Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c8.14

c8.14

Chandragupta had originally lived in the Panjāb, and a tradition says that as a young man he came into contact with Alexander. He then went to seek his fortune at the court of the Nanda kings of Magadha (there is some reason for supposing that he was of royal blood), and there he met with a fellow-countryman, the crafty Brahmin minister Chāṇakya² from Taxila. Becoming implicated in a plot which Chāṇakya had made against his master, he was forced to flee to his former home, and here he found the tribes ripe for revolt against their Greek rulers. Putting himself at the head of the rising, he helped his compatriots, says Justin³, “to cast off the yoke of servitude from their necks and slay their masters.” The people afterwards repented of their choice, he adds, for Chandragupta turned out to be as harsh as those whom he had displaced⁴.