The Mauryas 7

 CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA

PART I

So how did Chandragupta Maurya, the first hero of the Mauryan saga, happen to cross paths with the formidable Kautilya? And who was he, to begin with? Let us answer the second question first. The three religious traditions cheerfully contradict each other with regard to Chandragupta’s mysterious origins, as with most other things, and the historian is left to make of their divergent assertions what they will. Accordingly, in Buddhist texts, such as the Digha Nikaya and the Divyavadana, the Mauryas are described as hailing from a Kshatriya clan named the Moriyas who ruled at Pipphalivana. On the other hand, the Parishishtaparvan claims that Chandragupta (and here you might need to hold your breath!) was the son of a daughter of a chief of a village of peacock tamers or mayura-poshakas (the peacock is mayura in Sanskrit; mora in Pali).

The Mudrarakshasa of Vishakhadatta, which describes Chandragupta’s ascent to power and has been variously ascribed to periods from the late fourth century to the eighth century CE, talks of the hero’s low social origin. Then we have an infuriatingly tantalising reference by Kshemendra and Somadeva, early medieval writers of Kashmir, to Chandragupta being the ‘son of the genuine Nanda’ (purva-nanda-suta). Are we to understand, then, that Chandragupta was actually of royal Nanda blood who revolted against his own people and claimed the throne? A distinctly unhelpful statement is added by Dhundiraja, a commentator on the Vishnu Purana: Chandragupta was the eldest son of Maurya, son of the Nanda king Sarvarthasiddhi, by Mura, who was the daughter of a hunter.

Lest you begin to tear your hair out by the handful, let us hasten to add that this is the typical situation that prevails during any reconstruction of identities pertaining to the ancient period—loads of assertions and counter-assertions, some of them seeming to have been made for the sheer fun of it alone, and the historian making their slow and painful way through the pile of genuine facts and red herrings to arrive at the holy grail of historical truth! One may add here, as a telling aside, that such frenzied speculation is never the lot of women in the past, even truly remarkable ones who left a trail of evidence behind. No one really cares who they are and where they came from because history is—and has always been—about the men.

What we know about Chandragupta is that he ruled from 324/321 to 297 BCE, first establishing himself in Punjab and then moving eastwards until he gained control over Magadha. The only epigraphic evidence that we can definitely connect to him is the Junagarh inscription of Rudradaman, which attributes the beginning of the construction of a water reservoir known as the Sudarshana lake to Vaishya Pushyagupta, the provincial governor of Chandragupta Maurya. It was eventually completed by Tuhshaspa, the governor of the area during Chandragupta’s grandson, Ashoka’s reign.

The reservoir was used as a dam all through the Mauryan period and beyond, the waters of the lake being used for irrigation, and stimulating the agricultural growth and prosperity of the area. Rudradaman was a ruler of a line called the Kardamakas, a branch of the Shaka-Kshatrapas, from c.130 to 150 CE. On the self-same reservoir capitulating to a storm during his reign, he brushed aside the naysayers—and there were many!—and decided to repair and restore the lake. Once he had done so, he proceeded to record his deed on a rock for posterity—and this is how we establish a connection between him, the lake and Chandragupta. Of such fortuitous discoveries is history constructed—or rather, reconstructed!

And so, this excellent record, dated to CE 150, is inscribed near the top of the Girnar/Junagadh rock (the inscription is interchangeably named after both places) in the Brahmi script. Consisting of twenty lines of writing, it holds the distinction of being the earliest long inscription in Sanskrit in the Indian subcontinent. Parts of the text have been ravaged over time and cannot be read without difficulty. At one point, in the mid-1800s, a well-meaning, pious but blundering Jaina used gunpowder to widen the pilgrim trail that led up Girnar’s sacred mountain. The explosion blew off a corner of the Girnar rock at a critical part, obliterating some vital names that were a part of the Mauryan emperor, Ashoka’s edicts on the same rock and deeply frustrating historians thereby.

However, Rudradaman’s record remained intact, one that seems to have been composed with great care and elegance. The rock itself was clearly a much sought-after proclamatory material in early times because, as noted above, it also contains a set of edicts of Ashoka and an inscription of the Gupta king, Skandagupta. While the former contains Ashoka’s views on dhamma/dharma (and we will come to this at a later stage), the latter talks of the Sudarshana lake being repaired yet again after a storm and the breach taking two years (from CE 456–57) for Skandagupta’s governor of Saurashtra, Parnadatta, to rectify through his son, Chakrapalita, who was in charge of that particular city.

