The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c29.105

v1.c29.105

The extreme confusion reigning in the legends is probably, as was indicated long ago, to be explained by a division of the empire, perhaps beginning after Samprati⁴. The Buddhists will then give the western line, as is indicated by the fact that Vīrasena is represented as ruling in Gandhāra⁵ and further by the fact that Sophagasenus, or Subhāgasena, with whom Antiochus the Great renewed an ancestral friendship in 206 b.c.⁶, is indicated by his name as a member of this line. This series will then have been terminated by the Greek conquest of the Punjab under Euthydemus and his successors. At Pāṭaliputra the second line may have held out a little longer, until about the year 184 b.c., when it was overthrown by Pushyamitra, whose power may have centred about Ujjain, and who, as is indicated in the drama of Kālidāsa called the *Mālavikāgnimitra*, succeeded to the struggle with the Greeks. But descendants of Açoka were as late as the seventh century A.D., if we may trust the statement of Hiuen Tsiang, still in possession of small dominions in eastern India: for he relates that shortly before his visit Pūrṇavarman, king of Magadha, a descendant of Açoka, had restored the Bodhi-tree, which had been destroyed by Çaçāṅka, otherwise named Narendragupta, of Karṇasuvarṇa, or Bengal¹.