Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s1.t1.5

c9.s1.t1.5

The murdered sovereign must have belonged to the line that preceded the Nandas on the throne of Pāṭaliputra. The ruler who answers best to the description given by Curtius and Diodorus is Kākavarṇa-Kālāśoka whose tragic end is alluded to in the Harshacharita, and whose sons—nine or ten in number—were, according to Buddhist tradition, ousted by Ugrasena Nanda. The name Agrammes is possibly a distorted form of the Sanskrit Augrasainya, "son or descendant of Ugrasena". It may be noted in this connection that Augrasainya as a royal epithet may be traced back to the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* where it occurs as a patronymic of Yudhāmśraushṭi.¹