered a contemporary of Bālāditya but also Bālāditya can be considered a contemporary of Vikramāditya whom Toramāna preceded by a generation. And since Bālāditya and Yaśodharman were contemporaries the time of Vikramāditya must be the same as Yaśodharman's.

Hiuen Tsang, whom we have mentioned above, has himself indicated the time of the defeat of Mihirakula by Bālāditya. Majumdar² informs us: "The most important point to be noted is that Hiuen Tsang places the defeat 'some centuries ago', i.e., several hundred years before c. 633 A.D. when he visited Śakala. This is hardly compatible with the view that the incident referred to by him took place about 530 A.D. As Watters has pointed out, other Chinese authorities also seem to place Mihirakula long before that date." Majumdar's own reaction is: "This naturally casts grave doubts on the credibility of Hiuen Tsang's story about Mihirakula." But Hiuen Tsang's chronology, supported by other Chinese authorities, is just what it should be by our hypothesis.

Hiuen Tsang's Chronology of the Imperial Guptas

And we may draw attention to the fact that the Chinese pilgrim is not only in general agreement with Our criticism of the modern view but also indicates in particular the correctness of our own by his hint on the age of Bālāditya. Sen³ says that in Hiuen Tsang's account Bālāditya was the great-grandson of Sakrāditya who is credited by the pilgrim to have built the earliest monastery of Nālandā shortly after Buddha's death, and in between Sakrāditya and Bālāditya we have the mention of Sakrāditya's son Buddha-gupta and of Buddhagupta's son Tathagatagupta. Many of our historians⁴ identify Hiuen Tsang's Bālāditya with one of the kings of the Gupta dynasty, Narasimhagupta surnamed Bālāditya. For, the pilgrim's Buddhagupta, grandson of Sakrāditya, must be identified with the historical Budhagupta, grandson of Kumāragupta I,

1.Bhāratiya Vidyā, Vol. V, Miscellany, p. 113.

2.Op. cit., pp. 196-97.

3.Op. cit., pp. 135-39, 162.

4.The Classical Age, pp. 37, 43.

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especially as Kumāragupta's title Mahendrāditya includes like Sakrāditya a name of Indra. So we may conclude that Hiuen Tsang believed the Imperial Guptas to have flourished shortly after the Nirvāna of Buddha. Of course, the belief is mistaken: both the Indian time-scheme and the modern can- demonstrate its shortcoming, but the mistake should drive home with some precision Hiuen Tsang's sense of the antiquity of the Guptas.

On Fleet's theory, Narasimhagupta who has to be placed just before the year 215 of the Gupta Era¹ would be just previous to (320+215=) 535 A.D., fairly close to Hiuen Tsang's own time. If Hiuen Tsang had thought his Bālāditya to be pretty close and yet affirmed Sakrāditya to have existed shortly after Buddha's death we should absurdly have had to consider Hiuen Tsang as dating Buddha in the early years of the Christian Era. But he does nothing of the sort although he gives four different views prevalent in his time about the number of years elapsed since Buddha's Nirvāna: (1) 1500 years, (2) 1300 years, (3) 1200 years, (4) 900 years.² As Hiuen Tsang's own time in India is c. 630-643 A.D., none of the views puts Buddha's death after Christ: the latest date is (900-643 A.D.=) 257 B.C. We do not know which of the four dates was favoured by Hiuen Tsang himself, but, judging from even the latest, we can be certain that he did not regard the Guptas as having been near his own day: they were to him sufficiently far to go considerably beyond Fleet's epoch and, by even the latest of his own dates for Buddha's death, they were for him ancient enough to be previous to Christ. By the modern chronology the last Gupta was in c. 569 A.D., just a little over 60 years before the Chinese pilgrim's visit to India.

Clearly, Hiuen Tsang can be taken to support our chronology of the Guptas. And his expression, "some centuries ago", in connection with Mihirakula can be no slip on his part. So far as he is concerned, we are free, if not actually encouraged, to put Narasirhhagupta Bālāditya where our Gupta Era of 315 B.C. would want him - namely, just before (315-215=) 100 B.C., a time which bears out our dating of Yaśodharman, since Yaśodharman fought Mihirakula before Bālāditya did so.³ His inscription says

1.The Classical Age, p. 43.

2.Watters, II, p. 28.

3.A New History..., p. 201, fn. 1, the first 6 and a half lines.

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that Mihirakula's head was never before bent to anybody.¹ Thus, through Bālāditya, Hiuen Tsang allows for Yaśodharman the period of the traditional Vikramāditya and sanctions broadly our identification of the one with the other. He also lends support, by his chronology, to our proposition that Mihirakula was a Śaka king whom Vikramāditya defeated and by whose overthrow he won the title "Śakāri".

Yaśodharman, the Guptas and the Ephthalite Huns

Perhaps a last volley will be fired at us in the following terms: "A very cogent argument, against transposing Yaśodharman to 122 B.C. and identifying him with Vikramāditya as well as against setting the Guptas in the pre-Christian period, is our knowledge that the Hūnas who broke into India were the Ephthalite Huns and that these Hūnas started moving east from the Oxus valley in about the middle of the 5th century A.D. and entered India in the time which on Fleet's Gupta Era would be the reign of Skanda-gupta who himself in the Bhitari Seal Inscription refers to his victory over them. Facing these facts, how can we admit the wholesale chronological revolution you propose?"

Quite a good answer can be given. We have already disconnected Mihirakula and Toramāna from the Ephthalite Huns. There is no evidence, either, that the invaders of India during the reign of Skandagupta were these tribes whose campaigns our historians date in the middle of the 5th century A.D. - unless we take it for granted that Skandagupta lived where Fleet would place him. Nor are the Hūnas of Yaśodharman's inscription distinguished by anything to render them identifiable with the Ephthalites. Indian chronology has nothing to make the Hūnas (Chinese "Hiung-nu" or "Hsung-nu") impossible in India in the pre-Christian period. The Purānas put them no less than the Śakas and Tushāras in just this period. And we know that the Huns were active on the borders of China for over 300 years before Christ. We may cast a glance at their activities.²

In 318 B.C. they were troubling the Chinese empire. In 215 they were again engaged in war and suffered a defeat. Round about 212

1.Ibid.

2.M. Grenet, La Civilisation Chinoise, pp. 51,112, 118, 119,122,128, 132, 145, 156.

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the Emperor Shi Huang-ti was completing the Great Wall to keep them out. Foiled by the Great Wall they might easily have sought other fields of adventure to the south-east. And indeed it was while the Great Wall was being completed that they formed for the first time a nation united and strong, capable of just such an excursion. On our computation Skandagupta's reign in Gupta Era 135-147 falls in 180-168 B.C., precisely the time when the Huns, on a south-eastern war-path, could have struck at India in the way our historians have pictured from the Bhitari Seal inscription. No a priori ground exists against a Hūna invasion in the 2nd century B.C. Whether it actually occurred or not can be judged only according as we date Skandagupta and Yaśodharman. Our chronological revolution stands intact.

Some Chronological Relations

What remains to be done is to take a few other inscriptions into account and fix two chronological relations properly. The first relation is between Toramāna and Mihirakula. The second is between Yaśodharman, who is known to have dealt with Mihirakula, and Bhānugupta who, according to the inscription, must have been in conflict with the same king.

Vainyagupta and Bhānugupta appear to have "ruled at the same time respectively over the western and eastern parts of the empire".¹ The western part would include Eran where several of our inscriptions have been found. The inscription, dated in Gupta Era 191, "records how a feudatory chief named Goparāja accompanied 'the mighty king, the glorious Bhānu-gupta, the bravest man on earth', and fought a famous battle. Goparāja died in this battle..."² Majumdar³ opines that the battle "at Eran was probably fought against Toramāna. For at a date which cannot be long removed... we find Toramāna as the overlord of Eran". The turn of Majumdar's phrase implies that we do not know the date at which Toramāna achieved his overlordship. And such is indeed the fact. Another Eran inscription simply records "the construction of a temple by Dhanyavishnu, after the death of his brother Mātri-vishnu, 'in the first year while the Mahārājadhirāja, the glorious

1.Majumdar, "The Imperial Crisis", A New History..., p. 190.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid.

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Toramāna of great fame, is ruling the earth'.'¹ All we can be sure of is that Toramāna was not master of Eran till the Gupta year 165. For, an earlier inscription of Mātrivishnu and Dhanyavishnu shows Eran still under Budhagupta,² the father of Vainyagupta and Bhānugupta. The last absolutely certain year of Budhagupta is Gupta Era 175.³ Any year between 175 and the year of Bhānu-gupta's battle - 191 - could be Toramāna's "first year".

