The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c23.99

c23.99

The legends of Khotan assert a connexion between that kingdom and Asoka in more ways than one. According to one version of the story he banished certain nobles of Taxila to the north of the Himalaya as a punishment for their complicity in the wrongful blinding of his son Kunāla. These exiles elected one of their number to be king, who reigned in Khotan until he was defeated by a rival prince exiled from China. Another version of the tale asserts that the earliest ancestor of the royal family of Khotan was the prince Kunāla, Asoka's son, who was himself exiled from Taxila. These stories seem to be merely mythological explanations of the fact that the ancient civilization of Khotan was derived from both India and China. It is not likely, although it is not impossible, that Asoka's political jurisdiction should have extended into the basin of the Tārīm.²