SUPPLEMENT TWO
XANDRAMES OF THE CLASSICAL ACCOUNTS AND HIS INDIAN COUNTERPART
A NEW EQUATION PROPOSED
When Alexander the Great, in the course of his invasion of India, reached the river Hyphasis (Vipāśa, modern Beās), he heard from the Indian prince Phegelas (Bhagalā) the news, which the renowned Porus (Paurava) confirmed, that on the eastern bank of the Ganges there was waiting for him Xandrames, king of the Gangaridai and the Prasii, with an army of 20,000 horses, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants. The news struck terror in the hearts of the tired Macedonians and they forced their leader to call a retreat.
This was at approximately the end of July 325 B.C. At that time a young Indian named Sandrocottus had met Alexander and repeated to the Macedonian what the latter had already been told by his other Indian informants: the king of the interior regions which had been banded against the foreigner was hated and despised by his subjects for the wickedness of his disposition and the meanness of his origin. Sandrocottus himself afterwards became a king, one more powerful than even Xandrames.
Such in general is the picture with which we are presehted by the reports of Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch taken together. Modern historians have identified Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya and Xandrames with the last member of the dynasty of nine Nandas, which preceded Chandragupta Maurya on the throne of Māgadha.
But, while the names "Sandrocottus" and "Chandragupta" can be equated, has an Indian equivalent of "Xandrames" been found in the case of the last Nanda? If not, is there any evidence worth crediting, which would induce us to overlook the absence and still hold on to the current identification? And do we know of some other figure in Indian history who can serve in all respects or at least in the fundamentals as a better counterpart of Xandrames of the Classical accounts?
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1
The name "Xandrames" indubitably looks as if it were the Greek form of either the Sanskrit "Chandramās" or some other appellation like it. The Purānas1 mention the founder of the Nandas as Mahāpadma and designate one of his eight sons variously as Sukalpa, Sumālya, Sumātya, Sahalya. We find no trace of anything akin to "Xandrames".
In Buddhist tradition2 we do not hear of a father and eight sons but of nine Nanda brothers, all of whose names are given in the Mahābodhivamsa: (1) Ugrasena, (2) Panduka, (3) Pandugati, (4) Bhūtapāla, (5) Rāshtrapāla, (6) Govishānaka, (7) Daśasiddhaka, (8) Kaivarta and (9) Dhana. Here also nothing answers to "Xandrames".
F.W. Thomas3 implies that "Dhana" was merely the nickname of the last Nanda and that his real name was "ChandRāmas". Thomas has grasped at the suggestion offered by the Mahāvamsatīkā:4 "The youngest brother was called Dhanananda for his passion for hoarding wealth." What Thomas implies is quite possible - but there are innumerable other possibilities, too. What is to lend "ChandRāmas" priority - without our first demonstrating Dhana to be the king the Greeks were speaking of? The English scholar's supposition has in itself no force. We can judge its value only after surveying the whole plea for the last Nanda.
Can we even be sure the Mahāvamsatīkā is not merely taking advantage of a coincidence - a hoarder of wealth happening to bear the name "Dhana"? We may attend to Barua's observation:5 "One may just be amused by the ingenuity of the Mahāvarmsatīkā in the invention of stories for the etymological significance of the names, Chandragupta ('one who was guarded by a bull called Chandra') and Bindusāra ('one on whose body flowed the blood of she-goats'), both of which are far-fetched." In the explanation of "Dhana" the Mahāvamsatikā's "ingenuity" may have found self-justification for once. But can we be anything more than "just
1.Pargiter, The Purāna Texts of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 26 with fn. 24; p. 69 with fn. 20.
2.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 31.
3."Chandragupta, the Founder of the Maurya Empire", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 469.
4.Barua, Aśoka and His Inscriptions (Calcutta, 1946), Part I, p. 43.
5.Ibid., p. 45.
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amused"? The test is: Does the Mahāboddhivamsa itself, which originally lists the nine Nanda-names, supply a gloss on "Dhana"? It puts "Dhana" on a par with all the other appellations, none of which has been taken for a nickname. And, if the Nandas were a rich family, as they evidently were, the last and youngest of them may have been named for his good fortune to be born amidst a hoard of wealth. He may have had no name except "Dhana".
H.C. Raychaudhuri,1 perhaps realizing the arbitrariness of Thomas's idea, attempts a more direct-looking solution. Reminding us that Curtius, unlike Diodorus, speaks of Agramm'es and not Xandrames, he has submitted that the Sanskrit patronymic "Au-grasainya", derivable from "Ugrasena" and meaning "Son of Ugrasena", is the Indian original of the name preserved by the Greeks. But it is difficult to see how Ugrasena who is explicitly called the eldest among the Nanda brothers can give rise to a term which clearly makes him the father of the rest to whom alone it must apply. "Augrasainya" is a sheer misnomer in the sole context in which the name "Ugrasena" occurs. Besides, in its second part it has not the least correspondence to "Agrammes".
What perhaps goes most against it is the baselessness of the belief underlying its formation - the belief that, in R.K. Mooker-ji's words,2 "The form Agrammes is modified into Xandrames by Diodorus". Actually, Curtius who uses "Agrammes" belongs to the 1st century A.D., whereas Diodorus wrote in the 1st century B.C. Chronologically, there can be no doubt that "Agrammes" is a corruption of "Xandrames", possibly through an intermediate version like "Andrammes" analogous to Plutarch's "Andro-cottus"3 in the 1st century A.D. for Strabo's "Sandrocottus"4 in the 1st century B.C. Moreover, a corruption cannot have - as does "Xandrames" - so plainly Indian a ring, while the supposed original has none. Hence we have to ignore "Agrammes" and take only "Xandrames" into consideration. But then no Nanda can have any standing.
The sole remaining argument is sought to be founded on some details in the reports by both Diodorus and Curtius. The former
1.The Political History of Ancient India (3rd ed.). p. 15.
2.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 32.
3.The Classical Accounts..., p. 198 (Plutarch's Life of Alexander LXI1).
4.Ibid., pp. 262, 270, 272 (Strabo's Geography, XV.1.36.53,57).
