The Mauryan Empire: Rulers and dhamma

Indian traditional texts give reign lengths and dates counted from the death of the Buddha or Mahavira, and these vary so much that they cannot by themselves give secure dates. In 1793 William Jones proposed that Chandragupta of the Sanskrit texts was the Sandracottus of the classical writers. Because Greek history is well dated, Alexander's death in 323 BCE and Seleucus's campaign around 305 BCE could now be placed beside Chandragupta's reign. The historian Sushma Jansari notes that this meant, for the first time, that Indian and Graeco-Roman history could be synchronised and dates assigned to ancient Indian history; Chandragupta's reign is therefore called the sheet anchor of Indian chronology. The identification says nothing about Greek descent, vassalage or the language of the edicts.

Pillar Edict II is the closest Ashoka comes to a definition. It asks, 'Dhamma is good, but what constitutes Dhamma?' and answers that it includes little evil, much good, kindness, generosity, truthfulness and purity. Ashoka adds that he has given 'the gift of sight' in various ways and has given many things, including the gift of life, to two-footed and four-footed beings, birds and aquatic animals. The definition is ethical and universal: it names no deity, ritual or sectarian doctrine, and it does not mention the Buddhist refuges or Vedic sacrifice. Other edicts fill in the practical content, such as respect for parents and elders, generosity to Brahmans and ascetics, and restraint towards living beings. This is why historians describe Dhamma as a social ethic that people of all sects could accept.

Bindusara ruled between Chandragupta and Ashoka, and most of what we know of him comes from later traditions. The 16th-century Tibetan Buddhist writer Taranatha says that Chanakya, one of his 'great lords', destroyed the nobles and kings of sixteen towns and made him master of the land between the western and eastern seas; some read this as a conquest of the Deccan, others as the suppression of revolts. The Divyavadana names an Ajivika wandering teacher, Pingalavatsa, at his court, and Basham concluded from such legends that he patronised the Ajivikas. The Ashokavadana says he sent Ashoka to besiege Takshashila, whose people said they opposed only his oppressive ministers. Kalinga, however, was conquered by Ashoka himself eight years after his consecration (Rock Edict XIII), so statement 4 is wrong. Three statements are correct.

Around 305-303 BCE Seleucus I Nicator, who held the eastern part of Alexander's empire, crossed the Indus to recover the Indian satrapies. Appian says he waged war on 'Sandrocottus, king of the Indians' until they came to an understanding and 'contracted a marriage relationship'. Strabo adds that the Indians afterwards held a large part of Ariane, received from the Macedonians, in return for five hundred elephants; Plutarch repeats the elephant figure. The territory therefore moved from Seleucus to Chandragupta: modern accounts list Gandhara, the Paropamisadae and parts of Gedrosia, and possibly Arachosia. The elephants mattered at once, for Seleucus used them against Antigonus at Ipsus in 301 BCE. Statement 3 reverses the direction of the transfer.

Greek and Roman writers drew their knowledge of the Mauryas mainly from Megasthenes and later envoys, and they Hellenised Indian names. Chandragupta appears as Sandrokottos (also Sandrakottos or Androkottos), and his capital as Palibothra, the city at the meeting of the Ganga and another great river. Bindusara, the son who succeeded him, is called Amitrochates, usually taken to render the Sanskrit amitraghata, 'slayer of enemies'; the Seleucid envoy Deimachus was sent to him. Ashoka is not known to Greek writers by such a name; in the Greek versions of his own edicts at Kandahar he appears as Piodasses, from Piyadasi. The people in whose country Palibothra stood were the Prasii, whom McCrindle's notes equate with the Prachyas, 'dwellers in the east'. So three pairs are correct.

Ashoka's edicts call him Devanampiya Piyadasi, 'Beloved of the Gods', and almost never even give his personal name; the word Maurya appears in none of them. Nor does it occur in the contemporary Greek accounts, so Megasthenes knows only Sandrokottos, king of the Prasii, and not a dynastic name. The name is attested later: the Junagadh rock inscription of the Saka ruler Rudradaman (c. 150 CE) prefixes 'Maurya' to Chandragupta and Ashoka, and the Puranas, Buddhist and Jain texts and Tamil Sangam poems ('moriyar') also use it. Buddhist tradition links the family to the Moriya clan and to a land of peacocks (Pali mora), while Jain texts call Chandragupta the son of a superintendent of peacocks (mayura-poshaka). Statements 1 and 2 are correct and statement 3 is not.

Rock Edict XIII claims that conquest by Dhamma has been won not only within the empire but on its borders, 'even six hundred yojanas away, where the Greek king Antiochos rules, beyond there where the four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander rule'. In the Prakrit text the names appear as Atiyoga, Tulamaya, Amtekina, Maka and Alikasudaro. Dhammika identifies them as Antiochus II Theos of Syria, Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt, Antigonus Gonatas of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene in north Africa, and an Alexander, usually taken as Alexander of Epirus, though this last identification is debated. Magas therefore ruled Cyrene, not Bactria; Bactria was then still a Seleucid satrapy on its way to becoming an independent Greek kingdom. The list is valuable both for dating the edicts and for showing how far Ashoka's diplomatic horizon reached.

Our picture of Chandragupta's rise is stitched together from two very different bodies of evidence. The Greek and Roman texts, written between the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century CE, deal with India after Alexander and with the last Nanda king, but apart from Justin they do not mention Chandragupta directly. The Indian accounts, the Puranas and the Buddhist and Jain texts, tell of his rise with Chanakya against the Nandas, but their versions of his origin and career differ widely. The play Mudrarakshasa by Vishakhadatta, which dramatises how Chandragupta and Chanakya won over the Nanda minister Rakshasa, is a much later work, dated variously from the late 4th to the 8th century CE. It is a literary reworking, not a contemporary record, so statement 3 is wrong.