This article deals with the fourth century BC founder of the Maurya dynasty. For the two Gupta kings of the same name, see Chandragupta I and Chandragupta II
Chandragupta Maurya (c.321 BC - c.298 BC) (Greek Sandrocottus) was a India, founder of the Maurya dynasty and grandfather of Asoka the Great. He conquered the Magadha kingdom (in modern Bihar and Jharkhand) and eventually controlled all India north of the Vindhya Hills. In c.305 BC, Chandragupta, with a huge army, defeated Afghanistan to Chandragupta. Chandragupta also took Seleucus' daughter Helen as a concubine to ensure Seleucus' compliance with the terms of the truce. From Megasthenes, a Seleucid envoy at the court of Chandragupta, comes considerable information about the period. The emperor dwelt in an enormous, ornate palace at Pataliputra (Patna) and administered a highly complex and bureaucratic government. He was advised by Kautilya (also called Chanakya), a very able but unscrupulous Brahmin, to whom is attributed the Arthasastra, a guide to statecraft. Chandragupta established a vast secret service system. Jain tradition says that he abdicated his throne, became a Jain monk, and fasted to death.
In 305 Seleucus Nicator crossed the Indus, but was defeated by Chandragupta and forced to a humiliating peace (303), by which the empire of the latter was still farther extended in the north.
The government was, of course, autocratic and even tyrannous, but it was organized on an elaborate system, army and civil service being administered by a series of boards, while the cities were governed by municipal commissioners responsible for public order and the upkeep of public works.
Chandragupta himself is described as living in barbaric splendour, appearing in public only to hear causes, offer sacrifice, or to go on military and hunting expeditions, and withal so fearful of assassination that he never slept two nights running in the same room.
ChandraguptaMaurya with the help Chanakya (Kautilya), who is also known as the Indian Machiavelli, destroyed the Nanda rulers of Magadha[?] and established the Mauryan empire.
Chandragupta not only stopped his advance but pushed the frontier farther west into what is now Afghanistan.
ChandraguptaMaurya's son Bindusara became the new Mauryan Emperor by inheriting an empire that included the Hindu Kush, Narmada[?], Vindhyas[?], Mysore, Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, Assam, Baluchistan and Afghanistan.
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