We have already heard the Greeks commending the severity and wisdom of the administration of justice. Megasthenes assures us that in the camp of Chandragupta, in which 400,000 men were gathered together, not more than two hundred drachmas' worth (£7 10s.) of stolen property was registered every day. If we combine this with the protection which the farmers enjoyed, according to the Greeks, we may conclude that under Chandragupta's reign the security of property was very efficiently guarded by the activity of the magistrates, the police, and the courts.
From all these statements, and from the narratives given above of the luxurious life of the kings, which can only refer to the times of Chandragupta and his immediate successor, so far as they are trustworthy, it follows that Chandragupta knew how to rule with a vigorous and careful hand; and that he could maintain peace and order. He protected trade, which for centuries had been carried on in a remarkably vigorous manner, took care of the roads, navigation, and the irrigation of the land, upheld justice and security, organised skilfully the management of the cities and the army, paid his soldiers liberally, and promoted the tillage of the soil. The Buddhists confirm what Megasthenes states of the flourishing condition of agriculture, of the honest conduct of the Indians, and their great regard for justice; they assure us that under the second successor of Chandragupta the land was flourishing and thickly populated; that the earth was covered with rice, sugarcanes, and cows; that strife, outrage, assault, theft, and robbery were unknown.[656] At the same time the taxes which Chandragupta raised were not inconsiderable, as we may see from the fact that in the cities a tenth was taken on purchases and sales, that those who offered wares for sale had to pay licenses and tolls; in addition to these a poll-tax was raised, otherwise the register of births and deaths would be useless. Husbandmen had to give up the fourth part of the harvest as taxes, while the book of the law prescribes the sixth only of the harvest, and the twentieth on purchases and sales (p. 212).
When in the contest of the companions of Alexander for the empire and supremacy Seleucus had become master of Babylon, he left the war against Antigonus in the west, who did not threaten him for the moment, to Ptolemy and Cassander, established his dominion in the land of the Euphrates over Persia and Media, and reduced the land of Iran to subjection (Alexander had previously given him the daughter of the Bactrian Spitamenes to wife).[657] When he had succeeded in this, he intended to re-establish the supremacy of the Greeks in the valley of the Indus and the Panjab, and to take the place of Alexander. About the year 305 B.C.[658] he crossed the Indus and again trod the soil on which twenty years before he had been engaged in severe conflict by the side of Alexander on the Vitasta against Porus (p. 400). He no longer found the country divided into principalities and free states; he encountered the mighty army of Chandragupta. In regard to the war we only know that it was brought to an end by treaty and alliance. That the course of it was not favourable to Seleucus we may gather from the fact that he not only made no conquests beyond the Indus, but even gave up to Chandragupta considerable districts on the western shore, the land of the Paropamisades, i. e. the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush as far as the confluence of the Cabul and Indus, the eastern regions of Arachosia and Gedrosia. The present of 500 elephants, given in exchange by Chandragupta, was no equivalent for the failure of hopes and the loss of so much territory,[659] though these animals a few years later decided the day of Ipsus in Phrygia against Antigonus,[660] a victory which secured to Seleucus the dominion over Syria and the east of Asia Minor in addition to the dominion over Iran, and the Tigris and Euphrates. Chandragupta had not only maintained the land of the Indus, he had gained considerable districts beyond the river.
The man who annihilated Alexander's work and defeated Seleucus, who united India from the Hindu Kush to the mouth of the Ganges, from Guzerat to Orissa, under one dominion, who established and promoted peace, order, and prosperity in those wide regions, did not live to old age. If he was really a youth, as the Greeks state, at the time when Alexander trod the banks of the Indus, he can scarcely have reached his fifty-fifth year when he died in 291 B.C. The extensive kingdom which he had founded by his power he left to his son Vindusara. Of his reign we learn from Indian tradition that Takshaçila rebelled in it, but submitted without resistance at the approach of his army, and that he made his son Açoka viceroy of Ujjayini.[661] The Greeks call Vindusara, Amitrochates, i. e., no doubt, Amitraghata, a name which signifies "slayer of the enemies." This is obviously an honourable epithet which the Indians give to Vindusara, or which he gave to himself. We may conclude, not only from the fact that he is known to the Greeks, but from other circumstances, that Vindusara maintained to its full extent the kingdom founded by his father. The successors of Alexander sought to keep up friendly relations with him, and his heir was able to make considerable additions to the empire of Chandragupta. After the treaty already mentioned, Megasthenes represented Seleucus on the Ganges; with Vindusara, Antiochus, the son and successor of Seleucus, was represented by Daimachus, and the ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy II., sent Dionysius to the court of Palibothra.[662]
FOOTNOTES:
[640] Arrian, "Anab." 6, 27.
[641] Diod. 18, 3. Justin, 13, 4; supra, p. 407.
[642] Diod. 18, 39. Arrian, "Succ. Alex." 36; cf. "Ind." 5, 3.
[643] Diod. 19, 14.
[644] Von Gutschmid has rightly shown that Nandrus must be read for Alexander in Justin (15, 4); "Rhein. Mus." 12, 261.