The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c18.165

c18.165

Jain tradition avers that Chandragupta Maurya was a Jain, and that, when a great twelve years' famine occurred, he abdicated,² accompanied Bhadrabāhu, the last of the saints called *śrutakevalins*, to the south, lived as an ascetic at Sravana Belgola in Mysore, and ultimately committed suicide by starvation at that place, where his name is still held in remembrance. In the second edition of this book I rejected that tradition and dismissed the tale as 'imaginary history'. But on reconsideration of the whole evidence and the objections urged against the credibility of the story, I am now disposed to believe that the tradition probably is true in its main outline, and that Chandragupta really abdicated and became a Jain ascetic. The traditional narratives, of course, like all such relations, are open to much criticism, and the epigraphical support is far from conclusive. Nevertheless, my present impression is that the tradition has a solid foundation on fact.³