The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.114

v1.c24.114

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 readily 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 Regarded as historical documents, the British coin-legends of the eighteenth century, with their purely hereditary titles, are as misleading as the Purāṇas, which, arranging all in one long series, ascribe to Magadha both its own kings and the families of the suzerains of Northern India.