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INTRODUCTION.
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if not absolutely the whole, of the Indian continent was known to the Sanskrit-speaking population of the country. When was this knowledge reached ? It is difficult to fix the precise period ; and even if it could be fixed, it would not help us to fix satisfactorily any point of time to which the Anugità could be attributed. But it may be pointed out here, that in Patañgali's Mahabhashya we have evidence of such knowledge having been possessed by the Aryas in the second century B.C. In truth, the evidence available in the Mahabhashya is even fuller than this in the Anugitá. For Patañgali tells us of a town or city in the south named Kaskipura'; he speaks of the dominions of the Pandya kings, and of the Kola and Kerala districts ; he resers also to the large tanks of the south; and he makes allusions to linguistic usages current in the southern and other provincess Before Patañgali's time there had taken place Mahendra's invasion of Ceylon, and the invading army must have penetrated through the southern provinces. And there had been also put up the great Inscriptions of Asoka, which have attracted so much interest, and are proving such prolific sources of information in various departments of knowledge. One of these inscriptions was at Gangam, which is not very far from the Mahendra mountain alluded to in the Anugite. All these facts support the conclusion drawn by General Cunningham from the correctness of the information given to Alexander the Great by the Hindus of his time, namely, that 'the Indians, even at that early date in their history, had a very accurate knowledge of the form and extent of their native land'.' And not only do they support that conclusion, they show that the knowledge covered other facts regarding
--- -- ------ - --- - - -- --- · Banens ed., p. 74 (IV, 2, 3). 'P. 60 (IV, 1, 4). See also p. 65.
See Mahâbhåshya, p. 83 (1, 1, 6., p. 16 (1, 1, 1); and cf. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. if, pp. 152, 355. • See Cunningham's Corpus Inscriptionum, 1, p. 1. "See Ancical Geography of India, p. 3. And compare also the information collected in the Periplus of the Earythrysan Sen (translated by Mr. McRiddle), pp. 112-136, where a large number of ports is mentioned as existing on the lodina COOL The Periplus seems to date from about 90 A.D. ke ibid. p. 5).
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