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3. Hemachandra, in his Parisistaparvan, places the baseborn Nanda, instead of Nandavardhana, immediately after Udayin. This mistake was an easy consequence of confusion between the purvanandas and the navanandas. That Hemachandra had accepted the perverted meaning of the term navananda is proved by his statement

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ततस्त्रिखण्ड पृथिवीपति: पतिरिव श्रिय: ।

समुत्खातदिषत्कन्दो नन्दोऽभून्नवमो नृपः ॥

[Canto VIII, verse 3. J

4. Both versions of the Brihat-kathā agree in describing Chandragupta as a descendant of the older Nanda dynasty, and are silent as to the alleged Sudra origin of the founder of the Mauryya empire, though the Nandas who were ousted by Chandragupta are described as such. 5

5. The current view, however, is that Chandragupta was a Sudra, either on his father's or on his mother's side. This view should now be abandoned. We have first-rate evidence, on the authority of Kautilya himself, that Chandragupta was

योगनन्द यशः शेषे पूर्व नन्दस् तस्ततः ।

चन्द्रगुप्तो वृतो राज्य चाणक्यं न महो जसा ॥

Somadeva says:

Again

[कथापीठे-योगनन्दपुत्रशापमोक्षौ । (S. Lévi's edition, p. 47 ; Kävyamala series, p. 21.)

महामन्ती ह्ययं स्वेच्छमचिरात्त्वां विनाशयेत् ।

पूर्वनन्दस् तं कुर्याचन्द्रगुप्त' हि भूमिपम् ॥

(Bombay edition, p. 12. Taranga IV.)

हत्वा हिरण्यगतं च शकटालेन तत्सुतम् ।

पूर्वनन्दषुते लक्ष्नोच्चन्द्रगुप्ते निवेशिता ॥

(Bombay edition, p. 16.)

Jacobi's edition (Bib. Ind.), Canto VI, p. 46 of Eng. trans.
Brihat-Katha-mañjarī, Kāvyamāla series, p. 17, verse 121.
Kuthā-Sarit-Sāgara, Bombay edition, p. 12, verse 114.

high-born. In answering the question: Which is better, a weak but high-born king, or a strong but low-born king? Kautilya remarks :

"A people will naturally obey a high-born king though he is weak, for the tendency of a prosperous people is to follow a high-born king. Also, they render the intrigues of a strong but base-born person, unavailing, as the saying is, that possession of virtue makes for friendship.

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"The best qualities of the king are :—

Born of a high family, godly, possessed of valour,

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and possessed of a taste for discipline; these are the qualities of an inviting nature. ” 7 And we know that Kautilya's enumeration is generally in order of importance. It cannot be imagined that one who held these views helped to the throne a low-born Chandragupta.

6. The printed editions of the Mudrā-rākṣasa, and consequently many MSS. of the same drama, make Chāṇakya address Chandragupta as vṛṣala, i.e., Šūdra. This is à priori absurd, for what could Chaṇakya hope to gain by constantly drawing pointed attention to his master's low birth, even if he were actually lowborn? Throughout the drama, Chāṇakya addresses his former pupil by derivatives of Bhavat (=you, French vous) and never of yuşmad (=thou, French tu). It is preposterous to believe that these respectful forms of speech were combined with the opprobrious epithet vrṣala. Moreover, did not Chaṇakya, according to the Mudra-rākṣasa itself, pledge himself to the destruction of the entire race of kings born of the Nanda monarch who had insulted him? It would be a contradiction to install upon the throne a scion of the very dynasty Chanakya had determined to uproot. The fact seems to be that vṛṣala is a misreading for vṛṣabha. Vrsabha is the reading in most places in a remarkable manuscript of the drama in the possession of the Asiatic

6

• Kautilya's Arthasāstra, trans. by Shāmaśāstrī, p. 396. I am indebted for this reference to my friend Kumar Sudhindra Chandra Sinhasarma, B. Sc., of Susang.

? Kautilya's Arthasāstra, trans, by Shamasastri, p. 319.

Society of Bengal. It is written in the Bengali script and is undated. The last letter of the word is sometimes a clearly written bha() and sometimes a letter like a which seems to be the nearest approach to the original Brahmî letter which the writer could not confidently transcribe. In some manuscripts of the Purāņas too, this very word has, curiously enough, these very two variants, as noted by Mr. Pargiter." The Asiatic Society of Bengal has a manuscript of the Bhagavata Purāņa which preserves the original letter in a special symbol like a 10. This manuscript contains many clerical and scriptal errors which might have been "corrected" by the expenditure of a little common sense. 11 But the writer has obviously thought it fit to remain faithful to his original, so much so that he has reproduced the archaic form of a letter about which he was in doubt. 12

7. The Puranic texts do not necessitate the inference that Chandragupta was of Sudra origin. The statement: "Thereafter, kings will be of Jūdra origin," may be taken to mean either that all the kings after Chandragupta were Sudras, or that Mahāpadma was the first Sudra King of India after the war of the Mahabharata, and many other Sudra kings were to follow. The first interpretation is absurd since the Kāṇvāyanas are stated to have been dvijas. Hence, the second interpretation is the only possible one, because on any other interpretation the statement would lose its point.

