India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c13.16

c13.16

It is worth noting that grammatical literature also has preserved some references to the Nanda tradition. In the illustration *Nandopakramāṇi mānāni* (*Kāśikā* on II.4.21) we have an allusion that the weights and measures of the country were standardised for the first time by king Nanda. Again in *sūtra* VI.2.133 Pāṇini says that the word *putra* coming after the word *rājā* does not take an initial acute accent. The commentators agree that the word *rājan* includes here also the specific names of individual kings, and in this connection they remember the name of king Nanda, whose son is referred to as Nanda-putra. We have the testimony not only of Khāravela that the name of the king ruling in 465 B.C. was Nanda, but the form is also supported by the Jaina tradition and the *Bhavishya Purāṇa* as pointed out by Jayaswal (*J.B.O.R.S.*, 1917). We may identify Nanda-putra with Mahānandin, son and successor of King Nanda or Nanda-rāja, or Nandivardhana. *POLITICAL DATA*—Pāṇini refers to Magadha as one of the monarchies, but it was not yet an empire. In his time the Udīchya country was made up of a number of kingships like Gandhāra and numerous republics as the Yaudheyas and Kshudraka-Mālavas, etc. We know it as a fact that none of those kings who ever sat on the throne of Rājagṛiha or Pāṭaliputra from Bimbisāra up to the last Nanda king dethroned by Chandragupta, ever extended his empire so far as the Vāhīka country. The Greeks under Alexander found the Nandas east of the Beas. In the Prāchya country, Pāṇini mentions Magadha, Kosala, Avanti, Kaliṅga and Sūramasa as separate States (*Jana-padas*), which as stated by Kātyāyana (*vārttika* on *sūtra*, IV. 1. 168) were monarchies (*Ekarāja*).