The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.40

v1.c30.40

The other incidental reference in the *Mālavikāgnimitra* confirms the account of a Greek invasion of the Midland Country given by the Yuga Purāṇa and supported by statements which appear as grammatical illustrations in Patañjali's commentary on Pāṇini (p. 544). The Yavana successors of Alexander the Great in the Punjab had evidently forced their way through the Delhi passage and attacked the very centre of the Çuṅga dominions. In the play a messenger comes to Agnimitra with a letter from Pushyamitra announcing his intention to perform the horse-sacrifice, the traditional Kshatriya rite whereby a king asserted his title to exercise suzerainty over his neighbours. The horse, as was the custom, had been set free to roam whithersoever he would for a year as a challenge to all opponents; and he was guarded by Pushyamitra's grandson, Vasumitra, the son of Agnimitra, attended by a hundred princes. The challenge was accepted by a body of Yavana cavalry, who tried to capture the horse as he wandered along the right bank of the river Sindhu; and a conflict ensued in which the Yavanas were defeated by the Çuṅgas. Pushyamitra's claim was thus maintained; and he proposed to celebrate this triumph by the performance of the sacrifice which Agnimitra, as one of the monarchs of his realm, was invited to attend. An allusion to this sacrifice may perhaps be preserved in another grammatical example used by Patañjali¹; and, as we have seen (p. 302), it is probably to the solemn recitation of the suzerain's lineage on such occasions that we owe the dynastic lists preserved in the Purāṇas.