Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c17.s3.23

v1.c17.s3.23

¹ I had the pleasure, in 1814, of discovering a remnant of this city, which the Yamuna has overwhelmed. [The ancient Sūryapura was near Batesar, 40 miles south-east of Agra city. Sir H. Elliot (Supplemental Glossary, 187) remarks that it is strange that the Author so often claims the credit of discovery when its position is fixed in a set of familiar verses. For Sūryapura see A. Führer, Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions, 69.] The sacred place of pilgrimage, Batesar, stands on part of it. My discovery of it was doubly gratifying, for while I found out the Surasenoi of the Greeks, I obtained a medal of the little known Apollodotus, who carried his arms to the mouths of the Indus, and possibly to the centre of the land of the Yadus. He is not included by Bayer in his lists of the kings of Bactria, but we have only an imperfect knowledge of the extent of that dynasty. The Bhagavat Purana asserts thirteen Yavan or Ionian princes to have ruled in Balichdes [?] or Bactria, in which they mention Pushpamitra Dvimitra. We are justified in asserting this to be Demetrius, the son of Euthydemus, but who did not succeed his father, as Menander intervened. Of this last conqueror I also possess a medal, obtained amongst the Surasenoi, and struck in commemoration of victory, as the winged messenger of heavenly peace extends the palm branch from her hand. These two will fill up a chasm in the Bactrian annals, for Menander is well known to them. Apollodotus would have perished but for Arrian, who wrote the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the second century, while commercial agent at Broach, or classically Brigukachchha, the Barugaza of the Greeks. [The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was written by an unknown Greek merchant of first century A.D. (McCrindle, Commerce and Navigation, Introd. p. 1.)]