Two young men may have met over 2,300 years ago somewhere in Taxila, literally the “city of stone,” barely 32 kilometres from modern-day Islamabad. One was Macedonian King Alexander, who, at the age of 30, had recently beaten Persian Emperor Darius III and seized the Achaemenid Empire. Following that, he spent a year putting Syria and Egypt under his rule. The other young guy, Chandragupta, had travelled 1,500 kilometres south from a village near Pataliputra. He’d spent the last few years in this university town, cramming his studies under the watchful eye of his teacher, Kautilya.
Alexander would have ignored the young man; he was a nobody. Chandragupta, on the other hand, would have been keeping a close eye on Alexander, wondering how long it would take him to achieve the glory, aura, and power of the Macedonian conqueror.
He wasn’t kept waiting for long. Within a few years, the ambitious young Chandragupta would pick up where Alexander had left off, capitalising on the confusion caused by the Macedonian’s departure and death (Alexander died in 323 BCE), and head south to take over the kingdom of the Nandas in Magadha, which the Greek army had been so hesitant to face.
Over the next two decades, he would build the largest empire on the subcontinent, the Mauryas. Then he’d do the unthinkable and give up everything.
Ironically, if it hadn’t been for two chance finds that connected so many dots, the narrative of the remarkable Chandragupta, his likely meeting with Alexander, and his escapades in and around Taxila would have been lost to us. The first was written in 1793 in Calcutta by prominent jurist, linguist, and orientalist Sir William Jones, and the second in 1905 in Mysore by renowned Sanskrit scholar Rudrapatna Shamasastry.
Finding Chandragupta
Plutarch, the Greek biographer, wrote of Alexander meeting a young man named Sandrokottos, who would eventually fight the Nanda ruler Agrammes or Xandrames (Dhanananda, the last of the Nanda kings) and capture the Magadha throne. Other Graeco-Roman records made mention of this ‘Sandrokottos,’ whom Indian historians couldn’t pinpoint. Even the Puranas, which include extensive lists of monarchs and dynasties, made no mention of him.
Many people were perplexed as to who Sandrokottos was.
William Jones, a Sanskrit researcher and linguist, discovered the answer when he came across Mudrarakshasa, a Sanskrit play written by Vishakhadatta between the 4th and 8th century CE. The drama told the events of King Chandragupta Maurya’s ascension and defeat of the last Nanda king. Jones, who established the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Kolkata in the late 18th century CE, connected the dots and concluded that the ‘Sandrokottos’ of Greek records was none other than Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Mauryan Empire.
This was a significant discovery since it helped connect the chronology of India’s past with the West and the Middle East for the first time. It also ushered in the era of the Mauryan Empire, and researchers began piecing together the event using Puranas, Buddhist and Jain scriptures, and, more recently, Graeco-Roman accounts.
In 1905, another important piece of the Mauryan puzzle was solved in Mysore. According to legend, an old Brahmin from Tanjore gave over a collection of very ancient and frayed manuscripts to the Oriental Research Institute Mysore’s librarian, eminent Sanskrit scholar Rudrapatna Shamasastry. Shamasastry examined the manuscripts and realised, to his amazement, that they were quite valuable. While there had been numerous references to the great Chanakya or Kautilya and his book on statecraft, the Arthashastra, in classical writings, this was the first time the entire treatise had been discovered in its complete form. Shamasastry was the first to translate this work into English.
These two finds, made over a century apart, helped piece together the story of a little fatherless kid who rose to become Emperor!
Chandragupta and Chanakya
History is frequently coloured by the person who writes it, as the angle relies on the point of view from which it is viewed. This is especially true when reading about Chandragupta, his origins, and his spectacular ascension.
There are three variants of this: Buddhist, Jain, and Brahmanical. After all, this was a time when each of these religions was fighting for space and influence.
According to Buddhists, Chandragupta originated from a poor family who ruled over a little nation named Pipphalivanathe. According to the Jains, his father was a leader of great birth. According to the Puranas, he was a humble born. All of these narratives completely ignore him and merely refer to him as ‘poor born’, despite the fact that he was most likely the son of a Shudra woman (others believe he was the son of the Nanda king’s concubine). Instead, the Puranas honour his instructor and mentor, the Brahmin Chanakya, who is known as the “King Maker.”
