in the fourth century, the empire of magadha was greatly expanded under the powerful,

though unpopular, dynasty of the nandas who according to puranic accounts, conquered all
rival monarchs and became sole emperors of the whole of india. how far their sway
extended into the south, it is by no means easy to determine. that it included kalinga seems
to be confirmed by the famous hathigumpha inscription of kharavela who ruled over kalinga
in the second century. this inscription mentions a nanda raja in connexion with the
construction of an aqueduct and states elsewhere that king nanda carried away as trophies
of war a statue of jina and other heirlooms of the rulers of kalinga. kannada inscriptions from
mysore of the tenth and eleventh centuries preserve faint memories of the rule of the
nandas in the kuntala country but there is little confirmation of this tradition. nander on the
upper reaches of the godavari has sometimes been taken to be the survival of an ancient
name like nau-nandadhera and as indicating the extent of nanda power into the deccan.
indeed, punch-marked purana coins , which are found all over the deccan, south india and
ceylon as well as in north india are clear witnesses of ancient contacts between the north
and south whose details are now lost but while they enable us to infer the existence of trade
connexion, they are of no avail in fixing the southern limit of the nanda empire. the inclusion
of kuntala in the empire conforms to the limits of the mauryan empire under asoka as
determined by the existence of his inscriptions in the south and there is no clear evidence of
the mauryan emperors having undertaken wars of conquest in the mauryan emperors having
undertaken wars of conquest in the south. it may, after all, be that the kanada insriptions
mentioned above preserve a correct tradition- that the mauryas came by their southern
possessions as a matter of course by overthrowing the imperial dynasty of the nandas. the
enormous wealth accumulated by he nandas was well known to the ancient tamils and
became proverbial. mamulanar, one of the poets of the sangam age, puts these words into
the mouth of a lovelorn lady: ‘what is it that has attracted my lover more than my charms
and kept him away from me so long? Can it be the treasure accumulated in prosperous
pataliputra and hidden in the waters of the ganges by the great nandas victorious in war?”

Jain tradition affirms that when bhadrabahu, the last of the saints called srutakevalins,
faretold a famine of twelve years’ duration the mauryan emperor chandragupta abdicated
the throne and migrated to the south with the saint and his pupils. The emperor is said to
have lived for many years as a Jain ascetic in sravana belgola in mysore and ultimately
committed suicide by sallekhana or starvation, surviving his teacher by twelve years.
Inscriptions from sravana belgona and its neighbourhood mention bhadrabahu and
chandragupta munindra; one inscription, which may be as old as A.D 600, mentions the pair
(yugma) and says that theirs was the safe faith (dharma); and another of even earlier date,
probably not later than the fifth century, contains all the elements of the story given above.
Bhadrabahu, according to this account, faretold at Ujjain a period of twelve years of dire
famine and the whole of the Jain sangha there upon migrated from the north to the south
under his leadership. When they arrived at a mountain named Katavapra (that is chandragiri)
in a populous and prosperous country (mysore), an Acharya (Prabhachandra by name),
knowing he had but a short time to live, sent away the entire sangha and with only one
disciple attending on him, performed penance and gained emancipation from his body. Two
inscriptions of about A.D. 900 from the neighbourhood of Seringapatam describe the summit
of the lower hill chandragiri at sravana Belgola as marked by the footprints of both
Bhadrabahu and Chandragupta munipati. Later inscriptions at Sravana Belgola bearing dates
in the twelfth and fifteenth centuries repeat this tradition with variations. Similar attestation
also comes from literary sources of which the earliest seems to be the Brihatkathakosa of
Harishena (931). The absence of any clear evidence about the actual end of Chandragupta
maurya lends some plausibility to this legend; but it is improbable in itself and the identity of
the chandragupta muni of the inscriptions is by no means beyond doubt.

The arthasastra of kaultiya gives some informations of value about the trade between the
north and the south in the age of the early mauryan empire. ‘among land routes’, say
kautilya, ‘my teacher considers that leading to the himalaya superior to the one leading to
dakshinapatha, because of the elephants, horses, spices, ivory, hides, silver and gold articlesa
all are very valuable (to be had there)’. He then expounds his own quite difference view as
follows: ‘no’, say kautilya. ‘although it is deficient in woollen cloth, hides and horses, the
dakshinapatha abounds in conch-shells, diamonds, precious stones of other kinds, pearls and
articles of gold. Moreover , the southerntrade route across dakshinapatha traverses a
territory rich in mines and valuable merchandise is frequented by many (traders) and easy to
travel by. That is the superior route’. This passage almost brings before our eyes the large
scale opening-up of tradewith the south which the foundation of the nanda and mauryan
empires brought about. The view represented by kautilya’s teacher (acharya) was becoming
rapidly out of date as a result of new conditions and the pupil affirms that there were in his
day more wealth and larger possibilities of trade in the south than ever before. The mention
of gold, diamonds and other precious stones and pearls and of easy conditions of travel
along the much frequented route, deservers to be particularly noted. Again, in his account of
the articles that entered the royal treasury, kautilya includes varieties of pearls from the
tambraparni river in the pandyan country from pandyakavata (which is explained in the
commentary as the malayakoti mountain in the same area), and from the churna river in
kerala. He also mentions fine cotton fabrics from madura, as well as vaidurya (beryl) of
various colours and varieties of sandalwood which must also have come from south india.

The lagendary account given by megasthenes of the rule of the pandyan kingdom by
pandaia, a daughter of herakles has been noticed already; it must be understood as
recounting the origin of the kingdom rather than as describing contemporary conditions.
Megasthenes says that each day one village brought its due tribute to the royal treasury, this
tribute being , perhaps, a payment in kind calculated to ensure a regular supply of provisions
for the daily comsuption of the royal household. There is a similar statement in the
silappadikaram (600) that on a particular day a certain cowherd family in a suburb of madura
took its turn to supply ghee to the royal palace.