Cāṇakya

Joy”) because he avariciously accumulates huge wealth. Cāṇakka is said to be an exceed-ingly ugly brāhmaṇ of Takkasilā (Takṣaśilā, i.e. Taxila in the north of modern Pakistan).

After his father’s premature death he supports his mother on his own. One day the mother comes to him weeping, because she has heard a prophecy that Cāṇakka’s teeth are a sign that he is destined to be a king, and kings have no affection for anybody. Cāṇakka therefore breaks out his own teeth (further enhancing his ugliness) in an attempt to alter his fate.

As an adult he comes to Pupphapura (Puṣpapura, i.e. Pāṭaliputra) because King Dhanananda has overcome his avarice and become a liberal donor, constructing an alms house where each day he hands out gifts to learned brāhmaṇs.⁷⁵ However, when the king sees the hideous newcomer, he orders him cast out in spite of the cautions of the official in charge of alms that this should not be done. Cāṇakka thereupon breaks his sacred thread and smashes his drinking pot, cursing the king to find no welfare anywhere up to the four corners of the world.⁷⁶

The humiliated Cāṇakka takes on the guise of an ājīvaka ascetic, which allows him to remain unnoticed on the palace grounds even though the king sends men to arrest him.

He gains the confidence of Pabbata, the prince and heir to the throne, promises to make him king,⁷⁷ and goes with him to the wilderness of the Viñjhā (Vindhya) mountains. He multiplies money, presumably by magic, then decides to look for a candidate more worthy of kingship than Pabbata. Thus he comes upon a promising lad called Candagutta, son of the chief of the Moriya clan.⁷⁸ He gives both his disciples an amulet to wear around their necks on a tight woollen thread, and to test their problem-solving abilities, he tasks first Pabbata, then Candagutta to remove the other boy’s amulet without cutting the thread.

The former fails do so, but Candagutta absolves the task by beheading Pabbata. After seven years of training, Cāṇakka and Candagutta begin a campaign against Pāṭaliputra, but are repelled. In their wanderings they meet a village woman whose son eats the middle of a cake, throws away the edges, and asks for another. She scolds him, saying he acts like Candragupta, who in trying to capture the kingdom neglects the outlying provinces and

75 According to CHATTERJEE (1945:592n9), Cāṇakya vanquishes the official in charge of distributing alms in a scholarly debate and thereby takes over his position. This additional information perhaps comes from the Cambodian Mahāvaṃsa, to which he refers here along with the Mahāvaṃsa-ṭīkā.

76 Mahāvaṃsa-ṭīkā chapter 5, p. 146 l. 1–3, imāya ca cāturantāya paṭhaviyā nandino vaḍḍhi nāma mā hotū ti abhisapitvā. TRAUTMANN (1971:20) points out the inconsistency that the king is named Nandin here, but (Dhana)nanda everywhere else in this account, implying that the curse may have been expropriated from a different account of the story. CHATTERJEE (1945:594) remarks that this outburst of anger and the ensuing curse are also described in the Cambodian Mahāvaṃsa.

77 Mahāvaṃsa-ṭīkā chapter 5, p. 146 l. 10–12, tassiṃ eva ṭhāne vasantassa rājaputtassa pabbatassa nāma kumārassa

… and rājakumāraṃ disvā taṃ hatthagataṃ katvā rajjena taṃ upalāletvā tena vissattho hutvā. It is a bit baffling why the heir apparent would go to the wilderness with a deranged ascetic for a promise of kingship, which is after all his due to begin with. This is clearly a glitch in the story; see page 150 for a discussion of Pabbata.

78 The actual narrative is more complex. Here and throughout this chapter, I simplify stories by omitting episodes that are neither relevant to the Mudrārākṣasa nor recurrent in several versions of the tale.

goes only for the centre.⁷⁹ Drawing a lesson from this, Cāṇakya and Candragupta conquer the land starting with the outer marches, and finally vanquish and kill Dhanananda.

After Candragupta’s coronation the new king charges a dreadlock-wearing (jaṭila) ascetic called Paṇiyatappa to eliminate robbers, which he accomplishes successfully.

