The Mauryan Polity c13.s12.60

c13.s12.60

(i) The head of the administration according to the prevalent conception of those times was always the king. The king being considered an all-important factor it would be meaningless and derogatory to glorify the minister however illustrious he might have been, and this, by a foreign minister to the court, would be out of place. (ii) There might have been an occasion when his name could have been mentioned. To testify to this we are not in possession of the complete Indika. To judge from the extant fragments it will be illogical and unreasonable. After all the name of the king is mentioned only once though other statements have been repeated oftentimes. (iii) Or it may be that the minister had gone out of office when Megasthenes visited the Court. For he came to India 20 years after the accession of the king. That Megasthenes had been to India several times before this has not been conclusively proved. And again granting that Cāṇakya was still in power when Megasthenes came, his name had become so much a commonplace one that Megasthenes did not think it worth his while to mention him. (iv) Or as has been surmised Kauṭalya was not living at the time of the visit. Thus probabilities can be answered by other possibilities also. Lastly, (v) as Keith suggests this argument cannot be stressed owing to our fragmentary knowledge of Megasthenes.¹