Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/253

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SOUTHERN INDIA HINDUIZED
203

great monarchy embraced all the districts between the Godavari and the Krishna, the capital apparently being situated near the modern Amaravati on the lower Krishna. It was the Andhra text of the Taittiriya Aranyaka which Apastamba recognized and followed, and his teachings are to this day held in regard by the Apastambiya Brahmanas of Nasik, Puna, Ahmadabad, Satara, Sholapur, Kolhapur, and other places in the Deccan.


CAPITAL OF HALF COLUMN FROM A TEMPLE IN ORISSA.

Thus we find that the conquest of Southern India which was commenced at the close of the Epic Period went on through succeeding centuries; that by the sixth century, Bengal, Orissa, Gujarat, and the Deccan had been conquered and Aryanized; and that by the fifth century the Deccan as far south as the Krishna River was the seat of a powerful Hindu Empire. By the fourth century B. c. the whole of Southern India south of the Krishna River had been Hinduized, and three great Hindu kingdoms, those of the Cholas, the Cheras, and the Pandyas had been founded, stretching as far south as Cape Comorin; and Ceylon, too, had been discovered. And when we come towards the close of this century, we issue now from the obscurity of isolated