SUPPLEMENT THREE
CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA, CHANDRAGUPTA I AND
THE GREEK PICTURE OF SANDROCOTTUS
A COMPARATIVE GLANCE AT THE RIVAL CLAIMS
Even apart from the weighty chronological tilt from Megasthenes favouring the founder of the Imperial Guptas instead of the founder of the Maurya dynasty as the Indian original of the Greeks' Sandrocottus in the time of Alexander and his immediate successor Seleucus Nicator, there are substantial considerations to support the former and not the latter Indian monarch.
The most obvious and perhaps the most decisive point is the information by Strabo (XV.1.36)1 from Megasthenes apropos of the Prasii: "...the reigning king must be surnamed after the city, being called Palibothrus in addition to his own family name, as, for example, King Sandrocottus to whom Megasthenes was sent on an embassy." Here two kinds of designations are involved: (1) the name of the city goes with that of the king and (2) the king's family name goes with his personal one. The first designation seems to be given prominence but if we look at what Strabo says immediately after by way of comment we can see the equal importance accorded to the second. For, his next words are: "Such is also the custom among the Parthians; for all are called Arsaces, although personally one king is called Orodes, another Phraotes, and another something else." Surely, "Arsaces" is not the name of a city: it serves as the family name.
Nor have we exhausted Strabo's drift by discerning the equality of stress. There is an important subtlety which is liable to be overlooked unless explicitly disengaged. And it is the heart of the matter for us. Strabo has announced the city-name and we thereby know Sandrocottus to have been "Palibothrus". Where is the family-name? Strabo has intended it to be conveyed. His information would be incomplete without it. Yet only "Sandrocottus" is mentioned as an example of what is intended. The unmistakable implication is that the family-name is incorporated in this very term.
Nothing known about the Mauryas agrees with any element of
1. The Classical Accounts..., p. 262.
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Strabo's information. Leave aside being called after the name of their chief city, they are not called by the name of their family, either. The family-name is evidently not incorporated in their current common appellations - Chandragupta, Bindusāra, Aśoka, Daśaratha, etc. It is lacking even in their official announcements. Nowhere in the numerous edicts of Chandragupta Maurya's grandson Aśoka does the dynastic title appear. The three inscriptions we have of Aśoka's grandson Daśaratha are equally void. Well does B. M. Barua1 remark on the first Maurya whom he takes to be Sandrocottus: "Chandragupta does not appear to have been known to Megasthenes, and, for the matter of that, to most of the Greek writers as a scion of the Maurya family." ("Most" is an unconscious misnomer: "any" would be the mot juste.)
Sometimes it is argued2 that the Greeks do mention the Mauryas when they refer to a tribe named the Morieis. But if "Morieis" stands for the clan of Moriyas about which the Buddhist tradition3 speaks and if Sandrocottus is Chandragupta Maurya, it is all the more difficult to understand how the Greek writers never associated it with Sandrocottus. Strange indeed that, aware of such a term, Megasthenes who lived at Palibothra and knew Sandrocottus personally should still omit to introduce it in his report. His ommission ought to lead us to feel certain that Sandrocottus was no Maurya.
A desperate bid to see a Maurya in Sandrocottus may be made by drawing our attention to two things side by side. First, the Mahāvariisatīkā, which connects Chandragupta with the Moriyas, accounts for their name through "Mayura" ("peacock") by a tradition averring that they built in their capital "peacock palaces that were filled and resounded with cries of peacocks".4 Secondly, the Greek writer Aelian (XIII. 18)5 relates how the extensive parks attached to the palace of Sandrocottus at Palibothra were full of tame peacocks. But can the chronology of Indian history be made to depend on such bagatelles? Besides, peacocks are not the only birds Aelian speaks of: he refers also to domesticated pheasants in the parks and observes that parrots "keep hovering about the king
1.Aśoka and His Inscriptions, Part I, p. 49.
2.Mookerji, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 24.
3.Ibid., p. 22.
4.Varhsatthappakdsini, I, p. 180, quoted by Barua, op. cit., p. 50.
5.The Classical Accounts..., p. 415.
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and wheeling round him."1
As for the king being termed "Palibothrus", neither any inscription nor any narrative indicates the use of a designation corresponding to it in the time of the Mauryas.
Quite a contrast all round meets us in regard to the Guptas. The family-name "Gupta" is part and parcel of the appellation by which every ruling member of the line is known in their inscriptions. The personal names - Chandra, Samudra, rāma, Kumāra, Skanda, Pūru, Budha, Narsirhha, Vishnu - all carry the suffix "Gupta" in the inscriptions universally accepted as belonging to the line. Among these there is none attributable to the founder himself and we can imagine him calling himself at times merely "Chandra" as well as at other times "Chandragupta", since he was not carrying on an earlier imperial family tradition and so was free either to put forth his personal name alone or else set down together with it the name of the family he was founding. His successors, however, invariably mention him as "Chandragupta" in their epigraphs and such a form must mostly be his own practice. Thus in his case Strabo's statement about Sandrocottus should be regarded as borne out. If the statement implies, as most assuredly it does, that in "Sandrocottus" the family name is already incorporated, it would apply with extra precision to Chandragupta I.
