People often find it hard to believe that the literature containing stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharat and Puranas came into being only 2,000 years ago, give or take a few centuries, in the period between the Mauryas and the Guptas. Maybe they were popular already in the oral tradition, but that remains a speculation. That these stories may have existed 5,000 years ago or even earlier, remains a matter of faith. So it is quite possible the Mauryan kings, like Chandragupta and Ashoka, never heard these stories. They were familiar with Vedic gods and goddesses, of course, and folk deities that find mention in the most ancient of Buddhist and Jain lore, but not quite the stories of Shiva and Vishnu avatars we are so familiar with today.