Śūrasena

Mathurā

The Śūrasena realm occupied the Yamuna country around Mathurā, on the route between the Ganga plain and the west. Mathurā itself becomes one of the major cities of early historic India — a centre of trade, of Jain and Buddhist monastic settlement, and, from the Kushan period, of a distinctive school of sculpture working in mottled red sandstone.

The kingdom is among the sixteen mahājanapadas, though the Buddhist and Jain lists give it less attention than the eastern realms, reflecting where those traditions were strongest.

The Kṛṣṇa connection

Śūrasena's territory is the setting of the Kṛṣṇa cycle: Mathurā under the tyrant Kaṃsa, the cowherd country across the river, and the eventual removal of the Vṛṣṇi clans to the western coast. The clan confederation the Harivaṃśa describes and the monarchy the mahājanapada lists imply are not easily reconciled, and the sources are of different kinds and dates.

Megasthenes, writing at the Mauryan court around 300 BCE, reports that the Sourasenoi worshipped Herakles and had two great cities, Methora and Kleisobora. The identification of that Herakles with Kṛṣṇa or with Balarāma is generally accepted but not certain; it is nonetheless the earliest external notice of the tradition.

Afterwards

Śūrasena passed under Magadhan and then Mauryan control. Mathurā's own political history resumes with a series of local rulers issuing coins, then the Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps, and then the Kushans, under whom the city reached its greatest importance.