We may assume that, on Budhagupta's death, when internal dissensions broke out and the empire was split in two, Toramāna swooped down on Eran. We may date his conquest, therefore, in the 175th year of the Gupta Era. This gives us (315-175=) 140 B.C. Toramāna could not have been king of Eran for long. Apart from the inscription in his 1st regnal year there, we have no epigraph of his anywhere except the undated one from the Punjāb where he is called "Toramāna-Shāhi-Jau(bla)". For the length of his Eran-period we must turn to the epigraphs of Mihirakula and Yaśodharman. Majumdar⁴ informs us: "...there is an inscription at Gwalior dated in the 15th regnal year of Mihirakula... The name of the father is mentioned, but only the first two letters 'Tora' can be read, the rest being utterly lost. It has been restored as Toramāna." So we must allot at least 15 years to Mihirakula. Before Yaśodharman defeated him in 122 B.C., he must have reigned for that length of time: that is, from 137 B.C. Then Toramāna, as would seem appropriate, can be alloted no more than 3 years in Eran - from 140 to 137 B.C.

From such a chronological set-up it should be clear that the battle joined by Bhānugupta in the year 191 G.E. - or (315-191=) 124 B.C. - could not have been against Toramāna. It must have been a valiant effort to oust Mihirakula from Mālava. But the effort was in vain. "Unfortunately, the Eran inscription of Goparāja is silent about the result of the battle."⁵ Majumdar⁶ rightly remarks: "...it is somewhat strange that if [Bhānugupta] had really achieved such a great victory it should not have been expressly stated in the record while referring to him." Yaśodharman-Vikramāditya

1.Ibid., p. 191.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid., p. 189, with fn. 1.

4.Ibid., pp. 195-6.

5.Ibid., p. 191.

6.Ibid.

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was destined to do within 2 years what Bhānugupta had failed to accomplish.

Did Skandagupta fight the Hūnas?

We have argued on the assumption that the Hūnas are connected with Skandagupta no less than with Yaśodharman. But in the interests of historical accuracy we should add that no strict proof exists to connect the Hūnas with the Gupta king.

The latter's Junāgarh inscription of the Gupta Era 136-8 refers "to a struggle with hostile kings including those against the Mlech-chhas".¹ Majumdar² comments: "The war with the Mlechchhas probably refers to his fight with the Hūnas which is specifically referred to in the Bhitari Pillar Inscription. But whether the Mlechchhas are the same as Hūnas, or were a different tribe, both the records claim that Skanda-gupta completely defeated these enemies. The verse describing the conflict with the Hūnas, though mutilated, leaves no doubt that it was a severe one." Surely, the mutilation Majumdar speaks of must render some things uncertain. That there was a severe conflict and that Skandagupta scored a victory is quite clear. What is unclear must then be the mention of the Hūnas. And this is precisely the fact.

Fleet originally read the inscription and noted some gaps. In one place his reading suggested that the king of a tribe called the Pushyamitras was the Gupta emperor's adversary. But, while construing the expression "Pushyamitrārhs cha", he observed that the second syllable of the name was damaged.³ H. R. Divakar proposes to read the whole thing as "Yudhyamitrarhs cha",⁴ which makes the expression allude to the hostile chiefs simply as enemies. Fleet's reading the Hūnas is also a conjecture. The word admits of no clear decipherment. Sircar, in some letters⁵ to the present writer, has frankly said so, even though wondering what else could possibly be read. So we have no sound reason to introduce the Hūnas into Skandagupta's reign period of 180-168 B.C. Unknown tribals from the west of the Indus seem to have

1."The Expansion of the Gupta Empire", Ibid., p. 177.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid., p- 174, fn. 2.

4.Ibid.

5.Dated 3.8.1957, 6.9.1957, 17.9.1957.

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irrupted into India - a mixed horde which could be, termed Mlechchha.

Gradually the distinction among them of Śaka and Hūna must have taken place. The first clear mention of the latter is in the Yaśodharman-inscription's phrase: "the chiefs of the Hūnas." But here there is no indication of war between them and Yaśodharman any more than the reference to "the Gupta lords" is to a war with the Gupta family. Although some importance is undoubtedly attached to "the chiefs of the Hūnas" just as to "the Gupta lords", Mihirakula who stands by himself separately from the former as much as from the latter is the real cynosure of the epigraph's attention.

But, of course, whether or not Skandagupta really fought the Hūnas and whether the Bhitari Pillar named them or not makes no odds to our dating of the Imperial Guptas and of Yaśodharman, and to our view of Mihirakula's and Toramāna's nationality.

Who Founded the Era of 78 A.D.?

To round off this section a glance needs to be cast at the problem of the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. and see how it may figure in our new perspective as a sequel to the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C. Here there is a peculiarity seldom brought to notice. Repeatedly it is 78 A.D. and not 57 B.C. that is associated with Vikramāditya and his destruction of the Śakas.

Perhaps the earliest instance of this peculiarity is in Bhattotpala. Commenting on the terms "Śakendrakāla" and "Śakabhupakāla" in Varāhamihira's Brihatsamhitā (VIII. 20 and 21 respectively), he writes that the kings of the Śakas who were Mlechchhas were killed.by Vikramāditya and hence the era was called Śaka and began from the date of the slaughter of the Śaka kings.¹ In reference to Varāhamihira there is a paradox here. The terms Varāhamihira has employed do not have the negative sense Bhattotpala has expressed. They suggest the coming into power of a Śaka king or kings rather than the killing of the kings of the Śakas: the sense is positive and out of accord with the comment. This is enough to make the comment rather eccentric.

1. The Benares edition, p. 193 gives the original Sanskrit. Transliterated by Shrava, op. cit., p. 47, it runs: "Śaka nāma mlechchha-jātayo-rājānaste yasmin-kāle Vikramāditya-devena vyāpaditāh sa kalo loke Śaka iti prasiddhah."

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The impression gains strength from our argument that Varaha-mihira's Śaka-kāla was of 551 B.C. and that his own date was in the first century B.C., contemporaneous with the legendary Vikramāditya himself: so the era of 78 A.D. would be beyond his ken. We have also argued that Bhattotpala subscribes to the ancient Śaka-kāla as well; but his mention of the era of 78 A.D. is not in conflict with his date which, according to us, is around 337 A.D. Only in regard to Varāhamihira the mention would be anomalous.

However, the comment found in Bhattotpala, for all its eccentric look both by being off the point of the older astronomer's terms and by appearing to be chronologically inapplicable, serves to stress that the name of Vikramāditya was at one time associated not with the era of 57 B.C. but with that of 78 A.D., the Śaka-kala which Shrava¹ has shown to have been called "Śaka-nripa-kdlatita-samvatsara or the era at the expiry of the time of the Śaka king or kings". Nor is it a solitary freak. While the inscriptions do not bring in Vikramāditya in connection with such an era, literary allusions confirm the substance of that Bhattopala-eccentricity.

Āmarāja, whom we have quoted for the date of Vikramāditya's death and who was the commentator on Brahmagupta's Khanda-khādiyaka, states in language somewhat reminiscent of this strange gloss that when Śaka kings were killed by Vikramāditya the Śaka Era began.² Then there is the locus classicus of the same information with a new point raised, which sets the Vikrama Era in the right relation vis-à-vis the Śaka Era: the passage from Alberum,³ part of which we culled when discussing his'pronouncement on the Gupta Era:

"The epoch of the era of Śaka or Śakakāla falls 135 years later than that of Vikramāditya. The here-mentioned Śaka tyrannised over their country between the river Sindh and the ocean, after he had made Āryāvarta, in the midst of this realm, his dwelling-place. He interdicted the Hindus from considering and representing themselves as anything but Śakas. Some maintain that he was a Sūdra from the city of Almansūra; others maintain that he was not a Hindu at all, and that he had come to India from the west. The

1.Op. cit., p. 49.

2.The Sanskrit reads: "Śaka-nāma mlechchhā rājānaste yasmin kāla Vikramā-dityena vyāpāditāh sa Śaka-sambandhi kālah Śaka ityuchyate" (Khandakhādyaka, with Vāsanā-Bhāshya by Āmarāja, p. 2, Calcutta Edition, 1925).

3.Op. cit., II. p. 6.

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Hindus had much to surfer from him, till at last they received help from the east, when Vikramāditya marched against him, put him to flight and killed him in the region of Karūr, between Multan and the castle of Lonī. Now this date became famous, as people rejoiced in the news of the death of the tyrant, and was used as the epoch of an era, especially by the astronomers. They honour the conqueror by adding Śri to his name, so as to say Śri Vikramāditya. Since there is a long interval between the era which is called the era of Vikramāditya and the killing of Śaka, we think that Vikramāditya from whom the era has got its name is not identical with that one who killed Śaka, but only a namesake of his."

