Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c14.s1.20

c14.s1.20

¹ Buddhist tradition also testifies to the supposed connection between the expressions Moriya (Maurya) and Mora or Mayūra (peacock)—see Turnour, *Mahāvaṁsa* (Mahāwansa), xxxix f. Aelian informs us that tame peacocks were kept in the parks of the Maurya Palace at Pāṭaliputra. Sir John Marshall points out that figures of peacocks were employed to decorate some of the projecting ends of the architraves of the east gateway at Sāñchī (*A Guide to Sāñchī*, pp. 44, 62). Foucher (*Monuments of Sanchi*, 231) does not regard these birds as a sort of canting ba lge for the dynasty of the Mauryas. He apparently prefers to imagine in them a possible allusion to the *Mora Jātaka*.