Chandragupta Maurya (340 BC â€" 298 BC) was the founder of the Maurya Empire and the first emperor to unify most of Greater India into one state. He ruled from 322 BC until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favour of his son Bindusara in 298 BC.
Chandragupta Maurya was a pivotal figure in the history of India. Prior to his consolidation of power, most of South Asia was ruled by small states, while the Nanda Empire dominated the Indus-Gangetic Plain. Chandragupta succeeded in conquering and subjugating almost all of the Indian subcontinent by the end of his reign, except the Tamil regions (Chera, Chola and Pandya) and Kalinga. His empire extended from Bengal in the east, to Afghanistan and Balochistan in the west, to the Himalayas and Kashmir in the north, and to the Deccan Plateau in the south. It was the largest empire yet seen in Indian history.
After unifying much of India, Chandragupta and his chief advisor Chanakya passed a series of major economic and political reforms. He established a strong central administration patterned after Chanakya’s text on politics, the Arthashastra (English: "Economics and political science"). Maurya India was characterised by an efficient and highly organised bureaucratic structure with a large civil service. Due to its unified structure, the empire developed a strong economy, with internal and external trade thriving and agriculture flourishing. In both art and architecture, the Maurya Empire made important contributions, deriving some of its inspiration from the culture of the Achaemenid Empire and the Hellenistic world. Chandragupta's reign was a time of great social and religious reform in India. Buddhism and Jainism became increasingly prominent.
In foreign Greek and Latin accounts, Chandragupta is known as Sandrokottos and Androcottus. He became well known in the Hellenistic world for conquering Alexander the Great's easternmost satrapies, and for defeating the most powerful of Alexander's successors, Seleucus I Nicator, in battle. Chandragupta subsequently married Seleucus's daughter to formalize an alliance and established a policy of friendship with the Hellenistic kingdoms, which stimulated India's trade and contact with the western world. The Greek diplomat Megasthenes, who visited the Maurya capital Pataliputra, is an important source of Maurya history.
Chandragupta was Jain by faith. In the last years of his reign he took Jaineshwari Diksha from Shrutakevali Bhadrabahu to be a Muni. So he abdicated his throne and with the sangha he had gone to spend his last days at Shravanabelagola, a famous religious site in south India, where he fasted to death. Along with his grandson, Ashoka, Chandragupta Maurya is one of the most celebrated rulers in the history of India and is also known as Samrat Chakravartin. He has played a crucial role in shaping the national identity of modern India, and has been lionised as a model ruler and as a national hero.
Early life
See also Ancestry of Chandragupta Maurya Very little is known about Chandragupta's youth and ancestry. What is known is gathered from later classical Sanskrit literature, as well as classical Greek and Latin sources which refer to Chandragupta by the names "Sandracottos" or "Andracottus."
Many Indian literary traditions connect him with the Nanda Dynasty in modern day Bihar in eastern India. More than half a millennium later, the Sanskrit drama Mudrarakshasa calls him a "Nandanvaya" i.e. the descendant of Nanda (Act IV). Chandragupta was born into a family left destitute by the death of his father, chief of the migrant Mauryas, in a border fray. Mudrarakshasa uses terms like kula-hina and Vrishala for Chandragupta's lineage. This reinforces Justin's contention that Chandragupta had a humble origin. On the other hand, the same play describes the Nandas as of Prathita-kula, i.e. illustrious, lineage. The Buddhist text the Mahavamsa calls Chandragupta a member of a division of the(Kshatriya) clan called the Moriya i.e. Mor clan or gotra of Jat people. The Mahaparinibbana Sutta states that the Moriyas (Mauryas) belonged to the Kshatriya community of Pippalivana i.e. possibly Pipli on the outskirts of Kurukshetra. These traditions indicate that Chandragupt came from a Kshatriya lineage. The Mahavamshatika connects him with the Shakya clan of the Buddha, a clan which also belongs to the race of Ādityas.
In Buddhist tradition, Chadragupta Maurya was a member of the Kshatriyas and that his son, Bindusara, and grandson, the famous Buddhist Ashoka, were of Kshatriya lineage, perhaps of the Sakya line. (The Sakya line of Kshatriyas is considered to be the lineage of Gautama Buddha, and Ashoka Maurya billed himself as "Buddhi Sakya" in one of his inscriptions.)
A medieval inscription represents the Maurya clan as belonging to the solar race of Kshatriya s. It is stated that the Maurya line sprang from Suryavamsi Mandhatri, son of prince Yuvanashva of the solar race. Chandragupta was a student of Chanakya.