What is outstanding in Albērūnī's pronouncement is not only that 78 A.D. is linked with the Śaka-killing exploit of Vikramāditya but also that there must be two Vikramādityas, since 57 B.C. which is 135 years earlier is linked too with the same name. The reason for this belief in 1031 AD., Albērūnī's date, seems to be the spectacular short-term rise of Yaśodharman, as we have shown, in the period allotted traditionally to the figure connected with 57 B.C. Since Yaśodharman too tackled a Śaka chief - Mihirakula -of great power, a parallal to the legend of the Vikramāditya of 78 A.D. arose for 57 B.C. - a parallel evidently not yet developed in the time of Alberum. This cause is additional to the one we touched upon earlier: the memory of the Śaka-destruction by Chandragupta II Vikramāditya in the third century B.C. in the traditional-Purānic scheme of chronology. However, the question remains: "Who was the Śaka-destroyer in 78 B.C., bearing the name Vikramāditya?"

We have ruled out Kanishka the Kushāna as the starter of the Śaka-kāla of 78 A.D. For one thing, India always distinguished the Kushāna-Kanishka-line as Tukhara or Tushara from the line of the Śakas. For another, Kanishka's own date of accession, even if found possible to put in the first century A.D. against the argument for the second, need not be fixed exactly at 78 once the Western Śaka satraps whose era was said to have commenced in that year are removed to a far earlier epoch. Actually, as Shrava points out, there would be at any period a verbal difference between their era and Kanishka's inasmuch as they counted from it in terms of varshe in contrast to the use of samvatsara in all the Kushāna inscriptions, copper plates, scrolls, etc.

With Kanishka out of the picture, whom shall we posit as the

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Vikramāditya of Āmarāja, Alberum and the odd text in Bhattot-pala's commentary? As with Yaśodharman the original for the legend of 57 B.C., we may take the name "Vikramāditya" as an attributive or descriptive term and not the personal label for the hero of 78 A.D. Someone performing certain actions came to bear this appellation. The appellation itself derived from a floating memory mainly of Chandragupta II (259-221 B.C. by our chronology) who was styled "Vikramāditya" and subsidiarily from other members of the Gupta line who took the same title: among these the chief was Skandagupta (181-169 B.C.), grandson of Chandragupta II. It is the grandfather who is remembered in the later honorific "Śakri" (Śaka-slayer), but very strikingly the name of the legendary Vikramāditya's father in both the books of about the eleventh century A.D., that celebrate him - the Brihatkathāmanjari and the Kathāsarit-sāgara - is Mahendraditya,¹ the very name borne by Skandagupta Vikramāditya's father Kumāragupta.² The two books are talking about the king whom the era of 57 B.C. celebrates: we have no details about the later warrior beyond what Alberum has to tell.

What we may call a negative detail of some help is the absence of "Ujjayinī" in Albērūnī's account of Vikramāditya. A pointer of positive guidance may be drawn from the Jain tradition about the earlier warrior. In Majumdar's recital³ of the Kālakāchārya-kathā's narrative of the Śaka conquest of Ujjayinī which was ruled by King Gardabhilla, the ravisher of Kālakāchārya's sister and thereby the prompter of the enraged brother to summon the Śakas from beyond the Sindhu to cross Sind and Gujerat and attack Ujjayinī, we read at the end: "After 17 years Vikramāditya, son of Gardabhilla, regained his kingdom by expelling the Śakas. Kālakāchārya, after defeating Gardabhilla and releasing his sister, went to the court of king Sātavāhana at Pratishthāna."

What stands out for our purpose, directing us to the future when after 135 years the Śakas have come again and expelled Vikrama-putra from Ujjayinī, is the Sātavāhana dynasty with Pratisthāna as its capital. The capital is the very one that figures in the Indian legends associated with King Sālivāhana as the founder of the era of 78 A-D. Even the dynasty is indicated in the legends, for the

1. Pandey, op. cit., pp. 15, 21.

2. The Classical Age, p. 23.

3. "The Vikrama Samvat and Śakabda", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 155.

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name "Sālivāhana" of the king of Pratishthāna derives, as is well known,¹ from "Salavahana" which in its turn comes from "Sātavāhana". And we must observe with Shrava² that side by side with the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C. there was already in the Śaka year 981 a connection of the name "Sālivāhana" with 78 A.D. No. 134 among the inscriptions of Northern India collected by D. R. Bhandarkar is found equating this Śaka year with the Vikrama year 1116.³ So we have (78+981=) 1059 A.D. as the first instance to hand of the Sālivāhana legend. Here we are only 28 years later than 1031 A.D., the time of Alberum - and it is a fact hardly remembered that the Arab scientist is not devoid of an inkling of the name in question. Fleet" reports; "...it is perhaps worth noting that Alberum (A.D. 1031), in a very short abstract of the story in the Kathāsaritsāgara, has the curious form Samalvāhana, i.e., in the classical language Salavahana." We may add, again from Fleet,⁵ that the form in the classical language existed not only in legends: it was-also a name in actual use, however rarely, for there is "a copper plate record from the Chamba State, of about the middle of the eleventh century which mentions a King Salavahana as the father of the then reigning King Somavarman" - and there is, too, "a Rohtāsgarh inscription of A.D. 1631, which mentions a Tomara prince Sālivāhana who flourished at Gwalior in or just before that year; see Kielhorn's Northern List, No. 318." The first of these two epigraphs dating to c. 1050 A.D., is contemporary with the earliest reference - 1059 A.D. - we possess in epigraphy to the Śaka-Sālivāhana Era.

Fleet himself denies the reality of any King Sālivāhana as the founder of the Śaka Era. His conclusion⁶ is: "The name of the supposed king Sālivāhana was introduced in connection with the Śaka era in imitation of the association of the name of the supposed King Vikrama with the era of 58." But he⁷ grants the

1.Cf. ibid., p. 197.

2.Op. cit., p. 43.

3.Ibid., fn. 4. The inscription runs: Ekādasa-śata-varshāmga tadadhikam shodaśam cha vikramendresharh, Samvat nava-sata-ekāsaiti-Śaka-gata śālivāhana cha nrpadhisa-sake.

4."Sālivāhana and the Śaka Era", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1916, p. 818, fn. continued from p. 617.

5.Ibid., p. 615, fn. 1.

6.Ibid., p. 820.

7.Ibid., pp. 816, 820.

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source of "Sālivāhana" to be the family name "Sātavāhana" of the kings who had Pratishthana as one of their capitals. His employment of the epithet "supposed" is due to an analogy from the opinion that Kanishka and no such king as Vikramāditya established the era of 57 B.C. All post-Fleet historians have discarded the idea of Kanishka's responsibility for that era. And now that we have shown the implausibility of Kanishka's having established the Śaka-kāla of 78 A.D., we should be entitled not only to look, as we have done, for the real Vikramāditya of 57 B.C. but also for the real Sālivāhana of the Śaka-kāla.

The suggestion from his name and from his capital that he belonged to the Sātavāhana family is increased by an observation of Sircar's:¹ "A tradition recorded in the Dvātrimśat-puttalikā represents Sālivāhana...as of mixed Brāhmana and Naga origin. The association of the Sātavāhana kings with the Nagas and also with foreigners like the Śakas is proved by epigraphic evidence." While strengthening the suggestion we have spoken of, the last part of Sircar's words may seem odd when we are confronting Sālivāhana and the Śakas. But occasional intermarriages between the Śakas and the Sātavāhanas did not cancel their more frequent hostilities. Gautamīputra Sātakarni is known to have extirpated the Kshaharata dynasty of the Śakas.² The fourth ruler - YajnaŚri Sātakarni - after Gautamīputra was no less a Śaka-extirpator. Sircar³ informs us about his silver coins: "this series has the head of the king on the obverse, while the reverse type is a combination of the Ujjain and hill symbols with the rayed sun. It is well known that the king's head and the rayed sun associated with a hill are constant features of the coins of the Śakas of Western India. Yajna was therefore a great king who ousted Scythian [Śaka] rule not only from Aparānta, but probably also from parts of Western India and the Narmadā valley."

With the era of 78 A.D. going a-begging for any identifiable figure in the current historical accounts we may postulate on the authority of various legends that a scion of the Sātavāhana family in the third quarter of the first century after Christ celebrated his destruction of Śaka power by founding an era. The existence of Śaka power and of Sātavāhana kingship in this period is historically

1. "The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 197.

2. Ibid., p. 201.

3. Ibid., pp. 205-06.

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justifiable in the light of our discussion of the Periplus dating tp 70-80 A.D. and of Ptolemy's Geography written in 130-40 A.D. The Periplus implies that Ozéné (Ujjayinī), where its king is said to have formerly resided, had lost its glory. This can mean that the Śakas, whose capital it was, were dispossessed of it in 78 A.D. We saw how the Geography, which is known to have been based on information gathered by Marinus of Tyre some time earlier, proves to be historically no less than geographically quite inaccurate for its own period and how its mention of a Śaka ruler of Ozéné and of a Sātavāhana monarch of Baithana (Pratishthāna) can be taken to refer, against the background of the Periplus's date, to the period between 57 B.C. and 78 A.D. The legendary Sālivāhana, connected with the era of 78 A.D. which marks the expiry of Śaka rule, could very well be a successor of that Sātavāhana monarch.