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(VII.93)1 says of his Xandrames: "...the king of the Gandaridai2 was a man of quite worthless character and held in no respect, as he was thought to be the son of a barber. This man - the king's father - was of a comely person, and of him the queen had become enamoured. The old king having been treacherously murdered by his wife, the succession had devolved on him who now reigned." Curtius (IX.2)3 reports essentially the same story but with one or two variations in the details: "...the present king was not merely a man originally of no distinction but even of the very meanest condition. His father was in fact a barber scarcely staving off hunger by his daily earnings but who, from his being not uncomely in person, had gained the affection of the queen and was by her influence advanced to too near a place in the confidence of the reigning monarch. Afterwards, however, he treacherously murdered his sovereign and then, under pretence of acting as guardian to the royal children, usurped the supreme authority, and having put the young princes to death begot the present king who was detested and held cheap by his subjects as he rather took after his father than conduct himself as the occupant of the throne."
Our historians draw upon Jain tradition in their attempt at a parallel for the Nandas. In the Āvaśyaka Sutra (p. 693), we have a Nanda described as begotten of a barber. Hemachandra's Parisish-taparvan (VI.232) makes him the son of a barber by a courtesan. Struck by the barber-story, our historians forget a central discrepancy. Even in Jain tradition there are nine Nandas and, as in the Purānas, they are a father and eight sons. It is only the first, the father, who is called the son of a barber. Yet it is not he who can be deemed Xandrames. The ninth Nanda immediately preceding Chandragupta Maurya is our man. He is nowhere spoken of as a barber's son or stigmatized as belonging to a barber-family. Thus once more the Nandas are out.
The Purānic evidence on their origin, it should be obvious, is quite unhelpful. Else there would be little inducement to resort to Jain tradition. The Purānas4 see Mahāpadma as the son of the Śunga king Mahānandin by a Śūdra woman. Here it is the mother instead of the father who is of mean origin. And there is no
1.Ibid., p. 172.
2.Misspelling of "Gangaridai".
3.Ibid., p. 128
4.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 25.
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question of the queen conspiring with a lover and murdering her husband and bringing to the throne her son by that lover, or of the lover himself carrying out several murders to set up his future son as king. Mahāpadma comes to the throne rightfully and is coronated in the normal course of things.
The only point of agreement with the Classical accounts of Xandrames is, in a very general sense, "mean origin". And so, in spite of particular differences, the Purānas broadly agree also with Jain tradition. But Mookerji1 notes how glaringly Buddhist reports are here at variance: "Buddhist tradition does not impute any base origin to the Nandas and thus runs counter to the Brahminical and Jain traditions... The worst infamy which Buddhist tradition records against these Nandas is that they were originally outlaws and robbers."
Casting them in such a role, Buddhist tradition, as again Mookerji2 observes, "represents the Nandas as openly conquering Māgadha by force and not by any secret conspiracy or cowardly assassination of the reigning king by intrigues of the queen." Consequently, it comes about that the sole tradition which supplies some kind of excuse, however lame, for equating by name the Classical Agrammes with a Nanda differs toto coelo from Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch in every other circumstance.
Nor, we may add, are "the Brahminical and Jain traditions" uniform each in its own voice. While the Purānas label the Nandas as Sudras, the famous Indian drama Mudrā-rākshasa (VI. 6), by which many scholars set considerable store, regards the Nandas as prathita-kulajāh, "of illustrious birth", or uchchhaivarvijanam, "of high birth". And even in the Jain Pariśishtaparvan (VIII.230), which makes a barber breed the first Nanda on a courtesan, the daughter of the Nanda preceding Chandragupta Maurya claims, after falling in love with Chandragupta at first sight, from the deposed father the right to marry the Maurya victor and the claim is conceded "because it is customary for Kshatriya girls to marry according to their choice" (Prāyah Kshatriya-kanyānārh śasyate hi svayamvarah). The Nanda's Kshatriyahood is thus asserted.
This leads us to suspect that the single feature in which Jain tradition somewhat approaches the Classical accounts - namely, the barber-birth - is not meant to be taken literally. Perhaps the
1.Op. cit., pp. 32,33.
2."The Rise of Māgadhan Imperialism", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 32.
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very fact of its exclusive occurrence in this tradition implies that it is not literally meant. And, when the Pariśishtaparvan itself is internally inconsistent, we may endorse B. M. Barua's remarks:1 "The barber story is almost proverbial in the ancient royal tradition of India. When a reigning monarch was found stingy in the payment of awards or in making gifts, he was taken to be a barber's son."
Even the mean and avaricious disposition of the Nandas is not unequivocally affirmed in our literature. The Buddhist Mahāvam-satikā which speaks of the last of them being "addicted to hoarding treasure" says that towards the time when he was dethroned "he, instead of any more hoarding wealth, was bent upon spending it in charities which he organised and through the machinery of an institution called Dānaśālā administered by a Samgha whose President was to be a Brāhman."2 So, in the later part of his reign he is not likely to have been "despised by his subjects for the wickedness of his disposition" (to quote Plutarch3), as Xandrames was when Alexander heard of him a few years before Sandrocottus replaced his pre-eminence in the Indian interior.
The Buddhist Manjuśrī-mūlakalpa4 has the same charities but they are set in an entirely different story. This book knows of no nine Nandas. It has only one single Nanda who gained the throne from the position of a prime minister, as though by a magical process, and was a pious and sagacious man, a Buddhist who yet patronised Brāhmans. This character is as far as can be from the Greeks' Xandrames.
The Nanda, known as Yoga-Nanda, who in the Kashmiri tradition5 is himself overcome by a magical spell practised by Chanakya against him and is supplanted on the throne by Cha-nakya's protégé Chandragupta Maurya, has also no resemblance to Xandrames, except that he is stated to be of the lowest caste, a Sudra. There is too much ambiguity about him to permit any appreciable comparison.
1.Op. cit., p. 47.
2.Mookerji. op. cit., pp. 33-4.
3.Ibid.
4.Barua, op. cit., p. 43.
5.As preserved in the Kathasaritasagara and the Brihatkāthamanjari, two Sanskrit works usually dated to the 11th century A.D.
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None of our historians accept the Kashmiri tradition, believing they have found better substance elsewhere. But this tradition has one notable point. In addition to Yoga-Nanda a Pūrva-Nanda is mentioned. So there are two instead of the usual nine Nandas or the one Nanda of the Manjuśrī-mūlakalpa. Although, as Mookerji1 remarks, the relation between the two is not specified and we are not even told what Pūrva-Nanda's status is, nowhere save here -however vaguely - do we have, as in the Classical accounts, just two figures of the same family. The stories which our historians prefer have, all of them, the ninth and not the second family-member to match with Xandrames. The Kashmiri tradition, while having no rapport in its story with the Classical accounts, serves yet by this stray background-similarity in number to show up an extra inadequacy in the proposed Nanda-parallel.
