Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c8.11

c8.11

The chapter (VI) on Aśoka and his successors, also by the present writer, aims at presenting the primary evidence arranged under convenient heads with the necessary minimum of comment and criticism. The object has been to let the inscriptions tell the story as far as possible and to accept legendary evidence only to the extent to which it works in with and is not contradicted by the inscriptions. Aśoka's relations with the Sangha, the nature and content of the Dhamma he propagated, the extent of success that attended his missionary efforts, and the question whether he was both monk and monarch at one and the same time have been considered in some detail; the legends connecting Aśoka with Kashmir, Khotan and Nepal have also been considered with some care. All is darkness after Aśoka; the faint gleams from late and diverse sources, the earliest being the Divyāvadāna and Purāṇas, just render the darkness visible; no connected history is possible here; the available evidence has been summed up and the process of the dissolution of the Mauryan empire has been left largely to the imagination of the reader aided by the few scraps of evidence set forth at the end of the chapter. A brief account (Chap. VII) of South India and Ceylon rounds off the political history of the period; the vexed question of the identity and location of Satiyaputa has been discussed; and all the references to Nandas and Mauryas in early Tamil literature have been described in their proper setting and their historical value determined; and the evidence of the early Brāhmī inscriptions of the Tamil districts and of Ceylon, as also that of the Ceylonese tradition in the Mahāvamsa assessed.