True, we have no epigraph or coin of this personage nor any cognizance of his relationship with the Kushānas of his period. Before Kanishka's extension of Kushāna sovereignty to further north and south, our exterminator of Śaka rule in Ujjayinī in 78 A.D. did not need to fit into their picture. Epigraphs and coins are not always required for historians to believe in the reality of a king. Sircar¹ has written: "the existence of a line of Sātavāhana kings holding sway over South Kosala (modern Chhattisgarh and the adjoining region) is suggested by a tradition recorded, among others, by the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang. According to this tradition, when Nāgārjunā (c. second century A.D.) lived in a monastery built by Aśoka to the south of the capital city of Dakshina-Kosala, the king of the land was So-to-p'o-ho, i.e., Sātavāhana. That Dakshina Kosala in the.eastern M.P. was once under the Sātavāhana kings is possibly supported by the discovery of a copper coin of king ŚivaŚri Āpīlaka in Chhattisgarth." Stray coins are never a sign of its issuer's presence in a place or of his connection with it, for coins like seals and other portable objects can travel far from their proper provenance. So we have really nothing else than Hiuen Tsang's record of a tradition to go by. If its suggestion is worth noting as a probable pointer to a fact, we should make no bones about the "So-to-po-ho" we have proposed for the Śaka-nripa-kālātīta-samvatsara.

1. "The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 210.

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15

A Look Back at the Yavanas

Our reconstruction of Aśokan history and chronology took as its starting-point a reconsideration of the term "Yona" or "Yavana". We argued that neither in Aśoka's edicts nor in ancient Indian literature could this term have stood for the Greeks. We said further that, in consonance with the Persian word "Yauna" for all Greeks, it denoted them not before the Bactrian Greek kings and the Indo-Greek kings had come with Persian associations. According to us, the new significance was helped by the disappearance of the non-Greek tribe of Yonas who, originally Indian, had become a frontier people Irānianized and converted to the Mazdean religion.

We may add that the last indubitable sign of their presence in an inscription is connected with the pre-Gupta Sātavāhana king, Gautamīputra Sātakarni, who is said by his son to have been Śaka-Yavana-pahlava-nisūdana¹ "the destroyer of the Śakas, the Yavanas and the Pahlavas." What exactly is meant by the destruction of the Śakas we have already seen: "the extirpation of the Ksha-harata dynasty" to which the Śaka chief Nahapāna belonged. Who the Pahlavas were as a tribe in Gautamīputra's time we cannot say. They are not epigraphically heard of again as a tribe; and our historians designate as Pahlavas the Parthian kings who ruled over Eastern Irān from the middle of the 2nd century B.C. and extended their sway to Afghānistān until the middle of the 1st century A.D. The Yavanas do not figure with certainty in any post-Sātavāhana inscription as a distinct people. The Guptas have no mention of them. If we start the Guptas in 315 B.C., the first epigraphic reference after them to a Yavana is in the Besnagar Inscription of the last quarter of the 2nd century B.C., where "Yavana" denotes the Greek Heliodorus who was ambassador from the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas.

Some literary references are there, in late Buddhist books dealing with the time of the Bactrian Greek and Indo-Greek kings as well as in the dynastic sections of the Purānas² where 9 Yavanas along with 18 Śakas, 13 Murundas, 14 Tushāras and other tribal

1. The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 200.

2. Pargiter, The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 455.

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chiefs are said to have ruled, presumbly in the Punjāb and Western India, before the Guptas arrived on the scene. A strange people called Kilakila Yavanas also make their appearance in the same period; the chief of them is declared in the Vishnu Purāna¹ to be Vindhyaśakti who is familiar to students of history² "as a brāhmana belonging to the Vishnuvriddha gotra" and as "the founder of the Vākātaka dynasty", one who cannot by any chance be taken for a Greek. Hence even the slightly earlier "8 Yavanas" need not have been Greeks, either. By the currently held chronology itself they cannot be equated to the Greeks. We are authoritatively told:³ "Prima facie, it appears strange that the Purānas should have described one of these dynasties as Yavana; Greek rule had become extinct long ago. It is however likely that the term may be referring to the tribe Jouan-Jouan of the Chinese writers, who were threatening the Kushāns in c. 320 A.D. and who may have eventually penetrated to the Punjāb during the confusion subsequent to the overthrow of the Kushāns." Our historians here are swimming in surmises. We have no cause to be put out of countenance merely because we are ourselves also uncertain.

In the Brihatsamhitā (XIV, 17-18) Varāhamihira mentions the Yavanas as a tribe at the end of a long list including the Pahlavas and Kambojas. He is commonly dated to the 6th century A.D.; we have placed most of his life in the 1st century B.C., in accordance with his own Śaka Era of 551 B.C. as well as with Indian tradition. But, in any case, we have to note with Cunningham:⁴ "Dr. Kern, in his preface to the 'Brihatsamhita' of Varāhamihira, p. 32, states that Varāha's chapter on Geography is taken almost intact but changed in form from the 'Parāsara-tantra', and must, therefore, be considered as representing the Geography of Parāsara, or perhaps yet more ancient works, and not as the actual map of India in Varāhamihira's time." So we may stick to our view of the Yavana-tribe.

But, if the Yavanas as a tribe did not stand out in our Gupta times and if the Greeks were not yet known as Yavanas, what

1.The Vishnu Purāna: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, translated by H. H. Wilson (London, 1940), p. 477.

2.Sircar, "The Deccan after the Sātavāhanas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 219.

3.A New History..., p. 21.

4.The Ancient Geography of India (1924), p. 6, fn.

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was India's name for the Greeks in the 4th century B.C. when Chandragupta I, as Alexander's contemporary Sandrocottus, became king of Magadha? We may not expect the Greeks to be mentioned as a people by Samudragupta (Amitrachates of the Greeks); for their rule round the Indus-region in the immediate wake of Alexander had already been ended by Sandrocottus, though as a somewhat fluid cultural entity they continued in Arachosia. But it should be different with the records, if any, left by Chandragupta I.

Such a record would also solve an old problem: "How is it that Alexander's campaign and its aftermath have found no allusion in Indian historical writing of the age?" It would provide the needed allusion.

The Meherauli Pillar Inscription of "Chandra"

A number of gold coins stand in the name of Chandragupta I, but there is only one record which may be ascribed to him: the famous Meherauli Iron Pillar Inscription of King "Chandra", engraved in a Brāhmī script similar to that of the Allāhābād Pillar epigraph of Samudragupta.' Of course, palaeographical resemblance is not always a reliable criterion, yet it can be a good additional argument if other circumstances of direct history point in the same direction. Such circumstances seem to be present in this "one record". To be more precise we should say "one considerable record". For, an inscription of "Mahārājādhirāja Śri Chandra" has been discovered on a Jain image at Vaibhara hill,² which, because of the phrase "Mahārājādhirāja Śri Chandragupta" in several Gupta epigraphs, could very well be of the first Imperial Gupta, but it is a brief minor record provoking little heat of dispute. Controversy has long raged over the other, and many scholars choose Chandragupta II for its author; but, as Majumdar³ admits, "there is no convincing proof" of their position. We believe, with some scholars, that a better case can be made for Chandragupta I. The more commonly covered grounds for this case, as well as the answer to the usual objections, we shall set forth later. At the moment we shall touch on a point which

1.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, p. 69.

2.The Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report, 1926, p. 125.

3."The Expansion and Consolidation of the Empire", The Classical Age, p. 20.

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becomes uniquely significant when we identify Chandragupta I with Sandrocottus.

Chandragupta II is not independently known to have had anything to do with military action round about the Indus, whereas Sandrocottus is twice connected by the Greek and Latin historians with such an action, and Chandra of the Meherauli Pillar is credited, in Mookerji's words,¹ with "a running fight across the seven mouths of the Sindhu". The question then would be not of choice between the two Chandraguptas but of choice between the two military actions of Sandrocottus in the Indus-context: "Which of these actions is relevant to Chandra's fight?"

The first is the war of liberation Sandrocottus waged against the prefects of Alexander soon after Alexander's death: the result was the conquest of the Greek satrapies in India. The second is the confrontation in c. 305 between Sandrocottus and one of Alexander's successors, Seleucus Nicator, when he, after subjugating the Bactrians, "passed over into India". In the references to the former exploit there is no direct mention of the Indus. In those to the latter we have it not only by implication in Justin's "passed over into India", which suggests a crossing of the river. We have it also explicitly in the words of Appian (early 2nd century A.D.)² on Seleucus: "He crossed the Indus and waged war on Sandrocottus, king of the Indians who dwelt about it..." That Sandrocottus in turn should cross the Indus in driving out the invader would be quite natural. So, in the mere matter of Indus-crossing, Chandra's "fight" joins up better with Sandrocottus's opposition to Seleucus than with his campaign against Alexander's prefects.

