The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c25.4

c25.4

The sieges of Sākētam and Madhyamikā by the Yavana, that is to say presumably Menander, are referred to by the grammarian Patañjali in terms which necessarily imply that those events occurred during the writer's lifetime. The proof that Madhyamikā is the correct reading and to be interpreted as the name of a city is due to Prof. Kielhorn (*Ind. Ant.* vii, 266). The identity of Madhyamikā with the ancient town of Nagarī, or Tambavatī Nagarī, one of the oldest sites in India, about 8 miles to the north of Chitōr in Rājputāna, is established by the coins found at Nagarī, and rarely elsewhere, with the legend *Majhimikāya śibijanapadasa*, '[Coin] of the Śibi people in Majhimikā (Madhyamikā) city' (D. R. Bhandarkar in *Prog. Rep. A. S. W. I.*, 1915–16, p. 52. See also Cunningham, *Reports*, vi, 201; xiv, 146, pl. xxxi). The Śibis of Madhyamikā probably emigrated from the Panjāb. Madhyamikā was a place of great importance which the Greek army could not neglect. Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar has found two inscriptions of the second century B. C. recording the performance of the *Aśvamedha* and *Vājapeya* sacrifices. The coins are rightly assigned to the middle of the second century B. C. The ruins at Nagarī include a square brick *stūpa* (converted into a Saiva temple) with remarkable tiles and terra cottas, and a *toraṇa* of Gupta date. Chitōr was largely built out of the ruins of Nagarī.