Buddhist Civilisation 121Jains and Buddhists (Sastri 1999: 80–81). The tradition of righteous,
self-sacrificing kings in Tamil Nadu dates to the Sangam era (the
legend of King Sibi, so important in Buddhist Jataka tales, may well
have originated in the south) and the symbolism of the cakkavatti,
whose march of victory ‘was led by the march of a mysterious wheel
of gold and gems through the air’ (Sastri 1999: 119) may also have
indicated a Buddhist influence. The fact that Cholas and Dravidas
were both named as low, ‘mixed’ castes by orthodox law-givers like
Manu also indicates the limit of Brahmanic influence.
After the Sangam period, what Nilakanta Sastri calls a ‘long
historical night’ prevailed, from the 4th to the end of the 6th cen-
tury, dominated politically by ‘a mysterious and ubiquitous enemy
of civilisation, the evil rulers called Kalabhras’ (Sastri 1999: 130).
Yet this ‘dark period’ of Tamil history seemed so only to the 19th
and 20th century historians who created and defined their
history—before the British period, all earlier periods were equally
known or unknown to the general population. The ‘nationalist’
historians of the British period considered it a dark age only because
the rulers were supporters of non-Brahmanic religions: it was the
period of great literature, the kavyasand the great didactic poem
Kural, all influenced by or openly propagating Buddhism and
Jainism. The ‘Hinduisation’ of Tamil Nadu took place only after
the Brahmanic revival under the Pallavas in the 7th century. This
period saw the rise of militant bhakti movements focused on Shiva
and Vishnu strong anti-Buddhist and anti-Jain propaganda, as
well as the sophisticated campaigns of the Vedantic philosopher
Shankacharya in the 8th century CE.
The ‘Satyaputtas’ may be identified as a branch of the Asoka
family in Maharashtra which eventually became the Satavahanas,
and who ruled perhaps the greatest empire after Asoka (Kosambi
1975: 213–14). Though they are called the ‘Andhras’ in Sanskritic
puranic literature, they evidently originated from western
Maharashtra, with the earliest inscriptions referring to them dating
from about the 1st century BCE.^1 Then they were eclipsed in that
region after being defeated by the Sakas, central Asian tribes whotime of the British. His inscriptions announce him as a Buddhist;
and while most Indian historians, including Romila Thapar and
D.D. Kosambi, argue that the ‘Dhamma’ he tried to promote as the
ethics of his kingdom had nothing specifically Buddhist about it, it
was in fact basically the code of righteousness that Buddhism
prescribed for ‘cakkavati’ kings. His instructions on his rock edicts
not only enjoined ‘morality’ in general, they expressly renounced
the slaughter of nearly all animals for royal feasts. Though he
maintained capital punishment (not itself against the Buddhist
ideal), prisoners were regularly released from jail. Asoka’s pillars
are the most important early architectural remains, and the wheel
pillar itself proclaims that he saw himself as a Buddhist emperor
(see Thapar 1982; Smith 1998; Kosambi 1975: 197–209).
The Mauryan empire began to decline soon after Asoka and
ended with the revolt of a Brahman governor, Pushyamitra Shunga,
which Ambedkar has called a ‘counter-revolution’; Pushyamitra
sought to revive Vedic sacrifices and Ambedkar believes that the
Manusmritiwas written during his rule (Ambedkar 1987: 268–70).
But while the Mauryan empire broke up and a period of reaction
began in the Gangetic plain of Bihar and eastern UP, agricultural and
surplus-producing urbanised societies expanded in the south, west
and eastern regions of India, and new Buddhist and Jain-influenced
kingdoms outside the original Gangetic plain center of Buddhism.
In the east, the Kalinga that Asoka had once conquered produced
Kharavela, its first great ruler a Jain king who promoted agriculture
and irrigation works there, and himself embarked on a career of
conquest in the 1st century BCE. From this time on for a millennium,
eastern India including Orissa and Bengal remained an area of
Buddhist influence and the major but of trade with southeast Asia.
Asoka had identified four kingdoms to his south—the Pandyas,
Satyaputtas, Cholas and Keralaputtas. Three of these were the
traditional Tamil kings, Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras. These king-
doms date from the last centuries of the first millennium BCE, when
surplus production allowed the formation of kingdoms in the south
and the beginnings of trade. Basham has noted the presence of a
Pandya envoy in Athens in 20 BCE (Basham 1959: 228). The Sangam
period, lasting probably from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE, was
a period of epic poetry that showed influence of Buddhism and
Jainism as well as Vedic Brahmanism. The earliest Tamil inscriptions
in the Brahmi script, from about the 2nd century BCE, record gifts to
120 Buddhism in India
(^1) In fact, the Dravidian speakers who must have been dominant in the area at the
time probably only later gave birth to separate Telugu and Kannada literatures,
while Marathi arose out of the mixture of these with some Pali (Prakrit) and later
Sanskrit influences.