There is, in addition, the fact that as a result of opposing Seleucus Sandrocottus obtained from him the Greek satrapies lying to the west of the Indus. These satrapies would come into the picture logically in relation to a passing over by Sandrocottus outside India. The campaign against the prefects of Alexander resulted only in Sandrocottus's obtaining the Greek satrapies lying on the Indian side of the river. There was no going across. Hence the Indus-adventure of Chandra links up again better with the war between Sandrocottus and Seleucus.

However, we have to face the clear expression: "across the

1.Op. cit., p. 69.

2.Syr., 55: McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian, pp. 9-10.

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seven mouths of the Sindhu." Can we conceive Seleucus to have attacked India in the locality of the Indus's seven mouths rather than in the north-west where earlier Alexander had crossed the river? No scholar so far has thought of anything except the northwest. But apropos of Sandrocottus's war with the prefects we may remember that the treaty of Triparadisus in 321 B.C. among Alexander's generals refers to the removal of Peithon to the provinces between the Indus and the Paropanisus from the province of which he was the governor: we know that he was the governor of Sind. Do we not have here a hint that Sind, including the seven mouths of the Indus, was the province first lost by the prefects?

Peithon certainly brings in a coincidence which appears meaningful. But what the terms of the Triparadisus treaty throw into relief is, as Mookerji¹ has said, that no part of India to the east of the Indus was included as a part of Alexander's empire. We are still not carried beyond the river's mouth westward. And there is no sign that Peithon was forcibly driven out: he is as if removed by Greek orders in view of events taking place on the Indus's eastern side. Thus the entry of Sind into the picture is meaningful more in appearance than in reality: there is no true connection with Chandra's battle.

On the other hand, while we are not told that Seleucus invaded India at the Indus's mouths we are not told either that he did so in the north-west. We simply do not know from our sources where exactly he crossed the Indus. And, if we may judge from the territories he ceded to Sandrocottus at the end of the war, we get a vision of the whole of the Greek possessions to the Indus's west as the area where the war may have been waged. For, as J. C. Powell-Price² informs us: "The Indus valley and Afghānistān and Balūchistān were given up..." Mookerji³ also tells us that Sandrocottus was ceded by Seleucus "the Satrapies of Arachosia (Kandahār) and the Paropanisadae (Kābul), together with portions of Aria (Herāt) and Gedrosia (Balūchistān)". In consequence, to quote Mookerji⁴ once more, Sandrocottus "extended his empire beyond the frontiers of India up to the borders of Persia". In other

1.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 50.

2.A History of India (Thomas Nelson, London, 1955), p. 38.

3.Op. cit., pp. 59-60.

4. The Gupta Empire, p. 69.

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words, the war with Seleucus won for him the territories lying westward along the entire length of the Indus, from Kābul down to the mouths. It is immediately to the west of these mouths that the "portions of... Gedrosia (Balūchistān)", ceded to Sandrocottus, lie. Seleucus may have carried out his penetration there just as well as further up the river.

The Indus-delta was no terra incognita to Seleucus. Alexander had already explored it and, before sending Nearchus on his voyage from there to the Tigris in the Persian Gulf, he had himself touched the sea. We read in Arrian's Anabasis (Vl.xix):¹ "Then having gone beyond the mouths of the river Indus, he sailed out into the open sea..." Seleucus may have found all the rest of the Indus well guarded on the other side and so proceeded southward, watching for a weak spot. He may have remembered what had happened when Alexander had begun "to sail down the right branch of the river" towards the mouth of it. Arrian (IV.xviii) records: "The Indians of that region had fled..." Judging the delta to be the required weak spot, Seleucus may have attempted his invasion over it, partly succeeded but finally got driven off by the resolution and skill and resources of a military expert who was more than his match.

We may reconstruct the sequel as follows. Seleucus was pushed back northward along the way he had come. Then he made overtures of peace. We hear of their results from both Justin and Appian: a friendly exchange took place between the erstwhile enemies. Perhaps the Greek was called over to negotiate where Chandra, to celebrate the various victories rounded off by this last one, set up - as Mookerji² says - "his pillar in honour of Lord Vishnu on the hill known as Vishnupada" - not far from the Kurukshetra and the Beās.³

With the road open to us to opt for the Indus-delta, we may scrutinise the remainder of the inscription for helpful pointers in our direction. If the epigraph records the triumphs of Sandrocottus, any reference to the conflict with Alexander's prefects should come first in the series of achievements; for, as we have seen, he became king originally as a result of it. But actually the Indus-battle stands last in the series. The very first is, in Mookerji's

1.McCrindle's translation.

2.Op. cit., p. 69.

3.Sircar, Select Inscriptions, p. 277. n.5.

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phrases:¹ "Conquest of the Vanga countries (Vangeshu) by his battling alone against a confederacy of enemies united against him (Śatrun-sametyagatān)." Vanga is central Bengal: its conquest takes us to eastern India. According to our reading of Justin's passage on Sandrocottus's military deeds, there would have been no action there at the start of his career. If the Vangā-war preceded the one on the Indus, the latter could not be the campaign against the Macedonian prefects.

Moreover, to date the inscription to so early a period in the life of Sandrocottus must raise the query: "What about his accession to the throne of inland India?" Whether the conquest of Vanga preceded or succeeded the action in the Indus-region against those prefects, it could not have come before he held the sovereignty of inland India. Where in the inscription is any allusion to his achievement of it? Prominent in inland India at the time of Alexander's march up to the Hyphasis (Beās) was a king named Xandrames. Surely, Sandrocottus took over the lands belonging to Xandrames not long after - or else, if we are mistaken, a little before - the struggle with the prefects. How is it that an inscription made at so early a point in Sandrocottus's life has not the slightest hint of this take-over?

Both by omission and commission the Meherauli Pillar puts itself in a time to which the early events of the life of Sandrocottus are somewhat remote. C. 305 and some years preceding it are here the theme. Most probably the early events figure in another inscription which remains to be found. And, in the theme developed in the present epigraph, the focus of attention for us is the military encounter we have traced between Sandrocottus and Seleucus. But the moment we look at the terms in which this encounter is described we have already to our hand the name we are seeking for the Greeks in the 4th century B.C. For, the full phrase concerned goes: "Conquest of the Vāhlīkas in a running fight across the seven mouths of the Sindhu."

What were the Greeks called in the 4th Century B. C. ?

Vāhlīkas or Bāhlīkas - that is what we may take Sandrocottus alias Chandragupta I to be calling the Greeks with whom he came into contact in c. 305 B.C. It must have been the current designation

1. Op. cit., p. 69.

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ever since Alexander invaded India. But we still have to ask whether there is a more likely identification of them for the Meherauli Pillar.

S. N. Majumdar¹ writes in a note to Ptolemy's Geography: "Reference in Sanskrit Literature clearly indicates the Bāhlīkas, or rather the two tribes of them, as dwelling in the Punjāb. One of these tribes was closely connected with the Mādras, for Śalya, a prince of Mādra (with its capital at modern Sialkot), is also called lord of the Vāhlīkas (Mahābhārata, Ādi CXIII, 4425-40; LXVII, 2642) and his sister Mādri is called Vāhlīki also (Adi, CXXV, 4886). The other people of this name appear to have been connected with the Daradas (Dards of Dardistān) (Bhisma, CXVII, 5484, etc.). Thus one Bāhlīka was situated in the plains of the Punjāb, alongside the Mādradeśa, i.e. between the rivers Chenāb and Sutlej; and the other among the lower slopes of the Himalayas, very possibly between the Chenāb and Beās."

The people living round Balkh or Bactria are also known as the Vāhlīkas. Then there is the dynasty of three Bāhlīka rulers placed by the Purānas in the region of Mahisamati on the Narmada.

The last can be rejected immediately since these rulers are to the east of the Indus and do not involve its crossing. The people living round Balkh are to be rejected too, because, as Allan² correctly points out, the inscription cannot mean that "Chandra's arms penetrated to Balkh, the route to which would not be across the mouths of the Indus".

An attempt is sometimes made to get round this difficulty by saying³ that Chandra who mentions other things besides these mouths is merely referring to the four limits of the territory traversed by him in the course of his digvijaya: the eastern limit is Vanga, the southern the southern sea, the western the seven mouths of the Indus and the northern the Vāhlīkas. In support of this it is sought to be proved⁴ from numerous inscriptions and literary works that Chandra's claim of having conquered the chakravartikshetra is the conventional claim of a Digvijain and would call for just these four limits. But all such arguments

1.Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy, p. 395.

2.Catalogue of Coins, the Gupta Dynasty, etc., Introduction, p. xxxvi.

3.Sircar, Select inscriptions, p. 276, n. 4.

4.The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Letters, Vol. V, pp. 407-15.

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completely overlook the syntax of the sentence concerned. Even Majumdar,¹ who is for Balkh, is forced to translate the sentence thus: "he defeated a conspiracy of hostile chiefs in Vanga and, having crossed in warfare the seven mouths of the Sindhu, conquered the Vāhlīkas."

