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MAHĀPADMA
233 Harsha-charita. Kākavarņa Śaisunāgi, says Bāņa, had a. dagger thrust into his throat in the vicinity of his city. The young princes referred to by Curtius were evidently the sons of Kālāśoka-Kākavarņa. The Greek account of the rise of the family of Agrammes fits in well with the Ceylonese account of the end of the Saišunāga line and the rise of the Nandas, but not with the Purāṇic story which represents the first Nanda as a son of the last Saišunāga by a Śūdra woman, and makes no mention of the young princes. The name Agrammes is probably a distorted form of the Sanskrit Augrasainya, "son of Ugrasena”. Ugrasena is, as we have seen, the name of the first Nanda according to the Mahābodhivamsa. His. son may aptly be termed Augrasainya which the Greeks corrupted into Agrammes and later on into Xandrames.
The Purānas call Mahāpadma, the first Nanda king, the destroyer of all the Kshatriyas (sarva-Kshatrāntaka) and the sole monarch (ekarāt) of the earth which was under his undisputed sway, which terms imply that he finally overthrow all the dynasties which ruled contemporaneously with the Saišunāgas, viz., the Ikshvākus, Pañchālas, Kāśis, Haihayas, Kalingas, Asmakas, Kurus,
1 "Augrasainya" as a royal patronymic is met with in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, viii. 21.
2 The identification of Xandrames taken to answer to Sanskrit Chandramas), the Magadhan contemporary of Alexander, with Chandragupta, proposed by certain writers, is clearly untenable. Plutarch (Life of Alexander, Ch. 62) clearly distinguishes between the two, and his account receives confirmation from that of Justin (Watson's tr., p. 142). Xandrames or Agrammes was the son of a usurper born after his father had become king of the Prasii, while Chandragupta was himself the founder of a new sovereignty, the first king of his line. The father of Xandrames was a barber who could claim no royal ancestry. On the other hand, Brāhmaṇical and Buddhist writers are unanimous in representing Chandragupta as a descendant of a race of rulers, though they differ in regard to the identity of the family and its claim to be regarded as of pure Kshatriya stock. Jaina evidence clearly suggests that the barber usurper is identical with the Nāpitakumāra or Napitasū (Pariśishța, VI. 231 and 244) who founded the Nanda lipe,
Q. P. 90—30.
