Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s38.29

c11.s38.29

The inscriptions of Aśoka at Brahmagiri and Siddhāpura in Mysore mark clearly the southern limit of the Mauryan empire which might have extended even a little further south to the latitude of the modern city of Madras. Kannaḍa inscriptions from Mysore and Bombay Karṇāṭak of the tenth and eleventh centuries A. D. preserve faint memories of the rule of Nandas in those parts, but there is little tangible confirmation of this tradition, unless it be that the punch-marked *purāṇa* coins found all over Deccan, South India and Ceylon are to be accepted as witnesses of ancient contacts between the North and South of which the details are now lost beyond recovery. Then there is the Jaina legend, late, multiform, and oft-discussed, of the migration of Chandragupta to Śravaṇa Belgola when Bhadrabāhu, the Jain patriarch, foretold a famine of twelve years' duration. Chandragupta is said to have lived several years as a Jain monk in Śravaṇa Belgola until his death by the rite of Sallekhana. The legend is improbable in itself and the identity of the Chandragupta it relates to is not above doubt. A late Pallava charter mentions an Aśōkavarmā among the earliest rulers of Kāñchī, and one may wonder if this is a reference to the Mauryan emperor.