Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/204

 166 ASOKA MAUKYA AND HIS SUCCESSORS conjunction and harmony with his measures of domestic propaganda. Before the year 256 B. c., when the Rock Edicts were published collectively, the royal missionaries had been despatched to all the protected states and tribes on the frontiers of the empire, to the independent kingdoms of Southern India, to Ceylon, and to the Hellenistic monarchies of Syria, Egypt, Gyrene, Macedonia, and Epirus, then governed respectively by Antiochos Theos, Ptolemy Philadelphos, Magas, Antigonos Gonatas, and Alexander. The missionary organization thus embraced three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe. The protected states and tribes brought in this way within the circle of Buddhist influence included the Kambojas of Tibet, with other Himalayan nations; the Gandharas and Yavanas of the Kabul valley and re- gions still farther west; the Bhojas, Pulindas, and Pitenikas dwelling among the hills of the Vindhya range and Western Ghats; and the Andhra kingdom between the Krishna and Godavari Rivers. The Dravidian peoples of the extreme south, below the thirteenth degree of latitude, being protected by their remoteness, had escaped annexation to the north- ern empire. In Asoka's time their territories formed four independent kingdoms, the Chola, Pandya, Kerala- putra, and Satiyaputra. The capital of the Chola king- dom was probably Uraiyur, or Old Trichinopoly, and that of the Pandya realm was doubtless Korkai in the Tinnevelli District. The Keralaputra State comprised the Malabar coast south of the Chandragiri River, and