Ancestry of Chandragupta Maurya - The Identification of Chandragupta Maurya With Sandrokottos

The Identification of Chandragupta Maurya With Sandrokottos

Little, if anything, is known for certain about Chandragupta Maurya's origins. For two centuries, historians have been trying to establish the chronology of early India. The question of whether Chandragupta can be identified with the figure known in ancient Greek texts as Sandrokottos is one element in fixing the chronology. The philologist William Jones began the systematic study of the chronology in the late 18th century. His work and that of his contemporaries are still highly regarded. The indologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were reluctant to believe in the veracity of traditional Indian accounts of the past or to accept an extraordinary antiquity of Indian history. Subsequent scholars took the identity of Sandrokottos with Chandragupta Maurya as proven and carried on further research. James Prinsep, deciphered the Brahmi script and was able to read the inscriptions of Piyadassin (Asoka). George Turnour found in the Ceylonese chronicles that Piyadassin was used as another name of Asoka, the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya. The inscription bearing Piyadassin as a name of Asoka was not found until the time of Turnour. In 1838, Prinsep found five names of the Yona kings in Asoka's inscriptions and identified them as the five Greek kings, successors of Alexander, living in the third century BCE, who were contemporaries of Asoka.