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Of the military affairs of the Indians, besides what has been already quoted about the order of soldiers, the Greeks tell us that the bow was their favourite weapon. In the Veda and the Epos we found this to be the chief arm (p. 35, 89), and the good management of it was the first qualification of a hero. The Greeks tell us that the Indian bow, made of reed, was as tall as the man who carried it. In stringing it the Indians placed the lower end of the bow against the earth, and drew the string back while pressing with the left foot against the bow; their arrows were almost three cubits long. Nothing withstood these arrows; they penetrated shield and cuirass.⁶³⁶ Others were armed with javelins instead of the bow, and with shields of untanned ox-hide, somewhat narrower than a man but not less tall. When it came to a hand-to-hand contest, which was rarely the case among the Indians, they drew the broad-sword three cubits in length, which every one carried, and which must have been wielded with both hands. The Indians rode without a saddle; the horses were held in with bits, which took the form of a lance. To these the reins were fastened, but along with them a curb of leather, in which occasionally iron, and among the wealthier people ivory points, were placed, so as to pierce the lips of the horse when the rein was drawn.⁶³⁷ The Indian horsemen carried two lances and a shield smaller than that of the foot soldier. In every chariot of war besides the driver were two combatants, and on the elephants three besides the driver. On the march the chariots were drawn by oxen, and the horses led in halters, so that they came into the battle-field with vigour undiminished.⁶³⁸ The beating of drums and the sound of cymbals and shells, which were blown, gave the signal of attack to the army.⁶³⁹ The Epos exhibits to us the kings for the most part in their chariots, and in these and on the elephants it places but one combatant beside the driver. The oldest trace of the use of elephants in war is not to be found in the battle-pieces of the Epos, into which the elephants were introduced at a later time. We hear nothing of elephants in the single contests of the heroes, but it is said that in the year 529 B.C. an Indian nation put elephants in the field against Cyrus (p. 16). At a later time Ctesias is our first authority for this practice; he describes it, about the year 400 B.C., as the fixed custom of the Indians.

CHAPTER VI.
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 (1¼ 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 10s.) 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