The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c27.2

v1.c27.2

WITH the Maurya dynasty begins the period of continuous history in India, a transition due to a concurrence of causes. In the first place, the invasion of Alexander and some other occasions of contact with the West furnish chronological limits of relative definiteness, to which certain archaeological and literary circumstances readily conform. Secondly, the establishment of a single paramount power in Hindustān, embracing a part even of the country south of the Vindhya mountains and standing in relation to the still independent areas, supplies a unity which previously was lacking and which, in fact, was rarely realised in later ages. The personalities also of two of the members of the dynasty stand out more clearly than is usual in India, in the case of one, indeed, with a vividness which would be remarkable even in the West. The literary material gain is of exceptional variety and authenticity. Not to mention the information afforded by the histories of Alexander's Indian campaign and the accounts of the Seleucid empire, we have in the memoirs of Megasthenes, a Seleucid envoy at the court of the first Maurya, a picture, unfortunately fragmentary, of the country, its administrative and social features, which research continues to verify in all its main details. Açoka's own rescripts, graven upon rocks and pillars, are documents of unassailable fidelity. The recently recovered Arthaçāstra ascribed to Kauṭilya, otherwise named Chāṇakya and Vishṇugupta, though in principle it conveys no new conception of an Indian polity, is in virtue of its date, which clearly falls within or near the Maurya period, and of the abundant light which in detail it sheds upon the life of the people, especially upon the arts of peace and war, perhaps the most precious work in the whole of Sanskrit literature. Finally, a most skilfully constructed political drama, the *Mudrārākshasa* of Viçākhadatta, preserves, in spite of a relatively recent date, some outlines of the events which attended the foundation of the dynasty.