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Cape Comorin Volume II Issue II July 2020 ISSN: 2582-1962 Cape Comorin Volume II Issue II July 2020 An International Multidisciplinary Double-Blind Peer-reviewed Research Journal Maurya Dynasty. Myth, Legend or History Daya Dissanayake, Novelist, Poet and Blogger, Udumulla Road, Battaramulla, Sri Lanka Abstract: Over the past two centuries we have created a Maurya dynasty, or which should have been called a Chandragupta dynasty. Though Rama was deified, and the deification extended to Hanuman and Valmiki as we find at Ram Tirth in Amritsar, even Asoka Maurya has not been deified yet, leaving us the freedom to discuss the historicity of the Mauryas. In India Buddha and Mahavira have become founders of two great religious traditions. They are accepted as historical characters, and their biographies cannot be questioned, because it would amount to questioning the faith of people. About other people we come across in the long history of India, specially those who are believed to have lived Before the Common Era, we do not have any solid evidence of writing or archaeological remains to determine their historicity, chronology or about their lives. Their biographies are accepted by many as history, by a few as legends, and could even be considered myths only. We call him Chandragupta assuming he is the same Sandracottus of the Greeks. Bindusara is claimed to be his son, identified as Amitrocades. Aśoka/Devanampiya/Piyadassi is accepted as his grandson, but never mentioned by the Greeks, by any name, Greek or Indian. Chandragupta‟s biography was created by the British, selectively picking from secondary and tertiary Greek sources, and from a drama produced about eight centuries after Chandragupta. Alexander was a hero, a great warrior, while Chandragupta was „an oriental despot‟, who was greatly influenced by Alexander. Thus they accepted that Chandragupta was Sandrocottus, and the connection with Alexander. All we know about Alexander is from what was recorded by his own people, who would have tried to create a great war hero. Other than his courage, cunning and fighting skills, there is no evidence that Alexander was able to hold and rule the land he had captured. It is time to attempt the search of a historical Maurya dynasty. Keywords: Chandragupta, Bindusara, Aśoka, Maurya, Alexander “Myth is history for those who believe in its empirical reality”, Prof. Gananath Obeysekara begins his book, „Stories and Histories‟ (2019). Separating myth from legend and history is a near impossible task, when written material cannot be authenticated, or understood in their original context, and when there is hardly any archaeological evidence. “Nothing is more injurious than the habit of putting inferences, however satisfactory, on a level with primary historical facts to which they attach themselves.” (Latham R. G) “So far as annals, king lists, chronicles, dates of important battles, biographies of rulers and cultural figures go, there is no Indian history worth reading. Any work where the casual reader may find such detailed personal or episodic history for ancient India should be enjoyed as romantic fiction (like some Indian railway time-tables!), but not believed.” (Kosambi. 1965. P 22). "Most things do not happen as they should, and some things do not happen at all: it is the business of the conscientious historian to correct these defects". This quote is attributed to Mark Twain. In India Buddha and Mahavira have become founders of two great religious traditions. They are accepted as historical characters, and their biographies cannot be questioned, because it would amount to questioning the faith of people. About other people we come across in the long history of India, specially those who are believed to have lived Before the Common Era, we do not have any solid evidence of writing or archaeological remains to determine their historicity, chronology or about their lives. Their biographies are accepted by many as history, by a few as legends and could even be considered myths only. Over the past two centuries we have created a Maurya dynasty, or which should have been called a Chandragupta dynasty. Though Rama was deified, and the deification extended to Hanuman and Valmiki as we find at Ram Tirth in Amritsar, even Asoka Maurya has not been deified yet, leaving us the freedom to discuss the historicity of the Mauryas. I have not come across the term „Chandragupta Dynasty‟ with reference to the three rajas, Chandragupta, Bindusara and Aśoka. If they had really been historical characters, we should have identified them as the Chandragupta dynasty, because the term Maurya was never mentioned in the earliest written records. 