Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions c8.s1.29

c8.s1.29

That the north of Mysore may even at that period have been a part of the Maurya empire is not beyond probability. For the Edicts of Aśōka are evidence that it was so two generations later; and as the only conquest Aśōka is said to have made was that of Kalinga or Orissa, it follows that the rest of his empire was inherited from his predecessors. If it be true, moreover, as above stated, that the Nandas ruled over Kuntala, then the Mauryas naturally acquired it in succession to them. One inscription, indeed (Sb 263), says that Nāgakhaṇḍa (the Shikarpur tāluq) "was protected by the wise Chandra Gupta, an abode of the usages of eminent Kshattriyas"; but this is of the fourteenth century and too much cannot be built upon it. Of special interest, however, is the statement in the work by Harishēna before referred to, that when, as described in the Śravaṇa-Beḷgoḷa inscription, the *sangha* were sent on their way, "they went by the guru's direction to the Punnāṭa country, situated in the South."¹ This was a province in the south-west of the Mysore State. It is mentioned in the second century by Ptolemy as Pounnata, "where is beryl." It is also named in the fifth century in connection with the Ganga king Avinīta (Cg 1), whose son Durvvinīta married the Punnāṭ king's daughter, and united it to the Ganga territory. An inscription of the Punnāṭ Rājas² gives Kitthipura as their capital, which is identified (Hg 56) with Kittūr on the Kabbani river in the Heggaḍadēvankōṭe tāluq. One of the ancient rock inscriptions on Chandragiri (SB 7) records the death of a Jain guru from Kittūr.