CHANDRAGUPTA OF MAGADHA.
The life of the Indians had developed without interference from without,
following the nature of the country and the impulse of their own
dispositions. Neither Cyrus nor Darius had crossed the Indus. The arms
of the Macedonians were the first to reach and subjugate the land of the
Panjab. The character and manners of another nation, whose skill in war,
power, and importance only made themselves felt too plainly, and to whom
civilisation and success could not be denied, were not only suddenly
brought into immediate proximity to the Indians, but had the most direct
influence upon them.
We saw how earnestly Alexander's views were directed to the lasting
maintenance of his conquests, even in the distant east. Far-seeing as
were his arrangements for this purpose, strong and compact as they
appeared to be, they were not able long to resist the national aversion
of the Indians to foreign rule, after Alexander's untimely death.
Philippus, whom he had nominated satrap of the Panjab, was attacked and
slain by mutinous mercenaries, soon after Alexander's departure from
India. These soldiers had been defeated by the Macedonians of Philippus,
in whose place Eudemus together, with Mophis the prince of Takshaçila
was charged with the temporary government of this satrapy.[640] After
Alexander's death (June 11, 323 B.C.), Perdiccas, the administrator of
the empire, published an edict from Babylon, that "Mophis and Porus," so
Diodorus tells us, "should continue to be sovereigns of these lands in
the same manner as Alexander had arranged." According to Justin also the
satraps already in existence were retained in India; Peithon, whom
Alexander had made satrap of the lower Indus, received the command of
the colonies founded there.[641] In the division of the satrapies made
by Antipater at Triparadeisus in the year 321 B.C., Peithon is said to
have received the satrapy of upper India, while the lower region of the
Indus and the city of Pattala were allotted to Porus, whose kingdom was
thus largely extended. The land of Mophis, in the Vitasta, was also
considerably increased. "They could not be overcome without a large army
and an eminent general," says Diodorus; "it would not have been easy to
remove them," Arrian tells us, "for they had considerable power."[642]
Porus, at any rate, was removed in another manner. Eudemus, whom
Alexander had made temporary governor of the satrapy of the Panjab, must
have maintained his position; he caused Porus to be murdered, and seized
his elephants for himself.[643]
Sandrakottos, an Indian of humble origin, so Justin relates, had
offended king Nandrus by his impudence,[644] and the king gave orders
for his execution. But his swiftness of foot saved him. Wearied with
the exertion he fell asleep; a great lion approached and licked the
sweat from him, and when Sandrakottos awoke the lion left him, fawning
as he went. This miracle convinced Sandrakottos that he was destined for
the throne. He collected a troop of robbers, called on the Indians to
join him, and became the author of their liberation. When he prepared
for war with the viceroy of Alexander, a wild elephant of monstrous size
came up, took him on his back, and bore him on fighting bravely in the
war and the battle. But the liberation which Sandrakottos obtained for
the Indians was soon changed into slavery; he subjugated to his own
power the nation he had set free from the dominion of strangers. At the
time when Seleucus was laying the foundation of his future greatness,
Sandrakottos was already in possession of India.[645] Plutarch observes
that Sandrakottos had seen Alexander in his early years, and afterwards
used to say that the latter could have easily subdued the Prasians,
_i.e._ the kingdom of Magadha, as the king, owing to his wickedness and
low origin, was hated and despised. Not long after Sandrakottos
conquered the whole of India with an army of 600,000 men.[646]
According to this, Sandrakottos, while still a youth, must have been in
the Panjab and the land of the Indus in the years 326 and 325 B.C. when,
as we have seen, Alexander marched through them. He may therefore be
regarded as a native of those regions. Soon afterwards he must have
entered the service of king Nandrus, who cannot be any other than the
Dhanananda of Magadha, already known to us, whom the Greeks call
Xandrames, and at a later time he must have escaped from his master to
his own home, the land of the Indus. Here he found adherents and
summoned his countrymen to their liberation. They followed him; he
fought with success against the viceroys, including, no doubt, Mophis of
Takshaçila, and after expelling them he gained the dominion over the
whole land of the Indus. The miracles recorded by Justin point to native
tradition; we have seen how readily the warriors of India compared
themselves with lions. And when Sandrakottos called out his people
against the Greeks, it is the beast of India, the elephant, which takes
him on his back and carries him on the way to victory. Chandragupta's
martial achievements and successes surpassed all that had previously
taken place in India; it is sufficiently intelligible that the tradition
of the Indians should represent his rapid elevation as indicated by
marvels, and surround it with such.
