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400 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
in these pages, the period of Kanva rule extended from cir. B.C. 75 to cir. B.C. 30.
Very little is known about the history of Magadha proper after the Kanvas. To reconstruct the history of the province from the fall of the Kanvas to the rise of the Gupta dynasty is a difficult task. The so-called Andhras or Satavahanas who are represented as destroying the Kanva sovereignty, apparently in Eastern Malwa, do not appear to have ruled in Magadha proper. The greatest among them are called 'Sovereigns of the Deccan' (Dakshinapathapati) and an accurate idea of the field of their political and military activities may be obtained from the epithets 'tisamuda-toyapītavāhana,' 'whose chargers had drunk the water of the three oceans,' and 'trisamudradhipati,' 'overlord of the three seas' occurring in epigraphic and literary records. The sway of rulers like the Guptas, on the other hand, is said to have extended as far as the four seas.
The discovery of a clay seal with the legend Mokhalinam suggests that at one time the Gaya region was under the sway of Maukhari chiefs. But the precise date of the record is not known. Equally uncertain is the date of Mahārājā Trikamala who ruled in the same
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1 There is no valid reason for connecting the Nurruvar Kannar (Silappadikaram, xxvi, Dikshitar's trans, 299 f.) either with the Satakarnis or with Magadha. The expression "Kannar" sometimes stands alone proving that Nurruvar is only a qualifying adjective, not a part of the name. The Ganges, even if it be the Bhagirathi, and not Gautami Ganga or the Godavari, with which the family is associated, flows through other territories besides Magadha, showing that there is no necessary connection between that province and the kings in question.
2 Fleet, CII, 14. The legend is written in Mauryan Brahmi. The Maukharis in question may have exercised sway over some little principality under the suzerainty of the Mauryas or the Sungas. Three inscriptions have recently been discovered at Baḍva in the Kotah State in Rajputana recording the erection of sacrificial pillars by Maukhari Mahāsenāpatis (generals or military governors) in the third century A. D. (Ep. Ind. XXIII, 52).
