The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (collected till 1923) and Outlines of Political History c7.47

c7.47

As regards the southern limit of Aśōka's territories we must be guided by the commencement of the Jatinga-Rāmēśvara, Brahmagiri and Siddhāpura Edicts, all of which are engraved on rocks near the village of Siddhāpura in the Chitaldrug district of northern Mysore. From these we learn,’ writes Dr. Hultzsch in his new and comprehensive work on the Edicts of Aśōka (Introd., p. xxxviii), ‘that the head-quarters of Aśōka’s southernmost province was a place of the name Suvarṇagiri, and that his representative there, just as at Ujjayinī, was a royal prince (Āryaputra).’ Brahmagiri and Siddāpura belonged to a district called Isila, which was subordinate to the Viceroy at Suvarṇagiri. Dr. Hultzsch suggests that Suvarṇagiri may have been the same as the modern Kanakagiri in the Nizām’s State, south of Maski.¹