First of all, a particular incident or a specific complex of circumstances is mentioned in regard to Vanga: there is no generality as one may expect if a mere eastern limit were intended. Secondly, the crossing of the Sindhu's seven mouths is organically related to the conquering of the Vāhlīkas, as if the latter could never have been defeated without the unique circumstances of a running fight across those mouths. Even if a limit is indicated, it is a single one, the western - and, with the southern sea taken as another limit, we shall have the northern limit missing. We may also observe that Majumdar does not bring in the southern sea as part of the detailed statement. The southern sea's mention has the air of a generality and it differs palpably from the manner of the earlier declaration. Mookerji² recounts it as: "Spread of his fame, as a conqueror, up to the southern seas." It is indeed difficult to think in terms of a Digvijain's four limits. The interpretation "Balkh" is quite gratuitous.

Even the Bāhlīkas of north-western India, the two people in the upper Indus-region, cannot serve: they too do not need to be reached across the mouths of the river. The eneiny is undoubtedly to the west of the Indus and must be one with whom the fight had to begin at the mouths and get essentially decided there, even if a pursuit had to be maintained subsequently along the whole west bank and officially terminated when the celebrating Pillar was mounted on the Vishnupada hill.

An unconventional meaning has to be found for the term "Vāhlīkas". Of course, the possibility is there that, as S. M. Majumdar³ conjectures, the indigenous Vāhlīkas themselves migrated southwards near to the mouths of the Indus. But nowhere in Sanskrit literature do we have the slightest sign of such a migration. Many tribes are put in various divisions of India or various parts of the same division. Thus⁴ not only are the Kiratas placed in the east as well as in the north-west: the Trigartas too are

1."The Expansion and Consolidation of the Empire," The Classical Age, p. 20.

2.Op. cit., p. 69. 3. Op. cit., p. 395.

4. Barua, Aśoka and His Inscriptions, Part I. pp. 101-2.

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placed by the Mahābhārata in the upper no less than in the lower part of the north. The Śūdras and the Ramathas (known also as the Ramanas) whom the Epic locates in the southern part are located by the Markandeya Purāna in the northern.¹ Many tribes are widely diffused. The Vāhlīkas are not among them. A few tribes, some located in the north and some in the south, are at times listed in a mixture of northern and southern tribes. Thus the Parades, whom the Markandeya Purāna places in the northwestern division along with the Aparantas, Gandhāras, Yavanas, and Kambojas, occur in the Vāyu Purāna and in the Harivarmśa along with the Śakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Pahlavas, Khaśas, Mahishikas, Cholas and Keralas, some of whom belonged to the Uttarāpatha and some to the Deccan.² Similarly, in the Matsya Purāna, the Pulindas are associated with the Āndhras, Śakas, Chulikas and Yavanas.³ The Vāhlīkas do not come in any such hotchpotch even. They are always with the northerners. No less than the Mahābhārata and the Purānas, the Brihatsamhitā of Varāhamihira mentions them with northern peoples.

Raychaudhuri⁴ claims to find a people that can be called Vāhlīka just where it is wanted: he says, "The Vāhlīkas beyond 'the seven mouths of the Indus' are apparently the Baktrioi occupying the country near Arachosia in the time of the geographer Ptolemy {Indian Antiquary, 1884, p. 408)." There is a mistake here: Ptolemy does not state, as Raychaudhuri believes, that the Bactrioi are between the mouth of the Indus and Arachosia. What comes between is the country of Gedrosia (modern Balūchistān) and here in the maritime parts immediately adjoining the Indus the Arbitai are put by Ptolemy;⁵ in the north of this country, not far from the Indus, are the Rhamnai (the Indian Ramanas). Then we have Arachosia itself to the north-west of Gedrosia. The tribes of south Gedrosia who would be nearest to - though distant enough from - the lower Indus are the Rhoploutai and the Eoritai.⁶ And only between Arachosia and Drangiana (Seistan) to the west of Arachosia are the Bactrioi.⁷ It is impossible to identify

1.Ibid.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid.

4.The Political History of Ancient India, p. 535, fn. 2, end.

5.Op. cit., p. 320.

6.Ibid., p. 316.

7.Ibid., p. 313.

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them with the Vāhlīkas of the Meherauli Pillar. Besides, they are obviously a small and insignificant tribe and are absolutely unknown to history and it is hardly conceivable that they should have constituted a serious menace to Chandra's empire, comparable to the conspiracy of hostile chiefs in Vanga and deserving to be mentioned in a record claiming all-India fame for its hero.

The sole alternative left among the suggestions made by scholars is the one of Allan. He¹ opines that in the time of Chandra "the name Vāhlīka had acquired a more general significance and was used like Pahlava, Yavana, etc., of a body of foreign invaders of India." Allan, of course, was speaking of the Vāhlīkas against a background of the 4th century A.D. So his comparison with the Pahlavas and Yavanas cannot be pressed into our service. In our period - the 4th century B.C. - we have no proof of "a more general significance" for the names "Pahlava" and "Yavana". But his idea of "Vāhlīka" as denoting "a body of foreign invaders" rather than any of the known Vāhlīkas inappositely offered by other scholars is none the less brilliant and the only logical course. It is supported also by the fact that the very word "Vāhlīka" or "Bāhlīka" etymologically suggests "outsiders".² And it can hold for the 4th century B.C. just as well as for the 4th century A.D. It can hold even better, for in the 4th century A.D. we have no foreign invaders of any kind near the mouths of the Indus. Even if we put Chandragupta I and Chandragupta II in that century we come across no sign of such invaders: it is only towards the end of the reign of Kumāragupta I and the beginning of that of Skandagupta that we can think of invading foreigners, but then too not in the Indus-delta. In contrast, the 4th century B.C. shows us two foreign invasions, Alexander's and Seleucus's. One of the invaders left India for Gedrosia from the mouths of the Indus, the other is likely to have tried entering the country from Gedrosia over the same mouths. And both were of the same race. Chandra's Vāhlīkas can be none else than the Greeks.

Even apart from the suggestion of "outsiders", how apt the name "Vāhlīka" is for the Greek invaders of the 4th century B.C. will be apparent the moment we ask: "By what route did they swoop down on India?" Mookerji³ writes of Alexander: "At the

1.Op. cit., p. xxxvi.

2.The Vedic Age, p. 258.

3."Foreign Invasions", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 43-4.

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beginning of 327 B.C. he had completed the conquest of Eastern Irān beyond the Hindu Kush by overrunning the regions now known as Bokhara as far as the Syr Daria (Jaxartes). In May 327 B.C. he advanced towards India. He returned through the Kushān Pass..." Clearly the descent through the Kushān Pass which lies in the Hindu Kush was from Bactria. So the general name "Vāhlīka" or "Bāhlīka" for a body of foreign invaders suited his men down to the ground. In the Anabasis (IV.xxii)¹ Arrian has the specific phrase that Alexander "advanced from Bactra towards India".

In connection with Seleucus we may hark back to Justin's words immediately preceding those about Seleucus's passing over into India. Justin writes: "He first took Babylon, and then with his forces augmented by victory subjected the Bactrians." Here also the Greeks moved from Vāhlīka into India, after conquering that province and establishing their power in it.

Thus the combination of India-ward Greeks and Vāhlīka was strengthened. Need we be surprised if in an inscription Sandrocottus should call Seleucus and his invading army the Vāhlīkas?

For the sake of interest we may observe in addition that Antio-chus III, one of the successors of Seleucus, gave up in 206 B.C. a two-year siege of the capital of Bactria held by the Greek Euthydemus, soon after "crossed the Hindu Kush, marched down the Valley of the Kābul river, and reached the country ruled by Sophagasenus (probably Sanskrit Subhagasena), king of the Indians..."² Once more there is the India-ward movement from Vāhlīka.

Vāhlīka is all along bound up with the Greek approach to India. Even the Greeks who were definitely called Yavanas were those who were Bactrians - themselves Vāhlīkas in the strict sense. Agrawala,³ quoting the Brāhmanda Purāna (16.18), makes the statement: "Originally the Yavanas or Greeks who had settled in Bactria were designated in Purānic tradition as Bāhlīka Yavanas." Bāhlīka or Vāhlīka, as the first name for the Greeks before the term "Yavana" caught on, seems a certainty from every standpoint, and the Meherauli Pillar of King Chandra carries the epigraphic proof

1.McCrindle, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great, p. 1.

2.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 104-5.

3."Bhuvana Kosa Jariapadas of Bharatvarsha", Purāna (Varanasi), Vol, V. No. 1, p. 167.

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from the hands of Sandrocottus if we can demonstrate definitively its author as being Chandragupta I.

Chandragupta I as "Chandra" of the Meherauli Pillar

It is not only Chandragupta II who has the abbreviation "Chandra" on some coins. It is also Chandragupta I who has this brief legend on the single type of coins known to be his - the special ones commemorating his marriage with the Lichchhavi princess Kumāradevī." That they were issued by himself and not by anybody on his behalf seems now certain: Majumdar² tells us, "The view that the coins were issued by Samudragupta is no longer held by any scholar."

