Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c9.47

c9.47

“The Yavana was besieging Sāketa : the Yavana was besieging Madhyamikā,” are examples given by the contemporary grammarian Patañjali of the imperfect tense, which indicates an event which has recently taken place, and is still fresh in men’s memories. About this time the aged Pushyamitra, who had usurped the throne of the last of the Mauryas in 184 B.C., was contemplating offering the ancient Brahminical sacrifice of Aśvamedha, to celebrate his ascendancy over his neighbours. He received an unexpected check. On the banks of the Sindhu¹ river, the sacred horse and its bodyguard, under the command of the young Crown Prince Agnimitra, were attacked by a party of Yavana horsemen (perhaps a detachment of the army besieging Madhyamikā), and all but carried off². Nor did Menander stop here. Pressing on, he began to threaten Pāṭaliputra itself, to the great alarm of the inhabitants. “When the viciously valiant Yavanas,” says the author of the Gārgī Saṃhitā, “after reducing Sāketa, the Pañchāla country, and Mathurā, reach the royal residence of Pāṭaliputra, all the provinces will be in disorder.” He penetrated, says Strabo, right to the Soanus³. But the fears of contemporary writers were not realised, and Menander, as far as we know, never entered the ancient capital of Aśoka. “The fiercely-fighting Greeks,” we are told, “did not stay long in Madhyadeśa: a cruel strife had broken out in their own country.” Menander returned, and died soon after in the field. According to a Siamese version of the *Milinda Pañha* he was looked upon at the time of his death as an Arhat, a Buddhist saint of high degree. And so, says Plutarch, his subject states strove for his ashes, which they finally divided among them, and placed beneath great *dāgabas* in their own land, just as was done in the case of Gautama Buddha himself¹. His coins are found in great quantities all over North-Western India, and as far south as Hamīrpur in the Jamna district. Over two centuries after Menander’s death, the author of the *Periplus* found them still current at the port of Broach².