On "Palibothrus" as "surname", D. R. Mankad2 has some apt observations: "This only means that the king should be known as Pātaliputraka meaning so and so of Pātaliputra. The practice of distinguishing the personal names of kings by the names of their capitals is found in the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription of Samudra-gupta [the son of Chandragupta I]..." Lines 19 and 20 of this inscription undoubtedly combine names of capitals with those of kings no less than territory-names with king-names. Pishtapuraka-Mahendragiri, Kotturaka-Swamidatta, Erandapallaka-Damana, Kanchika-Vishnugopa, Vengika-Hastivarman, Palakkaka-Ugrasena and Kusthalapuraka-Dhananjaya assuredly fall into the first category3 and provide firm ground for thinking of a combination like Pātaliputraka-Chandragupta. Mankad4 is able even to cite
1.Ibid.
2.Purānic Chronology, p. 299.
3.V. D. Mahājan, Ancient India, pp. 393-4, 396-7.
4.Op. cit., p. 299.
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the employment of "Pātaliputra" as a distinguishing prefix in a Gupta inscription: the Udayagiri cave inscription of Gupta Era 82 by the minister Śāba of Samudragupta's son Chandragupta II describes in its 4th line this minister as Pātaliputraka-Śāba. In Aśoka's Rock Edict XIII we have peoples denoted by territorial names or territories by the names of peoples - Keralaputra, Tamraparnya, Satyaputra, Āndhra, Yona, Kamboja, Gandhāra. There is nothing analogous to the practice we note in Gupta times in consonance with the report by Strabo-Megasthenes.
The next point we must ponder in the Greek accounts is that Sandrocottus was "born in humble life" (Justin, XV.IV).1 Strictly speaking the phrase should signify not only a person without such triumphant royalty as Sandrocottus ultimately enjoyed but also one belonging to a fairly low social status. Yet the man should have no taint of illegitimacy like Xandrames, the issue of a queen's infidelity, and the social status has to be above that of a barber like the father of Xandrames, for Mookerji2 has rightly reasoned that if Sandrocottus had himself been illegitimate or had borne the taint of extreme ancestral "meanness" he could not have emphasized to Alexander the detestation in which the then-reigning king of the Indian interior was held by his subjects.
Do we find Chandragupta Maurya "born in humble life" in the way wanted? The Brāhmanical tradition3 makes him at the same time a descendant of the imperial Nanda line and the child of a Śūdra woman. Though the Purānas contain no hint of any kind of birth and merely state that the Nandas were uprooted by the Brāhmana Chānakya who anointed Chandragupta as king, a commentator on the Vishnu Purāna (IV.24, Wilson, IX, 187) brings in Murā as the wife of King Nanda and the mother of Chandragupta and a commentator on the drāma Mudrārākshasa (Acts IV, VI) of the 5th century A.D. goes further and says that while his father was called Maurya and was a scion of the Nanda family his mother Murā was a woman of the Śūdra caste. As the Vishnu Purāna (IV.1012) and the Arthaśāstra (III.7) lay down that the child takes the caste of his father, whether born of conjugal association or not, Chandragupta Maurya of the Brāhmanical tradition, hailing from the family of the imperial Nandas, has to be put out of court.
1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 193.
2.Op. cit., pp. 9-10.
3.Ibid., pp. 15-16, 18-19.
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What about the Buddhist and Jain traditions? Mookerji1 sums up: "Buddhist and Jain traditions are at one in declaring for him a noble birth." According to the latter,2 "Chandragupta was born of a daughter of the chief of a village community who were known as 'rearers of royal peacocks' (mayūra-poshaka-grdme)." This story is at variance with what the Greek account suggests. The testimony of the Buddhist books is still more so and the variance is of the greatest importance since modern scholarship accepts the Buddhist version of Chandragupta's origin. The Mahāvamsa and the canonical work Digha Nikāya summarise the versions. The first3 states that he was "born of a family of Kshatriyas called Moriyas" (Moriyānanām khattiydnām vamse jātam) and the second characterizes4 his family as the ruling Kshatriya clan known as the Moriyas of Pipphalivana. "It is now generally accepted," writes Mookerji,5 "that the old clan-name Moriya offers a more satisfactory explanation of Maurya, the name of the dynasty founded by Chandragupta, than the supposed derivation from his mother Murā or father named Maurya. We may therefore readily accept the view that Chandragupta belonged to the Kshatriya clan called the Moriyas originally ruling over Pipphalivana which probably lay in U.P." Certainly there is no birth in humble life here.
To rule over a small locality like Pipphalivana as a petty rāja need not contradict the Greek view of Sandrocottus, but to be, as Mookerji6 announces, "A scion of the Kshatriya clan of Moriyas, an offshoot of the noble and sacred sect of the Sākyas who gave the Buddha to the world" is scarcely to conform to that view. The Kshatriya caste is attributed to Chandragupta by every Buddhist book. The Divyāvadāna7 has no reference to Pipphalivana, yet mentions Chandragupta's son Bindusāra as a lawfully anointed Kshatriya king and his grandson Aśoka as well is described as a Kshatriya.