Finally, this parallel lacks the Classical feature that the family member preceding Xandrames is not himself a king. Diodorus says, "The old king having been treacherously murdered by his wife, the succession had devolved on him who now reigned." Between Xandrames and the old king, there was nobody on the throne. According to Curtius, Xandrames "rather took after his father than conduct himself as the occupant of the throne". Being the occupant of the throne is contrasted to being like the father: the father could never have been king at the same time he was father. He did not occupy the throne even though he, "under pretence of acting as guardian to the royal children, usurped the supreme authority" - that is, got the reins of power into his hands so that he could do what he liked with the princes' lives. Xandrames is called "the present king" whom the barber-father begot: the begetter is not honoured with the royal title. In the parallel our historians propose, the Nanda-predecessor of Dhana is a king in his own right and openly styled so.
Thus there is not a single element in which the parallel does not break down. After such a debacle, can we regard as anything except a face-saving fancy the ad hoc hypothesis that, as distinguished from the nickname "Dhana", the last Nanda's name was "Chandramās"?
So we return to where we started, and may sum up that both at the centre and at the periphery the alleged Nanda-correspondence fails to hold together. "But what is the alternative?" we may be
1. Op. cit., p. 49.
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asked. The reply is easy, though unexpected. The very search for likenesses in the Nanda-legends appears a superfluity when we open the historico-dynastic section of the Purānas to seek out Xandrames directly by name. For, there he stands in striking relief with a most recognizable physiognomy in all fundamentals.
2
In a list - from the Vayu Purāna - of the Nāga kings of Vidiśā, belonging to the epoch between the Āndhras (Sātavāhanas) and the Imperial Guptas, Pargiter1 gives us the phrase:
Sadāchandras tu Chandrāmso dvitiyo Nakhavāms tathā
He2 renders the phrase: "Sadāchandra, and Chandrāmśa who will be a second Nakhavant." In "Chandrāmśa" we have surely a name sounding very much like "Xandrames". And we must realize that in the entire history of India it is the only echoing one borne by a king whose existence no scholar has doubted. Here is a fact of the greatest initial importance. It demands all the attentive study it can get.
In a footnote Pargiter3 cites a variant from another copy of the Vayu for the qualifying words: dvitiyo Nakhavām. The variant runs: Nakhapāna-jah, meaning for Pargiter4 "Nakhapāna's offspring". He sees in "Nakhavam or "Nakhapāna" the Purānic version of "Nahapāna", the name of the Śaka ruler hailing from the Kshaharata family whom Gautamiputra Satakarni of the Āndhra dynasty destroyed.
Modern scholars concur with his interpretation, but not with his distinction between Sadachandra and Chandrāmśa. They rightly find in tu a sign of identity: if cha had been used the names could have applied to different persons. So they5 speak of "Sadāchandra surnamed Chandrāmśa, who is described as a second Nakhavat". But never having questioned the current hypothesis about Sandrocottus, neither they nor Pargiter have ever connected Chandrāmśa with Xandrames.
1.Op. cit., p. 49.
2.Ibid., p. 72.
3.Ibid., p. 49 fn. 11.
4.Ibid., fn. 24.
5.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 169.
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The qualifying words about Chandrāmśa can themselves be a very strong prop to the identification with Xandrames if we reject Pargiter's gloss and disjoin the words from Nahapāna the Śaka king. First, we must take the Purānic term flexibly: it can be not only "Nakhavant'or "Nakhavat" but also "Nakhavan" and Pargiter1 himself in the introductory note to the passage uses this very form. It is extremely suggestive that a description of one whose name leads us to identify him with Xandrames, the son of a barber, should have the term "Nakha" in it.2 "Nakha" means "nail" and in India a barber has to deal with nail-cutting no less than with hair-cutting and actually one of the synonyms for "barber" is Nakhakutta ("nail-cutter").1 In "Nakhavān", therefore, we are invited, as it were, to read the barber-idea. But it is apparently fused with another notion. The word signifies "one who has nails" and, with "Nakhakutta" in our mind, we may interpret "having" in a double sense so that the name would imply "one who at the same time possesses nails to cut with and has nails in his possession by cutting them" - that is to say, a nail-cutter who wounds and tears his customers; or, if we wish to reflect in brief the pun which appears to be in the Sanskrit van in this context, we may say "a barbed barber". Such a ślēsha or double entendre, accompanied by the adjective dvitīyo, "second", is just what would be appropriate in the case of Chandrāmśa if he were Xandrames, since Xandrames, according to Curtius, "took after his father", the barber who, as we are told, had killed his royal patron and that patron's children, too.
But it is not only because Xandrames was like his father in character and manner that Chandrāmśa is affined to him: it is also by Xandrames's being the very next in number to his father in this respect that the Nāga king's affinity can be affirmed. Dvitīyo, "second", is a most pertinent expression. Both Xandrames and Chandrāmśa, unlike Dhana-Nanda of our historians, come immediately after their fathers: they are "second" in the family and not ninth. The rank common to them drives their equation home with particular accuracy.
1.Op. cit., p. 48.
2.I owe this observation to Dr. M. VenkataRāman, formerly of Madurai University.
3.M. Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 524.
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In the variant Nakhapāna-jah, which Pargiter renders by "Nakhapāna's offspring", we have the same suggestion of immediate succession. And, by exposing the absurdity of relating Chandrāmśa to the §aka Nahapana as son to father, it clinches our interpretation. The barber-idea is even more evident here, for, one of the meanings of pāna is "protection"1 and Nakhapāna would connote "Nail-protection". But to get the full appositeness out of this word we must glance at the grammatical side of it. Pāna has the neuter gender: as it is, we cannot apply it to a man. It is a word like shāsana, meaning "mastery" or "subdual", which also being neuter cannot go into a personal name unless there is an h after it, as in the well-known name of Indra, Pākashāsanah which that god carries as the subduer of or master over the demon Paka. So the one whose offspring is Chandrāmśa must bear the name Nakhapānah. Our text does not contradict such an assumption, since the only instance in which his name appears is the word Nakhapdna-jah and, when there is already aa h at the end of a word, Sanskrit grammar will not allow another in the midst of the expression. The absence of h after pāna is just what we should expect if the original name were Nakhapānah to personify "Nail-protection".
The purpose of employing this term instead of Nakhakutta would seem to be the demarcation of the barber in question from others of his profession: here was a barber who rose to a special post in the household where he worked and thus deserved a distinguishing appellation. And this compound appellation may be taken in an ironic double sense to yield the idea of protecting nails by means of nails. The aptness of the double sense will at once be seen if we remember Diodorus and Curtius. The father of Xandrames or Agrammes was really the nailed protector of nails, for he clove his way through everything to the supreme authority while doing his barber's job. In his relation to the sons of his sovereign he is spoken of by Curtius as setting up the "pretence of acting as guardian to the royal children" while planning to "put the young princes to death". In the word "guardian" we have actually the echo of the Purānic pānah "protector": he continued to protect the prince's nails as their guardian when all the time digging his own nails, as it were, deep into their lives.
The explicit Classical accounts and the pregnant Purānic line can
1. Ibid., p. 613.
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stand very well together on several scores. The central position may be considered as won: what remains is to settle some surrounding issues.
3
Our first concern now is to put the geographical situation of Xandrames as the king of the Gangaridai and Prasii on a level with that of Chandrāmśa as the king of Vidiśā. We are likely to be pulled up with the questions: "Are not the Gangaridai the people of the Ganges-delta in Lower Bengal and the Prasii the Prāchya, Easterners, and especially the people of Māgadha with their imperial capital at Pātaliputra, the Palibothra of the Greeks? How then can a Nāga monarch whose seat was Vidiśā have been Xandrames?"
We have already discussed in detail the location of the Gangaridai, also called Gangarides or Gangaridae, and their relation to the Prasii. To make the present essay self-contained, the conclusion at which we have arrived may be summed up and whatever argument is most relevant may be briefly used to structure the summary:
"On the evidence of Pliny (VI.22),1 the Prasii, who are also called the Palibothri, are specifically the people of the city Palibothra (lying on the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Sonos [Son]). On the same evidence, they are in general the Palibothran rulers of 'the whole tract along the Ganges'. But this general role of theirs belongs to the time of Sandrocottus who is directly named by Strabo (XV.1.36)2 the king of the Prasii and of Palibothra. In the time of Xandrames it is not they but the Gangaridai who are in prominence. As against Diodorus who mentions them after the Prasii in connection with Xandrames, both Curtius (IX.2)3 and Plutarch (LXII)4 put them before, and Diodorus himself in his next reference to the same ruler calls him the king of the Gangaridai as if he were essentially their king alone. On four other occasions (XVII.93,94; 11.37; XVIII.6)5 Diodorus speaks of Alexander's
1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 342.
2.Ibid., p. 262.
3.Ibid., p. 128.
4.Ibid., p. 198.
5.Ibid., pp. 172, 173, 234, 239.
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projected expedition or war against the Gangaridai: there is no mention of the Prasii. And on one (11.37) of these four occasions he assigns to the Gangaridai 4,000 elephants - the same number that he gives when telling us of Xandrames, king of the Prasii and the Gangaridai. Obviously, the royal power that was Xandrames and the military resources he commanded had fundamentally to do with the Gangaridai. The Gangaridai were the real and immediate 'nation' Alexander would have faced on reaching the Ganges. The Prasii were secondary and subsidiary, merely a background enemy. Under Xandrames's command they were a minor force. If he ruled over them - and was not just their leader, a sort of temporary king over them in a coalition against Alexander - it must have been over just a part, a part which had nothing to do with Palibothra since Palibothra is never associated with him in the Classical accounts. To the west of Palibothra, in the western regions of the Gangetic river-system, where Alexander would first meet him, lay the kingdom of Xandrames and his Gangaridai.
"No doubt, the Gangaridai were also in the Ganges-delta. Diodorus puts in that locality their eastern boundary; but it is precisely in this passage that he ascribes 4,000 elephants to them, thus joining them up with Xandrames's army-figures when he awaited Alexander's attack far away from the Ganges-delta. And in this passage Diodorus speaks also of Alexander wanting to cross the Ganges and make war upon the Gangaridai: the Ganges would be initially crossed more than 2,000 miles to the west of Lower Bengal. No wonder Diodorus does not refer to any other boundary in this locality than the eastern.
"The existence of the Gangaridai not only in the Ganges-delta but also much further west emerges quite clearly in another of Diodorus's passages (XVIII.6). There he says that the region inhabited by the Gangaridai is separated from Farther India by the Ganges but adjoins the rest of India which was conquered by Alexander. So the Gangaridai stretch from the frontiers of the Punjāb where Alexander halted, across Madhyadeśa (Middle Country) through Māgadha to Lower Bengal.
"A westerly extension of the Gangaridai is proved also when Diodorus (XVII, 9)1 recounts how the Younger Porus fled for shelter to the nation of the Gangaridai from Alexander advancing beyond the Acesines (Asikni, Chenāb) and across the Hydraotes
1. Ibid., p. 170.
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(Iravati, Rāvi) towards the Hyphasis. Between the Hyphasis and the Ganges - that is, on the frontiers of the Punjāb to the west of the latter river - the Gangaridai begin.
"The people local to the Ganges-delta are found, on a comparison of a passage in Pliny (V.22)1 with one in Solinus (52.7),2 to be known as the 'Gāngārides-Calingae' - a branch of the widely diffused many-branched Calinga people - and their elephant-strength is only 700. The Ganges-delta is thus definitely shown to hold no more than a part of the Gangaridai - a small one and certainly not the central which must be more westward where Xandrames stood in battle-array to meet the Macedonian. And, as the Pliny-Solinus reference assigns the 700 elephants of the Ganges-delta to the 'king' of the Gangaridai there, Xandrames with his 4,000 must be the king of the Gangaridai lying outside the Ganges-delta no less than mostly west of Māgadha. A number of Gangaridai groups, distinguishable from the 'Gangarides-Calingae' though not without the latter's contribution, must have assembled against Alexander, with their different kings, among whom Xandrames was the most powerful and principal monarch, welding them all into one.
