Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/15

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EIGHTEEN hundred years ago, the most powerful and civilised empire in the known world was that of Rome. Under Trajan, the last of the great Roman conquerors, it had risen to the zenith of its power, and embraced a great portion of Europe, and all those parts of Asia and Africa which lay around the Mediterranean Sea. In the east, the vast Empire of China had attained its greatest expansion under the kings of the illustrious Han dynasty and extended from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea, and from the Atlas mountains to the Himalayan range. Between these two Empires lay two kingdoms—Parthia and Gandhara. Pacorus, king of Parthia ruled over Parthia Proper, Media, Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. Kanishka, the leader of the Sakas, who had emigrated from the central table-land of Asia and overthrown the Bactrian empire, was king of Gandhara, and his dominion stretched from Bactria to the Central Himalayas, and from the River Oxus to the River Jumna. East of Gandhara and south of the Himalayan range was the ancient empire of Magadha then ruled by the Maha-karnas, who belonged to the great tribe of the Andhras. The small state of Malava, founded by a tribe akin to the Andhras, on the northern side of the Vyndhia hills, had thrown off the yoke of the Magadhas: and Parthian adventurers held sway in the regions near the mouths of the Indus and in Guzerat. In the Deccan, the basins of the Mahanadi, Godaveri and Kistna still formed part of the Magadh