+- MAURYAN EMPIRE CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA

Chandragupta Maurya was India’s first Emperor and great leader. Starting out from lowly beginnings and with the help of some talented individuals Chandragupta would form India’s first great empire, which would last for 140 years after his death.

Chandragupta Maurya’s origns are shrouded in mystery. Generally there are two accepted stories on the birth and youth of Chandragupta Maurya. One story has Chandragupta born into the Maurya clan of the Kshatriyas (Hindu warrior caste), who fell on such bad times that he was sold by his maternal uncles to a cowherd, who raised him as his son. He was later sold as a boy to a hunter to tend his cattle. It was about this time it is said that Chandragupta met Kautilya, who was a Brahmin (a Hindu priest). Kautilya was interested in the boy and his Khastriya origns for the purpose of getting revenge on the reigning Nanda kings of Magadha (in modern Bihar, India). Kautilya then bought Chandragupta from the hunter and took him to Taxila (modern Pakistan) where he gave the boy a royal education, in preparation for the purpose he had for Chandragupta. The second tradition has Chandragupta Maurya being born out of the affair of a Nanda prince and his maid, whose name was Mura (according to this tradition Chandragupta named his dynasty for his mother). Chandragupta spent his youth in the palace and was raised as a prince, but when a kinsman of his named Dhanananda came to power things changed. In a confusing series of events Chandragupta found himself at the center of a political movement by the Brahmins to kick the Nandas out of Magadha, at the end of which Chandragupta was exiled. In this exile the young man met Kautilya, who like above, was interested in Chandragupta for the purpose of revenge. Kautilya then took Chandragupta in as his adopted son and took him to Taxila to complete his royal training.

In any case it was from Taxila that Chandragupta Maurya would begin his conquest. According to Plutarch it was shortly after completing his training that Chandragupta saw the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great. Intrigued by the foreigners and their army Chandragupta studied them and even met with Alexander himself, telling him that the time was ripe for an advance further south. Modern historians believe that Chandragupta was trying to manipulate Alexander into weakening Magadha enough for him to stage a coup. In any case Alexander was forced to turn back and upon his death in Babylon in 323 B.C. Chandragupta, on the advice of Kautilya raised an army. Before long Chandragupta had a disciplined fighting force organized along Macedonian lines and in 322 B.C. (the first definite date in Chandragupta’s life we have) conquered the Punjab. He turned his army around and marched on Magadha, where Dhanananda was so unpopular that Chandragupta was hailed as a liberator by most of the people. In 321 B.C. Chandragupta finally defeated the Nanda loyalists and was proclaimed king, but this did not satisfy Chandragupta, who named himself Emperor Chandragupta Maurya I and his empire, the Mauryan Empire. In accordance with Kautilya’s advice Chandragupta increased the size of his forces till they numbered 30,000 cavalry, 9,000 elephants, and 600,000 infantry. He then sent this army to conquer the Macedonian held Indus River valley in 317 B.C., which was falling into the grips of civil war. After this Chandragupta, again by Kautilya’s advice, settled down to give his new empire structure. During his training in Taxila Chandragupta had grown to earn a liking for the Achaemenid style of governance and ruling, so he instituted a similar system in his Mauryan Empire. A period of peace and stability then ensued following this, but this peace was shattered when news reached the Mauryan capital of Pataliputra in 305 B.C. that Seleukos (Seleucus) I Nicator of the newly formed Seleucid Empire was marching towards the Indus, intent on recovering Alexander’s Indian possessions. Chandragupta went out to meet Seleukos in battle and utterly defeated him at the Indus. The war continued for the next two years until in 303 B.C. Seleukos and Chandragupta reached an understanding. Seleukos agreed to recognize the Mauryan Empire as a legitimate state and to give up the territories of Gandara and Arachosia (The Kabul valley in modern Afghanistan). Chandragupta in turn agreed to recognize the Seleucid Empire as a legitimate state and gave 500 elephants as a gift. To seal the deal Seleukos gave his daughter Helen to Chandragupta as a wife. After the signing of the treaty Chandragupta resumed his conquests, by the time Kautilya convinced him to stop again the Mauryan Empire extended as far north as the Himalayan Mountains and as far south as the Narmada River. With this Chandragupta stopped his expansion and focused internally.

Chandragupta Maurya had made his empire huge and given it a great system of governance; now that he had all the land he wanted he settled down to focus on these domestic matters. One of the first things he did was continue to refine the Achaemenid system. Chandragupta then reformed the caste system so that instead four castes, there were seven: Philosophers, Peasants, Herdsmen, Traders, Soldiers, Government Officials, and Councilors. The backbone of the Mauryan Empire was its agricultural prosperity. To maximize this Chandragupta made it so that he owned all of the farms, he then rented these farms out for a quarter or a half of what was produced on them. To make sure that people worked on the farms Chandragupta exempted them from military service or any other service to the state. The country’s civil service was such: The empire was divided into districts which were managed by relatives and trusted generals of Chandragupta, in each district were several departments which managed all of the government owned faculties and responsibilities in the district. Chandragupta also saw to it that the government controlled the prices of goods and trade, which he did by standardizing all of the weights, measures, and coinage in the Mauryan Empire. To protect the nation from foreign attack Chandragupta Maurya standardized the armed forces so that the Mauryan army would always stand at the strength of 600,000 men. However despite the great wealth and power of his empire, Chandragupta Maurya never enjoyed it, for he was incredibly paranoid. This paranoia was the reason that Chandragupta created a branch of the government that reported directly to him on everything and everybody in the government, even the slightest suspicion on the part of Chandragupta could make a person disappear. The crowning achievements of this paranoia were, according to Megasthenes (Seleucid ambassador to Chandragupta), the building of a palace that reportedly contained 1,400 beds that he never slept twice in and the formation of, on the advice of Kautilya, a unit of 700 female bodyguards.

Chandragupta Maurya’s last years and death are filled with as much mystery as his birth. In 301 B.C. a Jainist sage named Bhadrabahu said that there would be a twelve year drought. According to Jainist tradition Chandragupta, upon seeing the drought happen converted to Jainism and abdicated the throne to his son Bindusara in that same year. He died in this account by starving himself to death while in prayer with Bhadrabahu in 297 B.C. In another account Chandragupta simply threw Bhadrabahu out of his court and ignored his warning, dieing as in the above in 297 B.C., but in this account because of old age. So died Chandragupta Maurya, the first great unifier of India, at an unknown age.

The impact of Chandragupta Maurya was tremendous. Due to Chandragupta’s strong military tradition and excellent government structure the Mauryan Empire was able to grow to cover the entire Indian subcontinent under the reigns of his son Bindusara and his grandson, the legendary Buddhist Emperor Ashoka. While the Mauryan Empire would not last for very long after the death of its founder (about 140 years) the mark it left behind on India still remains to this day.