Page:The Ancient Geography of India.djvu/583
SOUTHERN INDIA. 529
Tables as placing the Andhras "on the banks of the
Ganges," but the extremely elongated form of the
Pentingerian Map has squeezed many of the peoples
and nations far out of their true places. A much safer
conclusion may be inferred from a comparison of the
neighbouring names. Thus the Andra-Indi are placed
near Damirice, which I would identify with Ptolemy's
Limyrike by simply changing the initial 4 to 4, as the
original authorities used for the construction of the
Tables must have been Greck. But the people of
Limyrike occupied the south-west coast of the penin-
sula, consequently their neighbours the Andræ-Indi
must be the well-known Andhras of Telingana, and
not the mythical Andhras of the Ganges, who are
mentioned only in the Puránas. Pliny's knowledge of
the Andaræ must have been derived either from the
Alexandrian merchants of his own times, or from the
writings of Megasthenes and Dionysius, the ambassa-
dors of Seleukus Nikator and Ptolemy Philadelphus to
the court of Palibothra. But whether the Andaræ
were contemporary with Pliny or not, it is certain that
they did not rule over Magadha at the period to which
he alludes, as immediately afterwards he mentions
the Prasii of Palibothra as the most powerful nation
in India, who possessed 600,000 infantry, 30,000
horse, and 9000 elephants, or more than six times the
strength of the Andaræ-Indi.
The Chinese pilgrim notices that though the lan- guage of the people of Andhra was very different from that of Central India, yet the forms of the written characters were for the most part the same. This statement is specially interesting, as it shows that
- Vishnu Purana,' Hall's edition, iv. 203, note.
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