Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.167

c11.167

Tradition has preserved for us the names of several persons who are reputed to have attended the court of Chandragupta. Among these the place of honour should be given to the celebrated Kauṭilya or Chāṇakya, the all-powerful chancellor of the Maurya empire. We have already referred to the famous work on statecraft attributed to him. The contemporaneity of the king and his famous minister, though not proved by irrefragable evidence, is rendered possible by the unanimity of traditions to that effect recorded in the works of Indian, Ceylonese and Burmese writers of different persuasions. A second minister of Chandragupta, according to Buddhist legends, was a Jaṭilian, Maniyatappo by name, mentioned in the *Mahāvaṃśa Ṭīkā*¹.