The first Gupta seems to answer more stringently to the description by the Greeks. He belonged to a family which, though said to
1.Ibid., p. 24.
2.Ibid.,
4.II. 167.
5."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 56.
6.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 22.
7.Ed. E.B., Cowell and R. A. Neil (Cambridge, 1886), p. 370.
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have exercised rule as small chiefs over some portions of Bihār1 or of Bengal,2 was, as its very name suggests, not Brāhman or Kshatriya but of lowly origin; for, according to the Vishnu Purāna, names ending in "Gupta" are characteristic of the Vaishya and Śūdra castes.3 Then there is the fact of the importance given by the Guptas to the Lichchhavi princess Kumāradevl. Her image and name regularly appear on Chandragupta's coins as if to support by his association with her an extended right to his new title of Mahārājadhirāja ("Supreme King of Great Kings") which none of his ancestors held. "Samudragupta," V. Smith" remarks, "was always careful to describe himself as being 'the son of the daughter of the Lichchhavis', a formula implying the acknowledgement that his royal authority was derived from his mother." Mookerji5 writes: "Samudragupta first proudly declares himself as Licchhavi-dauhitra in his inscription, and not as a Gupta-putra, although it is more usual to trace one's lineage on the father's side." As Allan6 observes, "it was rather the ancient lineage than any material gain resulting from the alliance that impressed the Guptas, who themselves appear to have been of humble birth." It is rather interesting to find Allan here using an exact equivalent of the Greek phrase: "born in humble life."
R. C. Majumdar7 also stresses the Lichchhavi-connection: he says that Samudragupta, the issue of Chandragupta's marriage with Kumāradevī, "is always referred to in the genealogical account of the Gupta records as 'the daughter's son of the Lichchhavis', whereas we do not come across any such reference to the maternal family of the eight or ten other Gupta rulers, mentioned in the same records." However, Majumdar sounds a note of hesitation on the nobility of the Lichchhavis. He argues that the Manusamhitā which regards them as a kind of degraded Kshatriyas (Vrātya-Kshatriya) was held in high respect about the time of the Guptas and therefore the marriage-alliance of Chandragupta was probably valuable from a political rather than a social point of
1.Moreland and Atul Chandra Chatterji, A Short History of India (1945), p. 87.
2.The Classical Age..., p. 2.
3.Wilson's translation, p. 298. Of course Gupta families not Vaishya or Śūdra are known, but they are exceptions.
4.The Oxford History of India, p. 148.
5.The Gupta Empire, pp. 15-16.
6.The Cambridge Shorter History of India (1943), p. 88.
7."The Rise of the Guptas", The Classical Age, p. 3.
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view. Of course the political value need not be underrated in order to play up the social, but neither need the whole thing be vice versa. Raychaudhuri' gives the right outlook on the Manusamhitā's designation of what he calls "the most famous clan of the Vrijian confederacy". He says: "Early Indian tradition is unanimous in representing the Lichchhavis as Kshatriyas... Manu concurs in the view that the Lichchhavis are Rājanyas or Kshatriyas [X. 22]... The obvious conclusion seems to be that the Lichchhavis were indigenous Kshatriyas who were degraded to the position of Vrātya when they neglected Brāhmanic rites and showed a predilection for heretical doctrines."
Although on religious grounds the Manusamhitā may not grant a high status to the Lichchhavis, there could have been no doubt in anyone about their ancient lineage. This lineage must have impressed the popular mind, and when an ancient family had political power it must have figured still more prominently in the general conception and, finally, if the Lichchhavis stood higher socially as well as politically than the Guptas, as they seem to have done, we should expect the latter to make much of the former both socially and politically. At least for Samudragupta, who is definitely known to have expanded his dominions by conquest far beyond the dreams of the Lichchhavis, their political importance could hardly be fundamental. If his father is to be thought of as not a conqueror on his own, this importance might have been for him equal to the social; with Samudragupta himself it was bound to be somewhat subordinate, though not necessarily negligible. Majum-dar's hesitation does not appear well-founded.
The last significant point to be decided for the two Chandragup-tas is military stature. All Greek and Latin documents paint Sandrocottus as a mighty warrior, a hero in his own right, one whose strong arm was felt not only in the Indus-region by the prefects whom Alexander had left behind and by Seleucus Nicator afterwards but also in various other parts of India. However, the one outstanding fact about Chandragupta Maurya is that he was a mere instrument in the hands of a Machiavellian fanatic of a Brāhman named Chānakya or Kautilya. Writes Mookerji:2 "The
1.The Political History of Ancient India, pp. 122-23.
2."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp.
59-60.