Cāṇakya adds minutely increasing doses of poison to Candragupta’s food to render him immune, but one day the pregnant chief queen (said to be the daughter of Candragupta’s maternal uncle) also eats some of his food and dies. Cāṇakya performs a Caesarean section on her and places the nearly mature foetus in the belly of a freshly slaughtered goat, changing goats day after day until the baby is ready to survive. Droplets (bindu) of goat’s blood remain on his skin, thus providing an explanation for his name, Bindusāra.

The Para-Canonical Jaina Tradition

Jaina literature⁸⁰ also preserves versions of the story of Cāṇakya and Candragupta, in the form of didactic tales. Some of these form part of hagiologies included in the corpus of nijjuttis and cuṇṇis attached to canonical Śvetāmbara scripture.⁸¹ The para-canonical ta-les of Cāṇakya (here said to be a follower of Jainism) were presumably handed down through generations of oral storytellers (C^HATTERJEE 1945:607) and probably first commit-ted to writing in the nijjutti to the Āvassaya-sutta (in Sanskrit: Āvaśyaka-sūtra), the second mūlasutta of the Śvetāmbara canon, at a time no later than the second century CE (J^ACOBI 1932:vi). The nijjutti itself, however, contains only allusions to most stories, the details of which are supposed to be filled in by the teacher from memory.⁸²

Subsequent commentarial works on the Āvassaya-sutta and the Uttarajjhayana-sutta (the first Śvetāmbara mūlaUttarajjhayana-sutta; in Sanskrit: Uttarādhyayana-sūtra) contain more de-tailed versions. Among these, the earliest source containing the relevant story is the Āvassaya-cuṇṇi of Jinadāsa from the sixth century (K^OCH 1992:223). Others include a retell-ing by Haribhadra of the eighth century in his ṭīkā on the Āvassaya-sutta, and another in Prakrit by the eleventh-century Devendragaṇin in the Sukhabodhā, a ṭīkā on the

79 Mahāvaṃsa-ṭīkā chapter 5, p. 148 l. 19–24, ayaṃ dārako candaguttassa rajjagahaṇaṃ viya karotīti … tvaṃ tāta pūvassa antaṃ pahāya majjham eva khādasi candagutto pi rajjaṃ icchanto paccantato paṭṭhāya gāmaghātakamma katvā antojanapadaṃ pavisitvā gāmaṃ haññati.

80 For detailed summaries see especially CHATTERJEE 1945; also RUBEN 1956:163–167, TRAUTMANN 1971:21–30 and RAGHAVAN 1973:62–66. A summary of the relevant sections of the Pariśiṣṭaparvan, almost as verbose as the original, can be found in JACOBI 1932:lxiii–lxxx. Excerpts in Hungarian translation have been collected in WOJTILLA 2012:36, 54.

81 In Jaina scripture, a nijjutti (Sanskrit niryukti) means a concise versified supplement to a canonical sutta (sūtra), a cuṇṇi (cūrṇi) is a detailed commentary on a sutta or a nijjutti, while a ṭīkā is a very verbose versified sub-commentary on a nijjutti that often uses material from cuṇṇis (JACOBI 1932:vi-vii; CHATTERJEE 1945:607).

82 The reference relevant to the present discussion is in Āvassaya-nijjutti 950 (verses numbered as in Haribhadra), khavage amaccaputte, cāṇakke ceva, thūlabhadde a| nāsikkasundarīnande vaire pariṇāmiā buddhī||

(cited and discussed by KOCH 1992:228–229). This is part of a list of catchwords for recalling (a total of 22) stories that illustrate pariṇāmiā buddhī (Sanskrit pāriṇāmikī buddhi, “cognition resulting from right deduction”), twelfth among which stories is that of Cāṇakka. See also METTE 1983 (especially p. 143) for a discussion of how these stories integrate into the Āvassaya tradition.

