Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c4.43

c4.43

The *Mudrārākshasa* shows other points of divergence from the *Purāṇas*. While the *Purāṇas* know of nine Nandas, the drama knows of a tenth Nanda named Sarvārthasiddhi whom it describes as a *Nandavaṁśīya*, a scion of the Nanda dynasty, and whom it places on the throne after the death of the last Nanda. Thus the enemy whom Chāṇakya and Chandragupta are to fight is not the Nanda king proper, as stated in the *Purāṇas*, but a kinsman of his. The drama opens with the statement of Chāṇakya to the effect that he has already “exterminated the nine Nandas from the earth and rooted out the stem of Nanda. But he fears that he cannot consider his work to be finished so long as there still survives a single offshoot of the Nanda family.” And so, in that view, he did not refrain from accomplishing the assassination of Sarvārthasiddhi then living as a hermit in the forest, because he happened to be the last surviving “shoot of Nandas’ stem.”