A troublesome water body, indeed, but one that could evidently be tamed repeatedly! Rudradaman himself, clearly a budding water resource engineer, appears to have been a very interesting character but that is a story for another time. Suffice it to say that the fact that he decided to record his reservoir-wrestles for posterity on the Junagadh rock speaks volumes about him and his priorities in a milieu where the only thing that rulers usually recorded about themselves were their military successes.

On the question of how Chandragupta met Kautilya, which is where his story actually takes off, stories abound, each jostling the other to claim historical veracity, and all equally gripping and fascinating. Let us consider the two main ones, though (and this might occasion some quibbling, there being differing views on their relative importance!), and in chronological sequence. The first of these apparently occurred when Kautilya was roaming around the Magadhan realm (or on the run from the Nandas, depending on the story you pick!), still smarting from Dhana Nanda’s cavalier treatment of him and mulling over his plans for revenge. At the time, Chandragupta was young, no more than eleven or twelve years of age but already, so this particular story goes, sporting the demeanour of a king and, at the point when Kautilya first saw him, holding a mock court with his friends. Chandragupta was the king, and the others had divided up the roles of robbers and officers between them.

It seems that Kautilya watched, unobserved and rapt, as the young Chandragupta, seated regally on a tree stump, swiftly dispensed justice after first carefully scrutinising the incriminating evidence and satisfying himself as to the guilty party. The thieving arms were to be chopped off—an order that was carried out with much boisterous enthusiasm and realistic screaming—and everyone was thoroughly enjoying themselves when Kautilya, probably wincing at the noise, decided to step forward and make himself seen. The other boys scattered in confusion when this unsmiling stranger walked into their midst but Chandragupta remained poised and grave, as befitted a king. Kautilya fashioned a test on the spot (a recurrent motif, again, in most ancient tales; nothing is immediately straightforward but once a qualifying test has been passed, all falls into place!), introducing himself as a poor brahmana in need of largesse.

Chandragupta, barely pausing for thought, decided to gift his supplicant a cow (in another version, a herd of cows) to cover his needs and, in the process, passed the test with flying colours. The solemn bestowal of a stick-as-cow followed, after which Chandragupta was thoroughly interrogated by Kautilya. The boy was, it seems, the son of a hunter (cowherd, in some versions), and Kautilya couldn’t help but marvel at his regal dignity and confidence that belied his humble origins. Also, he couldn’t help feeling thrilled: he had found his tool for revenge and his future king, in one lucky stroke. Accordingly, he would take the boy along and groom him for his role.

And so, after dispensing with the preliminaries—persuading the boy’s parents to let him go with a thousand panas to spur them on and informing Chandragupta that his life was about to radically change—Kautilya set forth on his mission with renewed vigour. One wonders how Chandragupta would have reacted to this electrifying news. He was probably thrilled at the thought of future adventures but also, quite conceivably, nervous at the prospect of accompanying this stern-faced stranger on his unnamed journey. But here, a note is injected into the tale that shows this to be Chandragupta’s destiny. His father apparently informed Kautilya that Chandragupta was not his real son—he had been discovered abandoned near a cowshed as a mewling infant and there was speculation that he was of noble birth. So in following Kautilya, he was merely fulfilling the role he was born to assume, which was definitely not that of a hunter (or cowherd!).

The spate of theories regarding Chandragupta’s birth explains the vagueness in these tales. The peacock motif clings stubbornly to him in most of them; the ‘peacock on arches’ symbol later becomes emblematic of the Mauryan coins. Apart from the origin-guesses mentioned earlier, he has also been connected to the Sakya clan of the Buddha, a descendant settled in eastern Magadha, famous for its peacocks. Or perhaps his family came from the mountain region of Meru on the northwest, which might explain why two of Ashoka’s Major Rock Edicts, Mansera and Shahbazgarhi, are located as gateways to the region. His link, however with the peacock totem is undeniable, hence the name of the dynasty he started.