However, in no inscription of Chandragupta II is the short form "Chandra" used, so that the abbreviation in the Meherauli Pillar epigraph where space for the longer form is available creates some surprise. As we have no authenticated inscription of Chandragupta I to compare this epigraph with, we can hardly be surprised if "Chandra" is employed in his case. On the contrary it is what we may consider possible: although by his own example he must have set for his successors the rule of using the family-name "Gupta", the necessity of sticking to that name as a dynastic title could not have been felt so much by him as by his successors after his designation "Chandragupta" had carried a renown wanting to his ancestors and giving him the right to call himself "Mahārājadhirāja" ("Supreme King of great kings") for the first time in the family in contrast to the name "Mahārāja" of his father and grandfather. His father Ghatotkacha bore no "Gupta"-ending though Ghatotkacha's own father was Gupta. In spite of establishing a general precedent for those who came after him, Chandragupta himself had no particular reason to attach importance at all times to the terminal component of his own name.

We may further note that he is the first Indian king to assume the title of "Mahārājadhirāja": hence not only in his time but in all Indian history up to him he was the sole supreme sovereign. This circumstance is perhaps echoed in what Mookerji³ lists as one of the distinctive declarations of the Meherauli Pillar about

1.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, p. 15.

2."The Rise of the Guptas", The Classical Age, p. 4, fn. 2.

3.Op. cit., p. 69.

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"Chandra": "Achievement of sole supreme sovereignty in the world (aikādhirājyam) by the prowess of his arms."

Even the term used for "prowess" argues for Chandragupta I rather than his namesake grandson. For, it is not the term characteristic of Chandragupta II, namely, "Vikram", but the term "Virya". This term seems to get connected with the grandfather of Chandragupta II through his father Samudragupta's use of it in the Allāhābād Pillar. Again, the religious expression - "having in faith fixed his mind on the god Vishnu" - is similar in spirit yet significantly different in form from the one repeated stereotypically by Chandragupta II: Paramabhāgavata. The successors of Chandragupta II followed the usage started by him, but Samudragupta, although a Vaishnava who adopted the emblem of garudadhvaja, appears to have differed doctrinally from his paramabhāgavata successors.¹ So the different form of the Vaishnavite expression on the Meherauli Pillar strikes us - through Samudragupta - as linking up with his father Chandragupta I.

As for a career of conquest like "Chandra"'s, we can say of Chandragupta I, as of his grandson, that independent sources lead us to infer such a career for him. The assumption of the unique title Mahārājādhirāja should be sufficient proof of territorial expansion. Mookerji² argues: "The title of 'King of Kings' must have been acquired by his conquests by which he was able to rule over an extensive territory." But it has often been held that the range of his expansion is summed up in the Purānic statement:³ "(Kings) born of the Gupta race will enjoy all these territories, namely, along the Ganges, Prayāga, Saketa and the Magadhas." A dissenting note, however, is struck by Majumdar:⁴ "Apart from the uncertainty of the reading and interpretation of the passage, we cannot even be certain that it refers to the period of Chandragupta I." Majumdar⁵ remarks about the territory indicated: "Some have even taken it as the Gupta dominions in the period of decline after Skanda-Gupta." Majumdar's own verdict,⁶ based on the word Gupta-vamśa-jāh is in the passage: "the Guptas, in plural number,

1.The Classical Age, p. 414.

2.The Gupta Empire, p. 12.

3.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 73.

4."The Rise of the Guptas", The Classical Age, p. 4.

5."The Rise of the Guptas", Appendix, A New History..., p. 134.

6.Ibid., pp. 134-35.

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are described as the rulers. It is prima facie unreasonable, therefore, to think that the author of the passage had specifically the kingdom of Chandragupta I in view." The plural should indicate that these territories formed the central block over which the Guptas exercised direct and immediate sovereignty, the area which roughly remained proper to them in the great days of their dynasty for more than 200 years after Chandragupta I had acquired it. Expansion beyond this area is thus not ruled out for any Gupta, including Chandragupta I himself.

In support of not restricting Chandragupta's domain to the Purānic limits, one may quote Samudragupta's Allāhābād Pillar Inscription. It is quite possible to take Samudragupta's sway over the 5 frontier kingdoms to the east and over the 9 tribal republican states to the west and north-west as inherited from his father's conquests: there is no direct indications that it was established by him as there is that he fought against certain kings of Northern and Southern India. Nor is Chandragupta's domain necessarily restricted to the Purānic limits even if the Allāhābād inscription shows a series of conquests by Samudragupta roughly beyond the region marked by Prayāga (Allāhābād) and Sāketa (Oudh) on the west and the Magadhas on the east. Mookerji¹ draws our attention to a problem connected with the eastern conquests. Three countries are mentioned: Samatata, Davāka, Kāmarūpa. The last two are covered by Assam. Samatata, says Mookerji, denoted "certain remote parts of Bengal" and "was probably to the east of Tamra-lipti and bordered on the sea, as stated by Hiuen Tsang." If Samudragupta's campaign in Bengal was concerned with the outlying districts to the east of Tāmralipti, who could have conquered Bengal proper, the central parts, down to "the southern seas" (the Bay of Bengal) mentioned on the Meherauli Pillar? We know for certain that Bengal proper was within the empire of his son Chandragupta II, because, under his grandson Kumāragupta I, its northern portion was called Pundravardhana.² Did Chandragupta II annex Bengal proper or did Chandragupta I do so? Mookerji concludes that in the absence of any definite evidence on the subject the conqueror could have been either the one or the other. And he grants that if Samudragupta did denote Bengal's outlying portions the central ones could be inferred to have been annexed

1.Op. cit., p. 69.

2.A New History..., p. 174.

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by a predecessor, and Samudragupta could be considered to have completed the work of his father, and Chandragupta I might be identified with Chandra who proceeded to form the central block of Gupta dominion outlined in the Purānas and then secured his rear by carrying out the first achievement described in the Meherauli Pillar: "Conquest of the Vanga countries (Vangeshu) by his battling alone against a confederacy of enemies united against him (śatrun-sametyāgatan)."¹ But, according to Mookerji, the difficulty of the identification is, so far as the conquests are involved, that "by no stretch of imagination can Chandra Gupta I figure as a conqueror of territories in the Punjāb and North-west which Samudra Gupta was the first of the Guptas to deal with".

Is the difficulty genuine? The imagination can be prevented from stretching only if an irrefutable reason is found from the Allāhābād Pillar to keep Chandragupta I within the geographical limits mentioned in the Purānas. If Mookerji himself has considered it possible that Chandragupta did break these limits in the direction of the Vanga countries, the sheer ban is removed and it should be equally possible to imagine him breaking beyond them in the direction of the Punjāb and the North-west. The only proviso would be that we show why Samudragupta would have to deal again with those regions.

We may ask a counter-question: "If Chandra is identified with Chandragupta II, why should the latter have to deal again with the Punjāb and the North-west after Samudragupta had dealt with them?" Mookerji² believes that, though Samudragupta had exercised sway over the northern Śakas, Chandragupta II had also to confront them and that he carried out campaigns in the Indus-region and consolidated his father's conquests. Logically, we can reverse the role of Samudragupta and say that instead of his conquests being consolidated by his son he consolidated the conquests of his own father Chandragupta I. The rationality and the probability of the two statements are exactly the same, provided the first Chandragupta is as likely as the second to have proceeded to the Punjāb and the North-west. The sole thing certain about Chandragupta II is that he conquered the Western Śakas, the Mahākshatrapas who ruled in Mālwa and Kāthiāwār. Although we may be sure that he had more conquests to his credit, "we have,"

1.Mookerji, op. cit., p. 69.

2.Ibid., p. 70.

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writes Majumdar,¹ "no definite information regarding the nature and result of these other campaigns." Fact to fact, there is nothing to choose between the two Chandraguptas in the matter of the Punjāb and the North-west. Consequently it is just as reasonable to make Samudragupta the consolidator of his father's achievements in those regions as to make Chandragupta II consolidate those of his father.

Even with regard to Bengal the same reverse process is possible. Majumdar² does not quite see a difference between the Vanga countries and the regions annexed by Samudragupta. He writes: "Vanga denotes Eastern Bengal, nearly the same country as Samatata which is included in the tributary states of Samudragupta." And by imagining either a revolt there or else a desire by the new king to fix more firmly his sovereignty he explains why, if Chandra was Chandragupta II, the latter had once more to fight Vanga. Can we not with equal logic say that, if Chandra was Chandragupta I, Samudragupta had to reconquer Vanga because of the same reasons - most probably a revolt?

The plausibility of a revolt requiring Samudragupta to go over a considerable portion if not the whole of the terrain of his father's dominion in a new digvijaya is suggested by certain attitudes and circumstances discoverable in Samudragupta's inscription.

