Tribes in Ancient India c48.11

c48.11

Strabo (XV, 4, 73) makes mention of an embassy sent to Augustus Caesar about the year 22 B.C. by a king ‘Pandion’, possibly a Pāṇḍya of the Tamil country.⁶ In the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*, the Pandian kingdom is mentioned which was included in Damirica.⁷ From the Hāthigumphā Inscription of the Cheta king Khāravela of Kaliṅga, it appears that in his eleventh year ‘he had had Pithuḍa ploughed with a plough drawn by an ass’, and seems to have pushed his conquest further south and made his power felt even by the king of the Pāṇḍya country.⁸