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Another thing to note: when of old time Pushyamitra overturned the Buddhist Mauryas, he showed his Brahmin orthodoxy by performing the great Horse Sacrifice; a sign that the ancient religion had come back in triumph. They let loose a horse to wander where it would, and followed it with an army for a whole year; then sacrificed it.
Asoka's Empire broke up soon after his death in circumstances which are not clear, for we now enter upon one of those chaotic periods which recur from time to time in Indian history and we have little certain information until the fourth century A.D. Andhra, a region including large parts of the districts now called the Northern Circars, Hyderabad and Central Provinces, was the first to revolt from the Mauryas and a dynasty of Andhra kings , who claimed to belong to the Śâtavâhana family, ruled until 236 A.D. over varying but often extensive territories.
Accepting the Greek identifications, and placing the Mauryas where we do in time you shall see how beautifully the epoch fits into the universal cycles, and confirms the teaching as to Cyclic Law. So, provisionally, I shall accept them, and tell the tale. First a few more items from Megasthenes as to India under Chandragupta.
India I allow; but look before you leap; or, if you will, in mid-air turn over in your minds the old Indian cycles, as far as you know them, and see if they offer you any prospect of a landing-place. As thus: there were the Mauryas, 320 to 190 B. C.; thence on thirteen decades to 60 B.C., and near enough to the reputed 58 of the reputed Vikramaditya of Ujjain.
Pushyamitra who in 184 B.C. overthrew the Mauryas and established the Sunga dynasty was a patron of the Brahmans. Târanâtha describes him as a ferocious persecutor, and the Divyâvadâna supports the story.
Though nothing is known of the fortunes of Pataliputra, the ancient imperial city of the Mauryas, during the first three centuries of our era, it continued to exist. In 320 a local Raja known as Candragupta I increased his dominions and celebrated his coronation by the institution of the Gupta era.
Yet the Gupta dynasty endured only a little longer than had that of the Mauryas. Its downfall was hastened by the long reign of terror which India went through during the invasion of the White Huns.
They are to be seen to the present day cut into granite pillars or chiselled into the face of the living rock in almost every part of what was then the Empire of the Mauryas, from the Peshawar district in the north to Mysore and the Madras Presidency in the south, from the Kathiawar Peninsula in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the east.
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