182 THE SUNGA, KANVA, AND ANDHRA DYNASTIES mount sovereign, and involved as a preliminary a formal and successful challenge to all rival claimants to supreme power, delivered after this fashion :- " A horse of a particular colour was consecrated by the performance of certain ceremonies, and was then turned loose to wander for a year. The king, or his representative, followed the horse with an army, and when the animal entered a foreign country, the ruler of that country was bound either to fight or to submit. If the liberator of the horse succeeded in ob- taining or enforcing the submission of all the countries over which it passed, he returned in triumph with all the vanquished rajas in his train; but if he failed, he was disgraced and his pretensions ridiculed. After his successful return, a great festival was held, at which the horse was sacrificed." 1 The command, at least nominally, of the guard at- tendant on the consecrated steed liberated by Pushya- mitra was entrusted to his young grandson, Vasumitra, who is said to have encountered and routed a band of certain Yavanas, or western foreigners, who took up the challenge on the banks of the river Sindhu, which now forms the boundary between Bundelkhand and the Eajputana States. These disputants may have been part of the division of Menander's army which had undertaken the siege of Madhyamika in Rajputana. The Yavanas and all other rivals having been dis- posed of in due course, Pushyamitra was justified in his claim to rank as the paramount power of Northern 1 Dowson, Classical Diet., s. v. Asvamedha.
