The Mauryan Polity c6.s1.t4.15

c6.s1.t4.15

These several incidents unmistakably indicate that the invasion was by the mighty army of a victorious emperor for the purpose of bringing down a recalcitrant ruler of a South Indian principality who alone had refused submission when all others had been vanquished and overthrown by the Kośar fighting evidently under the banner of the Imperial Mauryas. Who these Kośar¹ and Vaḍukar were who formed part of the imperial forces? Were they allies or mercenaries? It is difficult to ascertain beyond doubt. But the allusion in one and the same passage not only to the fabulous wealth of the Nanda—undoubtedly a king of the great Nanda line—but also to the *Moriyar* invasion² by the author Māmūlaṇār, bears the weight of the evidence that these facts were connected by some association of ideas in the mind of the author. Now what other connection could there be except that the Mauryas were the immediate successors to the throne and empire, and inheritors of the power and wealth of the Nandas? That this Nanda to whose vast hoard of wealth Māmūlaṇār here makes such pointed reference is the imperial Magadha Nanda, is clear from another poem of his where also the wealth of Nanda is eulogistically mentioned: