Page:The Malavikagnimitra, Tawney (2nd edition, 1891).djvu/17

Rh Weber and Shankar Pandit that the play was composed by the author of the Çakuntalá will, I think, admit on reading it, that it furnishes us with a genuine description of Hindú society before the Mahometan invasion.

For this reason it has an abiding historical value, though no one would, of course, think of comparing it in this respect with the Mrichchhakati, which reveals to us strata of Hindú society, that were apparently beneath the notice of the author of the courtly Málavikágnimitra.

I now proceed to extract from the second volume of Lassen's Indische Alterthumskunde an account of the Çunga dynasty of kings of which Pushpamitra was the founder:-

"After the death of Açoka the vast dominions of the Maurya kings broke up into three kingdoms. The first was in Magadha, the kings of which have been already mentioned. The second was that of Jaloka, which included a great part of North-Western India as well as Kaçmíra. He is no doubt identical with the Indian king, called by the Greeks Sophagasenos, who was a contemporary of Antiochus the great, and renewed with him the treaty which his forefathers had made........... .... "The third kingdom of the Mauryas probably embraced a part of the south-western provinces of the original kingdom, as its kings are mentioned as successors of Kunála, who was Viceroy in Takshaçilá and Gandhára.