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Updated: May 19, 2025
Chandragupta Maurya has just started his dynasty and great age in India, which is to last its thirteen decades until the neighborhood of 190.
They appear to have been aboriginal inhabitants before the Hindu invasion. The mountaineers of the Himalayas are in race more akin to the Chinese. Established Hindu chronology is found in the line of Magadha. We can fix the King Ajata Satru, who ruled, in the time of Gotama, in the middle of the sixth century B.C. Some generations later comes Chandragupta undoubtedly the Sandracottus of Diodorus.
The Emperor Chandragupta who in 305 B.C. had defeated Alexander's general, Seleucus, decided seven years later to hand over the reins of India's government to his son. Traveling to South India, Chandragupta spent the last twelve years of his life as a penniless ascetic, seeking self-realization in a rocky cave at Sravanabelagola, now honored as a Mysore shrine.
If we except the identification of the Greek Sandracottus with the Indian Chandragupta, we have really no clue by which we can test the truth of their writings or examine their method of investigation.
They offer him, contrary to his expectations, the rank and power of Prime Minister, and the parties are finally friends. The Nanda dynasty thus comes to an end and Chandragupta becomes the founder of the Maurya dynasty. A curious scene in the last Act may be noticed here. A Chandala or executioner leads a criminal to the place of execution.
The stately fabric which Chandragupta built up during his own twenty-five years' reign, circa 322-297 B.C., endured during the reign of his son Bendusara, of whom scarcely anything is known, and at the end of another twenty-five years passed on, undiminished, to his great successor, Asoka, whose unique experiment would have been scarcely possible had he not succeeded to an empire already firmly consolidated at home and abroad.
Rakshasa is a brave soldier but a blundering and somewhat soft-natured politician, whose faithfulnesss to his original master Nanda prompts him to wreak vengeance on Chandragupta and Chanakya. He has ultimately to abandon in despair his self-imposed task, the great aim of his life, being foiled by the arts of his adversary Chanakya.
Chanakya, whose ability and diplomatic skill are of a high order, lays out various plottings and machinations to make Chandragupta the paramount sovereign in India, by winning over the noble Rakshasa to his master's cause. He tries successfully to effect a reconciliation between his protegé, and Rakshasa.
Chandragupta also called Vrishala and Maurya is identical with Sandrakottus represented by the Greek writers as the most powerful Raja in India at the time of Alexander the Great's death.
This minister, also called Vishnugupta, is famous as a writer on Nity or "rules of government and polity", and the reputed author of numerous moral and political precepts commonly current in India. Nanda is slain by the contrivances of this wily Brahman, who thus assists Chandragupta to the throne, and becomes his minister.
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