Plutarch reports that he met with Alexander the Great probably around Takshasila in the northwest, and that he viewed the ruling Nanda Empire in a negative light:
Androcottus, when he was a stripling, saw Alexander himself, and we are told that he often said in later times that Alexander narrowly missed making himself master of the country, since its king was hated and despised on account of his baseness and low birth.
According to this text, the encounter would have happened around 326 BCE, suggesting a birth date for Chandragupta around 340 BCE. Plutarch and other Greco-Roman historians appreciated the gravity of Chandragupta Maurya's conquests. Justin describes the humble origins of Chandragupta, and explains how he later led a popular uprising against the Nanda king.
Foundation of the Maurya Empire
Chandragupta Maurya, with the help of Chanakya, defeated the Magadha king and the army of the Chandravanshi clan. Following his victory, the defeated generals of Alexander settled in Gandhara (the Kamboja kingdom), today's Afghanistan. At the time of Alexander's invasion, Chanakya was a teacher in Takshasila. The king of Takshasila and Gandhara, Ambhi (also known as Taxiles), made a peace treaty with Alexander. Chanakya, however, planned to defeat the foreign invasion and sought help from other kings to unite and fight Alexander. Parvateshwara (Porus), a king of Punjab, was the only local king who was able to challenge Alexander at the Battle of the Hydaspes River, but he was defeated.
Chanakya then went further east to Magadha, to seek the help of Dhana Nanda, who ruled the vast Nanda Empire which extended from Bihar and Bengal in the east to Punjab and Sindh in the west, but Dhana Nanda refused to help him. After this incident, Chanakya began to persuade his disciple Chandragupta of the need to build an empire that could protect Indian territories from foreign invasion.
Nanda army
According to Plutarch, at the time of the Battle of the Hydaspes River, the Nanda Empire's army numbered 200,000 infantry, 80,000 cavalry, 8,000 chariots, and 7,000 war elephants, which discouraged Alexander's men and prevented their further progress into India:
In order to defeat the powerful Nanda army, Chandragupta needed to raise a formidable army of his own.
Conquest of the Nanda Empire
Chanakya had trained and guided Chandragupta and together they planned the destruction of Dhana Nanda. The Mudrarakshasa of Visakhadutta as well as the Jain work Parisishtaparvan talk of Chandragupta's alliance with the Himalayan king Parvatka, sometimes identified with Porus.
It is noted in the Chandraguptakatha that Chandragupta and Chanakya were initially rebuffed by the Nanda forces. Regardless, in the ensuing war, Chandragupta faced off against Bhadrasala, the commander of Dhana Nanda's armies. He was eventually able to defeat Bhadrasala and Dhana Nanda in a series of battles, culminating in the siege of the capital city Pataliputra and the conquest of the Nanda Empire around 321 BCE, thus founding the powerful Maurya Empire in Northern India by the time he was about 20 years old.
Conquest of Macedonian territories in India
After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Chandragupta turned his attention to Northwestern South Asia (modern Pakistan), where he defeated the satrapies (described as "prefects" in classical Western sources) left in place by Alexander (according to Justin), and may have assassinated two of his governors, Nicanor and Philip. The satrapies he fought may have included Eudemus, ruler in western Punjab until his departure in 317 BCE; and Peithon, son of Agenor, ruler of the Greek colonies along the Indus until his departure for Babylon in 316 BCE. The Roman historian Justin described how Sandrocottus (Greek version of Chandragupta's name) conquered the northwest:
Expansion
Conquest of Seleucus' eastern territories
Seleucus I Nicator, a Macedonian satrap of Alexander, reconquered most of Alexander's former empire and put under his own authority the eastern territories as far as Bactria and the Indus (Appian, History of Rome, The Syrian Wars 55), until in 305 BCE he entered into conflict with Chandragupta:
Always lying in wait for the neighboring nations, strong in arms and persuasive in council, he acquired Mesopotamia, Armenia, 'Seleucid' Cappadocia, Persis, Parthia, Bactria, Arabia, Tapouria, Sogdia, Arachosia, Hyrcania, and other adjacent peoples that had been subdued by Alexander, as far as the river Indus, so that the boundaries of his empire were the most extensive in Asia after that of Alexander. The whole region from Phrygia to the Indus was subject to Seleucus. He crossed the Indus and waged war with Sandrocottus [Maurya], king of the Indians, who dwelt on the banks of that stream, until they came to an understanding with each other and contracted a marriage relationship. Some of these exploits were performed before the death of Antigonus and some afterward.