We can fix with tolerable exactness the date at which Sandrakottos
destroyed the satrapies established in the land of the Indus by
Alexander. In the year 317 B.C. Eudemus is in Susiana, in the camp of
Eumenes, who at that time was fighting against Antigonus for the
integrity of the kingdom. The three or four thousand Macedonians, with
120 elephants, which Eudemus brings to Eumenes, appear to be the remains
of the Macedonian power on the eastern bank of the Indus. Peithon,
Agenor's son (p. 407), we find in the year 316 B.C. as the satrap of
Antigonus in Babylon.[647] Hence the power of the Greeks in the Panjab
must have come to an end in the year 317 B.C. Eudemus could not have
removed Porus before the year 320 B.C., for, as has been observed, Porus
is mentioned in 321 as the reigning prince. Hence we may assume that in
the period between 325 and 320 B.C. Sandrakottos was in the service of
the king of Magadha, Dhanananda-Nandrus, that in or immediately after
the year 320 he fled to the Indus, and there, possibly availing himself
of the murder of Porus, summoned the Indians to fight against the
Greeks, and became the sovereign of them and of Mophis by the year 317
B.C.
When master of the land of the Indus, Sandrakottos turned with the
forces he had gained against the kingdom of Magadha. The weakness of the
rule of Dhanananda was no doubt well known to him from personal
experience; here also he was victorious. With a very large army he then
proceeded to carry his conquests beyond the borders of Magadha. Justin
tells us that he was in possession of the whole of India when Seleucus
laid the foundations of his power. Seleucus, formerly in the troop of
the 'companions' of Alexander, the son of Antiochus, founded his power
when he gained Babylon, fighting with Ptolemy against Antigonus in 312
B.C., which city Peithon was unable to retain, and afterwards, in the
same year, conquered the satraps of Iran. Hence in the year 315 B.C.
Sandrakottos must have conquered Magadha and ascended the throne of
Palibothra, since as early as 312 he could undertake further conquests,
and by that time, according to Justin, had brought the whole of India,
_i.e._ the entire land of the Ganges, under his dominion.
According to the accounts of the Buddhists, Chandragupta (Sandrakottos)
sprang from the house of the Mauryas. At the time when Viradhaka, the
king of the Koçalas, destroyed Kapilavastu, the home of the Enlightened
(p. 363), a branch of the royal race of the Çakyas had fled to the
Himalayas, and there founded a small kingdom in a mountain valley. The
valley was named after the numerous peacocks (_mayura_) found in it; and
the family who migrated there took the name of Maurya from the land.
When Chandragupta's father reigned in this valley, powerful enemies
invaded it; the father was killed, the mother escaped to Palibothra with
her unborn child. When she had brought forth a boy there, she exposed
him in the neighbourhood of a solitary fold. A bull, called Chandra
(moon) from a white spot in his forehead, protected the child till the
herdman found it, and gave it the name of Chandragupta, _i.e._ protected
by the moon. The herdman reared the boy, but when no longer a child he
handed him over to a hunter. While with the latter he played with the
boys of the village, and held a court of justice like a king; the
accused were brought forward, and one lost a hand, another a foot.
