Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.119

c11.119

The details of the "understanding" to which Strabo bears witness leave no room for doubt that Seleucus could not make much headway. Even royal Macedonian troops under a distinguished commander failed to dislodge the king of the Prasii from the Punjab. On the contrary, the invader had to give up some of the Macedonian possessions on the Indus "receiving in exchange the comparatively small recompense of five hundred elephants." In regard to the extent of the territory surrendered by Seleucus and the nature of the marriage compact of which, according to Strabo, the cession was in part the consequence, there has been considerable difference of opinion. Smith believed, on the strength of a passage of Pliny, that the countries ceded included the four satrapies of Gedrosia, Arachosia, Aria, and the Paropamisadae.¹ Pliny however simply says that "numerous authors include in India the four satrapies" in question.² He may have been referring to conditions not in the days of Seleucus and Chandragupta, but in some later epoch, e.g., that of the monarchs of the Scytho-Parthian dynasties who reigned previous to A.D. 77.³ The words used by Strabo "and of these places, in part, some that lie along the Indus are held by Indians" do not convey the idea of a complete abandonment of the Satrapies in question including even Aria. Tarn is inclined to think that only those parts of the three satrapies of Paropamisadae, Arachosia and Gedrosia which lay along the Indus were ceded by Seleucus. In Gedrosia the district ceded was, in his opinion, that between the Median Hydaspes (identified with the Purali) and the Indus. Of the satrapy called Paropamisadae Chandragupta got, according to this view, only Gandhāra between the Kunar river and the Indus. The boundary in Arachosia is not precisely defined but it is suggested that what Chandragupta got lay east of a line starting from the Kunar river to somewhere near Quetta and then going to the sea by Kalat and the Purali river.⁴ The contention of Tarn cannot however be accepted in its entirety.