Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s31: Assam and Bengal

c11.s31.1

Aśoka's empire did not extend to Kāmarūpa. No Aśoka monuments have been discovered there, and Hiuen Tsang did not notice any in his time ; in fact he asserts that there had never been a Buddhist monastery in the land. The Brahmaputra must have been the frontier of the empire on this side. The discovery in 1931 of the Mahasthān inscription written in Brāhmī characters clearly of the Mauryan epoch makes it certain that Bengal was included within the empire of Aśoka ; Hiuen Tsang saw Aśoka stūpas in Samataṭa (E. Bengal) and in Tāmralipti, which figures as a port of considerable importance in the events of Aśoka's reign as recorded in the Ceylonese chronicles. The southern limit of the empire may be taken to be indicated by the Aśoka stūpas mentioned by Hiuen Tsang in the neighbourhood of Kāñchipuram in the Dravida country (about 12° N. L.) ; the stūpa near the capital (Madura ?) of Malakūṭa (Pāṇḍya) was built, according to him, not by Aśoka, but by his brother Mahendra.