Chanakya, a Brahman of Takshaçila, observed the conduct of the boy, and
concluded that he was destined for great achievements. He bought
Chandragupta from the herdman, discovered that he was a Maurya, and
determined to make him the instrument of his revenge on king Dhanananda
who had done him a great injury. In the hall of the king's palace
Chanakya had once taken the seat set apart for the chief Brahman, but
the king had driven him out of it. When Chandragupta had grown up,
Chanakya placed him at the head of an armed troop, which he had formed
by the help of money hoarded for the purpose, and raised a rebellion in
Magadha. Chandragupta was defeated, and compelled to fly with Chanakya
into the wilderness. Not discouraged by this failure the rebels struck
out another plan. Chandragupta began a new attack from the borders,
conquered one city after another, and at last Palibothra. Dhanananda was
slain; and Chandragupta ascended the throne of Magadha.[648]
Besides the greatness of Chandragupta, the Buddhists had a special
reason for glorifying the descent and origin of the founder of a dynasty
which afterwards did so much to advance their creed. From this point of
view it was very natural for the followers of Buddha to bring a ruler,
whose grandson adopted Buddha's doctrines, into direct relation with the
founder of their faith, to represent him as springing from the same
family to which Buddha had belonged. Chandragupta's family was called
the Mauryas; the Buddhists transformed the Çakyas into Mauryas. We shall
be on much more certain ground if we adhere to Justin's statement that
Chandragupta was sprung from a humble family until then unknown. The
marvels with which the Buddhists surrounded his youth are easily
explained from the effort to bring into prominence the lofty vocation of
the founder of the dominion of the Mauryas. His mother escapes
destruction. A bull protects the infant, guards the days of the child
who is to be mightier than any ruler of India before him. In the game of
the boys, Chandragupta shows the vocation for which he is intended.
Though the Buddhist tradition puts the birth of the future king of
Palibothra in that city, it allows us nevertheless to discover that
Chandragupta belongs to the land of the Indus by making him the slave
and instrument of a man of the Indus, Chanakya of Takshaçila. And as
Justin represents Chandragupta as injuring the king of Magadha, and
escaping death only by the most rapid flight, so does the tradition of
the Buddhists represent him as having excited a rebellion in Magadha,
the utter failure of which compels him to take refuge in flight.
In all that is essential to the story there is scarcely any
contradiction between the narration of Justin and the Buddhists. We may
grant to the latter that Sandrakottos, relying too much on the weakness
of the throne of Magadha, raised a rebellion there, which failed of
success. He flies for refuge into the land of the Indus. Successful
there, and finally master of the whole, he is encouraged by his great
triumphs to attack Magadha from the borders, _i.e._ from the land of the
Indus, and now he captures one city after the other, until at length he
takes Palibothra. This means that when he had become lord of the land of
the Indus by the conquest of the Greeks and their vassals, he
accomplishes, with the help of the forces of this region, what he had
failed to carry out with his adherents in Magadha. We may certainly
believe the tradition of the Buddhists that Dhanananda was slain at or
after the capture of Palibothra.[649]
In ancient times the tribes of the Aryas had migrated from the Panjab
into the valley of the Ganges; advancing by degrees they had colonised
it as far as the mouth of the river. These colonists had now been
conquered from their ancient home. For the first time the land of the
Indus stood under one prince, for the first time the Indus and the
Ganges were united into one state. After Sandrakottos had summoned the
nations of the west against the Greeks, he conquered the nations of the
east with their assistance. It was an empire such as no Indian king had
possessed before, extending from the Indus to the mouth of the Ganges,
over the whole of Aryavarta from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas. In the
south-west it reached beyond the kingdom of the western Pandus to the
peninsula of Guzerat, beyond the city of Automela (p. 409), and the
kingdom of Ujjayini; in the south-east it went beyond Orissa to the
borders of the Kalingas (p. 410). In regard to the management of this
wide empire founded by Chandragupta, Megasthenes tells us that the king
was surrounded by supreme counsellors, treasurers, and overseers of the
army. Besides these there were numerous officers. The management of the
army was carried on in divisions, which cannot surprise us after the
statements of the Greeks about the strength of the army which
Chandragupta maintained; Megasthenes puts it at 400,000, and Plutarch at
