01The review of the army
Banabhatta, writing eight centuries later in the Harshacharita, gives the scene in one line: the senani Pushyamitra, showing the whole army to his master on the pretext of a review, crushed the weak Maurya Brihadratha. The Puranas list ten Shunga kings ruling 112 years, Pushyamitra for 36 of them. He kept the old title Senapati, and his capital stayed at Pataliputra, with his son Agnimitra governing from Vidisha in the west.
02Two horse sacrifices
An inscription found at Ayodhya, cut by a later king Dhanadeva, calls him the sixth in descent from Senapati Pushyamitra who performed two horse sacrifices. Patanjali’s Mahabhashya, the great commentary on Panini, slips in an example sentence, iha Pushyamitram yajayamah, here we perform sacrifice for Pushyamitra, which places the grammarian in his time. Kalidasa’s Malavikagnimitram adds that Agnimitra’s son Vasumitra, guarding the sacrificial horse, beat the Yavanas on the bank of the Sindhu river.
The Buddhist Divyavadana accuses him of persecuting monks. The stone record is mixed: the great railings of Bharhut and the enlargement of Sanchi date to the Shunga period, and a Bharhut gateway was raised in the reign of the Shungas.