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Brāhmanical traditions regard Kautilīya (alias Chānakya), rather than Chandragupta, as the chief actor in the great drāma which ended in the extermination of the Nandas. The Purānas credit Chānakya with having destroyed the Nandas and anointed Chandragupta as king. The same view is reflected in Kautilīya Arthaśās-tra and other treatises in ancient India. In the drama Mudrārāksh-asa, the figure of Chandragupta is almost cast into the shade by the brilliant and masterful personality of Chānakya. Stories are also told of the insult offered by the Nanda king to Chānakya and the grim resolve of the latter to uproot the royal dynasty; how he moved about in search of a suitable means to accomplish his ends and at last discovered Chandragupta and made use of him for this purpose." Barua1 comments: "With regard to the fall of the last Nanda king... the Mahāvamsa and its tikā on the one hand, and the Purānas on the other show a complete agreement in so far as they attribute it to the machination of the Brāhman Kautilya-Chānakya. The Mūlakalpa alone suggests that the fall of the Nanda king was due to the alienation of the feeling of the whole body of ministers inadvertently caused by him." The heroic stature of Sandrocottus the conqueror is utterly absent in Chandragupta Maurya.2
In the actual campaign inspired by Chānakya against Magadha we find in Chandragupta a most immature soldier. To quote Mookerji3 again:
"The Mahāvarhsatīkā tells a story about the initial mistake of his campaigns. The mother of a boy, eating the centre of a cake (chapāti) and throwing away the crust, compares his conduct to 'Chandragupta's attack on the kingdom'. The Jain tradition similarly compares the advance of Chandragupta to a child putting his finger into the middle of a hot pie, instead of starting from the edge which was cool. All this explains how Chandragupta, without beginning from the frontiers, and taking the towns in order as he passed, invaded the heart of the country, only to find that his army
1.Op. dr., I, pp. 43-44.
2.The mention of Kautilya, alias Chānakya, at once the minister of Chandragupta Maurya and the alleged author of the Arthaśāstra, brings up the problem of that political treatise in its bearing on chronology and on the identity of Sandrocottus. At the end of Part Three the problem will be thoroughly dealt with. In Supplement Four to the present Part it is briefly yet not indecisively glanced at.
3."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 59.
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was 'surrounded and destroyed'.
"But Buddhist tradition ascribes to him another error of strategy. This time he commenced operations from the frontiers and conquered many rāshtras and janapadas on the way, but failed to post garrisons to hold his conquests so as to secure his rear which was later attacked. Then the proper course dawned on him. He besieged Pātaliputra and killed Dhana Nanda."
Surely this blunderer cannot be the soldier whom the Greeks themselves admired as the liberator of India from the foreign yoke, one with whom Seleucus Nicator came to almost abject terms including perhaps even a daughter for marriage and whom Plutarch described as overrunning and subduing the entire country.
Here we may be threatened with gagging by the argument:1 "Aśoka, in his inscriptions, credits himself with only one conquest - namely, of Kalihga. But the geographical distribution of these inscriptions as well as their internal evidence shows that his empire was vast. As his father Bindusāra is not known as a conqueror, his grandfather Chandragupta must have created it. Some Tamil texts refer to an invasion of the South led by the people called the 'Vamba Moriyar' or the 'Maurya Upstarts'. The Mauryas are reported to have advanced as far as the Podiyil Hill in the Tinnevelly District, passing from Konkan through the hills north of Cannanore and the kingdom of Kongu (Coimbatore) on their way. The title 'Upstarts' suggests that the Tamil poets referred to Chandragupta's new-dynastic time. Then there is the inscription of Rudrādaman I at Junāgarh declaring that Saurāshtra was ruled in Chandragupta's time by a provincial governor of this Maurya king. An Aśokan inscription discovered at Sopārā in modern Thana District proves that this region too was a Mauryan province acquired under Chandragupta."
We need not refuse to be impressed by Saurashtra and by Sopara and other locations of Aśoka's edicts. But the picture is not as glowing as it looks. Chandragupta inherited an extensive kingdom from the Nandas, comprising provinces which had belonged to ten Kshatriya dynasties uprooted by Mahāpadma Nanda: Aikshvākus, Pānchālas, Kāśīs, Haihayas, Aśmakas, Kurus, Maithilas, Śurasenas, Vltihotras and Kalihgas.2 He had only to hold and not
1.Cf. Ibid., pp. 61-62
2."The Rise of Magadhan Imperialism", ibid., p. 32.
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annex the ten provinces: Kalihga is one of them.' How is it then that Aśoka had to conquer it? Either Bindusāra or Chandragupta himself must have lost it. The conquest of South India up to the Tinnevelly District is a doubtful affair. The very phrase "Maurya Upstarts" seems to indicate a family fairly advanced as a new entity and not just begun: the plural is otherwise inexplicable. If the Imperial Mauryas had anything to do with the achievement, it may be the successors of Chandragupta. And they are likely to be neither Bindusāra nor Aśoka, for, as Majumdar, Raychaudhuri and K. Datta's Advanced History of India (p. 101) tells us, "the southern frontier of the Maurya empire in the days of Aśoka... did not extend beyond the Chitaldrug district of Mysore, and the Pandya realm which included the Tinnevelly district is referred to in the edicts of that emperor as a frontier kingdom." If Chandragupta actually acquired this district, he or his son must have withdrawn from it very soon. Even the association of its conquest with any of the imperial Mauryas is not definite. An Advanced History of India (p. 101) observes: "The achievement is attributed by certain scholars to the Mauryas of the Konkan who belong to a much later date."