N. 2.

8 No. I. G8.

13

Pargiter, The Dynasties of the Kali Age, page 47, N. 66, and page 38,

10 No. 1816. This is the early Gupta shape of the Brahmî Bha.

11 e.g. valurvimsat for catūrviṁsát.

12 I have as yet found only one instance, in Pargiter's manuscripts, of distinc tively Brahmî scriptal error. See Pargiter, page 59, Nos. 41, 42 (y; and ;, ha and pa being easily confused in Brahmî).

13 The text in question is

tatah prabhṛti rajano bhaviṣyah sudrayonayah.

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(1) tatah prabhṛti rājāno śůdrayo nayah bhaviṣyah or

(2) tatah prabhṛti Sudrayonayah rajanah bhaviṣyah

(1) is inadmissible, for the Kanvayanas were not Sudras. Hence (2) is correct,

8. The above arguments seem to warrant the conclusion that the "Nandas" comprised two distinct groups of monarchs one the illegitimate descendant of the other - correlatively called purvananda and navananda; that Chandragupta was a descendant of the former and consequently was not low-born, on his father's side; that, on the incontrovertible authority of Kautilya himself Chandragupta could not have been low-born, even on his mother's side, as tradition would have it; that vṛṣabha, not vṛṣala, was the word used by Visakhadattaś Chāṇakya in addressing Chandragupta. It is not clear, however, whether vṛsabha was his second name, or was a term indicating royal dignity and power. The later tradition regarding Chandragupta's connexion with the newer and base-born Nandas appears to have resulted from a confusion of the older with the newer Nandas.

14

since there is no third alternative. The Bhāgavata (with Viṣṇu) tries to avoid ambiguity by saying:

Tato nṛpa bhaviṣyanti Sūdra-prāyā stvadharmikah, which seems to refer to the pro-Buddhist tendency of the Mauryyas. The Bhagavata verses in this part of the Dynastic list are entirely recast from the original, avoiding ambiguity so far as possible. For instance, it does not mention Kautilya by name, as the Matsya, Vayu and Brahmaṇḍa d but refers to him simply as dvijah kaścit, in order not to over burden the laconic list of Kings by the unusual introduction of the name of a minister. The Matsya text about Kautilya might, moreover, be easily misinterpreted as making that minister himself rule the land for a hundred years. 14. Vrsabha was the name of one of the sons of Kartavirya Arjuna and is a common personal name in ancient literature. Vṛṣabha was the name of an Indian river. (See Mahabharata Bhismaparvan IX). Vṛsabha also means "the powerful, according to the Petersburg dictionary, as pointed out to me by Mr. Jayaswal. For a definition of the term Vrsala, see Manavadharmasastra, VIII, 16. Kauṭilya himself uses the word in a bad sense in his ME, page 199 (original edition).

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Vrishala according to the MBh. (XII. 90. 15.) means a beretic (Buddhist Jain, etc). AS uses it in the same sense throughout (e.g., page 20, where Vriskalt is a nun). Mr. Shamasastry's trans. of the passage at page 199 is wrong. It ought to be 'Sakyas, Ajîvakas and others, the heretical ascetics', K. P. J. (Ed.)

II.-A Note on the Hathigumpha Inscription.

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IN connexion with the mention (line 13) of the "Elephantships" and elephants, etc., which were brought to Emperor Khāravela in the twelfth year of his reign, from the King of the Pandya country (in the extreme South opposite Ceylon), I would like to cite a classical authority throwing some light on the subject.

Ælian (Hist. Anim. XVI., 18)2 writing about the elephants of Ceylon (the Island of Tamraparṇi or Taprobané) says:— "These island elephants are more powerful than those of the mainland, and in appearance larger, and may be pronounced to be in every possible way more intelligent. The islanders export them to the mainland opposite in boats, which they construct expressly for this traffic from wood supplied by the thickets of the island, and they dispose of their cargoes to the King of the Kalingai."

3

If the passage is based on Megasthenes, it would appear that there had been a sea-borne trade in elephants between Ceylon and Kalinga, at least 150 years before Khāravela, Probably the famous elephants of the King of Kalinga were really Ceylon elephants. The Ceylonese constructed ships expressly for the export of their elephants. It seems that these were of the class of "the elephant-ships" of the inscription. The Pandya country

1 J.B.O.R.S., Vol. III, p. 458.

2 Translated by McCrindle, Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian, p. 170.

See remarks of Schwanbeck quoted by McCrindle at p. 159, n.

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