600,000.[650] One division attended to the elephants, another to the
horses, which like the former were kept in the royal stables; the third
to the chariots of war. The fourth was charged with the arming of the
infantry and the care of the armoury; at the end of each campaign the
soldiers had to return their weapons. The fifth division undertook the
supervision of the army, the baggage, the drummers, the cymbal-bearers,
the oxen for drawing the provision-waggons;[651] and the sixth was
charged with the care of the fleet. Manu's law has mentioned to us six
branches of the army, beside the four divisions of the battle array;
elephants, horsemen, chariots of war, and foot soldiers, the baggage as
the fifth, and the officers as the sixth member (p. 220). The land was
divided into districts, which were governed by head officers and their
subordinates; we remember that the book of the law advised the kings to
divide their states into smaller and larger districts of ten, twenty, a
hundred, or a thousand places (p. 214). Besides the officers of the
districts, the judges and tax-gatherers, there were, according to
Megasthenes, overseers of the mines, the woodcutters, and the tillers of
the land. Other officers had the care of the rivers and the roads. These
caused the highways to be made or improved, measured them, and at each
ten stades, _i.e._ at each yodhana (1-1/4 mile) set up a pillar to show
the distances and the direction. The great road from the Indus to
Palibothra was measured by the chain; in length it was ten thousand
stades, _i.e._ 1250 miles, a statement which will not be far wrong if
this road left the Indus near the height of Takshaçila, as we may assume
that it did.[652] The book of the priests is acquainted with royal
highways, and forbids their defilement; as we have seen, trade was
vigorous in the land of the Ganges as early as the sixth century B.C.;
the sutras of the Buddhists, no less than the Epos, often mention good
roads extending for long distances.[653] The magistrates who had care of
the rivers had to provide that the canals and conduits were in good
order, so that every one might have the water necessary for irrigation.
The cities in turn had other officers, who superintended the
handicrafts, fixed the measures, and collected the taxes in them. Of
these officers there were thirty in every city, and they were divided
into six distinct colleges of five members each. The first superintended
the handicraftsmen, the second the aliens, who were carefully watched,
but supported even in cases of sickness, buried when dead, and their
property conveyed to their heirs. The third college kept the list of
taxes and the register of births and deaths, in order that the taxes
might be properly raised. The fourth managed the inns, and trade, in
order that correct measures might be used, and fruits sold by stamped
weights. The same tradesman could not sell different wares without
paying a double tax. The fifth college superintended the products of the
handicraftsmen and their sale, and marked the old and new goods; the
sixth collected the tenth on all buying and selling.[654] According to
the book of the priests the king was to fix the measures and weights,
and have them examined every six months; the same is to be done with the
value of the precious metals. It ordains penalties for those who use
false weights, conceal deficiencies in their wares, or sell what is
adulterated. The market price for necessaries is to be settled and
published every five or at any rate every fourteen days. After a
computation of the cost of production and transport, and consultation
with those who are skilled in the matter, the king is to fix the price
of their wares for merchants, for purchase and sale; trade in certain
things he can reserve for himself and declare to belong to the king,
just as in some passages of the book of the law mining is reserved for
the king, and in others he receives the half of all produce from mines
of gold, silver, and precious stones. The king can take a twentieth of
the profit of the merchant for a tax. In order to facilitate navigation
in the great rivers certain rates were fixed, which differed according
to the distance and the time of the year. The waggon filled with
merchandise had to pay for the use of the roads according to the value
of the goods; an empty waggon paid only the small sum of a pana, a
porter half a pana, an animal a quarter, a man without any burden an
eighth, etc. Any one who undertook to deliver wares in a definite time
at a definite place, and failed to do so, was not to receive the
freight. The price of transport by sea could not be fixed by law; when
differences arose the decisions of men who were acquainted with
navigation were to be valid. The book of the law requires from the
merchants a knowledge of the measures and weights, of the price of
precious stones, pearls, corals, iron, stuffs, perfumes, and spices.