One of the more convoluted Buddhist versions has the pregnant queen of the conquered hill-town of Moriya-nagara fleeing on the heels of her husband’s murder, along with her older brothers, to Pataliputra. When Chandragupta was born, she placed the child in a vase and left him at a cattle-pen. Despite the odd choice of baby receptacle and locale, the infant survived, watched over by a herdsman and huntsman, in sequence, the latter being the foster father whom Kautilya later bought him from. And, incidentally, this same tradition insists that Chandragupta later married the daughter of his oldest maternal uncle, who had accompanied his mother to Pataliputra, and made her his queen. Anyway, the more ambiguous the origins, the more explanatory tales and variations there are—and this is true of any notable personage of the past who rises, all of a sudden, as if from nowhere, as it were.

As for Kautilya, at this moment, he was now firmly back on track and revenge seemed within grasping range. These are the bare essentials of the story but there are other tangential storylines and complications that have been tagged on to the original tale to give it more colour and excitement. One of these is the inclusion of a prince named Parvata/Pabbato, one of Dhana Nanda’s sons, who feared for his life at court and who, having abetted Kautilya’s escape from the palace after his unfortunate skirmish with the king, decided to accompany him on his travels in the hope of getting the throne someday with his new friend’s help.

As it happens, despite faithfully tagging on with Kautilya and later, vying with Chandragupta for his favour, Parvata meets a sorry end. Chandragupta is forced to murder him in pursuance of some ghastly loyalty test that the Machiavellian Kautilya had thought up; also, an early indication of the latter’s absolute ruthlessness in pursuance of his goal/s. Although mentioned in the Mahavamsa, the story veers just a little too much in the direction of purple melodrama to actually ring true but it is an interesting one, nevertheless. It was clearly fashioned to reinforce not just Chandragupta’s ability to take unpalatable decisions for a cause (and thereby his complete suitability to rule) but also the intense bond between mentor and disciple.

Yet, here is the second of the two noteworthy tales—and it is much more convoluted than the previous one. It takes, as its premise, that the Nandas were cousins of the Mauryas and virtual rulers of Magadha. According to this story, the Nandas, who wanted to eliminate their cousins, invited the latter for a hunt and a celebratory dinner. The day’s proceedings went well until it was dinner time when the Mauryas were told that there was no sitting space in the palace’s main hall and food would be served to them in the cellar. This should have raised even an infant’s suspicions but the Mauryas were clearly good-natured and gullible, and meekly followed their gracious hosts down to the cellar where—and this is frankly weird—they failed to notice the Nandas pretending to serve them but actually slinking out of the cellar in turns! It was only when the door banged shut that they realised their predicament, and then proceeded to starve and die, one after the other. Chandragupta, the hero of our story, remained alive, though, and was eventually hauled out of the cellar and thrust into a jail, vowing to take revenge on his family’s murderers.

At this point, a neighbouring king who wanted to attack Magadha, devised a ruse by which to ensure that the feared Mauryas were, in fact, dead. Accordingly, he sent a caged lion to Pataliputra with its tamer who challenged the people to set the animal free without breaking open the cage. Predictably, Chandragupta was the only one who took up the gauntlet and by a complicated series of moves, which involved parading an elephant before the lion, realised that the latter was, in fact, made of wax and manipulated by its tamer’s magnetic staff. So he set fire to the offending contraption for which he was rewarded by the Nanda king with the post of the state guesthouse’s manager in the wild hope that he would enrage some brahmana who would thereby curse and destroy him.

The king’s decidedly odd logic was turned on its head by Kautilya who now entered the scene in a dramatic way. Chandragupta saw him uprooting all the grass in his path because the blades had had the temerity to poke his feet and promptly invited the irascible brahmana to a meal. This dinner invitation led to an exchange of confidences on both sides but before more secrets could be spilled, the Nandas entered the guesthouse and became immediately and terribly annoyed that a shabbily-dressed brahmana was being fussed over and cossetted. In the ensuing tumult, the Nanda king pulled Kautilya to his feet whereby his knotted hair came undone and swung loose—and the latter swore to destroy the perpetrator of this awful deed.

The story now becomes so impossibly complex that it is nigh-impossible to follow its twists and turns. Once he deemed Chandragupta capable of effecting his revenge, Kautilya recruited an army, a motley crew sourced from all over, including Greek mercenaries. And then, he, basically—and very cleverly—turned friend against friend and enemy against enemy and everyone against everyone else until the path was clear for Chandragupta to kill the offending Nanda king on the battlefield and claim Pataliputra as its new ruler, while Kautilya grimly but triumphantly knotted his hair once more. A bizarre but wonderful story indeed and a classic example of the sort of frustrating source material that a historian routinely confronts!