"Here we may note a point in Plutarch.3 Although referring to the king - 'despised by his subjects for the wickedness of his disposition and the meanness of his origin' - as the one who ruled the total country which was banded against Alexander, Plutarch yet tells us not of the king of the Gangaridai and the Prasii but of 'kings'. The plural is there and it brings up two suggestions.
"In the first place, the barber's son Xandrames, virtually sole master of all the extensive portion of interior India which was opposing the foreigner, was ruler really of the Gangaridai and not of the Prasii who had their own government. Here our conclusion from Diodorus's 'king of the Gandaridai' gets support. In the second place, there may have been many kings of the Gangaridai themselves as also of the Prasii - and Xandrames may have been the biggest of the former, leading the pooled military resources of several related Gangaridai groups. This suggestion agrees with our conclusion from the 'king' of the 'Gāngārides-Calingae' as distinct from the 'king' of the Gangaridai that was Xandrames.
1.Ibid., pp. 341, 350, note 8.
2.Ibid., p. 457.
3.Ibid., pp. 196-199.
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"Associated - as their name indicates - with the Ganges, the several Gangaridai groups must be forming a 'nation' which is best designated by the phrase Bevan1 uses apropos of the Younger Porus's flight: 'the people of the Ganges-region.' Pliny also seems to have had in mind such a Ganges-wide location when he wrote of 'the whole tract along the Ganges' as a single extensive unity.
"And the name 'Gangaridai' is most probably an echo of the possible Prakrit expression, Gangārāttā, 'Ganges-States', denoting a number of confederacies of varying size and importance held together - however loosely - in spite of several kings by the predominant position of the king of the central confederacy.
"A comprehensive sense related to the Ganges in its entirety is the sole logical one not only in view of the various references with their different facets but also in view of the fact that no single ancient Indian tribe famous enough to equal the Gangaridai has been lighted upon by scholars to explain their name.
"In the comprehensive sense, even the Prasii, the Palibothri, are the Gangaridai; but, as they constituted a distinct political entity, they are listed side by side with the latter as though different from them. For practical purposes the Gangaridai are the people of the whole Ganges-tract except those of Pātaliputra in particular and of Māgadha in general. And the middle areas of the Ganges-tract constituted the dominion of Xandrames, king of the Gangaridai."
Every piece of evidence from Classical sources converges to present to us Xandrames as not a king of Eastern India, neither the monarch of Māgadha in any substantial connotation nor the monarch of Lower Bengal, but the overlord of a wide territory westward of both and quite conceivably having its centre at Vidiśā where the Nāga Chandrāmśa was sovereign.
4
Once we have made it possible to shift Xandrames to Vidiśā, our next concern is to render it likely that, like Xandrames, Chandrāmśa may have been sovereign over a fairly extensive territory from a governmental seat at this city.
The Purānas figure the Nāgas as flourishing at other centres too: Kantipuri, Mathura, Padmavati.2 The prevalence of Nāga rule
1."Alexander the Great", The Cambridge History of India, I, p. 370, fn. 4.
2.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 169.
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over considerable portions of Northern India in the historical context within which Chandrāmśa is set is also attested by epig-raphic and numismatic finds.' It seems the Nāgas who are specified in the Purānas as rulers of one or another centre were really masters over more than one centre and that the object of mentioning this or that centre was to denote the home or the principal city of each Nāga. Thus, "some coins bearing the name of Mahārāja Ganendra or Ganapa have been discovered at Padmavati and also at Vidiśā and Mathura",2 which shows that this king of Padmavati may have expanded his influence over the rest of the Nāga centres. Again, the Vākātaka records mention Mahārāja Bhavanāga, whose daughter married a son of the Vākātaka king Pravīra, one of the kings mentioned in the Purānas along with Chandrāmśa. This Bhavanāga, who is thus a contemporary of Chandrāmśa, is described in the records as belonging to the family of the Bharaśi-vas "who were besprinkled on the forehead with the pure water of the Bhaghathi that had been obtained by their valour".3 The implication is "that their home was away from the Bhagirathi (Gariga) but that they extended their power as far as the valley of that river".4 Another king, Virasena, who has left numismatic and epigraphic traces, is believed to have been a Nāga with his capital at Mathura and with sovereignty also over Bulandshahr, Etah and Farrukhabad districts as well as parts of the Punjāb.5 The Nāgas, whether centred at Vidiśā, Kantipuri, Mathura or Padmavati, can be considered prominent rulers of the Gangaridai - the peoples along the course of the Ganges - and Chandrāmśa the Nāga of Vidiśā may be set over various Gangetic peoples, regarded as overlord of several Gangetic kings and equated in geographical extension with Xandrames.
In the Gangetic valley west of Māgadha the Nāgas are known to have been the immediate predecessors of the Guptas whom the Purānas report as rising into imperial power at Māgadha in the period immediately following Chandrāmśa's. Two of the Āryavar-ta kings whom Samudragupta, the second of the Imperial Guptas, is declared in the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription to have "extirpated"
1.Ibid.
2.Ibid., p. 170.
3.Ibid., p. 169.
4.Ibid.
5.Ibid., p. 171.
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were Nāgas: GanpatiNāga and Nāgasena, who appear to have been a couple out of the nine Nāgas said by the Purānas to have ruled at Padmāvatī.1 Even during the reign of the Gupta dynasty the Nāgas continued in the provinces over which Xandrames had held sway. Samudragupta's son married KuberaNāga who was a Nāga princess. "A Nāga named Sarvanāga was appointed vishayapati (provincial governor) and was ruling the Antarvedl district (between the Gāngā and the Yamuna and between Prayāga and Hardwar) under Skandagupta",2 the fifth Gupta emperor.
Everything geographical favours our view of Xandrames and Chandrāmśa. And, with mention of the Guptas replacing the Nāgas in the Gangetic valley west of Māgadha, we come first to the problem of Sandrocottus whom the Classical accounts know as the next great king of the Indian interior after Xandrames and then to the problem of chronology in a historical vision which takes Chandrāmśa to be a contemporary of Alexander the Great and thereby implies the substitution of the Guptas for the Mauryas on the throne of Pātaliputra.
