The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (collected till 1923) and Outlines of Political History c7.14

c7.14

From about the year 700 B.C. events can be treated more historically. By this time Āryanism had flooded all north India. The remains of the aboriginal tribes had either been absorbed, reduced to servitude, or driven into the hills and forests. But the South remained principally Dravidian. The ancient Vedic theology had been expounded in the Brāhmaṇas, the philosophic Upanishads and the educational Vedāngas. The various Indian communities resulting from the fusion of Āryan and Dravidian races are known to have been very numerous. The Mahābhārata mentions six different kingdoms as existing on the Ganges River, Hastināpura, Mattra, Panchāla, Benares, Magadha and Bengal. There was another kingdom in Gujarat, another in the Indus Valley, another in the Kalinga country. But there must have been many more in the Dekhan and Peninsula and other parts. The Rāmāyaṇa names numbers of states in northern India, and fourteen kingdoms south of the Tungabhadra river. About 300 B.C. Megasthenes enumerates 118 nations as existing in India. Even after the greater number of north Indian states had been absorbed in the Empire of Magadha, King Aśōka (circ. 250 B.C.) makes mention of numerous states outside his own territory and bordering thereon.