Page:The history of caste in India.pdf/54



In order to understand the text before us, it is advisable to review the course of events for the five centuries within which the work must have been written. The political events and other great changes in India which were taking place two hundred and fifty years before and after the beginning of the Christian era deserve our attention.

The great emperor Ashoka was dead by 230 B. C. Within fifty years of his death the Maurya dynasty was overthrown. The dynastics of Shungas and Kanvas, of whom very little more than a list of kings is known, appeared and disappeared within the next hundred and fifty years. During the rule of these two dynasties, the kingdom or the empire of which Pataliputra was the capital dwindled into insignificance. The empire had lost its hold in the Punjab, and the mastery of the province was left to be contested for by rival Greek potentates. The Andras of the south, who had once paid tribute to the Mauryas of PataiiputraPataliputra [sic] now raised their heads. They followed a career of conquest, pushing themselves farther and farther to the north, overthrew the Kanvas and annexed their territory. The exact duration of the Andhra's authority in the north is a matter very uncertain. This dynasty terminated its existence about 236 A. D. according to the statements of the Matsya and Väyu Puranas, as interpreted by Vincent