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246 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA for which there is no real ground. They are placed in the north-west by the authors of the Mārkandeya Purāna and the Brihat Samhitā. The Assakenian king had a powerful army of 20,000 cavalry, more than 30,000 infantry and 30 elephants. The reigning king at the time of Alexander's invasion is called by the Greeks Assakenos. His mother was Kleophis. Assakenos had a brother who is called Eryx by Curtius and Aphrikes by Diodoros. There is no reason to believe that these personages had any relationship with king Sarabha, whose tragic fate is described by Bāna and who belonged apparently to the southern realm of the Asmakas in the valley of the Godāvari.
4 Nysa :
This was a small hill-state which lay at the foot of Mt. Meros between the Kophen or Kābul river and the Indus. 3 It had a republican constitution. The city was alleged to have been founded by Greek colonists long before the invasion of Alexander. 4 Arrian says, 5 "The Nysaeans are not an Indian race, but descended from the men who came to India with Dionysus.” Curiously enough, a Yona or Greek state is mentioned along with Kamboja in the Majjhima Nikāyao as flourishing in the time of Gautama Buddha and Assalāyana : "Yona Kambojesu dveva vannā Ayyo c'eva Dāsoca (there are only
1 Invasion of Alexander, p. 378.
2 He led the flying defenders of the famous fortress of Aornos against the Greeks (Camb. Hist. Ind., I. 356). Aornos is identified by Sir Aurel Stein with the height of Una between the Swat and the Indus (Alexander's Campaign on the Frontier, Benares Hindu University Magazine, Jan., 1927). The southern side of the stronghold was washed by the Indus (Inv. Alex.,271.)
3 Inv. Alex., 79, 193.
4 McCrindle, Invasion of Alexander, p. 79; Hamilton and Falconer, Strabo, Vol. III. p. 76. Dr. K. P. Jayaswal informed me that he referred to the Nysaean Indo-Greeks in a lecture delivered as early as 1919.
5 Chinnock's Arrian, p. 399. 6 II. 149.
