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378 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
As Mahāpadma Nanda and his sons ruled in the fourth century B. C., Khāravela is to be assigned either to the third century B. C., (taking ti-vasa-sata to mean 103) or to the first century B.C. (taking ti-vasa-sata to mean 300). In neither case could he be regarded as a contemporary of Pushyamitra who ruled from about 187 to 151 B.C.
The Yavana Invasion. The only undoubted historical events of Pushyamitra's time, besides the coup d'état of c. 187 B. C., and the Vidarbha war, are the Greek invasion from the NorthWest referred to by Patañjali and Kālidāsa, and the celebration of two horse-sacrifices.
Patañjali is usually regarded as a contemporary of Pushyamitra. Sir R. G. Bhandarkar draws our attention to the passage in the Mahābhāshya—iha Pushyamitram yājayāmah : “here we perform the sacrifices for Pushyamitra”—which is cited as an illustration of the Vārttika teaching the use of the present tense to denote an action which has been begun but not finished. The instances given by Patañjali of the use of the imperfect to indicate an action well-known to people, but not. witnessed by the speaker, and still possible to have been seen by him, are, “arunad Yavanah Sāketam: arunad Yavano Madhyamikām.” This, says Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, shows that a certain Yavana or Greek chief had besieged Sāketa or Ayodhyā
1 Konow (Acta Orientalia, Vol. I, pp. 22-26) accepts the date 103, but refers it (along with another date, 113, which he, with Fleet, finds in line 11) to a Jaina era. This era he is inclined to identify with that of Mahāvira's Nirvana. Apparently he is not aware of the existence of another Jaina reckoning, viz., the era of Samprati. Dr K. P. Jayaswal (Ep. Ind., XX. 75) now assigns the date 103 to a Nanda era and says that the date refers to the time when the Tanasuliya Canal, which Khāravela extended to the capital in the 5th year of his reign, was originally excavated.
2 Ind. Ant., 1872, p. 300.
