21 March 2021
While Greek sources offer no insight into any great high way cutting through the Magadha Empire midrib, they offer two clarifications. The first of these is that Indians were organised, martial and their emperor was holding his forces just ahead of the river Hyphasis, and while later day Roman commentators and compilers like Pliny the Elder, do attempt to discount these descriptions as exaggerations by mutinous Greek-Macedonian elements within Alexander’s expeditionary force, it is simple that Alexander’s own record of battles would have gone about ending differently if he had indeed led his troops across the Hyphasis( Beas) where the Nanda military juggernaut was waiting, marshalled after spies brought information of the collapse of territories ahead, at the boundaries of the Chakravartikshetram. In fact the very reason I discounted the ‘evidence’ of one ‘historical book’ -Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism. In Two Volumes. Volume II M-Z (Page 69) by Benjamin Walker is because of the Wikipedia reference link as #14 the Wikipedia page on Grand Trunk Road to Chandragupta Maurya. Actually this piece on him is a classical example of bias of Western scholarship that New India rails against. For the sake of accepting his ‘ Great Royal Highway, a precursor of the GTR, patterned on a highway from Susa to Sardis, a reader of Walker must swallow a series of conjectures that create one impression of Chandragupta- of being aided, propped up and mentored by Greek and Persian influences as well as resources. Any one who has read the fables of Vishnugupta or Chanakya in India would know that a posse of spies and expert body guards, all female, ( quite Amazonian to Westerners) were known by the sobriquet ‘fruit of poison’ (or ladies of poison) Vishakanya. Walker says these were Greek women. Now Greek records themselves say that Macedonian generals took on Persian wives in Susa when Alexander married Roxanne, and most of them gave up their Susa wives upon return back from the campaign, except notably Seleucus himself( Queen Apama). So, it is clear that Greek women were scarce in the conquered territories, even after the efforts to build cities named as Alexandria & Seleucia where they hoped to attract Greek/Macedonian populations for settlements. There is a lot of reference to how the Diadochi when they had their struggles after Alexander for succession and spoils, were short handed by the numbers at their disposal of Macedonian/Greek troops, which reveals their inability to integrate with local populations and to recruit from them.
Then there is the term-satrapies. It seems that Achaemenid provincial units were the model for Chandragupta! The problem is the term itself- Satrap is actually Kshetra + Ajna ( Region + Head, recall Ajna Chakra?) which is Sanskrit. Besides the model of provincial government of the Magadha Empire was already there in the immediate predecessor dynasty of Nandas, as an established form of governance in India, described in Arthashastra which was last edited by Vishnugupta or Chanakya or Kautilya as he is referenced to, who was also the personal teacher of Chandragupta Maurya. Walker makes further claims that Mauryan military which defeated Seleucus and forced the delineation of the North Western boundaries to Magadha’s satisfaction, who continued to offer war elephant regiments to Seleucid successors even a 100 years later, was organised on ‘Greek & Persian lines’!
Pliny the Elder again credits indirectly the Mauryan for defining the boundaries of India, to be marked by regions of Makran (Gedrosia in Greek) which is modern Baluchistan, Herat (Aria in Greek), Helmand ( Arochosia in Greek) which itself is derived from the ancient land Ariana ( Land of Aryans, popular singer Arianna Grande’s name is a version from the Hebrew Arian/Aryan which means holy! Arya in Sanskrit meant noble. Aram which is the probable root for all of these variations, is Tamil for a code of life that is exalted goodness, whose implementation was guaranteed by the Arasan- Tamil for one who upheld Aram and which in usage today denotes Kingship) and Gandhara (Paropamisadae) which were regained by Chandragupta (Sandrocottus in Greek). So if you go today to Aurobindo Ashram and ask for a look at the map of ancient India, you will realise that the Land of the Aryans was just an area under this Akhand Bharat itself. We also know how Jaina supremacy was overthrown by Buddhist Sangha supremacy at the dawn of our Common Era, which was subsequently overthrown by a Huna uprising, incorrectly termed as ‘invasion’ led by Huna prince Mihiralakula. Most of Afghanistan and parts of Eastern Iran and southern Central Asia, including Xinjiang Uighur was either Buddhist or Shiva and fire worshipping, at some point, like how the tyranny of Mahananda forced the rise of Chandragupta, the stranglehold of the Sangha was resisted and overthrown when the Guptas were ruling dynasty and when Baladitya was the specific ruler who was forced to retreat to the mouth of the Ganges. If Mihiralakula had not intervened, northern India would have been one ‘Bihar’ (Vihar) stretching all the way from Persian frontiers to the Narmada-Aravalli- Vindhya geographical area. We could have had a situation where a subsequent Islamic conquest could have led to en masse conversion of local populations, like how it transpired in Indonesia and Malaysia. ( Bali was ‘Hindu’ and so did not suffer mass proselytisation.) Chandragupta was not the first Chakravarti of India, as Pliny the Elder notes “ Also that India was a third part of the whole earth: and the same so well inhabited, that the people in it were innumerable. And this they delivered (believe me) not without good appearance of reason: for the Indians were in manner the only men of all others that never went out of their own country. Moreover, it is said, that from the time of Bacchus unto Alexander the great, there reigned over them successively 154 kings, for the space of 5402 years between, and three months over”.
