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AN EARLY HISTORY OF ORISSA
Prof. Luders. He took sata to be sata which
means hundred. (c) 'He brings into the capital the canal excavated
by king Nanda 300 years before', as proposed by
Jayaswal and Banerji.? (d) 'He brings into the capital from the road of
Tanasuliya the canal excavated in the year 103 of king Nanda'. This has been proposed by Jayas. wal and Banerji, in their revised reading and
translation of the inscription. Now, according to Jayaswal, the year in this passage may be taken as to Nanda era referred to by Al-Biruni in Tahqiq-i-Hind. Pargiter places the accession of the first Nanda ruler approximately in 402 B. C., calculating back from the accession of Chandragupta Maurya in 322 B. C. by adding 80 years as the duration of the reign period of the nine kings of the Nand house. According to this estimate, the canal excavated by the Nanda king in Kalinga would be in (402-103=) 299 B. C. But, then it would be too late to ascribe the public work to any Nanda king. Even if we take the Puranic account of 100 years as the duration of the nine Nandas (i. e. 88 years for Mahāpadma Nanda and 12 years for his sons), then we arrive at 319 B. C. as the year of the excavation of the acqueduct, which too would not fit in the chronological scheme of ancient Indian rulers (322+100-103 = 319 B. C.), since Chandragupta Maurya had captured and ascended the throne of Magadha earlier to that date.
R. D. Banerji believes that the canal may have been excavated by the first ruler of the Nanda dynasty, 103
1. EI, X, App. 1345. p. 161. 2. JBORS, Vol. III, 1917, pp. 425 f. 3. EI, XX, Art, 7, pp. 71f.
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