The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.54

v1.c24.54

Magadha is the most famous kingdom in ancient and medieval India. Twice in history did it establish great empires—the Maurya Empire in the fourth and third centuries B.C., and the Gupta Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. The long line of kings attributed to Magadha by the Purāṇas consists of a series of no fewer than eight dynastic lists furnished with a statement of the number of years in each reign and the duration of each dynasty. If all these dynasties could be regarded as successive, and if the length of reigns could be determined with certainty, the chronology of Magadha would be a simple matter of calculation. But this is not the case. Some of the royal families included in the series were undoubtedly contemporary, and the text of the Purāṇas has become so corrupt that the numbers as stated by the different MSS. are rarely in agreement.