All reports agree that he came from low beginnings and ascended through grit and good fortune in equal measure.
For over two millennia, various folk tales and parables have been created around Chandragupta’s life and passed down. Literary works (such as Vishakhadatta’s Mudrarakshasa) have been inspired by him, while Graeco-Roman sources (such as those of Strabo, Arrian, Plutarch, and Megasthenes) provide insight into what Chandragupta was like.
One classic story tells of Chanakya’s first meeting with Chandragupta. According to the Buddhist version described in the Mahavamsa, Chanakya or Kautilya first saw Chandragupta as a little kid playing with his pals and ruling over them as ‘king’. He took the child under his wing after being impressed by his commanding demeanour.
According to the Buddhist narrative, Chandragupta was born into a royal family but was raised by a hunter when his father was killed. According to the scriptures, Chandragupta belonged to the Moriyas’ Kshatriya clan, which was linked to the Shakyas (Buddha’s clan). This story, like much of what has been written about Chandragupta, was written afterwards. The Mahavamsa was most likely authored in the fourth century CE.
Both Buddhist and Jain texts speak of Chanakya’s antagonism with the last Nanda king, and how it was revenge that drove Chanakya to ‘train’ Chandragupta to be king so that he could destroy the Nandas, who, interestingly, are looked down upon by all the sources (Buddhist, Jain, and Brahmanical), despite being a formidable power of their time and most definitely the immediate reason for Alexander’s army
Another well-known narrative about Chandragupta involves him and his mentor debating how to deal with the Nandas. The Nanda army was significantly superior to Chandragupta’s, and it appears that there were early failures until a chance encounter. When the Emperor-in-waiting was touring, he is supposed to have stumbled across a mother reprimanding her son for scalding his hand while attempting to eat the centre of a boiling hot chappati (flat bread). She chided him, pointing out that it was better to eat the bread from the outside in. When he saw this, Chandragupta recognised he had made a mistake by invading the Nandas at the core of their empire. He subsequently switched his attention to the outskirts, specifically the North West.
The timeline becomes fairly hazy at this point. The Mahavamsa also relates how Chandragupta and Chanakya set out to recruit recruits from various locations. There are references to his warriors (mercenaries) coming from the republics in and surrounding Punjab. Parishishtaparvan, a Jain text, and the later play Mudrarakshasa discuss a crucial alliance formed by Chandragupta with a Himalayan king, Parvataka, and how the army that finally stormed the Nanda bastion in Pataliputra would have been composed primarily of Sakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, and Kiratas. In the drama Mudrarakshasa King Parvataka is inexplicably assassinated (possibly poisoned) just as Chandragupta is on the verge of victory…
Historians believe that the declining Greek position in North-Western India following Alexander’s departure aided Chandragupta. This was a time of rivalry and murder among the Greeks who commanded the eastern side. The Nandas were also in decline, and Chandragupta stepped in to fill the vacancy.
By 321 BCE, Chandragupta was on the throne of Magadha, beginning a 24-year reign. Chandragupta expanded his dominion after gaining control of the vast realm that the Nandas had left behind. According to records, he camped north of the Narmada in Central India. In 305 BCE, he returned to the subcontinent’s northwestern boundary, confronting the power of Greek King Seleucus Nicator. In 303 BCE, Chandragupta fought him and took over the Greek-held eastern provinces of Aria, Arachosia, and Paropanisadee (Herat, Kandahar, and Kabul). There was also a marriage partnership with Chandragupta, who most likely married a Greek.Many stories about Chandragupta and his mentor Chanakya’s adventures abound, many of which are in books written years later, and how the former’s tenacity was matched by the latter’s cunning. According to one famous legend, Chanakya even placed small amounts of poison into the new king’s food to make him resistant to enemy poisoning efforts!
The Ruler, Chandragupta
Early historians researching Chandragupta’s periods and reign frequently cited Chanakya’s treatise on statecraft to illustrate what Chandragupta’s own administration would have looked like. However, further research has raised severe concerns regarding this. American historian and cultural anthropologist Thomas R Trautmann, for example, conducted a statistical analysis to determine whether the book was truly written by one guy. Using technology and analysing commonly used terms, he found that the Arthashastra was written by three to four authors. Others, however, have called this study into question. Regardless, the oldest copy of the Arthashastra is only 450 years old, having been obtained by the Oriental Research Institute Mysore in 1905.
