Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s2.2

c9.s2.2

Following this evidence, which comes from sources assignable to the commencement of the Gupta Age, we may tentatively fix the southern boundary of the Nanda empire, or at least of the arena of its political and military activities, at the river Godāvarī. Barring some mediaeval Jaina treatises and inscriptions, of doubtful value for early times, there is hardly any evidence that the hegemony of the Nandas extended far beyond that famous river. Persian inscriptions, observations of Greek and Latin writers, supplemented by brief notices in Indian literature and epigraphs, enable us to say a few words about the two great regions of India—namely the Indus basin beyond the Ghaggar and South India beyond the Godāvarī—which, in the light of the evidence we have adduced, seem to have lain beyond the limits of the Nanda empire.