The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.252

v1.c26.252

Chandragupta could put into the field more than half a million of men, with 9000 war-elephants and numerous chariots to boot. If Seleucus had really forced his way to the shores of the Bay of Bengal in the teeth of an opposition so formidable, his astonishing feat was hardly likely to have been left to a Roman geographer to chronicle. Besides, in that event the upshot of the campaign would surely have been a more decided triumph. As it is, the terms of peace point to a frank recognition by Seleucus that his own arm was neither long enough nor strong enough to govern India from Babylon. Invader and invaded, we are told, concluded an alliance and sealed it by a further compact, which Appian (*Syr.* 55) calls a *κῆδος*, Strabo (xv, 724) an *ἐπιγαμία*. According to ordinary Greek usage these two terms are scarcely consistent one with another. The former would naturally signify an actual marriage between individuals, and hence it is frequently argued that Seleucus must have become either the father-in-law or the son-in-law of Chandragupta. There seems, however, to be no room in his family circle, as we otherwise know it, for any relationship of the kind. Probably, therefore, it is safer to fall back on the technical meaning of Strabo's word, and to suppose that what is implied is a convention establishing a *jus connubii* between the two royal families. In that land of caste a *jus connubii* between the two peoples is unthinkable.