25 www.capecomorinjournal.org.in ISSN: 2582-1962 Cape Comorin Volume II Issue II July 2020 An International Multidisciplinary Double-Blind Peer-reviewed Research Journal We have built a huge mountain over a pebble, and today we are unable to find this pebble anymore. It could be more than just a pebble, it could be an invaluable gem, and that is why it is important to search for it, however difficult it would be. Ananda Guruge used the term “faith-inspired accretion" (Guruge 1993 p. 43), for this mountain. We call him Chandragupta assuming he is the same Sandracottus of the Greeks. Bindusara is claimed to be his son, identified as Amitrocades. Aśoka/Devanampiya/Piyadassi is accepted as his grandson, but never mentioned by the Greeks, by any name Greek or Indian. Chandagupta Chandragupta, as we know him today, is as much a creation of British and Indian politicians and historians, in the same way as they did with Aśoka. Churchill denied the existence of a country called India before the British arrived, and claimed that “India had no more a political personality than Europe. India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator” . The Indian freedom fighters had to create their own history, and among the historical characters they had to build up were Chandragupta and Aśoka. To create their chronology they had to hang it on the chronology of the Greeks, specially Alexander. William Jones provided them a hook to hang it, by claiming that Sandrocottus and Chandragupta was one and the same. “...the contemporary of Alexander was not Chandragupta Maurya, but Chandragupta I of the Gupta dynasty”. (D. R. Mankad, Puranic Chronology. 1951. Preface.) Mankad explains his comment in greater detail in his Introduction. But Arrian mentions Sandracottus, and not Chandragupta, and Mankad contradicts himself by identifying Aśoka‟s grandfather as Chandragupta Maurya, when the Puranas mention the Maurya dynasty coming after the Nandas. Even if we accept Sandrocottus was Chandragupta, the western sources do not mention anything about his origins. “The Puranas were more concerned with the origin of the Nanda kings than that of Chandragupta.” (Mookerji. 1960 p. 9). There is a Xandrames mentioned but not identified, as the father of Sandracottus. There is no other record of the names of his parents. Arun Kumar Goswamy claims that “Chandragupta Maurya succeeded in bringing together most of the Indian subcontinent. As a result, Chandragupta is considered the first unifier of India and the first genuine emperor of India. His achievements, which ranged from defeating Alexander‟s Macedonian satrapies and conquering the Nanda Empire by the time he was only about 20 years old, to defeating Seleucus Nicator and establishing centralized rule throughout Southern Asia, remain some of the most celebrated unconfirmed events in Indian history.” Ever since William Jones, a Judicial Officer, announced on February 28, 1793 that Sandrocottus was Chandragupta, almost all historians, western and eastern, tried to find evidence to prove this idea. They identified names, places, incidents and records, interpreting everything to comply with this created history. William Jones identifies the king Sandrocottus as Chandragupta from a Sanskrit drama Rudra-Rakshasa by Visakhadatta written during the Gupta dynasty in the 4th or 5th century or later. The play also refers to a Brahmin statesman Chanakya, also called Kautilya or Vishnugupta. McCrindle's description of India and Chandragupta, based on Megasthenes and Arrian, could not be accepted as there is no other evidence to conform the association of Chandragupta and Alexander. Even when McCrindle works out Chandragupta‟s year of birth at or around 343 BCE, it is accepting that Chandragupta was thirteen years younger than Alexander. McCrindle (1877, p. 20) quotes Strabo, “Generally speaking, the men who have hitherto written on the affairs of India, were a set of liars, - Deimachos holds the first place in the list, Megasthenes comes next:..”. Yet McCrindle depends on the yarns by Megasthenes to write the history of India. Even if we accept there was a historical character as Megasthenes, that he visited Pataliputra, that he wrote about what he saw and observed, it is claimed that only a few fragments remained of such writings on which later historians based their records. We do not know if Megasthenes had learned Magadhan language or someone translated for him, that he has only second hand information. We do not know if he had travelled around Jambudvipa or just recorded what he heard from people in the city. “It is reasonable to presume that Megasthenes could not have had a first-hand knowledge of things excepting the administration of the Capital city...The major portions of the Indica must have been drawn from mere hearsay and reports. Even here he was confronted by a serious handicap which was his ignorance of the language or languages of India.” (Dikshitar 1953 p. 33) We can trace what Megasthenes may have written, only through the writings of later writers who 'quote' him, Strabo c. 64 B.C., Diodorus - 36 B.C., Pliny the Elder, 75 A. D., Arrian c. 130 A. D. an Justin 2nd cent. A. D. When we have to depend on fragments of a document, it would mean that we interpret the fragments as we understand them, or as we want to interpret them for others.
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