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126 the Conqueror, the subjugation of all Northern India from sea to sea, the formation of a gigantic army, and the thorough organization of the civil government of a vast empire were no mean achievements. The power of Chandragupta was so firmly established that it passed peaceably into the hands of his son and grandson, and his alliance was courted by the potentates of the Hellenistic world. The Greek princes made no attempt to renew the aggressions of Alexander and Seleukos upon secluded India, and were content to maintain friendly diplomatic and commercial relations with her rulers for three generations.

The Maurya empire was not, as some recent writers fancy that it was, in any way the result of Alexander's splendid but transitory raid. The nineteen months which he spent in India were consumed in devastating warfare, and his death rendered fruitless all his grand constructive plans. Chandragupta did not need Alexander's example to teach him what empire meant. He and his countrymen had had before their eyes for ages the stately fabric of the Persian monarchy, and it was that empire which impressed their imagination and served as the model for their institutions, in so far as they were not indigenous. The little touches of foreign manners in the court and institutions of Chandragupta, which chance to have been noted by our fragmentary authorities, are Persian, not Greek; and the Persian title of satrap continued to be used by Indian provincial governors for centuries, down to the close of the fourth century A.D.