They must know how the goods are to be kept, and what wages to pay the
servants. Lastly, they must have a knowledge of various languages.[655]
Megasthenes' account of the management of the cities shows that these
precepts were carried out to a considerable extent; that trade was under
superintendence, and taxed with a tenth instead of a twentieth, and that
a strict supervision was maintained over the market.
We have already heard the Greeks commending the severity and wisdom of
the administration of justice. Megasthenes assures us that in the camp
of Chandragupta, in which 400,000 men were gathered together, not more
than two hundred drachmas' worth (£7 10_s._) of stolen property was
registered every day. If we combine this with the protection which the
farmers enjoyed, according to the Greeks, we may conclude that under
Chandragupta's reign the security of property was very efficiently
guarded by the activity of the magistrates, the police, and the courts.
From all these statements, and from the narratives given above of the
luxurious life of the kings, which can only refer to the times of
Chandragupta and his immediate successor, so far as they are
trustworthy, it follows that Chandragupta knew how to rule with a
vigorous and careful hand; and that he could maintain peace and order.
He protected trade, which for centuries had been carried on in a
remarkably vigorous manner, took care of the roads, navigation, and the
irrigation of the land, upheld justice and security, organised
skilfully the management of the cities and the army, paid his soldiers
liberally, and promoted the tillage of the soil. The Buddhists confirm
what Megasthenes states of the flourishing condition of agriculture, of
the honest conduct of the Indians, and their great regard for justice;
they assure us that under the second successor of Chandragupta the land
was flourishing and thickly populated; that the earth was covered with
rice, sugarcanes, and cows; that strife, outrage, assault, theft, and
robbery were unknown.[656] At the same time the taxes which Chandragupta
raised were not inconsiderable, as we may see from the fact that in the
cities a tenth was taken on purchases and sales, that those who offered
wares for sale had to pay licenses and tolls; in addition to these a
poll-tax was raised, otherwise the register of births and deaths would
be useless. Husbandmen had to give up the fourth part of the harvest as
taxes, while the book of the law prescribes the sixth only of the
harvest, and the twentieth on purchases and sales (p. 212).
When in the contest of the companions of Alexander for the empire and
supremacy Seleucus had become master of Babylon, he left the war against
Antigonus in the west, who did not threaten him for the moment, to
Ptolemy and Cassander, established his dominion in the land of the
Euphrates over Persia and Media, and reduced the land of Iran to
subjection (Alexander had previously given him the daughter of the
Bactrian Spitamenes to wife).[657] When he had succeeded in this, he
intended to re-establish the supremacy of the Greeks in the valley of
the Indus and the Panjab, and to take the place of Alexander. About the
year 305 B.C.[658] he crossed the Indus and again trod the soil on
which twenty years before he had been engaged in severe conflict by the
side of Alexander on the Vitasta against Porus (p. 400). He no longer
found the country divided into principalities and free states; he
encountered the mighty army of Chandragupta. In regard to the war we
only know that it was brought to an end by treaty and alliance. That the
course of it was not favourable to Seleucus we may gather from the fact
that he not only made no conquests beyond the Indus, but even gave up to
Chandragupta considerable districts on the western shore, the land of
the Paropamisades, _i.e._ the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush as far
as the confluence of the Cabul and Indus, the eastern regions of
Arachosia and Gedrosia. The present of 500 elephants, given in exchange
by Chandragupta, was no equivalent for the failure of hopes and the loss
of so much territory,[659] though these animals a few years later
decided the day of Ipsus in Phrygia against Antigonus,[660] a victory
which secured to Seleucus the dominion over Syria and the east of Asia
Minor in addition to the dominion over Iran, and the Tigris and
Euphrates. Chandragupta had not only maintained the land of the Indus,
he had gained considerable districts beyond the river.
