724 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. |December, 1911. 
correctness : Acoka ascended the throne as nearly as possible in 
272, and died 231 B.C. He ruled o the entire of Northern 
India from the Himalayas to the Kistna, and from Eastern Bengal 
to the Helmand. As usualin Asiatic monarchies his descendants 
rapidly degenerated : and about 195 B.C. the Maurya dynasty 
came to an end. 
eanwhile important changes had been going on else 
where ; about 256 B.C. an officer represented as a Greek, and 
named Diodotus (a suspiciously Getic name alongside Gothie 
forms as Theoderic, etc.), who had been entrusted with the 
government of Baktria, finding his communications with the 
west cut off, declared his independence. He was succeeded on 
the throne by a son of the same name, Diodotus II. About 
215 B.C. (the exact date seems irrecoverable), one Euthydémus, 
represented as a Greek from one of the Magnesias, but who may 
have been partially of Getic extraction, ousted Diodotus II and 
ascended thethrone. He it was who was instrumental in carrying 
the Baktrian state to its widest extension. On the collapse of 
the great kingdom of the Mauryas, as is known that founded 
who succeeded in throwing a force across the river before he was” 
e ge 
pital” 
have | 
! Zariaspa. Strabo, speaking of the Bakirians, tells us :—Their bee 
re Baktra, which they call also Zariaspa (a river of the same and 
an : asp! 
