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BUDDHISM
48
the empire of Aśoka disintegrated shortly following his death. Some fifty years after his passing, the last of his successors, Brhadratha, was murdered by his own commander-in-chief on the occasion of a review of the forces, and a new non-Buddhist family, stemming from the region of Ujjain (which had just been one of the Maurya dominions) assumed the throne. Puşyamitra, Bṛhadratha's murderer and the founder of the new Hindu Sunga dynasty, released a horse, in preparation for a classic Vedic horsesacrifice, to wander at will over the domain attended by a hundred young and warlike princes. But somewhere midway to the Punjab the challenge of the ranging symbolic steed was accepted by a company of Greek cavalry.49 The Europeans were routed, and the imperial Indian sacrifice was completed--but the presence of Greek raiders was enough to signify what was happening toward the west. The regions recovered by Candragupta from the founder of the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty of Persia had been re-entered by the post-Alexandrian Greek provincial governors of Bactria, and these-Demetrius, Eucratides, and their dynastieswere now battling among themselves. The coins they minted preserve their portraits to the present: vigorous, Mediterranean heads. And, apparently, they were taking generously to their adopted homeland; for we hear of a Greek ambassador to the Śunga court at Vidiśā, Heliodorus by name, who was a follower of Visņu,50 while on the coins of Demetrius (a young king and conqueror whose Indian empire for a moment was more extensive than that of Alexander) one sees the hardy visage crowned by a royal cap in the shape of the head of an elephant. The invaders identified Indra with their own Zeus, Siva with Dionysos, Kṛṣṇa with Herakles, and the goddess Padma ("Lotus") with Artemis. Moreover, one of the most celebrated of the non
48 Harsacarita; cited in Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 518.
49 Kalidasa, Málavikāgnimitra; cited in Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 520. For a discussion of the horse sacrifice, cf. supra, pp. 134-135. 50 Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 558.
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