But let us flesh out this story with some basic details. Master and disciple began their grand campaign of unseating Dhana Nanda on the Magadhan throne by attacking some central cities only to meet with unanticipated resistance and failure. The story seems to have spread like wildfire among the populace: one presumes this was on account of the plan’s temerity and the fact that bad news is always savoured. One needs to backtrack a bit, at this juncture, though. Prior to their impetuous assault on the Nanda heartlands, the duo had been hard at work. Chandragupta wasn’t merely a puppet being dragged around by the masterful Kautilya and passively doing his bidding. Kautilya made sure that he was put through his paces in every sense of the word, most probably at Taxila, which was the last word in learning at the time, hosting students of haughty and humble backgrounds, and offering a grounding in everything that you conceivably needed to succeed in life.

Accordingly, Chandragupta had to master every single science and art that Kautilya saw fit for him to study, the aim being to make him physically and intellectually formidable. In addition, he was subjected to regular spot tests by Kautilya to ensure that his training was impeccable and had soaked into every pore of his being, so that it was literally coming out of his ears. This argues a high level of intelligence and receptivity in Chandragupta; Kautilya would have ruthlessly discarded him if it were otherwise and hunted for a replacement revenge-tool without a single qualm.

While this was happening, Alexander of Macedon decided to make his Indian foray (alluded to earlier), and Kautilya was quick to appraise the situation and capitalise on it—although the attempt very quickly went pie-faced, as it turned out. Much has been said and written on the encounter between Alexander and the dastardly Ambhi, who ruled the land between the Indus and Jhelum rivers, and who cravenly capitulated to the former without offering a single moment’s resistance. Alexander promptly heaped gifts on him and a much-relieved and gratified Ambhi offered arms and hospitality in return—and, furthermore, offered to help the conqueror subdue his longstanding enemy, Porus/Puru, who ruled the land between the Jhelum and the Chenab.

Things went downhill very quickly for Ambhi at the resultant battle of Hydaspes/Jhelum, fought in 326 BCE (which witnessed Alexander’s dramatic fording of the monsoon-swollen waters of the Jhelum virtually under Puru’s nose and leading to his consummate victory). He almost lost his life at Puru’s hands and, moreover, had to suffer the ignominy of seeing his old rival being treated with grace and dignity by Alexander. Incidentally, the brief but crisp conversation between Puru and Alexander moved swiftly into the ranks of legend, and has been immortalised in poetry and prose through the ages (Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s wonderfully poignant poem, ‘King Porus—A Legend of Old’, comes to mind, for one). It seems Puru was asked by his vanquisher how he would like to be treated. Puru’s magnificent retort was that he should be treated as a king; if their roles had been reversed, he would have behaved thus. It was Puru’s turn to have gifts heaped upon him by a deeply impressed Alexander, who, additionally, returned his kingdom to him. (Incidentally, this battle more or less sapped the spirit of Alexander’s army that clamoured to return home. This effectively put paid to his plans of ranging further afield, to Magadha and even beyond—but this occurred a little later.)

Sniffing out opportunities was Kautilya’s forte and here was a heaven-sent one. Chandragupta was immediately despatched to Taxila, where Alexander was at the time, to win him over as an ally.5 If all went well, this brilliant military genius would be another feather in Kautilya’s cap; he would hasten the conquest of Magadha and the dethroning of Dhana Nanda. As it happened, though, the rumoured meeting did not go well, as usually happens when arrogance meets arrogance head-on. Chandragupta, presumably sporting a swollen head on account of being Magadha’s uncrowned king-elect, said or did something in Alexander’s presence that annoyed him terribly.

This was purportedly nothing more than addressing Alexander as his equal but the latter, flush with his victories and surrounded by fawning flatterers like Ambhi, did not take kindly to it. The net result was that a chastened Chandragupta had to literally flee from Alexander’s presence. Meanwhile, Ambhi, sore since the landmark battle in body and spirit, tried to gain brownie points with the mighty conqueror in a highly clumsy fashion: he apparently threatened all sorts of dire consequences if Kautilya didn’t send Chandragupta back to apologise to Alexander and had his ear chewed off for his pains.

