| abstract
| - On the first day of spring in 1170 (417 AD) a merchant of the Satavahana who was transporting goods to the Roman Empire moved close enough to the coast that he saw the harbors and shipyards of the Maurya. When he returned to the Satavahana Kingdom the other merchants did not believe him but he insisted that they were real and that there were ships bearing the Maurya’s seal on them just north of their Kingdom. Dismissive as the people were, the government was less sure. A small group of boats moved out and to the area that the merchant had described, looking for these harbors. They came across Harishchandrang and were attacked by the Maurya navy. The Maurya from these ports moved into the island of Madagascar directly rather than move into the territories on mainland Africa. The capital of New Thanjavur (Antananarivo) lied in the center of the island and thus had many areas that the invading forces would need to go through in order to reach the King in his palace at the center of New Thanjavur. The city of Antsiranana on the Northern coast was the first stronghold hit by the Maurya. This attack was brutal but the Maurya managed to push past this area and the Generals in New Thanjavur, who were confident in their security on the island prior to this battle, were beginning to panic. The city of Mahajanga, on the other side of the Northern Coast was mobilized to keep further armies from providing reinforcements. The soldiers in Antsiranana were ordered to engage in suicidal tactics, taking as many of their munitions into oblivion rather than allow the Maurya to take the Satavahana weapons and use them against their original owners. Antsiranana became an example to the cities throughout the island of Madagascar. People were preparing to a sacrifice their own lives and the King promoted such preparations Mahajanga defended honorably and eventually contained the Maurya into a stalemate formation at a safe distance from the coast. In this window of time the Mainland African soldiers of the Satavahana Kingdom began preparing to move against the port cities of the Maurya, now that their locations were known. The Maurya contemplated asking for assistance from the neighbors on the continent but chose against this idea so that they would not be expected to share any of the gains they make. The cities of Satavang (Beira) and Ravishanga (Blantyre) were huge bases for the mainland military forces and they were almost entirely emptied in order to move to their ports, onto ships, and out against the Maurya. This was a day they had prepared for and were eager to complete. However the Maurya were also planning to move out their reserve forces to overcome the stalemate. This mobilization made the situation of the war all the more problematic. The Satavahana were making gains of the stalemate and is seemed as though they were going to overcome the stalemate and push the Maurya off the African continent. This was transitory however. The Satavahana were soon overwhelmed by the Maurya coming from all sides it seemed. They fell back by in large and the forces heading towards the Maurya port cities were quickly subdued. The Maurya invaded the capital but they were shocked at the destruction that the people inflicted on their own nation against the invaders. The burning of the New Thanjavur was not done by the invaders, in fact, it was done by the residents of the capital city. This horrific scene where the mostly unarmed populace killed themselves and attacked soldiers of the Maurya in such a way that it repelled them from their mission in many ways. The Maurya leaders would not be stopped, by the time they chose to end their operations and declare victory, there were hardly any resources ripe for the taking. The projected cost and time to repair this damage was so high that the Samraat was livid that his war would not lead to a wealthy and prosperous land acquisition, as he expected. This being the case on the island of Madagascar, the situation on the mainland areas were not much better. Despite this the unprotected Satavahana territories fell to invasions by the Zulu, the Bantu, the Maurya and the Siddharthists. Only the Bantu had a border with the land their claimed now but they managed to establish rather secure routes to these new areas. The island of Madagascar, or the island of death as it was later called, was left unconquered and the Maurya troops, despite the objections of some saying that they were conquerors and deserved to own this land, returned to their lands on the coasts of Africa or to mainland India.
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