The exact details of engagement are not known. As noted by scholars such as R. C. Majumdar and D. D. Kosambi, Seleucus appears to have fared poorly, having ceded large territories west of the Indus to Chandragupta. Due to his defeat, Seleucus surrendered Arachosia (modern Kandahar), Gedrosia (modern Balochistan), Paropamisadae (or Gandhara).
Mainstream scholarship asserts that Chandragupta received vast territory west of the Indus, including the Hindu Kush, modern day Afghanistan, and the Balochistan province of Pakistan. Archaeologically, concrete indications of Maurya rule, such as the inscriptions of the Edicts of Ashoka, are known as far as Kandhahar in southern Afghanistan.
After having made a treaty with him [Sandrakotos] and put in order the Orient situation, Seleucos went to war against Antigonus.
It is generally thought that Chandragupta married Seleucus's daughter to formalize an alliance. In a return gesture, Chandragupta sent 500 war-elephants, a military asset which would play a decisive role at the Battle of Ipsus in 302 BCE. In addition to this treaty, Seleucus dispatched an ambassador, Megasthenes, to Chandragupta, and later Deimakos to his son Bindusara, at the Maurya court at Pataliputra (modern Patna in Bihar state). Later Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and contemporary of Ashoka the Great, is also recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Maurya court.
Classical sources have also recorded that following their treaty, Chandragupta and Seleucus exchanged presents, such as when Chandragupta sent various aphrodisiacs to Seleucus:
And Theophrastus says that some contrivances are of wondrous efficacy in such matters [as to make people more amorous]. And Phylarchus confirms him, by reference to some of the presents which Sandrakottus, the king of the Indians, sent to Seleucus; which were to act like charms in producing a wonderful degree of affection, while some, on the contrary, were to banish love.
Southern conquest
After annexing Seleucus' eastern Persian provinces, Chandragupta had a vast empire extending across the northern parts of Indian Sub-continent, from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea. Chandragupta then began expanding his empire further south beyond the barrier of the Vindhya Range and into the Deccan Plateau except the Tamil regions (Pandya, Chera, Chola and Satyaputra) and Kalinga (modern day Odisha). The famous Tamil poet Mamulanar of the Sangam literature also described how the Deccan Plateau was invaded by the Maurya army. By the time his conquests were complete, Chandragupta had succeeded in unifying most of Southern Asia. Megasthenes later recorded the size of Chandragupta's army as 400,000 soldiers, according to Strabo:
Megasthenes was in the camp of Sandrocottus, which consisted of 400,000 men.
On the other hand, Pliny, who also drew from Megasthenes' work, gives even larger numbers of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 war elephants:
But the Prasii surpass in power and glory every other people, not only in this quarter, but one may say in all India, their capital Palibothra, a very large and wealthy city, after which some call the people itself the Palibothri,--nay even the whole tract along the Ganges. Their king has in his pay a standing army of 600,000-foot-soldiers, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 elephants: whence may be formed some conjecture as to the vastness of his resources.
Jainism and death
According to Jain tradition, Chandragupta gave up his throne at the beginning of the third century BC when he was forty-two years old and became an ascetic under the last Shrutakevali Bhadrabahu, migrating south with them and ending his days in sallekhana (death by fasting) according to Jain spiritual tradition at Śravaṇa Beḷgoḷa in present day Karnataka, though fifth-century inscriptions in the area support the concept of a larger southern migration around that time.
Successors
Chandragupta Maurya renounced his throne to his son, Bindusara, who became the new Maurya Emperor. Bindusara maintained friendly relations with Greek governors in Asia and Egypt. Bindusara's son Ashoka the Great became one of the most influential kings in India's history due to his important role in the history of Buddhism.
In popular culture
- Chanakya's role in formation of the Maurya Empire is the essence of a historical/spiritual novel The Courtesan and the Sadhu by Dr. Mysore N. Prakash.
- The story of Chanakya and Chandragupta was made into a film in Telugu Language in 1977 titled Chanakya Chandragupta. Akkineni Nageswara Rao played the role of Chanakya, while N. T. Rama Rao portrayed as Chandragupta.
- The television series Chanakya is an account of the life and times of Chanakya, based on the play "Mudra Rakshasa" (The Signet Ring of "Rakshasa").
- Also there was a television series on Imagine TV called Chandragupt Maurya
- The Indian Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring Chandragupta Maurya in 2001.
- In the American comic strip Pearls Before Swine a girl named "Carla" mentions the story of him becoming an ascetic, although she says monk, and starving to death.