Some good came out of this awful imbroglio, though, in the form of a heavenly sign—or something that Kautilya chose to interpret as such. While racing away from Taxila, Chandragupta, overcome by the noon heat, at a point, decided to sleep. One wonders at his equanimity in this life-threatening situation but perhaps taking power naps while in dire straits was part and parcel of Kautilya’s training! He woke abruptly, a short while later, to face the simple but terrifying fact that a tiger stood over him, licking off his sweat with its raspy tongue. It then looked long and deep into his eyes before sauntering off, leaving a petrified Chandragupta to make sense of what had happened. He would later swear to Kautilya that the tiger had seemed to bow to him. And Kautilya, who knew that his pupil was not subject to flights of fancy and never lied, suspended his habitual disbelief in superstition and grew equally excited. This was some sort of powerful omen; it was almost as if Chandragupta had been touched by a divine hand and anointed the king. It was time for them to strike!

Incidentally, the divine portent in question changes somewhat depending on the version you read. Here, for instance, is what the Roman writer, Justinus, has to say about our hero and the sign: ‘This man was of mean origin, but was stimulated to aspire to regal power by supernatural encouragement; for, having offended Alexander by his boldness of speech, and orders being given to kill him, he saved himself by swiftness of foot; and while he was lying asleep, after his fatigue, a lion of great size having come up to him, licked off with his tongue the sweat that was running from him, and after gently waking him, left him.’6 Sidestepping Kautilya and being less than complimentary to Chandragupta was probably Justinus’s reaction to their ostensibly audacious plan: of trying to rope the mighty Alexander into their kingmaking scheme and assuming he would be happy to help. The thing is that he might have helped and changed his—and our—history altogether but we will never really know what exactly transpired in that chamber in Taxila!

And so, we get back to where we were where the conniving duo, floating along in the euphoria occasioned by signs, launched their grand assault on the Nandas. The whole enterprise was a humbling endeavour—their calculations were way off, their reading of the public mood incorrect and their assessment of the Nanda resistance woefully inadequate. All the major towns and cities stood firm and despite their army growing from a ragtag crowd to a respectable size over the years—even featuring the fierce Arashtraka tribes (‘stateless’ people often identified with the Kambojas northwest of Kashmir)—they were not able to make a dent anywhere they went. Attacking Pataliputra right away was not an option: Dhana Nanda’s massive army was stationed there and rumours about its invincibility were strong enough to have even dissuaded Alexander’s soldiers from indulging their master’s whim and venturing in that direction.

Tales of the duo, at this juncture in their campaign, range from the prosaic to the wildly lurid. An example of the latter is when they were fleeing the Magadhan forces, at some point, and found themselves by a lake with a pursuing (Nanda) horseman hot on their heels. Kautilya did a quick wardrobe change, donning a mendicant’s robes and rubbing dust all over his face, and ordered Chandragupta to jump into the lake and hide. When the soldier on horseback came up, Kautilya told him that a man had just jumped into the water. While the excited soldier began to throw off his armour to follow suit, Kautilya chopped off his unfortunate head. Chandragupta emerged from the lake, immensely gratified at his master’s quick thinking—and presumably grateful that holding his breath underwater for prolonged periods of time had been part of his training schedule!

This is just one among the several hair-raising tales of Kautilya’s alleged brutality, and his obstinate pursual of the job at hand whereby nothing and no one was allowed to interfere. Yet, he was considerably chastened. The Nanda empire was seemingly impregnable and unvanquishable, and the thought of Dhana Nanda having the last laugh must have been impossibly galling to him. Kautilya was also keenly aware that he and Chandragupta were becoming a laughing stock among the people. The latter were a bit of an enigma, in any case. On the one hand, they squirmed under the savage Nanda hand but on the other, they closed ranks with him when it mattered.

Thus, casting about in his mind for workable solutions, Kautilya stumbled upon the incident that triggered a major rethinking of strategy on his part (mentioned in both Buddhist and Jaina traditions)—the one where he witnessed a woman rebuking her son for eating a hot dish from the centre rather than the sides and burning his tongue thereby. She likened the unfortunate boy to Chandragupta and his foolish scheme of seizing an empire from where it was strongest rather than from the sides.

Something clicked in Kautilya’s mind during this irritable woman’s rant and he changed his plan immediately (and it is gratifying to note than a woman is given credit, in this regard). From now on, they would attack the Nanda empire obliquely, from its frontiers and outlying areas, and work their way steadily and stealthily to its heart—just as you would approach a dish of steaming porridge (or roti/ bread, as some versions go). This necessitated an entirely new set of allies and Kautilya set his giant brain to selecting them. The use of the word ‘selecting’ is appropriate here—once Kautilya had identified them, they would inevitably and inexorably be drawn into his grand web through intrigue whether they wanted to or not. Parvataka, the ruler of a mountain fastness, was the first major recruit to their cause.

