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dation on fact. "I A few facts which appear to support the traditional account may be mentioned here on the smaller hıll at Sravana Belgola there are even now a cave and a temple nained after Bhadrabahu and Chandragupta respectively An inscription of the 7th century on the same hill states that the couple of ascetics Bhadrabahu and Chandragupta lived on the hill. Two more epigraphs3 of the 9th century near Seringapatam tell us that the same hill was marked with the footprints of the same couple of ascetics
Three inscriptions of the time of Asoka, the grandson of Chandragupta, are found in the Molakalmuru Taluk of the Chitaldrug District in the My soie State Recently an Asoka inscription was discovered at laski in the Nizam's Dominions. We learn from the Ceylonese Buddhist Chronicle Mahavainsa that Asoka sent d Buddhist missionary to Banavase and another to Mahisha-mandala. The late Dr. Fleet was of opinion that the Mahisha-mandala mentioned above did not refer to Mysore but to a province on the banks of the Narbada. But Mahisha-rashtra or Maisa-11ailu oli urs as the name of Mysore in inscriptions and literature Naisa is only a tadbharva or currupt form of Mahisha. The above facts show the connectioil of the Mauryas with the Kannada country.
A Prakrit inscription4 of about the middle of the 2nd century A. D, engraved on a pillar at Malvallı in the Shikarpur Taluk of the Shimoga District, records a grant by Haritiputra-Satakarnı for the god Tsvara of the village, and a Sanskrit inscription 5 of the early part of the 5th century, incised on a pillar standing in front of the Pranavesvara temple at Talgunda in the same Taluh, states that the god Pranavesvara had been worshipped by Satakarni and other kings. At Chitaldrug have been unearthed lead coins issued
1. Early History of India (31d edition), page 1462 Sravana Belgela 17. 3. Epigraphia Cai nautica, III, Seringapatam 147 and 148. 4 Ibid , VII Shikarpur 263. 5. Shikarpur 176.
