Chandergupta, the first Mauryan king and truly a conqueror, was a son of the Potohar and a prince of Taxila, who having defeated the Greek satrap in the Khyber mountains around 303 B.C. was crowned King at Taxila. It was from here that he assembled an army largely constituted from the frontier hill tribes and those from the river valleys that he marched into the Gangetic plains, defeated the Hindu Nanda ruler and established his empire in Magadha (present Bihar). He was not a Gangetic Indian, nor a Brahmin and his conquest of the seat of power in heartland India was indeed, after Alexander, the first invasion from the north-west. Ashoka was his grandson and inherited Chandergupta?s empire on the north-west (much of it including portion of upper Kabul valleys were ceded by the Greek satrap after his defeat and was never conquered by Ashoka). Ashoka?s edicts in the north-western region of Mauryan empire reveal his continuing affection and link with people of this region whom he always regarded as his own.
The Mauryas were themselves perhaps of Scythic origin. D.B. Spooner who evacuated Pataliputra was
struck by his findings and writes in his article "The Zoroastrian Period of Indian History" as follows:
"For Chandragupta' s times, the evidences are more numerous and more detailed, and indicate
a following of Persian customs all along the line - in public works, in ceremonial, in penal
institutions, everything".
The theory of a Scythic descent of the Mauryas is supported by the following pieces of evidence :
Mauryan coins have the symbol of the sun, a branch, a humped bull and mountain (Dehiya, p.155).
All these are pre-eminently Scythian MassaGetae icons who were Sun worshippers with the high
mount symbolizing earth and the irregular curving lines alongside it symbolizing water. The tree
branch is a symbol of productivity of the earth - agriculture and soldiering were the traditional noble
occupations of Sakas. The historians of Darius record that when he attempted to attack the Scythian
MassaGetae (an old-Iranian culture of Central Asia) along the Black sea in the 5th century BC, "the
Saka kings swore by the sun god and refused to surrender earth and water".
The Puranas do not even refer to the largest imperial dynasties of the north such as the Mauryas
(324 - 232 BC) and Dharan Guptas (320 AD - 515) as "Kshatriyas". Regarding the Mauryas,
Dehiya [p.147] states "Another indication of the foreign origin [ ie. Saka ] of these people is . . . The
Vishnu Purana calls them [ Gupta rulers ] Sudras. The Markandeya Purana brands the Mauryas as
Asura. The Yuga Purana called them `utterly irreligious, though posing as religious'. The Mudra
Rakshasa calls these people as Mlecchas and Chandragupta himself is called 'Kulahina', an upstart of
unknown family".
It has also been suggested that this Scythic influence was occasioned by the immigration of Iranic
Scyhtians fleeing the Greek conquest. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the main civilizing impetus
behind the Mauryan empire was Scythic.
