unpopularity of its ruler:-and therefore of the ease with which
Alexander might conquer it and hand it over to him. But two of a
trade seldom agree; both he and his host were born to rule
empires; and presently he offended susceptibilities, and had to
flee the camp. Whereupon he shortly sharked up a list of landless
reprobates, Kshatriyas at a loose end, for food and diet; and
the enterprise with a stomach in't was, as soon as Alexander's
back was turned, to drive out the Macedonian garrisons. This
done, he marched eastward as king of the Indus region, conquered
Magadha, slew his old enemy the Nanda king with all male members
of the family, and reigned in his stead as Chandragupta I, of
the house of Maurya. That was in 321. Master then of a highly
trained army of about 700,000, he spread his empire over all
Hindustan. In 305, Seleucus Nicator, Alexander's successor in
Asia, crossed the Indus with an army, and was defeated; and in
the treaty which followed, gave up to Chandragupta all claim to
the Indian provinces, together with the hand of his daughter in
marriage.--and received by way of compensation 500 elephants
that might come in useful in his wars elsewhere. Also he sent
Megisthenes to be his ambassador at Pataliputra, Chandragupta's
capital; and Megasthenes wrote; and in a few quotations from
his lost book that remain, chiefly in Arrian,--we get a kind of
window wherethrough to look into India: the first, and perhaps
the only one until Chinese travelers went west discovering.

Here let me flash a green lantern. If at some future time it
should be shown that the Chandragupta Maurya of the Sanskrit
books was not the same person as the Sandacottos of Megasthenes;
nor his son Bindusara Amitraghata, the Amitrochidas of the
Greeks; nor his son and successor, Asoka, the Devanampiya