By: Edgar Sanderson
On the premature death of Alexander, in B.C. 323, the partition of his vast dominions assigned Bactria (Bok- Bokhara), and the Indian regions visited by him, to Seleucus Nicator, founder of the Syrian monarchy. About fifteen years later, Seleucus was in alliance with an Indian sovereign named Chandra Gupta, an adventurer who had founded a strong kingdom in Behar, with a capital at Pataliputra, the modern Patna, and was master of men and things, as ruler or as suzerain, through most of northern India. The Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, at the court of Chandra Gupta, was the first man to give the world a fairly accurate account of the social system which existed in the valley of the Ganges. Writing early in the third century B.C., he depicts Patna, under the name of Palimbothra, as a town of vast extent, with elephants, chariots, and horsemen defiling through its streets; with a busy population crowding the bazaars; with festival processions in which richly-clad men carried vases and drinking-bowls of silver and gold, while animals were led along, strange to the Greek eye, such as panthers, lions, gaudy-plumaged birds, and hump-backed oxen (zebus or Brahman oxen) of the breed whose bulls, dedicated to Siva, are still most sacred in the regard of Hindus.
The castes are noted as seven instead of four; the position of the Brahmans is duly defined; magistrates keep strict watch over arts and manufactures, factures, sales and exchange, the gathering of taxes, and the registration of births and deaths. The walls of the city are of wood, loopholed for archers, and the great army of the king is composed of troops armed with bows and arrows, swords, javelins, and shields. Chandra Gupta's palace is a stately dwelling, inhabited solely by the Maharajah and his queens, with a body-guard posted at the gate whence the ruler issues at times to take his seat as judge in the court, or to sacrifice to the gods, or to hunt in the jungle, attended by the ladies riding in cars, or mounted on elephants and horses, with an escort of spearmen.