It is not only the case of Kalihga that proves to be a puzzle. There is also the case of the Āndhra country. We may be told: "In Rock Edict XIlI the Āndhra nation is distinctly mentioned in the list of subordinate peoples that lived in the dominions of the King . As Kalinga is the sole territorial acquisition mentioned by Aśoka, how did this nation come within his empire? Mahāpadma Nanda did not rule over it. None except Aśoka's grandfather could have annexed it. Would not this feat bring him closer to Sandrocottus's military reputation by constituting at least one clear sign of his conqueror's role?" Unfortunately the answer is No . For, in the time of Sandrocottus the Āndhras were an independent people, though perhaps not outside his suzerainty. "Pliny (first century A.D.), who is usually supposed to have utilised the information supplied by Megasthenes (c. 300 B.C.), speaks of a powerful king of the Āndhra country possessing 30 fortified towns as well as an army of 100,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 elephants." ?So either Aśoka himself annexed the Āndhra country without men-
1.Kharavela's Hathigumpha Inscription also testifies to the possession of Kalinga by "a Nanda king" (ibid., p. 216).
2.Sircar, "The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 194.
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tioning the conquest in his edicts or else Megasthenes and Pliny were talking of a period quite other than that of Aśoka's grandfather. That is to say, either several parts of Aśoka's empire beyond what was inherited from the Nandas need not have been acquired by Chandragupta Maurya or else Chandragupta Maurya was not Sandrocottus.
There is also the question of the Ganges-delta, what is now called Lower Bengal. Did this part of India fall within the conquests of Chandragupta? We know for certain from Megasthenes as reported by Pliny (VI.23)' that the whole extent of the course of the Ganges was ruled over by the king of the Prasii - Megasthe-nes's host Sandrocottus. Sandrocottus, therefore, was master of the Ganges-delta. But, if we go by what we know of Aśoka's empire, we cannot help doubting Chandragupta's possession of it. The Pali Chronicles and the Samanta-pāsādika, as Barua2 tells us, include in Aśoka's domain proper the port of Tamralipti. Also, Hiuen-Tsang (to quote Barua3) "was an eye-witness to the existence of four stupas built by Aśoka near the chief town of each of the four divisions of Bengal." However, Barua4 adds: "Fa-hian, too, stayed for a long time at Tamralipti, but he has nothing to say about any monument of Aśoka's to be seen there. Thus the testimony of the later Chinese pilgrim lacks corroboration from the itinerary of the earlier visitor." Barua5 shows, by considering another testimony of Hiuen-Tsang, the lack of corroboration to be still more significant: "Chola and Dravida, where too the pilgrim saw the stupas of Aśoka, cannot be included in Aśoka's empire. The pilgrim's Chola and Drāvida constituted together the territory of the Cholas, better the Cholas and Pāndyas, which lay, according to R.E. II and R.E. XIII, outside Aśoka's empire." Hiuen-Tsang is here proved incorrect about the location of stūpas. Barua's conclusion6 - rather on the temperate side - is that in the absence of any inscription of Aśoka throwing light on the subject the matter must remain in doubt. If Chandragupta, like Sandrocottus, had been in possession of the Ganges-delta, the high uncertainty
1.The Classical Accounts... p. 342.
2.Op. cit.. Part I, p. 65.
3.Ibid.
4.Ibid., pp. 65-66.
5.Ibid., p. 106.
6.Ibid., p. 65.
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about the inclusion of this region in Aśoka's empire would never have arisen.
Thus nothing relating to the sphere of war helps us to identify the founder of the Mauryas with the post-Alexandrine monarch of Palibothra. The situation with regard to the claim for Chandragupta I is much less complicated. There are clear-cut pros and cons. The cons may be put under two heads:
(1)The Purānas introducing the "(Kings) born of the Gupta race" without naming any King openly or giving his reign-length, enumerate a small series of territories under their rule: "along the Ganges, Prayāga, Saketa and the Magadhas".1 Taking this statement as our basis, we cannot visualize Chandragupta I as Sandrocottus, king of the Prasii, "the tribe of people far superior to all the rest" (Strabo, XV, I.36)2 - the Prasii who "surpass in power and glory every other people, not only in this quarter, but one may say in all India" (Pliny, VI.22)3 and whose king Sandrocottus "overran and subdued the whole of India with an army of 600,000 men" (Plutarch, LXII)4 before thwarting Seleucus Nicator in c. 305 B.C. and who, not long after Alexander's departure in 325 B.C. from India, had enabled his country to shake off "the yoke of servitude from its neck" by putting Alexander's "prefects to death", and "emancipated from foreign thraldom" the whole Indus-region which they had ruled (Justin, XV.IV).5
(2)Looking at the list of the numerous far-flung conquests by Samudragupta, the son of Chandragupta I, in the Allāhābād Pillar inscription, we cannot imagine his father to have had any great kingdom and hence any marked conquests to his credit. Why would Samudragupta break out in so many directions and to such distances if Chandragupta I had already an empire like that of Sandrocottus?
