Book Title: Political History Of Ancient India
Author(s): Hemchandra Raychaudhari
Publisher: University of Calcutta

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Page 467
________________ 438 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA tracts indigenous tribes like the Audumbaras, Trigartas, Kunindas, Yaudheyas, Arjunāyanas had begun to assert their independence probably after the collapse of the Euthydemian monarchy. Maues struck coins with the types of Eukratides and Demetrios. - But the absence of the Athena Allis type leads Tarn to surmise that he did not annex Menander's home kingdom ( i.e., the district round sākala). The dates assigned to Maues by various scholars range from B.C. 135 to A.D. 154. His coins are found ordinarily in the Pañjāb, and chiefly in the western portion of the province of which Taxila was the ancient capital. There can thus be no doubt that Maues was the king of Gandhāra. Now, it is impossible to find for Maues a place in the history of the Pañjāb before the Greek king Antialkidas who was reigning at Taxila when king Bhāgabhadra was on the throne of Vidišā in Central India for fourteen years. The date of Bhāgabhadra is uncertain but he must be placed later than Agnimitra, son of Pushyamitra, who ruled from cir. B.C. 151 to 143. The fourteenth year of Bhāgabhadra, therefore, could not have fallen before c. 129 B.C. Consequently Antialkidas could not have been ruling earlier than the second half of the second century B.C., and his reign could not have ended before 129 B.C. The Saka occupation of Gandhāra must, therefore, be later than 129 B.C. All scholars except Fleet identify Maues with Maharaya Moga of the so-called Sirsukh or Taxila plate, dated in the year 78 of an unspecified era. The generally accepted view is that the era is of Saka institution. As 1 Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India , 322-330. The conquest of this kingdom may have been effected by Azes I. Whitehead, Indo-Greek Coins, 112 ; Tarn, GBI, 349 ; or by Rājuvula, Allan, CICAI, 185. 2 Cf., now Marshall, Monuments of Sanchi, I, 268n.

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