Pushyamitra

Pushyamitra Shunga
Man on a relief, Bharhut, Sunga period, 2nd century BCE.
Shunga Emperor
Reign	c. 185 – c. 149 BCE
Predecessor	Brihadratha Maurya
Successor	Agnimitra
Issue	Agnimitra
Dynasty	Shunga

Pushyamitra Shunga (IAST: Puṣyamitra Śuṅga) (c. 185 – c. 149 BCE) was the founder and first ruler of the Shunga Empire in North India.

Pushyamitra was originally a Senapati "General" of the Maurya Empire. In 185 BCE he assassinated the last Mauryan Emperor, Brihadratha Maurya, during an army review, and proclaimed himself King. He then performed Ashvamedha and brought much of North India under his rule. Inscriptions of the Shungas have been found as far as the Ayodhya (the Dhanadeva-Ayodhya inscription), and the Divyavadana mentions that he sent an army to persecute Buddhist monks as far as Sakala (Sialkot) in the Punjab region in the northwest.

The Buddhist texts state that Pushyamitra cruelly persecuted the Buddhists, although some modern scholars have expressed skepticism about these claims.

Several sources suggest that Pushyamitra was a Brahmin, and the 16th century Buddhist scholar Taranatha explicitly calls him a Brahmin king. However, the various sources offer differing suggestions about which Brahmin gotra (clan) Pushyamitra belonged to. A Puranic manuscript mentions persons who were born of "Shunga, a descendant of Bharadvaja, by a woman married in the family of Kata, a descendant of Vishvamitra". Based on this, K. P. Jayaswal theorized that Shunga was a Brahmin with two gotras (dwaimushyayana or dvigotra): his family traced their ancestry to both Bharadvaja and Vishvamitra lineages. The Pravara Kanda of the Apastamba mentions a "Shunga-Shaishiri" gotra. J. C. Ghosh theorized that the Shunga family derived from the Shunga of the Bharadvaja gotra, and the Shaishiri of the Vishvamitra gotra (Kata group).