Pushkarasarin

{{Infobox royalty
, name = Puṣkarasārin
, succession =King of Gandhāra
, reign = Uncertain, {{circa 6th or 5th century BCE
, religion = Hinduism

{{
Pushkarasarin (Sanskrit: {{Transliteration, sa, Puṣkarasārin) or Pukkusati (Pali: {{Transliteration, pi, Pukkusāti) was a king of the Iron Age Indo-Aryan kingdom of Gandhāra during the time of Gautama Buddha (c. 6th or 5th century BCE), according to Buddhist texts which were written a few centuries later. There are no historical facts known for certain about Puṣkarasārin, and all theories about his reign are speculative. It is debated whether he ruled before or after the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley, and is unknown what kind of relationship he historically had with the Persian Achaemenid rulers.{{cite book , last=Karttunen , first=Klaus , title=India in Early Greek Literature , publisher=Finnish Oriental Society , date=1989 , isbn=978-951-9380-10-0 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1TxZAAAAMAAJ , pages=61–62

Reign

Buddhist narratives written a few centuries later{{cite book , last=Lamotte , first=Etienne , title=History of Indian Buddhism: From the Origins to the Saka Era , publisher=Institut Orientaliste, Louvain-La-Neuve , date=1988 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sJwEAAAAYAAJ , page=101 , quote = Pukkusāti, whose history we learn from a late and partly apocryphal tradition indicate that Puṣkarasārin became the king of Gandhāra at a time when this state was an important imperial power in north-west Iron Age South Asia, with the other states of the Punjab region, such as the Kekayas, Madras, Uśīnaras, and Shivis being under the suzerainty of Gandhāra.{{cite journal , last=Prakash , first=Buddha , year=1951 , title=Poros , url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41784590 , journal=Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute , volume=32 , issue=1 , pages=198–233 , access-date=12 June 2022

Puṣkarasārin engaged in expansionist ventures which brought him into conflict with the king Pradyota of the rising power of Avanti. Puṣkarasārin was successful in this struggle with Pradyota, but this led to a war between him and the Pāṇḍava tribe located in the Punjab region, and who were threatened by his expansionist policy.{{cite book , last=Jain , first=Kailash Chand , author-link= , date=1972 , title=Malwa Through the Ages , url=, location=Delhi, India , publisher=Motilal Banarsidass , pages=98–104 , isbn=978-8-120-80824-9 Puṣkarasārin also engaged in friendly relations with the king Bimbisāra of Magadha, who married Kṣemā, the daughter of the king of Madra, who was a vassal of Puṣkarasārin.{{sfn, Raychaudhuri, 1953, p=197

By the later 6th century BCE, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus, soon after his conquests of Media, Lydia, and Babylonia, marched into Gandhara and annexed it into his empire.{{cite book , editor1-last=Boardman , editor1-first=John , editor1-link=John Boardman (art historian) , editor2-last=Hammond , editor2-first=N. G. L. , editor2-link=N. G. L. Hammond , editor3-last=Lewis , editor3-first=D. M. , editor3-link=David Malcolm Lewis , editor4-last=Ostwald , editor4-first=M. , editor4-link=Martin Ostwald , author-last=Young , author-first=T. Cuyler , author-link= , date=1988 , chapter=The early history of the Medes and the Persians and the Achaemenid empire to the death of Cambyses , title=The Cambridge Ancient History , volume=4 , url=, location=Cambridge , publisher=Cambridge University Press , pages=1–52 , isbn=978-0-521-22804-6 The scholar Kaikhosru Danjibuoy Sethna advanced that Cyrus had conquered only the trans-Indus borderlands around Peshawar which had belonged to Gandhāra while Puṣkarasārin remained a powerful king who maintained his rule over the rest of Gandhāra and the western Punjab.

However, according to the scholar Buddha Prakash, Puṣkarasārin might have acted as a bulwark against the Expansion of the Persian Achaemenid Empire into north-west South Asia. This hypothesis posits that the army which Nearchus claimed Cyrus had lost in Gedrosia had in fact been defeated by Puṣkarasārin's Gāndhārī kingdom. Therefore, following Prakash's position, the Achaemenids would have been able to conquer Gandhāra only after a period of decline of Gandhāra after the reign of Puṣkarasārin combined the growth of Achaemenid power under the kings Cambyses II and Darius I. However, the presence of Gandhāra, referred to as {{Transliteration, peo, Gaⁿdāra in Old Persian, among the list of Achaemenid provinces in Darius's Behistun Inscription confirms that his empire had inherited this region from conquests carried out earlier by Cyrus.

Assuming that Puṣkarasārin lived during the 6th century BCE, it is unknown whether he remained in power after the Achaemenid conquest as a Persian vassal or if he was replaced by a Persian satrap (governor), although Buddhist sources claim that he renounced his throne and became a monk after becoming a disciple of the Buddha.{{cite web, title=Puṣkarasārin, url=http://www.palikanon.com/english/pali_names/pu/pukkusati.htm, publisher=palikanon.com, accessdate=26 July 2020

However, with alternative chronologies which date the Buddha's lifetime (and his contemporary kings) as much as a century later, it is alternatively possible that Puṣkarasārin in fact lived as much as a century after the Achaemenid conquest. Among scholars who favour the latter chronology, it remains an open question for debate, what kind of relationship Puṣkarasārin historically had with the Persian Achaemenid rulers. Possible theories are: he "may belong to a period when the Achaemenids had already lost their hold over Indian provinces," or he may have been holding power in eastern parts of Gandhara such as Taxila (speculatively considered by some scholars to be outside the Achaemenid dominions), or may have been serving as a vassal of the Achaemenids but with autonomy to conduct warfare and diplomacy with independent Indian states, similar to the "active and often independent role the western satraps had in Greek politics". Thus it is considered that he may have been an important intermediary for cultural influence between Ancient Persia and India.

References

Citations

{{Reflist

Sources

* {{citation , last=Jain , first=Kailash Chand , author-link=Kailash Chand Jain , title=Lord Mahāvīra and His Times , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8-TxcO9dfrcC , year=1991 , publisher=Motilal Banarsidass , isbn=978-81-208-0805-8 , ref={{sfnref, Kailash Chand Jain, 1991

6th-century BC births
6th-century BC deaths
6th-century BC Indian monarchs
Kings of Gandhara