Now for the pros, first as negating the cons and then as providing positive pointers. The Purānic statement, thrown out summarily, evidently deals with the very beginning of the Gupta sovereignty and marks for the context where it occurs the end of the
1.F. Pargiter, The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 73.
2.The Classical Accounts..., p. 262.
3.Ibid., p. 342.
4.Ibid., p. 198.
5.Ibid., p. 193.
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Purānas' dynastic record. But the plural number "Kings" should set us thinking. At least Chandragupta I and his son Samudragupta of "the numerous far-flung conquests" have to be counted. If so, how could the Gupta territories be confined to what is modern Allāhābād, Oudh and South Bihār? In mentioning this limited area the Purānas must have something else than the total conquests or the full kingdom in mind. Their indication must be only to the heartland, the central imperial seat, with which the Gupta kings began their empire fanning out from Pātaliputra. The area mentioned cannot be understood as precisely and finally demarcating the kingdom of Chandragupta I. An extension beyond this area is not ruled out for any Gupta, including Chandragupta I himself.
A direct inscriptional proof of Chandragupta's kingdom being more than the Purānic area is in Samudragupta's own declaration on the Allāhābād Pillar where, without reference to any conquest by himself, certain states paying homage to him are mentioned as situated on the frontiers of his dominions:1 that is to say, on the borders of the region inherited from his father and not newly acquired. The states to the east are Samatata, Kāmarūpa, Davāka, Kartripura and Nepal. Those to the west are not kingdoms but republics. All of them are beyond Allāhābād, Oudh and South Bihār. Perhaps the most interesting of them for pur immediate purpose is Samatata which "is taken as comprising the delta of the Ganges and Brāhmaputra".2 The Ganges-delta is exactly what Sandrocottus exercised authority over and what Aśoka cannot be said with any certainty at all to have inherited from Chandragupta Maurya. On the west, even further than the republics are some independent foreign countries which have entered into respectful relationship with Samudragupta.3 He has not been at war with them. They are the outlying borders of some of the Indian republican states that have accepted his suzerainty. It is as though they were continuing acts of obeisance and service from the past and as though he was continuing "the binding together of the (whole) world by means of the amplitude of the vigour of (his) arm" just as his royal predecessor had done. And such "binding together" extends not only to the north-west: it extends also to the extreme
1.Mahajan, Ancient India, pp. 394, 398.
2.Ibid., p. 398.
3.Ibid., pp. 400-401.
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south - "the people of Sirhhala and all (other) dwellers in islands." He has not fought with them, either. He seems to be merely prolonging an old influence over them with the reassertion of such power as his predecessor on the throne exerted. The naming of Simhala (Ceylon) reminds us that Megasthenes and other Greek writers of Alexander's time have brought in Ceylon-topics under designations like Taprobane, Palaesimundus and Palaeogoni. Pliny (VI.e.22),1 referring to Megasthenes, even relates these topics to the people over whom Sandrocottus ruled: "The island in former times...was thought to be twenty days' sail from the country of the Prasii..." Obviously Sandrocottus was in contact with Ceylon - and we are directed even beyond Ceylon, for we are informed of "the Taprobane mariners" "making sea-voyages".
No doubt, when we associate Samudragupta's inscription with the post-Alexandrine period we shall have to reinterpret several matters which modern historians have understood in a particular manner suiting their usual chronology. At a later stage we shall undertake the reinterpretation. At the moment what we are concerned with is to demonstrate that, if we identify Sandrocottus with Chandragupta I, the latter's empire can be seen on the strength of the statements on the Allāhābād Pillar to answer to that of the former.
The sole remaining problem is to explain why Samudragupta should have launched on some drastic campaigns of conquest when already Chandragupta as Sandrocottus had established himself over "the whole of India" as Plutarch grandiloquently puts it. Revolts in various parts of a dominion are common history. Apropos of one of the 9 kings of Āryāvarta whom Samudragupta "violently exterminated" - Ganapati Nāga - a historian2 writes: "He might have been the leader of the revolt against Samudragupta." Even in the life-time of Chandragupta I, Samudragupta had to take up arms. The first two stanzas of his inscription have practically got effaced, but "from whatever remains..., it appears that Samudragupta fought successfully certain battles during the reign of his father".3 His achievements serve to explain the fourth stanza which "tells us that Samudragupta was nominated by his father to
1.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 345-46.
2.Mahajan, Ancient India, p. 398.
3.Ibid., p. 392.
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succeed him with the following blessing: 'Rule over the world.' "1
This very blessing would suggest the overflowing of Allāhābād, Oudh and South Bihār by Chandragupta's kingdom. The pride with which Samudragupta's election is expressed would be ridiculous, especially for so grandiose a spirit, if the dominion were such a limited one. Even those historians who do not quite see their way to ascribing a very large kingdom to Chandragupta are yet struck by his assumption of the title Mahārājādhirāja. This title should be sufficient proof of ample territorial expansion. Mookerji2 cannot help giving it weight: "The title of 'King of Kings' must have been acquired by his conquests by which he was able to rule over an extensive territory."
