Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c7.74

c7.74

The king had his own suite of rooms. On rising from bed the king was to be received by his Amazonian bodyguard, women archers (*strīganairdhanvibhiḥ*). In the second apartment, he will be received by his personal servants to give him coat and head-dress, and other aged attendants and attendant eunuchs. In the third apartment was stationed a sham bodyguard of dwarfs, hunchbacks and *kirātas*, or mountaineers, of foreign origin, *Mlechchhas*. The outermost of the king’s apartments which communicated with the exterior was to be in charge of an armed retinue (*prāsapānibhiḥ*), door-keepers (*dauvārikaiḥ*), as well as the king’s ministers and kinsmen.