Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/81

Rh named Suhmâ, was the principal port for the embarkation and landing of passengers and goods conveyed to or from Ceylon, Burma, China, and the islands of the Indian Ocean. There is no doubt that this important mart was under the jurisdiction of Asoka, who built a stûpa there, Which Was still in existence nine centuries later. The port Was destroyed long since by the accumulation of silt and changes of the land level. Its modern representative, the small town of Tamlûk, stands fully sixty miles distant from the sea. The old city lies buried under the deposits made by the rivers, the remains of masonry walls and houses being met with at a depth of from eighteen to twenty-one feet. Another stûpa of Asoka stood in the capital of Samatata or the Brahmaputra Delta, and others in various parts of Bengal and Bihar.

It is thus manifest that the whole of Bengal must have been subject to the Maurya suzerainty. The conquest in B. C. 261 of the neighbouring kingdom of Kalinga between the Mahânadî and Godâvarî rivers, narrated in the preceding chapter, completed the circle of Asoka's sovereignty over India to the north of the