SUPPLEMENT THREE CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA, CHANDRAGUPTA I AND THE GREEK PICTURE OF SANDROCOTTUS A COMPARATIVE GLANCE AT THE RIVAL CLAIMS Even apart from the weighty chronological tilt from Megasthenes favouring the founder of the Imperial Guptas instead of the founder of the Maurya dynasty as the Indian original of the Greeks' Sandrocottus in the time of Alexander and his immediate successor Seleucus Nicator, there are substantial considerations to support the former and not the latter Indian monarch. The most obvious and perhaps the most decisive point is the information by Strabo (XV.1.36)1 from Megasthenes apropos o

-010_The True Dates of the Bharata War and of the Kaliyuga marked by Krishna^s death.htm SUPPLEMENT ONE THE TRUE DATES OF THE BHĀRATA WAR AND OF THE KALIYUGA MARKED BY KRISHNA'S DEATH To round off our chronology in terms that are prominent in the Indian tradition we should arrive at an estimate of the epoch in which the Bhārata War was fought and in whose wake the Yuga traditionally designated Kali commenced, essentially marked by the death of Krishna who had been the centrally determinative figure in that critical carnage. We have fastened on the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. for the start of the Imperial Guptas as the sole feature of the old Purānic chronology whi

SUPPLEMENT TWO THE CHRONOLOGICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE BEARING OF THE KAUTĪLIYA ĀRTHAŚASTRA Now that the main chronological problems connected with our thesis have been tackled, a determination of the age of the political treatise going by the name of Arthaśāstra and purporting to have been written by Kautilya, alias Chānakya and Vishnugupta, whom tradition regards as the chief minister of Chandragupta Maury a, can be attempted. An estimate related to our dating of Chandragupta I instead of the first Maurya to the time of Megasthenes must be outlined and justified in order to give a finishing touch to this s

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agrawala, V. S., India as known to Pānini (Lucknow, 1953) "Bhuvana Kośa Janapadas of Bharatvarsha", Purāna ( Varanasi), V, No.1 "Yāska and Pānini" The Cultural Heritage of India (Sri Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta, 1958), Vol.I Aitareya Brāhmana, IV, V, VII, VIII Aiyangar, K. V. Rangaswami, "The Samavartana of Snana (The end of Studentship)", Prof. K. V. Rangaswami Aiyangar Commemoration Volume (Madras, 1940) Aiyangar, S. Krishnaswami, "Studies in Gupta History", Journal of Indian History, VI, Supplement, Madras. Hindu India from Original Sources (Bombay 1919) The Beginnings of South Indian History (Madras

-002_The Challenge of India^s Traditional Chronology.htm PART ONE THE CHALLENGE OF INDIA'S TRADITIONAL CHRONOLOGY 1 The chronology of ancient India, as determined by modern historians, diverges completely from the chronology framed by India herself for her own antiquity. The complete divergence applies not only to very remote occurrences like the Bhārata War: it applies also to comparatively late ones like the rule of the Imperial Guptas. Could India be utterly at fault about historical time? Surely, here is an issue of capital importance - and. as if to rivet our attention on it, it becomes crucial apropos of the very point that brought modern historians their moment of "Eureka

SUPPLEMENT ONE WHO WERE THE Gangaridai? AN OLD QUESTION REOPENED "Gangaridai" (sometimes misspelled "Gandaridai", once "Gan-daritai") - "Gāngārides", - "Gāngāridae" (or "Gaggaridae"1) -these are the names under which a great people in ancient India was known to Greek and Latin writers of antiquity. Modern historians2 are as good as unanimous in locating this people in the region watered by the mouths of the Ganges, the Ganges-delta in what is now called Lower Bengal. And for their decision they quote two authorities: (1) Megasthenes (c. 302 B.C.) whose lost book Indica is believed to have been extensively drawn upon by several Classical autho

PART THREE A RECONSTRUCTION OF ANCIENT INDIAN HISTORY: AŚOKA AND BEFORE AND AFTER 1 A Selective Resumé Who was the Indian original of Sandrocottus, the adventurous youth whom the Greeks reported as having met Alexander the Great during his invasion of India in 326 B.C. and as having become king not long after? We have sought a decision between Chandragupta Maurya, the candidate of modern historians, and Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Guptas, the choice of those who go by the traditional-Purānic chronology. After noting in some detail how this time-scheme can be s

SUPPLEMENT FOUR AN INTRODUCTORY WORD ON THE ARTHAŚĀSTRA PROBLEM An indirect argument for the first Maurya may be advanced on the basis of the political treatise Arthaśāstra attributed to his traditional minister who is named Kautilya or Chānakya. A large number of scholars have discussed the question of this document's tallying with or differing from the account of Megasthenes regarding the administration under Sandrocottus. When we have finished our whole reconstruction of India's ancient history from the starting-point of our equation of Sandrocottus with the founder of the Imperial Guptas, we shall take up the question i

PART TWO THE MOMENTOUS EVIDENCE OF MEGASTHENES 1 Megasthenes, the Greek who lived at the court of the Indian king "Sandrocottus" for some years from c. 302 B.C. as the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator, wrote a very popular book entitled Indica. The book itself is lost but it has served as the source for several Classical authors' accounts of the country where the ambassador had sojourned. A question of great moment to the subject of India's antiquity is: "Did Megasthenes receive any information regarding the historical chronology of India from the native annalists of his day?" Such information is likely to throw sharp light on