The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c12.2

c12.2

While in India, Alexander the Great was told of the Gangaridai and Prasii whose reputation for military prowess unnerved the worn-out, home-sick soldiers of Hellas. The term Gangaridai is derived obviously from the Ganges on whose banks the people were settled. Prasii is the Sanskrit Prâcya—eastern. The two terms are used sometimes as if to denote two different peoples and sometimes as if both referred to the same people and country. The various contexts, however, make it clear that the people ruled by the king of Magadha or south Bihâr are meant. Here, as a comparison of the Buddhist and Puranic accounts shows, the Śaiśunâga dynasty had been succeeded by a line of Nandas, probably of lowly extraction, whose last representative, said to be a barber's son, occupied the throne of Pâṭaliputra in 326 B.C.¹ Alexander heard, and Puru confirmed the report, that the king of the Gangaridai possessed an army of 20,000 horse, 2,00,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants trained and equipped for war.¹ Plutarch has the version that the kings of the Gandaritai and the Praisoi awaited Alexander with 80,000 horse, 2,00,000 foot, 8,000 war chariots and 6,000 fighting elephants.² Pliny records that "the Prasii surpass in power and glory every other people, not only in this quarter, but one may say in all India, . . . Their king has in his pay a standing army of 6,00,000 foot-soldiers, 30,000 cavalry and 9,000 elephants, whence may be formed some conjecture as to the vastness of his resources."³ Even on the basis of the lowest of these figures for the army, it is manifest that Magadha had become a great military power and that it was almost certainly the strongest state in North India. It seems to have extended its sway over Kalinga or Orissa, Tirhut in North Bihâr, Anga, Kośala and Kâśî. Its crown passed, after a revolution which left lasting memories, to Candragupta, styled Maurya, in or about 320 B.C.⁴ It is certain that Candragupta further extended the bounds of the kingdom he had won. He probably led the revolt against the Macedonian garrisons and took possession of the territory they guarded. He overran the rest of North India or at any rate got his suzerainty acknowledged throughout the region. He resisted the invasion of Seleucus Nikator and, in exchange for 500 elephants, got the satrapies of the Paropanisadai, Aria, Arachosia and, perhaps, part of Gedrosia, roughly, modern Afghânistân and Baluchistân, about 303 B.C.¹ For the first time North India was united under one sceptre. Kalinga seems to have asserted its independence but a good deal of other territory was added to the empire of Magadha. Candragupta founded a new era.²