The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c24.s3.9

c24.s3.9

¹ The Udayagiri or Hāthigumphā inscription of Khāravela, the Jain king of Kalinga, has now been edited by K. P. Jayaswal and R. D. Banerji in *J. B. O. Res. Soc.*, iii, pp. 425–507, with good facsimiles. The inscription is dated in the year 165/164 of 'Rājā Muriya', *scil.* Chandragupta. We learn that Khāravela, surnamed Mahā Meghavāhana, the third of the Cheta or Chaitra dynasty of Kalinga, was anointed as Mahārāja when twenty-four years of age, having been already Crown Prince (*yuvarāja*) for nine years. In his second year he defied Sātakarṇi, by sending an army to the west. In his fifth year he repaired an aqueduct which had not been used for 300 years from the time of king Nanda, and in the same year, harassed the king of Rājagriha, i. e. of Magadha. In his twelfth year he watered his elephants in the Ganges, and compelled the king of Magadha to bow at his feet. In his thirteenth year he erected certain pillars. The Nanda king mentioned in the inscription must be Nandivardhana or Nanda I, the date of whose accession as counted back from the fifth year of Khāravela approximates very closely to the date deduced by K. P. Jayaswal from the date in the dynastic lists of the Purāṇas (R. D. Banerji in *J. B. O. Res. Soc.*, iii, Dec. 1917), pp. 497–99). The Āndhra king alluded to can only be Śrī Sātakarṇi, No. 3 of the Purāṇic list, who is commemorated by a defaced, but happily inscribed, relief image at Nānāghāṭ, a pass leading from the Konkan to the ancient town of Junnār in the Poona District, Bombay (*A. S. W. I.*, vol. v, p. 59). The synchronism of Sātakarṇi I with Khāravela proves conclusively that the Āndhra dynasty cannot have begun with the death of the last Kāṇva king. The date assigned to Sātakarṇi I is in full accord with the script of the Nānāghāṭ inscriptions, which include similar records of the first and second Āndhra kings, Simuka and Krishṇa (Lüders, *op. cit.*, Nos. 1113, 1114, 1144). The king of Magadha whom Khāravēla defeated was Pushyamitra of the Śuṅga dynasty.