Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c17.6

c17.6

The circumstances leading to the meeting of Chāṇakya and Chandragupta have been briefly related in the text. But the *Ṭīkā* gives some interesting details relating to the birth and early life of Chandragupta. At the conquest of Moriya-nagara, its king was slain, and his queen, then pregnant, fled from the city with her elder brothers and lived at Pupphapura in disguise. There she was duly delivered of a child who became known as Chandragupta. The mother for its safety placed the child in a vase and deposited it at the door of a cattle-pen where it was watched over by a bull named Chanda. There he was reared by a herdsman who put him to tend his cattle till he was taken away by a huntsman. As he was growing up, he was tending cattle with other village boys whom he profitably employed in a 'game of royalty' which he improvised by a natural instinct: "He himself was named *Rājā*; to others he gave the offices of sub-king, etc. Some being appointed Judges were placed in a Judgment Hall; some he made officers of the king's household; and others, outlaws or robbers. Having thus constituted a Court of Justice, he sat in judgment. On culprits being brought up, regularly impeaching and trying them, on their guilt being cleary proved to his satisfaction, according to the sentence awarded by his judicial ministers," he pronounced the punishment.