Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s2.t3.3

c9.s2.t3.3

It is the wealth of the Far South, rather than the annals of its people, their manners and customs, religion and philosophy, that interested the earliest foreign observers. The contemporaries and immediate successors of Alexander seem to have had some vague knowledge of the south. A place called Keras is mentioned by Aristotle. But its identification with Kerala or Chera is not beyond doubt. Onesicritus, however, gives a description of the island of Taprobane (Tāmraparṇī or Ceylon). Eratosthenes in his description of India in the days of Alexander informs us that the most southerly part of India was occupied by the lands of Coniaci and Taprobane was seven days' sail from this place. He gathered the information that the most southerly capes of India rose opposite to the region of Meroe, from treatises written by men who had been to that region. Nearchus speaks of the setting of the Bears and if Megasthenes is to be believed this was a phenomenon observed in the southern parts of India. Aristobulus shows acquaintance with the products of "the southern land of India, (which) like Arabia and Aethiopia bears cinnamon, nard and other aromatic products." Strabo speaks of the people of the south as being like the Aethiopians in colour, but he does not specify his authority. Megasthenes speaks, in one of his doubtful fragments, of the Andrae (Andhras) who "possessed numerous villages, thirty towns defended by walls and towers, and supplied their king with an army of 100,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 elephants." The tribe is referred to in certain Brāhmaṇa texts and is found in historical times in the region watered by the lower courses of the Godāvarī and the Kṛṣṇā. Mention is also made of a tribe called the "Modubae" who are placed beyond the "Modogalingae". They are apparently identical with the Mutibas, a Dasyu tribe associated by the Brāhmaṇa texts, referred to above, with the Andhras.