Ptolemy Physkon, king of Egypt, succeeded his brother Ptolemy VI., surnamed Philomêter.
Rôxana, the daughter of the Baktrian chief Oxyartes, was considered by the Macedonians the most beautiful woman in Asia, next to the wife of Darius. Alexander, who found her charms irresistible, made her his wife, and she bore him a posthumous son, called Alexander Aigos, who was admitted to a share of the sovereignty under the regency of Perdikkas. Before his birth she had enticed Alexander’s other widow, Barsinê or Stateira, to Babylon, and caused her to be murdered. She subsequently fell, with her son, into the power of Kassander, who placed them both in Amphipolis, where in 311 B.C. they were both murdered by their keeper, Glaukias.
Sambus was the satrap of a mountainous country adjoining the kingdom of Mousikanos, with whom he was at feud. His capital, called Sindimana, has been identified with Sehwân, a city on the Indus, for which see [Note S]. Sambus fled on Alexander’s approach, not to evade submission, but because he learned that his enemy, Mousikanos, had been received into the conqueror’s favour.
Sandrokottos (Chandragupta).—Sandrokottos, with the exception perhaps of his grandson, Aśôka, was the greatest ruler ancient India produced. Though of humble origin, he overthrew the Macedonian power in the Panjâb, conquered the kingdom of Magadha, and founded a wide empire such as no Indian king had before possessed. He is also memorable on another account. Those learned men who about a century ago took up the study of Sanskrit, established his identity with the Chandragupta who is mentioned in the Buddhist Chronicle of Ceylon as the founder of the Mauryan dynasty of Magadha, and by fixing the date of his accession to the throne of that kingdom, supplied the chronology of ancient India with its first properly-ascertained aera, and thus brought it into line with the chronology of general history.
Besides the notices of this great sovereign in the writings we have translated, the following occur elsewhere in the classics:—Appian (Syriakê, c. 55), speaking of Seleukos, says: “And having crossed the Indus, he warred with Androkottos, the king of the Indians, who dwelt about that river, until he entered into an alliance and a marriage affinity with him.” Strabo (II. i. 9) says: “Both of these men were sent to Palimbothra, Megasthenes to Sandrokottos, and Dêimachos to Allitrochades, his son,” and in XV. i. 36 repeats the statement as concerns Megasthenes. In XV. i. 53 we read: “Megasthenes, who was in the camp of Sandrokottos, which consisted of 400,000 men, did not witness on any day thefts reported which exceeded the sum of 200 drachmai, and this among a people who have no written laws, who are ignorant even of writing, and regulate everything by memory.” Lastly, in XV. i. 57 we read: “Similar to this is the account of the Enotokoitai, of the wild men, and of other monsters. The wild men could not be brought to Sandrokottos, for they died by abstaining from food.” Arrian in his Indika (c. 5) says: “But even Megasthenes, as far as appears, did not travel over much of India, though no doubt he saw more of it than those who came with Alexander, the son of Philip, for, as he says, he had interviews with Sandrokottos, the greatest king of the Indians, and with Pôros, who was still greater than he.”[417] Lastly, Athênaios mentions him in his Deipnosophists (c. 18 d): “Phylarchos says that among the presents which Sandrokoptos, the king of the Indians, sent to Seleukos were certain powerful aphrodisiacs.” It will be observed that Athênaios transcribes the name of the Indian king more correctly than any of the other authors.
These detached notices, combined with those which appear in the translations, we may now gather together into a connected and consistent narrative. Sandrokottos was of obscure birth, and, from the remark of Plutarch that in his early years he had seen Alexander, we may infer that he was a native of the Panjâb. It was at one time thought that he had in some way offended the conqueror, and that to escape the effects of his displeasure, he had fled for protection to the court of Magadha. But this belief must now be given up, as it was based on a corrupt passage in Justin, which, by the restoration of the correct reading, shows that it was not Alexander whom he had offended, but Nandrus or Xandrames, the Magadha king. We do not know what induced Sandrokottos to leave his home and take service under the latter monarch, but we incline to attribute it to a sentiment of patriotism forbidding him to seek office or advancement under a power which had crushed the liberties of his country. What the nature of his offence against Nandrus was does not appear, but he so dreaded his resentment that he quitted his dominions and returned home to the Panjâb. He found it, although Alexander had now been six years dead, still under Greek vassalage, and ruled as formerly in civil matters by Omphis of Taxila and the great Pôros, while the military administration had passed into the hands of Eudêmos. Soon after his arrival, however, the order of things was violently disturbed. Eudêmos having decoyed Pôros into his power, treacherously murdered him,[418] but had no sooner done so than he was recalled to the west to succour Eumenes in his war against Antigonos. As he took with him 3000 foot, 500 horse, and 125 elephants, he denuded the province of the main strength of the force by which it was held in subjection, and his departure was fatal to Greek power. The Indians, who longed for freedom, and were no doubt greatly incensed by the murder of Pôros, rose in revolt. Sandrokottos, who headed this movement, having collected a band of insurgents, overthrew the existing government, expelled the remainder of the Greek garrison, and finally installed himself in the sovereignty of the Panjâb and of all the lower valley of the Indus. The insurgents, whom he led to victory, are called by Justin robbers; but we must not thence infer that he was a bandit leader, who, by taking advantage of an opportune crisis, rose to power by the help of desperadoes whose crimes had banished them from society. His adherents were, in point of fact, chiefly the Arattâ of the Panjâb, who were always called robbers, and are denounced as such in the Mahâbhârata. The Kathaians, who so stoutly resisted Alexander at Sangala, were included under this designation, which means Kingless, and implies that they lived under republican institutions. The stories told by the same author of the lion which licked the sweat from Sandrokottos when asleep, and of the elephant which volunteered to carry him into battle, and thus gave presages of his future greatness, reflect the true spirit of oriental romance, and were no doubt derived from native traditions which somehow found their way to the west. They remind one of Joseph’s dreams, in which he saw the sheaves and then the heavenly bodies falling down in obeisance before him.
