Buddhists Vs Hindus: India's Great (Propaganda) Wars

A History of Mankind (181)

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With a much thinner layer of upper-caste Aryans, Southern India remained closer to Dravidian culture and traditions, as well as mostly independent from the Nanda and Maurya as well as their successor states.

Various kingdoms rose, of which the Chola state with its core in modern Tamil Nadu appears to have been most prominent – according to local tradition, it was ruled by the same dynasty between at least the Third century BC and the Thirteenth Century AD, even though it only became a significant Indian and even transoceanic power around the Ninth Century AD.

Stories about Karikala, a semi-mythological Chola Dynasty king perhaps of the 3rd-2nd century BC, provide glimpses of a world rapidly shifting from ritualistic warfare into naked power politics, albeit one that would still strike well-traveled people like Menander I as picturesque: in poems lauding his exploits, he’s said to have captured drums and umbrellas from their enemies, symbols of royalty in the petty kingdoms of the region.