Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s28.14

c11.s28.14

After his conquest of Kalinga, the empire of Aśoka extended practically over the whole of India with the exception of the extreme south of the peninsula which according to the second Rock Edict was occupied by the independent states of Choḷa, Pāṇḍya, Satiyaputa and Keralaputa. Hiuen Tsang notices the existence of numerous stūpas ascribed to Aśoka all over India; this does not always help us to determine the limits of the empire. Towards the north and north-west the empire clearly reached much farther than the frontier of British India. The territory gained by treaty from Seleucus continued in the Mauryan empire, and Aśoka refers to Antiochus of Syria in a manner that implies that their territories were contiguous; thus the southern half of Afghanistan up to the Hindu Kush, and practically the whole of British Baluchistan was included in the empire which thus held the ‘scientific frontier’ which eluded the grasp of British rulers of India in the nineteenth century. Tradition is strong that Kashmir was under Aśoka's rule. Following earlier authorities, Kalhaṇa, the historian of Kashmir, records² that Aśoka built the town of Śrīnagarī besides a large number of stūpas and some shrines to Śiva, two of which were called Aśokeśvara after the king. Aśoka is said to have been followed in this region by his son Jalauka who expelled the mlecchas that had overrun the land and then continued the policy of his father and introduced wholesome administrative reforms. Pandrethan, a small village three miles above the modern city of Śrīnagar, is supposed to represent Kalhaṇa's Purāṇādhishṭhāna (ancient capital), a name used even in Hiuen Tsang's time for Aśoka's city. Kashmir was a stronghold of Śaivism in later historical times, and to this, rather than to any real leanings to Śaivism on the part of Aśoka, must be traced the notion that he built important Śiva temples in Kashmir. We have noted already that Kashmir and Gandhāra received one of the missions sent out for the spread of the Dhamma, and Hiuen Tsang, who saw four Aśoka stūpas in Kashmir, records several edifying legends of local import.