5
What poses itself as a problem in regard to Sandrocottus is in fact a solution in regard to Xandrames. That Sandrocottus should soon follow Xandrames as the chief power in the Indian interior is one more proof of the identity of the latter with Chandrāmśa. For, the Guptas, arisen to imperial status at Māgadha in the period immediately following Chandrāmśa's have as their founder a Chandragupta just as do the Mauryas. Sandrocottus of Palibothra, in the matter of both name and royal seat, could perfectly well be Chandragupta I of Pātaliputra, the first of the Imperial Guptas. The sequence of Xandrames and Sandrocottus matches with absolute exactness the sequence of Chandrāmśa and Chandragupta I.
Nor is this a fitting together which, for all its precision, is merely general. It can be substantiated in closest particularity. For convenience's sake we shall start with a detailed discussion of the chronological relation between the Nāga and the Gupta.
In the post-Āndhra and pre-Gupta interval Chandrāmśa is in a
1.Ibid., p. 170.
2.Ibid.
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group of rulers whom the Purānas1 mention after naming Vin-dhyasakti, known to our historians as the founder of the Vākāta-kas. On the one hand we are told of the Nāgas of Vidiśā, along with some other monarchs, and on the other we get Vindhyasakti's son Pravīra and Pravīra's four sons. Then we are informed of the passing away of the Vindhyaka family and provided with a list of various subsequent rulers and dynasties who are not distinguished in terms of time and whose beginnings must therefore be taken as simultaneous. Among them are the Guptas.
Pargiter's full text2 on the Nāgas of Vidiśā runs: "Bhogin, son of the Nāga king Sesa, will be king, conqueror of his enemies' cities, a king who will exalt the Nāga family. Sadachandra, and Chandrāmśa who will be a second Nakhavant, then Dhanadharman, and Vahgara is remembered as the fourth. Then Bhutinanda will reign in the Vaidiśā kingdom."
As Sesha enters only as the royal father of Bhogin and is not directly put forth as a king of this period, it is with Bhogin we must commence, setting him in time on a level with Vindhyasakti in the post-Āndhra epoch. Sadāchandra being the same as Chandrāmśa, we have three kings following Bhogin's name. But since here Chandrāmśa is called the second barber, a first one has to be put before him on a level with Bhogin in time. Evidently this barber did not sit on the throne and thus remains excluded from the list of kings. The kings after Bhogin are only three. And yet there is the curious fact that Varigara, mentioned next to Dhanadharman who is placed after Chandrāmśa, "is remembered as the fourth". However, the puzzle remains as long as we think of "the fourth" in terms of kinghood. Taking our cue from the word "second" in connection with Chandrāmśa, we can clear up the mystery by regarding Vahgara as the fourth "Nakhavan". Then with Dhanadharman as the understood third, we have a quartet of "barbers", the last three of whom we may count either as successive or as contemporaneous, either as a continuing three-generationed family of "barbers" after the first or as three sons following a father.
If we accept the latter case, the eldest son Chandrāmśa would rule in the seat of Bhogin's government (and, before Bhogin's, Sesha's), the others in minor localities under him. All the three
1.Pargiter, op. cit., pp. 72-3.
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sons would constitute the next generation after Bhogin (and after the first "barber") - that is, on a time-parity with Vindhyaśakti's son Pravīra. The second generation after Bhogin - that is, on a level of time with Pravīra's four sons - would be Bhutinanda. As nothing is said of his end we may assume that during his reign the Vindhyakas would pass away and the Guptas arise.
If Bhutinanda belongs practically to the same generation as Chandragupta I, Chandrāmśa would precede the latter in time exactly as Xandrames preceded Sandrocottus, and be a powerful monarch in the Indian interior in the middle of 326 B.C. when Alexander halted at the Beās and when, as we know from Plutarch (LXII)1 and Justin (XV.4),2 Sandrocottus was not yet a king. And the fact that Chandrāmśa's father, the first "Nakhavān", is not enumerated as a king identifies further the circumstances with those of Xandrames and supports the chronological position we have assigned to Xandrames.
Here we may appropriately touch on the common notion that Sandrocottus waged war against Xandrames to win Palibothra from him. According to our picture Xandrames had no Palibothra to lose as he was never its possessor. Also, Sandrocottus could have waged no war against him: he could have fought only with Bhūtinanda - and, again, not over Palibothra but only the "Vaid-iśā kingdom". The Classical accounts, taken in a straightforward manner, completely bear us out. Nowhere do we read of Sandrocottus going to war with Xandrames. And the manner in which he became king of Palibothra and of the Prasii is never explicitly mentioned.
There are only three passages referring to his warlike activities. The shortest is of Appian (2nd century A.D.).' It brings in Seleucus Nicator's attempt to invade India in c. 305 B.C.: "He crossed the Indus and waged war on Sandrocottus, king of the Indians who dwelt about it, and he made friends and entered into relations of marriage with him." A little longer passage is in Plutarch (loc. cit.):4 it touches also on Seleucus. After speaking of the huge army credited to the "kings" of the Gangaridai and the
1.The Classical Accounts..., p. 199.
2.Ibid., p. 193.
3.McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian (Calcutta, 1920), pp. 9-10.
4.The Classical Accounts.... pp. 198-9.
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Prasii, Plutarch adds: "Nor was this any exaggeration, for not long afterwards Androcottus, who by that time had mounted the throne, presented Seleucus with 500 elephants, and overran and subdued the whole of India with an army of 600,000 men."
From Appian we learn simply that Sandrocottus ruled the Indus-region in c. 305 B.C. Plutarch does not locate the "throne" Sandrocottus mounted before that year and, if he is to be taken literally, Sandrocottus became an all-India emperor after the confrontation with Seleucus. But, as he enters Plutarch's narrative with his immense military forces appropos of the kings of the Gangaridai and the Prasii we may infer that his throne was not unconnected with the Prasii who are always associated with him in Classical accounts. Even Plutarch indirectly makes the association.1 For, just after saying that even up to his day the altars which Alexander erected to commemorate his farthest point in India were visited by the kings of the Prasii, Plutarch brings in Sandrocottus a second time: "Androcottus himself, who was then but a youth, saw Alexander himself and afterwards used to declare that Alexander could easily have taken possession of the whole country..." And, since we know from Strabo (XV.1.36;2 11.1.93) that Seleucus's ambassador Megasthenes was sent to Sandrocot-tus's court at Palibothra, we may assume that Sandrocottus before his confrontation with Seleucus was already king of the Prasii no less than of the Indians who dwelt about the Indus. But we are left in the dark as to how he made this city his capital. From Plutarch we may even conjecture that in the period after Alexander's departure from India Sandrocottus took possession of Xandrames's kingdom. For, the reason Sandrocottus gave Alexander for his assessment of the latter's chances was the unpopularity of the wicked low-born king who was the Macedonian's chief antagonist. Xandrames is not named here; but his presence is evident. Still, whether Sandrocottus came into conflict with Xandrames himself or with some successor of his would depend on when in the post-Alexandrine period the conflict occurred.
