Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c4.5

c4.5

**Importance of Chronology.** Chandragupta follows in the wake of this imperial tradition. But in his case the tradition becomes a reality, and acquires historicity. The older kings are mere names and cannot be related definitely to space and time which alone can make them historical characters. In the case of Chandragupta, we are able for the first time in the long annals of ancient Indian kingship to locate him accurately in both time and space, and establish his history on the basis of chronology. In one sense, History is limited by Chronology, and what is history proper is chronological history, comprising an arrangement of facts in order of time. Chronology is not so essential to the history of thought or cultural history, made up, as it is, not of isolated and individual dated events, but of large movements of the spirit embracing a long interval of time, though even such cultural history must rest on and present a sequence in thought, what Max Müller has called 'the inner chronology of ideas'. But Chronology is essential to Biography. An individual cannot rank as a historical person unless his life and work are placed in time. The dates of Chandragupta's life and reign may be worked out with considerable precision.