Sandrokottos while in Magadha had seen that the king was held in such odium and contempt by his subjects that, as Plutarch tells us, he used often afterwards to speak of the ease with which Alexander might have possessed himself of the whole country. He accordingly had no sooner settled the affairs of the Panjâb than he prepared to invade the dominions of his former master. The success which he anticipated followed his arms. He overthrew with ease the unpopular despot, and having received the submission of Magadha, extended his conquests far beyond its eastern limits. He was thus able to combine into one great empire the regions both of the Indus and the Ganges. He established the seat of government at Palibothra, the capital of Magadha, a great city advantageously situated at the confluence of the Erannoboas or Sôn with the Ganges, and on the site now occupied by Pâtnâ, beneath which, at a depth of from 12 to 15 feet, its ruins lie entombed.
While Sandrokottos was thus, with a genius like that of Akbar, welding the states of India into unity, the successors of Alexander were too much engrossed with their internecine wars to concern themselves with his doings; but when they had for a time composed their differences, Seleukos Nikator, the king of Syria, advanced eastward to recover the Indian conquests of Alexander. The date of this expedition cannot be fixed with precision, but it was probably made in the year 305 B.C., or about ten years after Sandrokottos had ascended the throne of Palibothra. The records of it are unfortunately lost. It seems that he was allowed to cross the Indus without opposition, but it is not known how far he advanced into the country. We do not even know whether the hostile armies came into actual conflict, but we may conjecture that the sight of the vast and formidable host brought into the field by his antagonist, who was an experienced commander of the stamp of Pôros, led him to think discretion would be the better part of valour, and to prefer entering into negotiations rather than to risk the chance of defeat. At all events he concluded a treaty by which he not only resigned his claims to the Greek conquests beyond the Indus, but ceded to the Indian king considerable districts extending westward from that river to the southern slopes of the Hindu-Kush. The compact was cemented by a matrimonial alliance, the Syrian king giving his daughter in marriage to Sandrokottos. Friendly relations seem to have subsisted ever afterwards between the two sovereigns.
Seleukos sent as his ambassador to the Indian court his friend and companion Megasthenes. This was a fortunate choice, for while there Megasthenes, who was an acute observer and of an inquisitive turn of mind, composed a work on India, in which he gave a faithful account of what fell under his own observation, as well as of what facts he could gather from trustworthy reports. That work, now lost, was the source whence Strabo and other classical authors derived most of their information regarding India. In such of the fragments thus preserved as relate to Sandrokottos, we find an admirable picture of his system of government, of his personal habits, and of the regulations of his court. He did not live to old age, but died in 291 B.C., before he had reached his fifty-fifth year.
When we turn to the Buddhist accounts of Chandragupta we find them tally so closely in all main points with the Greek accounts of Sandrokottos that no doubt can be left that the two names which are so nearly similar denote but one and the same person. As he was the founder of the dynasty to which the pious Aśôka, the Constantine of the Buddhist faith, belonged, the Buddhist writers assign to him an honourable pedigree which connected him even with the royal house whence Buddha himself sprang. His father, they tell us, reigned over a small kingdom situated in a valley among the Himalayas, and called Maurya, from the great number of its peacocks (Mayûra). He was killed in resisting an invasion of his enemies, but his queen escaped to Pataliputra, where she gave birth to a son whom she exposed in the neighbourhood of a cattle shed. The child, like Oedipûs, was found by a shepherd, who called him Chandragupta (Moon protected), and charged himself with his maintenance. There resided at that time in Pataliputra a Brahman who had come from the great city of Taxila in the Panjâb, and whose name was Chânakya. To him King Dhanananda had given an insult which could be expiated by nothing short of his destruction. While the Brahman was casting about for means whereby he could clear his score with the offender, Chandragupta, now a boy, fell under his cognisance. Having discovered that he was of royal descent, and foreseen from his conduct among his companions that in after life he would be capable of great achievements, he bought him from the shepherd and gave him a training adapted to make him a fit instrument for the execution of his designs. When Chandragupta had grown up, his master put under his command a body of troops kept secretly in his pay, and attempted a rebellion, which proved abortive. Chandragupta fled to the desert, but having ere long collected a fresh force he invaded Magadha from the border, that is, from the side of the Panjâb. He captured city after city till the capital itself fell into his hands. The king was slain, and Chandragupta ascended the vacant throne.