Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/254

204 passages in the Sutra works into the sunlight of Greek accounts of India. For it was in this century that Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus, came to India and resided in the royal court of Chandragupta in Pataliputra, or ancient Patna, between 317 and 312 B.C.

The account of the races and kingdoms in India given by Megasthenes is full and intelligible, and gives us a clear idea of the state of the country at the close of the Philosophic Period.

The Prachyas, by which name we are now to understand the Magadhas, had become the most powerful and foremost nation in India in the fourth century B.C., as the Kurus, the Panchalas, the Videhas and the Kosalas had been in the Epic Period. They had their capital at Pataliputra, a flourishing town described as eighty stadia, or nine miles, long and fifteen stadia, or nearly two miles, wide. It was a parallelogram in shape, girded with a wooden wall pierced with loopholes for the discharge of arrows, and defended by a ditch in front.

It would seem that the whole of Northern India was now included in the powerful and extensive empire of Chandragupta, for the Jumna, flowing through Mathura and Caresbora, was said to run through the kingdom of Pataliputra. The nation surpassed in power and glory every other people in India, and their king Chandragupta had a standing army of 600,000 foot soldiers, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 elephants.

Speaking of South Bengal, Megasthenes mentions