Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.58

c11.58

History does not record when the founder of the Maurya dynasty was born. As he was a mere stripling when he saw Alexander in 326—25 B.C. his birth could not have taken place before the middle of the fourth century B.C. Certain writers, as has already been noted above, record traditions that he was of royal extraction. The *Brihatkathā* and the *Mudrārākshasa* connect him with the Imperial Nanda dynasty of Magadha, and Buddhist commentators with the ruling family of Moriyanagara, perhaps identical with Pipphalivana of early Pāli texts, members of which had to take shelter in Pupphapura (Pāṭaliputra) when the last monarch of the line had been put to death by a certain powerful Rājā. The queen consort of Moriyanagara, we are told, gave birth to Chandragupta, and the child is said to have been reared by a herdsman and a hunter¹. A variant form of the story is given by the Burmese². The foundation of the Maurya city (Moriyanagara) is there attributed to princes of Vaiśālī that had escaped from the massacre of Adzatathat (Ajātaśatru). According to Jain tradition recorded in the *Pariśiṣṭaparvan*³, however, Chandragupta was born of the daughter of a peacock-tamer (Mayūraposhaka) who lived in an obscure village. The sources of Trogus and Justin knew Chandragupta as a *novus homo*, a man "born in humble life". This does not accord with the tradition regarding his imperial pedigree, though it may well be reconciled with the story that his family, though sprung from a ruling *Kshatriya* clan, had fallen on evil days. Justin's reference to the hero's encounter with "a lion of enormous size" and "a wild elephant" of monstrous shape further shows that the *Chandraguptakathā* known to the Latin historians of the early century of the Christian era, might not have been altogether ignorant of Chandragupta's traditional association with hunters and tamers of the wild denizens of the forest. Little that is historical can, it has to be conceded, be extracted from these legends.