And here comes most aptly the challenge of the famous Meherauli Iron Pillar of "Chandra", engraved in a Brāhmi script similar to that of the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription3 and narrating wide conquests not only to the east of what we have called the Gupta heartland but also to the west of it where the scene is "a running fight" in the lower Indus-region. "Chandra's" fame as a conqueror is said to reach up to the "southern seas" and he is credited with winning the title Aikadhirājyam ("Sole supreme sovereignty in the world") which pointedly compares with Chandragupta I's Mahārājādhirāja ("Supreme King of Great Kings") won for the first time in the Gupta family. Controversy revolves round the question whether "Chandra" was the founder of the Imperial Guptas or Samudragupta's son Chandragupta II. We shall survey the controversy in detail in a much later part of our book. But it should be clear that the mention of the Indus-region is extremely reminiscent of Sandrocottus's victory there and that, if Chandragupta I can be likened to Sandrocottus in military prowess, "Chandra" could appropriately be identified with him. Then the inscription would be the crowning sign of Chandragupta I rather than Chandragupta Maurya being Sandrocottus the mighty warrior.
In closing, we may touch, in the context of "the running fight" connected by the inscription with the Indus-region, upon two sensational incidents which Justin4 reports as occurring to Sandro-
2.The Gupta Empire, p. 12.
3.Ibid., p. 59.
4.The Classical Accounts..., p. 193.
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cottus some time before he raised the standard of revolt against Alexander's governors. Justin begins: "He was born in humble life, but was prompted to aspire to royalty by an omen significant of an august destiny." Then we are told of Sandrocottus's insolent behaviour with Alexander and his seeking safety by a speedy flight because the Macedonian had ordered the death-penalty for him. The sequel runs: "When he lay down overcome with fatigue and had fallen into a deep sleep, a lion of enormous size approaching the slumberer licked with its tongue the sweat which oozed profusely from his body, and when he awoke, quietly took its departure. It was this prodigy which first inspired him with the hope of winning the throne... When he was thereafter preparing to attack Alexander's prefects, a wild elephant of monstrous size approached him, and kneeling submissively like a tame elephant received him on to its back and fought vigorously in front of the army."
The partizans of Chandragupta Maurya, who cannot show him to be a Sandrocottus-like soldier but have to admit the prominence of Chānakya-Kautilya, have tried to trace a connection between this arch-schemer and Sandrocottus by means of Justin's story. Indian tradition has it that Chānakya, after being insulted by the Nanda, repaired to the Vindhyan forest and there met Chandragupta. "Greek and Latin writers," we are informed,1 "do not mention Kautilya but allude to Chandragupta's encounter with a lion and an elephant, which accords well with his residence in the Vindhyan wilds."
The link proposed is a flimsy and fanciful one which may acquire some little meaning only if there is a corpus of other evidence in favour of the Maurya. But if any weight is to be attached to Justin's narrative we may ask for a passing look at the fact, which is much more relevant than a reference to the Vindhyan forest, that the coins2 of the first Imperial Gupta depict on their obverse a goddess seated on a lion. The king-symbol and its divine sources, as indicated by Justin, are both precisely present, seeming to link Chandragupta 1 with the Alexander-fleeing prodigy-visited Sandrocottus. And even Justin's wild elephant offering itself to Sandrocottus for a ride as if it were a tame one may be construed as
1.Majumdar, Raychaudhuri & Datta, An Advanced History of India, p. 98.
2.The Classical Age, p. 13.
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remembered in a coin1 supposed to have been struck by the first Gupta's great-grandson Kumāragupta I. There a king rides on a splendid elephant. But since, in Mookerji's words,2 "there is no clue to connect this coinage with Kumāragupta", we may well conceive the king to be Chandragupta I.
While we are dealing with Justin, we may advert to a few earlier phrases in the same passage, phrases at the end of the allusion to "the yoke of servitude" of Alexander's prefects being "shaken off' from "the neck" of the Indians. Justin continues: "Sandrocottus was the leader who achieved their freedom, but after his victory he forfeited by his tyranny all title to the name of liberator, for he oppressed with servitude the very people whom he had emancipated from foreign thraldom."
This statement finds some echo in an Indian tradition that the Guptas were severe rulers. We need not regard all of them as such nor any one of them as such everywhere and always. However, a belief about their severity persisted up to the time of Albērūnī' who wrote: "People say that the Guptas were wicked powerful people." In the Buddhist Manjusrimūlakalpa4 Samudragupta is described as follows: "He was lordly, shedder of excessive blood, of great powers and dominion, heartless, ever vigilant (mindful) about his own person, unmindful about the hereafter, sacrificing animals; with bad councillor he greatly committed sin." A suggestive point here is that the Manjusrimūlakalpa which starts the Guptas with Samudragupta is speaking about the founder of their dynasty.
To round off our survey we should touch upon two more themes. Diodorus Siculus,5 supposed to be summarizing Megasthenes, states: "...there are usages observed by the Indians which contribute to prevent the occurrence of famine among them; for whereas among other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil, and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste, among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are
1.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, p. 89.
2.Ibid.
3.Sachau, Albērūnī's India, II, p. 7.
