Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/215

DECLINE OF THE MAURYA DYNASTY 177 are recorded in the Puranic lists, retaining only Maga- dha and the neighbouring home provinces. The Andhra protected state between the Krishna and Godavari Rivers was among the earliest defections, and rapidly grew into a powerful kingdom, stretching right across India, as will be narrated in the next chapter. The last king of the imperial Maurya line, a weak prince named Brihadratha, was treacherously assassinated by his commander-in-chief, Pushyamitra. But descendants of the great Asoka continued as local rajas in Magadha for many centuries, the last of them being Purna-varman, who was nearly contem- porary with the Chinese pilgrim, Hiuen Tsang, in the seventh century. Petty Maurya dynasties, probably connected in some way with the imperial line, ruled in the Konkan, between the Western Ghats and the sea, and some other parts of Western India, during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, and are frequently mentioned in inscriptions.