Pointers to the solution of this problem as well as to that of some
1.Ibid.,
3.McCrindle, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (Westminister 1893). p. 408.
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others can be discerned in the long passage Justin (XV, IV)1 has on Sandrocottus's arrival at kingship. As usually translated it goes: "Seleucus Nicator waged many wars in the east after the partition of Alexander's empire among his generals. He first took Babylon, and then with his forces augmented by victory subjugated the Bactrians. He then passed over into India, which after Alexander's death, as if the yoke of servitude had been shaken off from its neck, had put his prefects to death. Sandrocottus was the leader who achieved their freedom, but after his victory he forfeited by his tyranny all title to the name of the liberator, for he oppressed with servitude the very people whom he had emancipated from foreign thraldom. He was born in humble life, but was prompted to aspire to royalty by an omen significant of an august destiny. For when by his insolent behaviour he had offended Alexander,2 and was ordered by that king to be put to death, he sought safety by a speedy flight. When he lay down overcome with fatigue and had fallen into 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 the prodigy which first inspired him with the hope of winning the throne, and so having collected a band of robbers,3 he instigated the Indians to overthrow the existing government.4 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 its back and fought vigorously in front of the army. Sandrocottus having thus won the throne was reigning over India when Seleucus was laying the foundation of his future greatness. Seleucus having made a treaty with him and otherwise settled his affairs in the east, returned home to prosecute the war with Antigonus."
Leaving aside the prodigies and noting that the phrase - "he instigated the Indians to overthrow the existing government" - has
1.The Classical Accounts..., pp. 192-3.
2.Majumdar's text has "Nandrus" here and the note to it: "Nandrum (Nanda) has been here substituted for the common reading Alexandrum (Alexander) on the authority of Gutschmid (cf. M.I., p. 327, fn. 1.). But the original reading is now looked upon as the correct one."
3.Majumdar's note: " 'Mercenary soldiers' would be a better translation."
4.An alternative reading is: "he solicited the Indians to support his new sovereignty." See An Advanced History of India by R. C. Raychaudhuri, R. C. Majumdar and Kalikinkar Datta, p. 99.
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an alternative reading, namely, "he solicited the Indians to support his new sovereignty", we may tabulate the sequence of events thus:
(1)Sandrocottus, born in humble life, meets Alexander and is insolent with him. (Perhaps he twitted him with uncomplimentary reflections on the Macedonian military temperament which could not go on to the Ganges in spite of the odds in the foreigners' favour, as we gather from what Plutarch makes him say afterwards.)
(2)Alexander wants him to be punished with death and he takes flight.
(3)He conceives the ambition to become a king.
(4)He collects an army of mercenaries, incites the Indians to overthrow "the existing government" and back his own "new sovereignty".
(5)After Alexander's death he succeeds in fighting and killing the foreign prefects and freeing the Indus-region from Greek rule.
(6)He becomes king there, acts the tyrant and is ruling over India when Seleucus is preparing his own great future.
(7)He meets Seleucus's invasion of the Indus-region, and the foreigner strikes a treaty with him.
Now the question of questions is: Whose is "the existing government" which Sandrocottus wants overthrown in his own favour? Vincent Smith1 and H.C. Raychaudhuri2 take it to be the government of Xandrames and they rest their case on the word "thereafter" (deinde in the Latin). Raychaudhuri writes: "The use of the term deinde ('thereafter','some time after') in connection with the war against the prefects of Alexander suggests that the acquiescence of Indians in a change of government and the establishment of a new sovereignty is quite distinct from the war with the Macedonian prefects. There was an interval between the two events, and the Macedonian war came some time after the change of government among Indians." The last-mentioned event is what Raychaudhuri calls "assumption of sovereignty" in "the plains and uplands of the Indian interior" before the same "in the Lower Indus Valley".
Raychaudhuri's analysis teems with illicit inferences. First of all, what is there in Justin to allow his interpreter to speak of "change
1.The Early History of India (London, 1934), p. 45, fn. 2.
2.An Advanced History of India, p. 100.
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of government among Indians", as if Justin's "existing government" signified an Indian government which is to be distinguished from the government by the Macedonian prefects? The mere fact that the Indians were instigated to overthrow the "existing government" cannot render the government itself Indian. After all, the Macedonian prefects were governing Indians, and to get rid of their sway it is the Indians under them who had to rise up. Again, Sandrocottus's "new sovereignty", which he solicited the Indians to support, need not mean that the old sovereignty which he wanted them to cease acknowledging was of another Indian -namely, Xandrames - and not of the Macedonian prefects.
Secondly, to instigate the Indians to overthrow the existing government is not necessarily the same as their acquiescence in a change of government, as if a new government were already established by Sandrocottus. The phrase can very well mean no more than agitation on Sandrocottus's part among the Indian subjects for a change of rule. Also, to solicit support for a new sovereignty is not inevitably equivalent to the establishment of a new rule. Justin may simply signify that Sandrocottus proposed himself as a new sovereign and sought to rally the Indians to his cause.
Thirdly, if Sandrocottus prepared to attack the prefects "some time after" the instigation or solicitation, there is no logical implication that the latter act was not done as a preliminary to his campaign against the foreigners. Suppose even he actually became a king somewhere before launching on that campaign. Then too, with a new government set up by him, he might be only bringing about the antecedents required for the move against the prefects. These antecedents could be in the Lower Indus Valley itself and not in the plains and upjands of the Indian interior. That is how Mookerji' sees the situation "A careful analysis of the details given by Justin indicates that Chandragupta, having collected an army, first installed himself as king. He then fought with the prefects of Alexander and defeated them." Mookerji interpolates no war in the Indian interior between Sandrocottus's assembling troops and his terminating the prefects' domination. The other war Mookerji2 designates as "Chandragupta's next task". In quoting Justin about
1."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 58.
