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KINGS AND PEOPLES
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kingdom of Kamsa was offered to Upasagara' as a wedding present. In the Buddha's time the ruler of the Surasenas, as his name implies, was a prince born of a princess married by the king of Surasena from the royal house of Avanti.1 When Megasthenes wrote about the Surasenas, their country must have been included in the Maurya empire, and after the Mauryas, their capital Madhura came under the sway of the Bactrian Greeks and the Kuşanas. Whether their country formed a Sunga dominion or not is still a disputed point. The memory of the Surasenas as a people remains associated with a distinct form of Prakrit dialects named Sauraseni after them or their country.
The Ghata Jātaka seems to present a distorted version of the legend of Vasudeva and his brothers, described as Andhakaveṇhudāsaputtā dasabhātikā, the ten brothers who passed as the sons of Andhakaviṣṇu, husband of Nandagopā, their foster-mother. In it Vasudeva is otherwise called Kanha (Sk. Kṛṣṇa) and Kesava (Sk. Keśava), which is quite compatible with the account given in the Great Epic and the Purāņas. It records the names of Vasudeva's nine brothers as Baladeva, Candadeva, Suriyadeva, Aggideva, Varunadeva, Ajjuna, Pajjuna (Sk. Pradyumna), Ghatapandita and Ankura. The
1 Majghima, ii, p. 83f.
