Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/175

EMPIRE OF ASOKA 141 tour of the holy places. He was accompanied by his daughter Charumati, who adopted a religious life, and remained in Nepal, when her imperial father returned to the plains. She founded a town called Devapatana, in memory of her husband, Devapala Kshatriya, and settled down to the life of a nun at a convent built by her to the north of Pasupatinath, which bears her name to this day. Asoka treated Lalita Patan as a place of great sanctity, erecting in it five great stupas, one in the centre of the town, and four others outside the walls at the cardinal points. All these monuments still exist, and differ conspicuously from more recent edifices. Some minor buildings are also attributed to Asoka or his daughter. Eastwards, the empire comprised the whole of Ben- gal as far as the mouths of the Ganges, where Tamra- lipti (generally identified with the modern Tamluk) was the principal port. The strip of coast to the north of the Godavari River, known as Kalinga, was annexed in 261 B. c. Farther south, the Andhra kingdom, between the Godavari and the Krishna (Kistna), appears to have been treated as a protected state, administered by its own rajas. On the southeast, the Palar River, the northern fron- tier of the Tamil race, may be regarded as the limit of the imperial jurisdiction. The Tamil states extending to the extremity of the peninsula, and known as the Chola and Pandya kingdoms, were certainly independ- ent, as were the Keralaputra and Satiyaputra states on the southwestern, or Malabar, coast. The southern