4.Ed. R. Sankyayana, appended to Jayaswal's Imperial History of India, p. 48, verses 649 ff.
5.Book II, 36. The Classical Accounts..., p. 233.
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regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighbourhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain quite unmolested." Majumdar,1 taking Sandrocottus to be Chandragupta Maurya, expresses surprise: "The statement that 'famine has never visited India' is contradicted by Indian literature which refers to famine even in ancient days. Reference is made, for example, in Jain literature to a terrible famine at the time of Chandragupta Maurya." Majumdar's "example" is drawn, as his footnote shows, from the Cambridge History of India, I, p. 65.
There we find Jarl Charpentier informing us that, according to Jain records, at the time when Chandragupta Maurya "took possession of the throne...a dreadful famine lasting for twelve years devastated the region of Bengal". From Megasthenes-Diodorus we do not quite learn that "famine has never visited India": what we gather is that conditions had been such in the past and still were such in the age of Sandrocottus as to render famine extremely unlikely. But under these conditions what the Jain records convey is almost incredible - unless the age of Chandragupta Maurya was not at all that of Sandrocottus.
Mookerji2 makes a rather odd comment on the state of affairs: "Megasthenes' observation...cannot be literally true for all periods of Indian history, for various literary works refer to famines and specially to one that occurred a few years after he left India. But it certainly shows that at the time he wrote there was plenty and prosperity, and famine was a very uncommon thing; at least it did not occur within living memory." The endeavour here, on the assumption of Sandrocottus having been the first Maurya, is to reconcile Megasthenes with Indian testimony. However, if in the Greek ambassador's period nobody could remember any past famine and food was abundant, it is most improbable that soon after his departure from an India well supplied with food a calamity involving twelve years of acute scarcity would visit the land. Besides, how soon in the wake of Megasthenes's exit could the disastrous famine have struck? Megasthenes came to India
1.The Classical Accounts..., Introduction, p. xviii.
2."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 68.
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after Sandrocottus had foiled Seleucus Nicator's attempt to invade India in c. 305 B.C. and the two opponents had made a friendly treaty. How many years later did Chandragupta Maurya cease to be king? Mookerji ends his reign in 300 B.C.1 So, within 5 years, the ample prosperity to which Megasthenes bears witness vanished totally - an unbelievable reversal of fortune. And surely Megasthenes remained at Pātaliputra for at least a few years if he was to collect the mass of detailed information he has left us of both fact and fancy prevalent in India? There seems no point in saying that during Sandrocottus's reign a dire shortage afflicted the country when Megasthenes had already departed. Clearly, what the Jain books report has no relevance to the epoch of Sandrocottus and Megasthenes. This epoch has economically all the signs of the golden age initiated by the Chandragupta who was the founder of the Imperial Guptas.
The second closing theme is religion. Raychaudhuri2 writes: "Jain tradition recorded in the Rājāvalīkatha avers that Chandragupta was a Jain and that, when a great famine occurred, he abdicated in favour of his son Simhasena and repaired to Mysore where he died. Two inscriptions on the north bank of the Kaverl near Seringapatam of about 900 A.D. describe the summit of the Kalbappu Hill, i.e. Chandragiri, as marked by the foot-prints of Bhadravāhu and Chandragupta Munipati. Dr. Smith observes: 'The Jain tradition holds the field, and no alternative account exists.'" Raychaudhuri adds in a footnote that Fleet is sceptical about the Jain tradition. But Mookerji,3 while noting the same, remarks: "Dr. Hoernle... [The Indian Antiquary, xxxi, pp. 59-60], after a critical study of all the Jain Pāttāvalīs, believes in the tradition..." There is no doubt that Chandragupta Maurya followed the Jain religion and no doubt also that, as Mookerji4 tells us, even before the time of the Mauryas, "the atmosphere of Jainism had already penetrated into Pātaliputra" and "Jain influence was...predominant in the royal court". If Sandrocottus was the first Maurya, Megasthenes who has references to what we can recognize as Jain ascetics and practices along with an account of
1.Ibid., p. 54.
2.The Political History of Ancient India, 5th Edition, p. 295.
3.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 67, fn.
4.Ibid., p. 66.
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Brāhmanism should evince knowledge of the king's religious leanings. Dating the end of Chandragupta Maurya's reign in 300 B.C. or even slightly later, we should have Megasthenes in the midst not only of the severe famine but also of the monarch's acceptance of Jainism. What do we actually discover? Raychaudhuri in his footnote adds: "According to Greek evidence Chandragupta was a follower of the sacrificial religion." A little earlier he1 quotes Strabo2 on the four occasions when the king appeared in public, one of them being "to offer sacrifices". We cannot mistake the implication that Sandrocottus followed the Vedic Hindu religion and not Jainism. He could not have been Chandragupta Maurya.
All in all, taking both facts and legends, nobody with an unprejudiced mind can fail to be impressed with the claim staked for Chandragupta I as against Chandragupta Maurya for identification with Sandrocottus.
l. Op. tit., pp. 276-77.
2. Hamilton and Falconer's translation of Strabo's Geography, Vol. Ill, p. 106.
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