Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c5.77

c5.77

**Defeat of Seleucos, 304 B. C.: Extension of Empire up to Persia.** Chandragupta did not merely supplant the Nanda king in the sovereignty of Magadha. He made himself at once the sovereign of an empire which was much larger than that of Nanda, for it included the land of the five rivers up to the Indus. This empire also extended farther by his later conquests. His subsequent career may be gathered from the following statement of Plutarch [*Lives*, Chap. LXII]: "Not long afterwards, Androcottos, who had at that time mounted the throne, presented Seleukos with 500 elephants and overran and subdued the whole of India with an army of 600,000." "The throne" here is the throne of Magadha which he had won by defeating the Nanda king. The present to Seleukos was the result of a war between the two. It would appear that in the struggle for power which ensued among the generals of Alexander after his death, Seleukos won for himself a secure position as the ruler of Babylon by about 311 B.C. and felt free to devote himself to the consolidation of his authority in the distant provinces. Bactria was not subdued without hard fighting. And by about 305 or 304 B.C. at the latest, he planned for a recovery of the Indian conquests of Alexander. Taking the route along the Kabul river, he crossed the Indus [Appian, *Syr.* 55]. But the expedition proved abortive and ended in an alliance. It was because he had to confront a new India, strong and united, under Chandragupta in command of a formidable army, and felt that discretion was the better part of valour. By the terms of the treaty, Seleukos ceded to Chandragupta the Satrapies of Arachosia¹ (Kandahar) and the Paropanisadae (Kabul), together with portions of Aria (Herat) and Gedrosia (Baluchistan). Thus Chandragupta was able to add another glorious feather to his cap. He extended his empire beyond the frontiers of India up to the borders of Persia. That is why it was possible for his grandson Asoka to declare in two of his Rock Edicts [II and XIII] that the Syrian emperor, Antiochus [Aṁtiyako *Yona-rājā*], was his "immediate" neighbour, one of his "frontagers" (an *Anta* or a *Pratyanta* king). Chandragupta on his part cemented this alliance by making a present to Seleukos of 500 war-elephants. This gift was of great value to Seleukos who was at that time very much worried by a call for help from his friends, the confederate kings Cassander, Lysimachus, and Ptolemy, against their common adversary, Antigonus. The elephants arrived in time at the battle-field of Ipsus to turn the scale of victory against Antigonus. The present of Indian elephants by Chandragupta to Seleukos was followed by a demand for them in western wars. Pyrrhos transported these elephants from Epiros to Italy in 281 B.C. Hasdrubal in 251 B.C. used at Panormus elephants driven by 'Indians'. So did Hannibal and Hasdrubal during the second Punic war with Rome, and, at the battle of Raphia, Ptolemy's Libyan elephants were no match for the Indian elephants of Antiochos [Warmington, *Commerce between Roman Empire and India*, p. 151].