The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c19.4

c19.4

The period when Aryan civilisation began to extend over Southern India is also a matter of uncertainty, though the poetical account of it is given in the Râmâyana. As in the north, it invigorated and supplemented, but did not entirely supersede the older states of culture which existed before the Aryans entered India. Asoka sent his younger brother, Mahendra, to lead the Buddhist mission in the south; but even before the third century b.c. Aryan institutions had existed there, and the three principal dynasties—the Pândya, Kerala or Chera, and the Chola—claimed descent from the five Pândava heroes of the Mahâbhârata, who founded a kingdom with its capital at Indraprastha, one of the old Delhis.