Nonetheless, we may piece together some information about Chandragupta’s reign from sources. The sole real inscriptional reference to Chandragupta is Rudradaman’s Junagadh rock inscription from the 2nd century CE. The inscription dates the construction of a reservoir in Junagadh, Gujarat, to Chandragupta’s reign. Meanwhile, Graeco-Roman texts are effusive about the empire’s spread under Chandragupta. Plutarch, for example, states that Sandrokottos conquered all of ‘India’.
We do know that following his loss, Seleucus dispatched Megasthenes, the author of Indica, as an ambassador to the court of Chandragupta in Pataliputra.
Unfortunately, little of Megasthenes’ original work survives, but we do have snippets of the ambassador’s records that have come down through the ages, albeit in pieces, and through the works of others. Dr. Erwin Alexis Schwanbeck, a German classical historian and Indologist, was the first to compile all of Megasthenes’s Indica into a book titled Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian. This was eventually translated into English by Scottish philologist and Government College of Patna Principal John Watson McCrindle.
The account that emerges from these excerpts is fascinating and, at times, unbelievable, especially given the circumstances. They do, however, have some colourful nuggets about Chandragupta and how he resided in a “palace with gilded pillars.” He is reported to have dressed in the finest muslins edged in purple and gold embroidery and to have been flanked by a personal guard of female hunters!
Chandragupta’s dominion stretched from modern-day Afghanistan to the south of the Vindhyas, and from Kathiawar in the west to Bengal in the east. The Nandas were responsible for much of the Gangetic Delta (Gangaridae to the Greeks) and Prassii (Magadha), yet there is evidence that Chandragupta was frequently on the road to conquest.
Though the former may have been part of Chandragupta’s empire for a time, two areas, Kalinga (Odisha) and Andhra, remained significant hubs.
There are also some allusions in Tamil scriptures that indicate an invasion by the ‘Vamba Moryar’, translated as ‘Maurya upstarts’.
Other records indicate that the Mauryas may have travelled to Tirunelveli District in modern-day Tamil Nadu. Many sections of the empire could have been ‘protectorates’ rather than directly under Chandragupta’s rule.
The huge empire of Chandragupta was divided into provinces administered by governors, and it is a credit to his abilities that the empire lasted as long as it did – under his son Bindusara and grandson Ashoka. In fact, historian P L Bhargava summarises it in his book Chandragupta Maurya when he writes:
“Chandragupta was no mere military adventurer, and his grandeur was based on more than just his military achievements…He understood how to organise and conquer a big empire. His management was so excellent that his dominion passed down to his son and grandson undamaged.” This, couldn’t have been possible without Chandragupta’s own brilliance.
From 324 until 297 BCE, Chandragupta Maurya is claimed to have reigned. Today, the only physical evidence of his reign is the excavations at Pataliputra. Archaeologist D B Spooner (1912-1915) excavated a barrier that is very similar to that described by Megasthenes in his Indica. There are also the remnants of a multi-pillared hall and a stunning Greek-inspired stone capital at the archaeological site.
The Southward Journey
A regular stream of Jain pilgrims visits the sacred slopes of Chandragiri and Vindhyagiri, where the 58-foot-tall monolithic monument of Gommateshwara stands, around 144 kilometres from Bengaluru. It is said that this is where Jain monk Acharya Bhadrabahu decided to leave his students 2,300 years ago. One of these people was Chandragupta Maurya.
According to Jain literature, Chandragupta renounced his throne in his final days to follow Jain ascetic Bhadrabahu, who predicted a 12-year drought in his country. Chandragupta and his guru are supposed to have meditated here for months.
Interestingly, two copper plate inscriptions at Sohgaura (near Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh) and Mahasthangarh (present-day Bangladesh) from the third century BCE talk of drought-relief efforts done, most likely alluding to this drought.
Following Bhadrabahu’s death, Chandragupta is reported to have followed the Jain practise of sallekhana, or death fasting. While some historians have questioned the truth of the tradition, which was written hundreds of years after Chandragupta’s death, it lingers on. In reality, Chandragiri is where Chandragupta meditated with his master and there he passed away, into the sunset, over the hill.
For a youngster who ascended to become Emperor, it was a calm end to a life full of activity and glory.
Images Courtesy – Wikipedia
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