2.Ibid., p. 59.
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Sandrocottus's instigation of the Indians he' inserts an explanatory word thus: "the existing (Greek) government."
Whether Sandrocottus actually installed himself as king or not, surely a preliminary to fighting or defeating the prefects was needed: an army had to be collected, a successful anti-government action organized, an alternative leadership claimed and confidence in it created. And some lapse of time was absolutely unavoidable between the two stages of the venture against the Macedonians, an interval indispensable for consolidating the one and leading on to the other. This interval, instead of being separative, would really be connective. So deinde, "thereafter", "some time after", casts our mind back to the first stage and puts the second into relation with it rather than cleaving them apart as distinct. Justin's narrative knits together Sandrocottus and the foreign-ruled Indians and their liberation by him and his stepping as ruler into the foreigner's shoes, as various elements of a single theme of war in which it is illegitimate to read a change of government in the Indian interior.
The very language in which Justin expresses that stepping into the foreigners' shoes clinches our contention. Towards the end of the narrative, after the description of Sandrocottus's elephant-mounted war with the prefects, we are told: "Sandrocottus having thus won the throne..." And, towards the beginning of the passage, there is an omission in the rendering we have quoted. When Sandrocottus is said to have been the leader who achieved the freedom of the Indians from the yoke of servitude to Alexander's governors we find nothing more than: "after his victory." Of course, the suggestion is that he became the Indians' master and started oppressing them too. But the actual words in the Latin original are very explicit in conveying the sense of mastery. They are: "Siquidem occupato regno."2 They are in complete conformity with the later phrase about winning the throne, whose Latin original is: "Sic acquisito regno."3 Not only victory but also enthronement ("regnum"="kingly status") is said at the very start by Justin to have been accomplished. Hence twice we have the statement that Sandrocottus became king as a result of vanquishing the prefects. And, in between the two versions of the same declaration apropos of the fight with the foreigners, we have
1.Chandragupta Maurya and His Times, p. 52.
2.Vincent Smith, loc. cit..
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the switch-back story of how Sandrocottus came "to aspire to royalty". What he had aspired to is obviously realized in this winning of the throne. And, as if to leave us in no doubt, the switch-back story itself has the phrase: "It was the prodigy which first inspired him with the hope of winning the throne." Moreover, this phrase, which is the leit motif of the war with the prefects, is immediately followed by the one about collecting an army and instigating or soliciting the Indians. What he did on collecting an army was, therfore, to start oh the course against the Macedonians, which ended in throne-winning. Even to think of his actually becoming a sovereign before defeating them is to fly in the face of clear-cut assertions that actual sovereignty was consequent on the victorious campaign against the prefects. And if no sovereignty at all predated this campaign, all talk of Sandrocottus's effecting a change of government in the Indian interior is out of place. Right from the commencement up to "sic acquisito regno" is the tale of a single war, the one in the Punjāb. Nationalist-contra-Macedonian agitation, self-proposal as future king and plea for Indians' backing it - these alone precede the Macedonian war.
As for a war in the Indian interior, Mookerji, no doubt, like Raychaudhuri, accepts it, but - as he clearly affirms later - it is for him subsequent to the victory in the Punjāb. We too must accept it as being such. Justin's text offers no particulars. The sole place where we can read any other kingship than the one in the Indus-region is in the expression continuing the mention of throne-winning in that region: "Sandrocottus...was reigning over India when Seleucus was laying the foundations of his future greatness." The actual Latin for the reigning over India is: "Indiam possidebat."1 The verbal turn stands for: "...was in possession of India." But in any case the rule in the interior followed the one in the Punjāb and we do not know how it came about. Justin, like Appian and Plutarch, is wanting in any sign about either a fight with Xandrames or the mode of coming into possession of Palibothra.
Yet we get an important chronological clue. According to Justin, Sandrocottus liberated the Punjāb after Alexander's death. Alexander died in June 323 B.C. Mookerji2 says: "The task [of
2."Chandragupta and the Maurya Empire", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 58.
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liberation] was not probably completed before 317 B.C., for Eudemus, the commander of the garrison in Western Punjāb-,...left India in that year with all his forces to join the coalition of the Eastern Satraps never to return again." Consequently, all affairs pertaining to the Indian interior are likely to have come to a head after 317 B.C. Between this date and 325 B.C., when we first hear of Xandrames, there are 9 years and we have no gauge of how much later than 317 B.C. Sandrocottus got occupied with affairs of the interior. It is very probable that Xandrames was no longer king of the Gangaridai at that time and that Sandrocottus replaced his successor who then was master of Vidiśā.
As neither Xandrames nor his successor ruled over Palibothra, Justin's chronology leaves its occupation by Sandrocottus vague. But our negative vision gets filled in the context of identification of Sandrocottus with the founder of the Imperial Guptas. What we know of Pātaliputra between the fall of the Āndhras and the rise of the Guptas would not permit us to look at Xandrames as king of Palibothra or to conceive Sandrocottus as fighting for it.
With regard to Chandragupta I, there are three facts facing us in this context: (1) according to the Purānas the territories which the Guptas enjoyed, when their power started, included "the Māgadhas" and therefore Pātaliputra; (2) Chandragupta I married the Lichchhavi princess Kumāradevī, whose image and name regularly appear on his coins as if to justify further by his association with her his right to the new title Mahārājadhirāja ("Supreme King of Great Kings") which none of his ancestors had borne and which he took on the strength of his conquests; (3) an inscription published by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indrajit' clearly shows the Lichchhavis ruling at Pātaliputra in the period preceding that of the Guptas. From this trio of facts we may reasonably infer that Chandragupta I came into possession of Pātaliputra by marrying the Lichchhavi Kumāradevī. No previous sovereign like Xandrames enters the picture of the Guptas' founder becoming king of Pātaliputra.
However, with our seeing in Chandrāmśa the Indian equivalent of Xandrames, we may end on an irony of historical vision. Although Xandrames cannot be identified with any member of the Nanda dynasty founded by Mahāpadma and so Sandrocottus
1. The Indian Antiquary, IX, p. 7.
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cannot be brought into comtemporaneity with the last of the Nandas known to the Purānas, we still have the extreme likelihood of a Purānic Nanda-sounding king confronting him in the dominion over which Xandrames had presided: Chandrāmśa's successor, Bhutinanda.
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