The evidence for this is perhaps the Puranic record as transcribed by Greek Embassies to the Court of Pataliputra, gleaned from the mention of dynasties in ancient India. It would be pertinent to mention that Rajyagriha ( Giri Viraj, Raj Gir colloquially) is mentioned in the Mahabharata as then seat of Magadha Empire, whose Chakravarti is Jarasandha.
We must close this subject by making a mention of the Nandas. The Nandas were to come to power overthrowing the Shaishunagas. The GrecoRoman records as well as Indian Jaina and Puranic sources mention the Nandas as formidable dynasty with territorial control upto North Western regions where Alexander made his foray into India. The Nandas were not Kshatriya in origin, as seen from Jaina, GrecoRoman and Buddhist record ( Annata Kula- unknown genealogy), probably Shudra, born either partially to a Shudra spouse of a royal, or entirely as child of a barber.
Leftist Historian KN Panikker and Social Anthropologist MN Srinivas are of the view that during this Nanda period there was an absence of Kshatriyas, and sufficient evidence is a viable for jatis to rise above their existing caste stratification to become the dominant Kshatriya castes in medieval India. Their frame is lent sustenance from the Matsya Purana composed/last edited around 100 CE. The Puranas both Vayu and Matsya, state that the Nanda king Mahapadma destroyed the Kshatriya ruling class of that time, and attained undisputed sovereignty ( Dilip Kumar Ganguly- History and Historians in Ancient India, Pages 19-20, Abhinav Publications, 1984).The Kshatriyas exterminated by Mahapadma Nanda include Maithili, Kasheyas, Ishvakus, Panchalas, Shurasenas, Kurus, Haihayas, Vitihotras, Kalingas, and Ashmakas.” Of these, it can be said that only Kalingas were able to regroup until Ashoka put them to the sword. So now when you read the myth that Chandragupta himself was a low born to a royal concubine of the Nandas themselves or ‘kula Hina’ ( annata Kula in Pali) in Mudrarakshasa a Sanskrit text composed centuries later. Not to mention the origin stories of Chandela of Khajuraho fame, or Kakateyas of Andhra fame, whose origins are clearly not ‘Kshatriya’. It is also a matter of surmise that later day Raghu Vanshi/ Surya Vanshi, Chandra Vanshi claims are ‘crafted hagiography with a claim of such genealogy as to thwart questions of legitimacy. This can be seen in the coronation of Shivaji Maharaj in the 16th Century as well.
So when we read Chandragupta we must understand he was not a pioneer of sorts as a Chakravarti nor did he set up a system of administration or military organisation that was unique to then India. What his reign and that of his predecessor Nanda led to was the European geographical recognition of India as seen from Pliny and from maps of antiquity of Greek (Eratosthenes descriptions), which conformed to modern contours of the Indian subcontinent. During his reign the first official Greek embassy of Megasthenes arrived, and his relations with Seleucus cemented the already growing exchange between Greeks and India.
indiarubberman.com 