The Post-Mauryan Period: Shungas, Indo-Greeks, Shakas and Kushanas

The eighth-year entry of the Hathigumpha inscription describes Kharavela's raid into Magadha. He stormed Gorathagiri, a fortified hill in the Barabar range, and harassed Rajagriha. Hearing the report of these acts, the Yavana king, whose name has been read by some scholars as 'Dimita' (possibly Demetrius) though the reading is doubtful, retreated to Mathura to relieve his frightened army and transport. The passage is valuable for two reasons: it shows that Greek forces were active deep in the Ganga valley in the second or first century BCE, consistent with the Yuga Purana and Patanjali, and it shows that Mathura was a fall-back base for them. It does not mention Taxila, Sakala or Pushkalavati, though all three were Indo- Greek centres in the north-west.

The Ayodhya record of Dhana is a short Sanskrit stone inscription of about the first century BCE. Dhana, lord of Kosala and son of Kausiki, calls himself the sixth (in descent) from the Senapati Pushyamitra, 'who had performed the Ashvamedha twice', and records a shrine built in honour of his father Phalgudeva. It is therefore the epigraphic proof that the general who overthrew Brihadratha kept his old military title and still performed the Vedic horse sacrifice, which historians read as his link with the Brahmanical tradition. The record also shows that Shunga authority reached Ayodhya. It says nothing about imperial titles or gold coins, and Mathura has yielded no archaeological evidence of direct Shunga rule; the Bharhut gateway was raised by Dhanabhuti 'during the rule of the Sugas', not by Pushyamitra.

The name 'Shunga' is mainly a Puranic label (the Vishnu Purana lists ten Shunga kings from Pushyamitra to Devabhuti). In the epigraphic record it appears only once: a pillar of a Bharhut gateway says it was raised 'during the rule of the Sugas' (Suganam raje) by Vatsiputra Dhanabhuti, and even this reading is not free of ambiguity. Statement 1 is correct. Buddhist tradition is hostile to Pushyamitra: the Ashokavadana in the Divyavadana says he destroyed the Kukkutarama at Pataliputra and proclaimed at Sakala a reward for every monk's head. Statement 2 correctly reports that claim, though modern scholars treat it with great caution. Statement 3 is wrong: no archaeological trace of a Shunga presence has been found at Mathura; the Yavanarajya and Maghera inscriptions instead point to Indo-Greek control there for part of this period.

The Shunga line ended with Devabhuti, who is remembered as overfond of the company of women. Bana's Harshacharita says that his minister Vasudeva had him killed with the help of the daughter of a slave woman disguised as the queen; Vasudeva then founded the Kanva dynasty around 73 BCE. Statements 1 and 2 are correct. The Puranas make the Kanvas rulers of Magadha from Pataliputra, but their copper coins (including those with the legend 'Kanvasya') come mainly from the region of Vidisha, which had also been a seat of the later Shungas, and from Kaushambi; statement 3 is correct. Statement 4 is wrong: the Kanvas were Brahmins, said to descend from the sage Saubhari, and the dynasty took its name from Vasudeva's gotra. Four Kanva kings ruled until the Satavahanas (Andhras of the Puranas) ended the line.

Kanishka's empire stretched from Bactria to the Ganga valley. Its main capital was at Purushapura (Peshawar) in Gandhara, with another major capital at Mathura; the Kushans also used Kapisa (near modern Bagram) as a summer capital, where the 'Begram treasure' of Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese and Indian objects illustrates the empire's position at the junction of land and sea trade. Statement 1 is correct. Kushan territory in India reached at least Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi, where inscriptions dated in Kanishka's era have been found, which agrees with the cities named in the Rabatak inscription; statement 2 is correct. Statement 3 is wrong. The year 78 CE, the start of the Shaka era, was long taken as Kanishka's accession, but historians no longer regard it as such; Harry Falk, for example, places the accession around 127 CE, and the date remains debated. Buddhist tradition also connects Kanishka with a council in Kashmir, which shows how far his patronage was remembered beyond Gandhara.

Kanishka is revered in Buddhist tradition, but his coinage shows a much wider pantheon. After the change of coin language to Bactrian, Iranian and Indic gods such as Ardoxsho, Pharro, Mao, Mithra (Miiro), Nana, Oado and Oesho appear on the reverses, and Buddhist subjects are only a small group. These Buddhist coins are comparatively rare, well under one per cent of all known coins of Kanishka; statement 1 is correct. Three types are known: the standing Buddha (Boddo), the Shakyamuni Buddha (Sakamano Boudo) and the bodhisattva Maitreya (Metrago Boudo). The Shakyamuni and Maitreya types are known only in copper, and only six Kushan gold coins of the Buddha are known, one of them set in an ancient piece of jewellery; statement 2 is correct. Statement 3 is wrong: unlike Kanishka's other deities, who are shown from the side, the Buddhas are shown frontally, which suggests they were copied from contemporary standing and seated statues, apparently of the Gandhara type with both shoulders covered.

The Hathigumpha cave inscription on Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar is a 17-line record set out year by year. It calls Kharavela 'Aira Maharaja Mahameghavahana' and Chetaraja-vasa-vadhana, an increaser of the line of the Cheti king, and also Kalinga- chakravartin; claim 1 is in the text. After fifteen years of boyhood he spent nine years as yuvaraja, mastering lekha (writing), rupa (coinage), ganana (accountancy) and vyavahara (law), and was crowned in his 24th year; claim 4 is in the text. In his second regnal year, 'disregarding Satakarni', he sent a large army of horse, elephants, infantry and chariots to the west, to the Kanhabemna river; claim 2 is in the text. Claim 3 is matched by the record that he broke up the confederacy of the Tramira (Tamil) countries, said to have been a threat to Kalinga for many years (the exact number of years is read differently). So all four claims appear in the inscription, which is why it is treated as the chief and almost the only source for Kharavela.

The Besnagar record is in Brahmi script and a Prakrit with some Sanskritised spellings. It says that this Garuda-standard of Vasudeva, the god of gods, was set up by the Bhagavata Heliodorus, son of Dion, of Taxila, who had come as Yona ambassador from the great king Antialkidas to king Kasiputra Bhagabhadra, the Saviour (tratara), 'son of the princess from Benares', then in the fourteenth year of his prosperous reign. Bhagabhadra is usually identified with the Bhadraka of the Puranic Shunga list and is thought to have held court at Vidisha around 113 BCE. The inscription is therefore the main evidence that the Shungas and the Indo-Greeks had moved from war to diplomatic exchange, and that a Greek envoy had become a devotee of Vasudeva.