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It will be seen that we have here a corroboration of the inference drawn from the Mahābhāṣya that Puṣyamitra's horse sacrifice coincided with operations undertaken by Yavana conquerors. The river Sindhu mentioned by Kalidasa is of course the present Sindh, which forms the boundary between Bundelkhand and Rajputānā, and if we bear in mind that Madhyamika was situated in Rajputānā, we must arrive at the conclusion that the Yavana troops which Vasumitra met on the banks of the Sindhu belonged to the forces operating against Madhyamikā.
So far there is a general agreement between all sources. We learn from the Khāravela inscription that a Yavana had pushed eastwards beyond Mathura four years before the Kalinga king humiliated Bṛhaspatimitra, i.e. Puşyamitra. Patanjali tells us about Pusymitra's horse sacrifice as having taken place at the same time as a Yavana expedition against Saketa and Madhyamikā, and Kālidāsa informs us about an encounter between the guard of Puşyamitra's sacrificial horse and Yavana soldiers on a river that is not far distant from Madhyamikā. The natural inference is that all these statements refer to the same events.
Now we learn from the Malavikāgnimitra that Pusyamitra, at the time of the horse sacrifice, had a grown-up grandson who was old enough to be entrusted with the guarding of the sacrificial horse. He cannot therefore himself have been much less than about sixty years of age, and cannot have ruled thirty-six years after that date. The horse sacrifice must accordingly have taken place towards the end of his reign, and the fact that he is styled senapati by Kālidāsa and senānī in the Purānas raises the question whether he had really become emperor of Magadha at an early stage of his career. We would be inclined to think that the horse sacrifice should properly be assigned to the last years of his life, i.e. according to the current opinion some time before B.C. 149 or 142.
If however the Yavana king mentioned in Khāravela's inscription is really Demetrios, the date of the aśvamedha would be about B.C. 174. There is accordingly here a certain discrepancy. I think, however, that it can be satisfactorily explained.
It is a well-known fact that the date usually assigned to Pusyamitra is in disagreement with information which can be deduced from another source. Merutunga and other Jaina authors have preserved some Prakrit
तुलसी प्रज्ञा अंक 131
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