Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.136

c11.136

The political and military record of Chandragupta, brilliant as it is, does not sum up all his achievements. The great soldier who had liberated one part of his country from an unpopular dynasty, and another from foreign yoke, the architect of an empire embracing the greater part if not the whole of India, was as "strenuous in the arts of peace as in the arts of war." The conqueror of Bhadrasala and Seleucus, master of a host of 600,000 foot-soldiers, 30,000 cavalry, 8,000 or 9,000 elephants², wore the velvet glove as soon as conditions permitted. Great though he was as a war-leader, he had no inordinate passion for the sanguinary revelries of the battle-field. He set out to accomplish the unity of India, but beyond its borders he never cast his covetous eyes. The statement of Arrian, who apparently quotes from Megasthenes, that "a sense of justice, they say, prevented an Indian king from attempting conquest beyond the limits of India"³ perhaps reflects one of the fundamental principles of Mauryan foreign policy as laid down by the founder of the line and upheld by his successors.