The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.48

v1.c30.48

There appears to be no reason for doubting that the last king but one, the Bhāga or Bhāgavata of the Purāṇas, is the Bhāgabhadra, in the fourteenth year of whose reign the Besnagar column was erected by Heliodorus, son of Dion, the Yavana ambassador who had come to the court of Vidiçā from Antialcidas, king of Takshaçilā (p. 558). This identification enables us to bring the histories of the Çuṅgas and the Yavanas into relation with each other, and to determine, naturally within limits of possible error, a fixed point in their chronology. If the duration of reigns as given in the Purāṇas, confused though it is by textual corruptions, be approximately correct, the fourteenth year of king Bhāgabhadra (within a few years of 90 B.C., whether earlier or later) may well have fallen within the reign of Antialcidas, if, as seems not unlikely, he was the successor of Heliocles and came to the throne c. 120 B.C.¹