The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.110

v1.c30.110

but they appear not to have been pursued beyond the limit of safety. We may suppose that the armies of Khāravela passed up the valley of the Mahānadī and over the water-shed into the valleys of the Godāvarī and its great tributaries the Waingangā and the Wardhā. They would thus invade territory which the Andhra monarch regarded as lying within his realm. But it is not stated, and there are no grounds for surmising, that the forces of the Kaliṅgas and the Andhras came into actual conflict on either of these occasions or that any important political results followed. Such military expeditions, as is abundantly proved by inscriptions, formed part of the ordinary routine in a state of society, in which war had become a profession and the soldier was an hereditary member of a professional caste. They supplied to some extent the place which is occupied by manœuvres in the training of modern armies; and they also afforded the king such opportunities as there might be for the fulfilment of that desire to extend his rule which, according to the law-books, is one of the chief qualifications for kingship (Manu ix, 251; x, 119 etc.). Our knowledge of this feature in the life of ancient and medieval India is derived from the eulogies of kings which fill so large a proportion of the inscriptions which have come down to our time. These compositions are the work of grateful beneficiaries or court-poets, whose object was rather to glorify their royal patron than to hand down to posterity an accurate account of the events of his reign. It is evident that in them successes are often grossly exaggerated, while reverses are passed over in complete silence. The statements of the inscriptions are, therefore, very frequently those of prejudiced witnesses; and they must be weighed as such if we are to estimate rightly the value of these few scattered fragments of historical evidence which time has preserved. The achievements of Khāravela loom large in the Hāthigumphā inscription; and there is no reason to doubt that, as a military leader, he played an important part in the affairs of the time. But if, as the expeditions of his second and fourth years seem to indicate, his ambition led him to entertain the project of wresting the suzerainty from the Andhra king of Pratishṭhāna, the attempt must be held to have failed. His family has found no place in the dynastic lists of suzerains which were handed down to posterity by the Purāṇas.