The man who annihilated Alexander's work and defeated Seleucus, who
united India from the Hindu Kush to the mouth of the Ganges, from
Guzerat to Orissa, under one dominion, who established and promoted
peace, order, and prosperity in those wide regions, did not live to old
age. If he was really a youth, as the Greeks state, at the time when
Alexander trod the banks of the Indus, he can scarcely have reached his
fifty-fifth year when he died in 291 B.C. The extensive kingdom which he
had founded by his power he left to his son Vindusara. Of his reign we
learn from Indian tradition that Takshaçila rebelled in it, but
submitted without resistance at the approach of his army, and that he
made his son Açoka viceroy of Ujjayini.[661] The Greeks call Vindusara,
Amitrochates, _i.e._, no doubt, Amitraghata, a name which signifies
"slayer of the enemies." This is obviously an honourable epithet which
the Indians give to Vindusara, or which he gave to himself. We may
conclude, not only from the fact that he is known to the Greeks, but
from other circumstances, that Vindusara maintained to its full extent
the kingdom founded by his father. The successors of Alexander sought to
keep up friendly relations with him, and his heir was able to make
considerable additions to the empire of Chandragupta. After the treaty
already mentioned, Megasthenes represented Seleucus on the Ganges; with
Vindusara, Antiochus, the son and successor of Seleucus, was represented
by Daimachus, and the ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy II., sent Dionysius to the
court of Palibothra.[662]
FOOTNOTES:
[640] Arrian, "Anab." 6, 27.
[641] Diod. 18, 3. Justin, 13, 4; _supra_, p. 407.
[642] Diod. 18, 39. Arrian, "Succ. Alex." 36; cf. "Ind." 5, 3.
[643] Diod. 19, 14.
[644] Von Gutschmid has rightly shown that Nandrus must be read for
Alexander in Justin (15, 4); "Rhein. Mus." 12, 261.
[645] Justin, 15, 4.
[646] "Alex." c. 62.
[647] Droysen, "Hellenismus," 1, 319.
[648] "Mahavanaça," ed. Turnour, p. 39 ff. Westergaard, "Buddha's
Todesjahr," s. 113.
[649] We can hardly make any use of the description in the drama of
Mudra-Rakshasa, which was composed after 1000 A.D. (in Lassen, "Ind.
Alterth." 2^2, 211), for the history of Chandragupta.
[650] Pliny ("Hist. Nat." 6, 27) gives 600,000 foot soldiers, 30,000
horse, and 9000 elephants.
[651] Megasthenes in Strabo, p. 707.
[652] Strabo, p. 69, 689, 690.
[653] Manu, 9, 282; _supra_, p. 387.
[654] Strabo, p. 708.
[655] Manu, 8, 39, 128, 156, 398, 409; 9, 280, 329-332.
[656] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 432.
[657] Arrian, "Anab." 7, 4. Droysen, "Alex." s. 396.
[658] The date of the campaign of Seleucus can only be fixed so far that
it must be placed between 310 and 302 B.C., and as the subjugation of
Eastern Iran must have taken up some time, the campaign to India may be
placed nearer the year 302 B.C.; we are also compelled to do this by
Justin's words (15, 4); cum Sandracotto facta pactione compositisque in
oriente rebus, in bellum Antigoni descendit, _i.e._ to the battle of
Ipsus.
[659] Justin, 15, 4. Appian, "De reb. Syr." c. 55. Strabo, p. 689, 724.
Pliny, "Hist. Nat." 6, 21. Athenæus, p. 18.
[660] Diod. Exc. Vat. p. 42. Plut. "Demetr." c. 29.
[661] "Açoka-avadana," in Burnouf, "Introd." p. 362.
[662] Strabo, p. 70. Athenæeus, p. 653. Pliny, "Hist. Nat." 6, 21.