He is a bit frustrating to identify, though—some versions claim that he was Dhana Nanda’s son, Parvata, who, however, had already been killed by Chandragupta, if you remember, so this is untenable. Jaina accounts describe him as the king of Himavatakuta or the mountain country, which some see as modern-day Himachal Pradesh or Kashmir. Another wild surmise is that he was, in fact, Porus/Puru, clearly masquerading under a different name. However, as Parvataka is shown as a mleccha or outcast in the Mudrarakshasa and Porus belonged to a Kshatriya race, this theory holds no water, too—and this is compounded by the fact that Greek sources insist on Porus having eventually died at Alexander’s hands. So unless there were a lot of resurrected souls wandering around and joining the anti-Nanda cause, we must presume that Parvataka was a different person altogether! The Mudrarakshasa lists Chandragupta’s other allies—the Greeks, Scythians, Kambojans of Gandhara and the Nepalese or Kashmiris—all from the northwest or beyond.

Another story pops up, at this juncture, which compels us to sit back and marvel at Kautilya’s sheer ingenuity. It is situated at a time when the duo had begun to experience some success—belatedly but, nevertheless, sweeter for the delay. They had stuck so far to their altered plan of focusing on cities on the Nanda empire’s frontiers—and had picked them off, one by one, in a steady, relentless fashion. Their numbers had swelled considerably by now for there is nothing like a successful track record, however small, to attract supporters and win over vacillators. Occupying units held sway in the conquered units and Pataliputra was drawing tantalisingly closer.

At this exhilarating point, though, a particularly intractable city (frustratingly unnamed) stood in their way. The Jaina texts note that the duo’s siege of this city had yielded no result and if this state of affairs continued, their resources would be stretched and, eventually, snap. Besides, the spies (and Kautilya already had a huge force of them, cleverly hidden in plain sight in key places and keeping him clued in, at all times) reported discontented rumblings and general homesickness among the soldiers—a malady that Kautilya simply could not afford to have on his hands. Chandragupta, always privy to his master’s moods and findings, also chafed at the bit.

It was time for action and Kautilya rose to the occasion by unleashing his theatrical abilities for the second time around (although there might have been several more that we are unaware of). Donning his favourite mendicant robes again, he prepared to infiltrate the stubborn city before Chandragupta’s startled eyes and was annoyingly cagey when questioned except for murmuring something about the temple of the Seven Mothers (sapta-matrika) within its walls and instructing his baffled disciple to temporarily withdraw his troops on the morrow. When the guards on the city’s bafflements saw Kautilya approaching the gates, they were dumbfounded. How clueless could this ascetic be that he didn’t know the city was under siege and that they couldn’t open the gates! But Kautilya was nothing if not thorough and managed to put on an act so convincing that the soldiers could not bear to disappoint this mild man, desperate to worship at the temple of the Seven Mothers within.

After much discussion and shaking of heads, here was their compromise solution: they let down a rope ladder, up which the mendicant—suddenly transformed into an athletic soul—swarmed with alacrity. Once in, Kautilya made his way to the temple, made a great show of devotion and then began to suss the mood of the people thronging around the shrine. Within minutes, he had heard enough: they were sick of the siege and were willing to do anything to see it lifted. Life and business had come to a standstill, and they could not care less about the politics behind it. It was time for Kautilya to move among the crowd, gently insinuating that the siege couldn’t possibly end as long as the Seven Mothers protected the city. And as the enemy could happily camp outside for another six months, all was well, wasn’t it? Well, no, it clearly wasn’t, or so their faces said, and Kautilya spoke a little bit more about the Mothers’ protection and the resultant impregnability of the city, and so on and so forth. At some point, he tactfully removed himself to the anonymity of a night shelter.

The following morning, the temple was in the eye of a storm. Someone had removed the Seven Mothers from the shrine and there was no knowing who had done it or why. It was rumoured, though, that a wise sage had predicted that this was the only way to lift the siege—and someone had decided to act upon it. More people were spilling out onto the battlements, pointing in wonder at the enemy’s retreating army and in no time at all, a clarion call was sounded: the siege had ended. Kautilya backed away from the jubilant crowd and slipped out of the now-open gates.

Of course, in a matter of moments, Chandragupta’s forces swooped in—and the rest, as they say, is history.