Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c12.s8.18

c12.s8.18

The murdered sovereign seems to have been Kālāśoka-Kākavarṇa who had a tragic end as we learn from the *Harsha-charita*. Kākavarṇa Saiśunāgi, says Bāṇa, had a dagger thrust into his throat in the vicinity of his city. The young princes referred to by Curtius were evidently the sons of Kālāśoka-Kākavarṇa. The Greek account of the rise of the family of Agrammes fits in well with the Ceylonese account of the end of the Saiśunāga line and the rise of the Nandas, but not with the Purāṇic story which represents the first Nanda as a son of the last Saiśunāga by a Sūdra woman, and makes no mention of the young princes. The name Agrammes is probably a distorted form of the Sanskrit Augrasainya, "son of Ugrasena".¹ Ugrasena is, as we have seen, the name of the first Nanda according to the *Mahābodhivaṁsa*. His son may aptly be termed Augrasainya which the Greeks corrupted into Agrammes and later on into Xandrames.²