Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s1.t1.8

c9.s1.t1.8

Next to the "advisers of the king" probably stood the "generals of the army". One official of this class, Bhadrasāla, finds prominent mention in the *Milinda-Pañho*. The Nanda army was a powerful fighting machine and we are told by the classical writers that the last king of the line "kept in the field for guarding the approaches of his country, twenty thousand cavalry, and two hundred thousand infantry, besides two thousand four-horsed chariots, and, what was the most formidable force of all, a troop of elephants which ran up to the number of three thousand".¹ Diodorus and Plutarch raise the number of elephants to four thousand and six thousand respectively. The latter puts the strength of the army of the Gangetic nations at eighty thousand horse, two hundred thousand foot, eight thousand war chariots, besides six thousand fighting elephants.