Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/136

 106 CHANDRAGUPTA AND BINDUSAEA reigning King of Magadha, and was obliged to go into exile. During his banishment he had the good fortune to see Alexander, and is said to have expressed the opinion that the Macedonian king, if he had advanced, would have made an easy conquest of the great kingdom on the Ganges, by reason of the extreme unpopularity of the reigning monarch. Mahapadma Nanda was re- puted to be the son of a barber, who had secured the affections of the late queen. The guilty pair had then murdered the king, whose throne was seized by the barber-paramour. His son, the now reigning monarch, was avaricious and profligate, and naturally possessed few friends. Chandragupta, having collected, during his exile, a formidable force of the warlike and predatory clans on the northwestern frontier, attacked the Macedonian garrisons immediately after Alexander's death, and con- quered the Pan jab. He then turned his victorious arms against his enemy, the King of Magadha, and, taking advantage of that monarch's unpopularity, dethroned and slew him, utterly exterminating every member of his family. His adviser in this revolution was a subtle Brahman named Chanakya, by whose aid he succeeded in seizing the vacant throne. But the people did not gain much by the change of masters, because Chan- dragupta, " after his victory, forfeited by his tyranny all title to the name of liberator, oppressing with servi- tude the very people whom he had emancipated from foreign thraldom." He inherited from his Nanda prede- cessor a huge army, which he increased until it num-