The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c18.12

c18.12

Chandragupta, having collected, during his exile, a formidable force of the warlike and predatory clans on the north-western frontier, attacked the Macedonian garrisons after Alexander’s death, and conquered the Panjāb. It appears probable that before he undertook the expulsion of the foreign garrisons, he had already overthrown his unpopular relation, the Nanda king of Magadha, whom he deposed and slew. The dramatist who tells the story asserts, and no doubt with truth, that Nanda’s race perished utterly and was exterminated. The adviser of the youthful and inexperienced Chandragupta in this revolution was a Brahman named Vishnugupta, better known by his patronymic Chānakya, or his surname Kautilya, by whose aid he succeeded in seizing the vacant throne. But the people did not gain much by the change of masters, because Chandragupta, ‘after his victory, forfeited by his tyranny all title to the name of liberator, oppressing with servitude the very people whom he had emancipated from foreign thraldom’. He inherited from his Nanda predecessor a huge army, which he increased until it numbered 30,000 cavalry, 9,000 elephants, 600,000 infantry, and a multitude of chariots. With this irresistible force all the Northern States, probably as far as the Narbadā, or even farther, were overrun and subjugated; so that the dominions of Chandragupta, the first historical paramount sovereign or emperor in India, extended from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea.