The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.63

v1.c30.63

The donor of the cave at Pabhosā traces his descent from the kings of Ahicchatra, the northern capital of the Pañchālas in the Bareilly District; and the inscriptions give the genealogy of his family for five generations beginning with his great-grandfather, Çonakāyana, and ending with his nephew, Bahasatimitra. The line is carried two stages farther by the Morā inscription which describes the daughter of Bahasatimitra (Bṛihāsvātimitra) as the wife of the king (of Mathurā) and 'the mother of living sons' (*J.R.A.S.* 1912, p. 120). In the patronymic, Çonakāyana, 'the scion of the house of Çonaka,' we may perhaps see an allusion to the glories of Pañchāla in the heroic age, when, as is recounted in one of the ancient verses preserved by the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, king Çoṇa Sātrāsāha celebrated his triumphs by the performance of the horse-sacrifice². No detailed list of the earlier historical kings of Pañchāla occurs in the Purāṇas; but coins found in the neighbourhood of Ahicchatra—now a vast mound three and a half miles in circumference on the north of the village of Rāmnagar—have preserved the names of about a dozen of their successors in the Çuṅga period³. Among the kings thus known there appears an Agnimitra (Pl. V, 3), who has often been supposed to be identical with the second Çuṅga king. There seems to be no evidence at present either to prove or to disprove the suggestion. The identity of name may well be accidental, or, perhaps more probably, it may indicate that the royal families of Vidiçā and Ahicchatra were related. The name of another king of Ahicchatra, Indramitra, has been recognised in an inscription at Buddh Gayā (p. 526; Pl. V, 4).