________________
206 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
last-mentioned city engaged in hostilities with Pushkarasārin of Taxila. The king of Taxila harassed by numerous enemies including the mysterious Pāņdavas who are known to have been in possession of Sākala (in the Punjab) in the days of Ptolemy, turned to the king of Magadha for help. Though ready to oblige his Gandhārian friend by receiving an embassy, Bimbisāra, who had to liquidate the long-standing feud with his eastern neighbour across the Chainpā, was in no mood to alienate Pradyota or any of the other military chiefs of the age.
When the king of Avanti was suffering from jaundice he sent the physician Jivaka. He also pursued a policy of dynastic marriages like the Hapsburgs and Bourbons of Europe and contracted alliances with the ruling families of Madra," Kosala’ and Vaiśāli. These measures were of great importance. They not only appeased the most formidable militarists of the age, but eventually paved the way for the expansion of the kingdom both westward and northward. Bimbisāra's Kosalan wife brought a Kāsi village producing a revenue of a hundred thousand for bath and perfume money.3 The Vaišālian connection produced momentous consequences in the next reign.
1 Khemā, the princess of sākala (Madra) is said to have been the chief consort of Bimbisāra. Was she connected with the Pandavas who are found in Sākala as late as the age of Ptolemy?
2 According to the Dhammapada commentary (Harvard, 29, 60; 30, 225) Bimbisāra and Pasenadi were connected by marriage, each having married a sister of the other. : 3 Jataka, Nos. 239, 283, 492. According to the Thusa Jātaka (338) and the Mūshika Jātaka (373) the Kosalan princess was the mother of Ajātasatru. The preface to the Jātakas says, "At the time of his (Ajātasatru's) conception there arose in his mother, the daughter of the king of Kosala, a chronic longing to drink blood from the right knee of king Bimbisāra". In the Samyukta Nikāya (Book of Kindred Sayings, 110) Pasenadi of Kosala calls Ajātasatru bis nephew. In Vol. I. page 38 n of the Book of the Kindred Sayings, however, Maddā (Madrā) appears as the name of Ajātasatru's mother. A Tibetan writer, calls her Vāsavi (DPPN I. 34.). The Jaina writers represent Chellaņā, daughter of Chetaka of Vaiśāli as the mother of Kūņika-Ajātaśatru. The Nikāyas call Ajātasatru Vedehiputta