There is the phrase - already quoted by us once - in which he is called the cause of "the destruction of evil". This attitude to him renders all his "uprooting" and "extermination" of various kings punitive, as if they had done wrong, as if he had fought them for treason to and rebellion against rightful authority.

Then there is the seventh verse, a part of which is lost. "Mention is first made," comments Majumdar,³ "of his complete victory over two rulers named Achyuta and Nāgasena, and a third, belonging to the family of the Kotas. This is followed by a statement that he took his pleasure at the city Pushpa. The lacunas, caused by the peeling off of the surface of the stone in this part of the record, leave us in the dark about the connection between these events, but the construction of the sentence makes it very likely that Samudragupta's victory over the kings, at least the third one, is closely connected with his visit to the city called

1."The Foundation and Consolidation of the Empire", The Classical Age, p. 20.

2.Ibid.

3."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", A New History..., p. 139.

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Pushpa. In other words, it was probably the victory over one or all of them, that enabled him to take possession of the city."

As "Pushpapura was... a well-known name of Pātaliputra"¹ and as the kingdom of Chandragupta I, after his marriage with the Lichchhavi princess Kumāradevī, "almost certainly included the greater part of Bihar and also very probably a portion of U.P. and Bengal",² Pātaliputra which was the chief city of Bihar must have been involved in the campaign of the seventh verse. That is to say, Samudragupta's capital was at stake. Of course, as Majumdar³ conjectures, "it is just possible that the poet refers to the triumphal entry of Samudra-gupta into his own capital after his brilliant military campaign"; but, if we may justly hold that Samudragupta could take his pleasure at the Gupta's own capital city Pātaliputra only by recovering it from enemies on whom he inflicted an absolute defeat, this must mean a revolt at the very heart of his empire. And in concord with it there were most probably uprisings in other provinces than Magadha. Samudragupta can thus be seen as winning back Pātaliputra and then going forth to crush the various rebellions whether on the east or on the west and carrying his arms as far as he could, even beyond the limits of his father's previous victories.

Further, there is the fact known from the Allāhābād Pillar that Chandragupta chose his son as his successor in the midst of a public assembly, exclaiming with exultation, "Thou art worthy, rule this whole world." This appointment of a son to the throne while the father was yet alive was an extraordinary event and must bear a special significance. Some have held that we have a parallel in the case of Samudragupta's own son. "But this view," says Majumdar,⁴ "rests on the doubtful interpretation of an expression which cannot be regarded as certain." The Allāhābād Pillar leaves us in no uncertainty. What is more, it implies a greater gesture of recognition than the mere appointment of Samudragupta. Majumdar⁵ has well remarked: "The royal declaration is usually taken to mean that Chandra-gupta I publicly announced Samudragupta as the heir apparent to the throne. The words put in his

1. Ibid.,

2.Ibid., p. 132.

3.Ibid., p. 140.

4."The Expansion and Consolidation of the Empire", The Classical Age, p. 18.

5."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", Ibid., p. 7.

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mouth, however, taken literally, mean that Chandra-gupta I formally abdicated in favour of his son." And Majumdar adds in a footnote: "Dr. Chhabra has come to the same conclusion after a critical discussion of the whole passage... (Indian Culture, XIV. 141)."

The extremely unusual character of the event must signify Chandragupta's deep gratefulness for distinguished services rendered by his son, and the services may very reasonably have been a rush to rescue the father from whatever loss had been suffered, less demanding at the start, precisely the campaign in which Samudragupta "uprooted" Achyuta, Nagasena and the scion of the Kota family and achieved possession and pleasure of Pātaliputra. Rewarded for this campaign with the crown and invested thereby with full power, he may have set out on a vast digvijaya to restore and expand his father's kingdom.

In this way our suggestion as to why his military expeditions were undertaken in spite of his father's wide conquests receive indirect support and our identification of Chandra with Chandragupta I is made easier.

If it is asked whether we have any clue to the cause for a revolt, we may cite Justin (XV.iv) on Sandrocottus: "India... after Alexander's death, as if the yoke of servitude had been shaken off from its neck, had put his prefects to death. Sandrocottus was the leader who achieved their freedom, but after his victory he forfeited by his tyranny all title to the name of liberator, for he oppressed with servitude the very people whom he had emancipated from foreign thraldom." The same anti-thraldom impulse which worked in Sandrocottus against the Macedonian prefects seems to have driven his dependents to raise the standard of rebellion against him towards the closing part of his iron-rod rule.

Two Objections to our Case Answered

Our case is pretty strong now, but it has two objections to meet. Mookerji takes up the word suchirān occurring on the Meherauli Pillar and meaning "a long reign". He¹ says that it cannot hold true for Chandragupta I. We have already shown that if, as is very reasonable, we may assume that Chandragupta's founding the Gupta Era is linked with his marriage to the Lichchhavi princess

1. Op. cit., p. 10.

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Kumāradevī who may have brought him Pātaliputra as dowry, the gift of his throne to Samudragupta for unusual prowess and ability must involve two things: (1) Samudragupta must have attained the age of at least twenty-five to thirty and (2) Chandragupta must have reigned twenty-five to thirty years at the minimum till then. As Chandragupta II ascended the throne in the 56th year of the Gupta Era, we have quite a long period to divide between Chandragupta I and Samudragupta for their reigns. We may well allot to the former a reign as long as his grandson's: about 33 years. Mookerji's objection carries no weight.

A more serious one could be based on Greek sources. The Meherauli Pillar mentions seven mouths of the Indus, whereas Arrian (Indica, II), recounting the history of Alexander numbers only two. If Chandragupta I was Sandrocottus, why this discrepancy? We must try to understand what Arrian intends by "mouths".

His words in the Indica are: "these mouths are not close to each 'other, like the five mouths of the Ister (Danube), but diverge like those of the Nile, by which the Egyptian delta is formed. The Indus in like manner makes an Indian delta, which is not inferior in area to the Egyptian, and is called in the Indian tongue Pattala."¹ Some elucidation of his reference comes from his Anabasis of Alexander (Ch. XVIII), where he tells us of the Indus dividing near the city Patala into "large rivers both of which retain the name of Indus as far as the sea."² By "mouths" Arrian means not precisely the places of immediate entry into the sea, for he speaks of the divergence of the mouths, thus implying the high-up common point of parting at the city Patala, and he speaks of the large delta to which this city gives the name Pattala and which is formed by the mouths, thus implying the whole triangle made by that point and the points of entry into the ocean. Arrian's "mouths" are simply the two main oceanward branches of the lower course of the river from the city Patala sufficiently distant from the sea and they do not preclude offshoots from the branches within the delta which also empty into the sea.

We become sure of the non-preclusion when we read in the geographer Ptolemy exactly the same information about the two branches. Referring to the delta made by them he³ writes in almost

1.McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian, p. 183.

2.Chinnock's translation, p. 321.

3.McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy, p. 136.

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a paraphrase of Arrian: "The insular portion formed by the bifurcation of the river towards its mouth is Patalene." This information, however, does not prevent Ptolemy¹ from giving the mouths of the river as seven. Why should its occurrence in Arrian be taken to limit the mouths to just two in Alexander's day? Even the author² of the Periplus (c. 70-80 A.D), nearly a 100 years before Ptolemy, gives the same number as that later writer. It seems the most natural thing that, in c. 326-300 B.C. when Arrian's chief sources here wrote their books, the number should not be different.

The reason for Arrian's concentration on merely the bifurcation at the city Patala is not difficult to find. The records about Alexander used by him in the Anabasis were concerned only to describe Alexander's exploration of the seaward route via both the main branches of the river from this city and did not need to mention the smaller offshoots which Alexander neglected and left unexplored. In the Indica, at the end of chapter XVII which closes the section based principally on Megasthenes, Arrian declares: "Since my design in drawing up the present narrative was not to describe the manners and customs of the Indians, but to relate how Alexander conveyed his army from India to Persia, let this be taken as a mere episode." What led to his omission of the seven mouths in the one book can be legitimately thought to have worked also in the other to the same effect. The seven mouths are a detail beyond his purpose and outside his course of history.

Nothing vitiates our thesis and its implication that in the 4th century B.C. The Greeks were designated Vāhlīkas, not Yavanas.

And, in King Chandra's vivid record of his victory over the Vāhlīkas on the westward side of the Indus's seven mouths, we have Indian history speaking through the founder of the Imperial Guptas and taking notice of the last of the events connected with the Greek invasion of our country in the final quarter of the 4th century B.C.

Last Words

The Meherauli Pillar may be said also to mark in conclusion the victory not only of independent logic working on the very data

1.Ibid., p. 83.

2.Ibid.

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offered by modern historians but also of the traditional Indian chronology, which is found both in the Purānas and in Megasthenes, over the modern time-scheme in the matter of identifying Sandrocottus. As the historical point from which everything is to be traced backward and forward, Chandragupta I instead of Chandragupta Maurya stands solidly where Megasthenes and other Classical writers have placed Sandrocottus.

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