Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s38.16

c11.s38.16

The Divyāvadāna is clearly wrong in including Pushyamitra among the Mauryas. By all other accounts, he was the first of the Śuṅgas who rose to power first as the commander-in-chief of the forces of Bṛhadratha, the last of the successors of Aśoka. In his Harsha-charitra, Bāṇa finds occasion to introduce a calendar of treacherous assassinations, and there occurs the statement : ‘The wicked generalissimo Pushpamitra crushed his master, the Mauryan Bṛhadratha, who had little sense, and to whom the general pretended to show the whole army in a review’. Likewise, the Vishnu Purāṇa says : ‘Pushyamitra the commander-in-chief will uproot Bṛhadratha and will rule the kingdom as king 36 years’³. The fall of Bṛhadratha must be taken to mark the end of the Mauryan empire as such; it occurred about 185 B. C.