A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c10.12

c10.12

The conquest of Kalinga by Aśoka (c. 260 B.C.) is one of the best-known events of his reign and formed the turning-point in his spiritual career. No wonder his edicts are found in Dhauli in the delta of the Mahanadi, and at Jaugada in the Ganjam district, then certainly part of Kalinga. Dhauli was perhaps the same as Tosali, the capital of Kalinga in those days. A fragment of one of the edicts of Aśoka discovered at Sopara near Bombay proves the inclusion within the Mauryan empire of the north-west as well as the north-east of the Deccan. Farther south Aśokan inscriptions have been found in the Raichur and Chitaldrug districts in Mysore, and in the Kurnool district of Andhra. How much farther south the empire of the Mauryas extended can only be conjectured; it seems not unlikely that a part of the Tondaimandalam was included in it; at any rate, a Pallava inscription of the ninth century A.D. (the Velūrpālaiyam plates) mentions an Aśokavarman among the earliest rulers of Kāñchipuram. The countries of the Deccan are very well represented in the account given by the Ceylonese chronicle Mahāvamsa of the missions sent after the third Buddhist council at Pātaliputra for the propagation of the dhamma in different countries. We learn that a certain Mahādeva was sent to Mahishamandala (Mysore) and one Rakkhita to Vanavāsi (afterwards the centre of the Kadamba kingdom), a Yona Dhammarakkhita, possibly a Greek monk, was deputed to Aparantaka (the northern half of the Bombay coast) and Mahārakkhita to the Maratha country. Mahinda, the son of Aśoka, who was responsible for the conversion of Ceylon, also finds a place in the list along with four others who share with him the honour of carrying the gospel to Laṅkā. Though this account is seven or eight centuries later than the time to which it relates, there is good reason to believe that it preserves a fairly correct tradition quite in conformity with the evidence of the Aśokan inscriptions. All the Deccan states mentioned were of course within the empire of Aśoka.