DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

246 GREEK INVADERS [8.1
Now, with non-Aryan chiefs and traders to be won over, the rule was
neatly inverted, so that the ksatriya and vaisya would take on the
gotra of their house-priests (Brough 195-6). The house-priest of the last
Sunga was a Kanvayana (also a Bharadvaja gotra), so that the Sungas
had a clan-name not that of the purohita, but could have been ksatriyas
nevertheless. The Satavahana custom of reporting the mother’s gotra
name e.g. Gotamiputa siri Satakani may, but need not, indicate some
remnant or original mother-right; for it can be explained as due to
polygamy. The mother’s gentile name served to distinguish the son
from his stepbrothers, while showing respectable birth on both sides.
The Surigas tried to restore a dead rite, the ancient vedic horsesacrifice.
6 For Pusyamitra, this must have seemed a necessity, as new
invaders thrust into the empire he had usurped. However, the reputation
some Buddhist works gave him of persecuting Asoka’s religion signifies
at most that brahmins were helped to revive banned practices. The
splendid Buddhist structures at Bharhut and many at Sand belong to
the Sunga period. The horse-sacrifice proved ineffective, as the Yavana
raided well into the Sunga home territory along the Ujjain trade-route.
Casual references indicate that Greeks had invested Slaketa, and penetrated
perhaps as far as Patna. This particular Yavana seems to have been
Menander, the most sue-, cessful descendant of Euthydemos, transient
ruler over wide but shifting territory. Demetrios, son of Euthydemos,
had also ‘ conquered India’—not quite so far as Alexander. The great
Antiochus had to be content for his conquest of India with gifts from
Subhagasena, “king of the Indians”, who had ruled only the Mauryan
province of the Kabul valley. Menander is the king Milinda of Sagala in
the Milindapanha = “Questions of King Milinda”, a Pali Buddhist text
discovered in Ceylon which (with citations) alone preserved his memory
for literate Indians. His capital, modern Sialkoft, had been Alexander’s
furthest east, and earlier the Madra headquarters (Mbh. 2.28.13 ; Jat.
468). This particular line of Greek invaders was terminated about 75 B. c.
by the gakas, who had earlier settled the Indus delta. Meanwhile, the
Euthydemids had lost their original Bactrian kingdom to Eucratides