Uttarajjhayana-sutta.⁸³ Written for the most part in very short, often elliptical sentences, all these versions resemble notes for the use of a storyteller rather than actual stories. A fully detailed literary version of the tale of Cāṇakya, as well as another story relevant to our discussion, was written about 1165 CE in Sanskrit by the scholar Hemacandra in his Sthavirāvalīcarita or Pariśiṣṭaparvan, an appendix to his hagiographic work the Triṣaṣṭi-śalākāpuruṣacarita.⁸⁴

Cāṇakya’s Revenge: Jaina Literature

The tale of Cāṇakya’s humiliation, vow and revenge—without any preamble about the origin of the Nandas—is told in nearly identical form in the Āvassaya-cuṇṇi of Jinadāsa, the Āvassaya-ṭīkā of Haribhadra and the Uttarajjhayaṇa-ṭīkā of Devendragaṇin.⁸⁵ The Pariśiṣṭaparvan also recounts the tale, putting it immediately after a story to which we shall return shortly.⁸⁶

In these accounts, Cāṇakya is the son of a man called Caṇi(n), from a village named Caṇaka (Caṇaya, Caṇiya) in a region called Golla. He was born with teeth, which wise monks interpreted to mean that he was destined to be a king. His father (another devout Jaina) broke all his teeth out, seeing kingship as just an obstacle to spiritual progress.⁸⁷ The monks, however, informed him that this did not nullify the prophecy, only changed it so that now he would rule from behind the scenes.⁸⁸ Cāṇakya grows up and marries a poor but respectable brāhmaṇ girl, who once becomes very dejected because of their poverty.

Her husband decides to go to Pāṭaliputra to beg some money from Nanda, because he had heard that the king was very generous to brāhmaṇs.

83 CHATTERJEE 1945:608. Chatterjee (ibid.) also notes that Devendragaṇin’s account is mainly based on the Āvassaya-cuṇṇi, ignoring the work of Haribhadra and thus probably representing an attempt to reproduce an original version of the traditional narrative. The section of Devendragaṇin’s Uttarajjhayana-ṭīkā relevant to the story of Candragupta is printed in JACOBI 1932:336–341. KOCH 1992:260–271 prints a side by side edition of the relevant sections of the Āvassaya-cuṇṇi (of Jinadāsa) and the Uttarajjhayana-ṭīkā (of

Haribhadra), showing that the two are indeed almost verbatim identical, and where there are differences, the cuṇṇi is generally superior (KOCH 1992:223).

84 According to CHATTERJEE (1945:608), Hemacandra’s narrative is based largely on that of Haribhadra.

85 Āvassaya-cuṇṇi 1.563.1–1.565.10 and Āvassaya-ṭīkā 1.433a.4–435b.2 (KOCH 1992:260–268); Uttarajjhayana-ṭīkā 3.1 (JACOBI 1932:336–342).

86 See page 114.

87 The same prophecy in the Mahāvaṃsa-ṭīkā (page 104 above) was also connected to his teeth, but (as TRAUTMANN 1971:20, 25 points out) the episode is more coherent in the Pariśiṣṭaparvan.

88 Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.199, bhāvy eṣa bimbāntarito rājā radanagharṣaṇāt; Āvassaya-cuṇṇi, ettāhe vi biṃbaṃtario rāyā bhavissaï tti (the Uttarajjhayana-ṭīkā and the Āvassaya-ṭīkā differ negligibly here and at all other points where I cite the cuṇṇi, unless otherwise noted). KOCH (1992:261) renders the term bimbāntarito rājā/biṃbaṃtario rāyā as “monarch without an image,” JACOBI (1932:lxxii) and CHATTERJEE (1945:591) as ruling “by proxy.” Though antarita could with some stretch mean “bereft of,” I disagree with Koch and take this to mean that Cāṇakya would be hidden behind another image. This other image is logically that of Candragupta (hence the translation “by proxy”), but could also refer to any image or representation and may perhaps be a theatrical metaphor, hence my use of “behind the scenes.”

When he enters the palace, he sits down at the foremost seat,⁸⁹ which happens to be reserved for the ruler. Nanda enters with his son,⁹⁰ who feels that a brāhmaṇ sitting in the foremost seat is an insult to the king’s dignity.⁹¹ A servant girl very politely shows Cāṇakya the second best seat, on which he puts his water pot (without rising from the first). He is shown further seats and continues putting various brāhmaṇic accoutrements on them, until after the occupation of the fifth seat the servant girl runs out of patience and kicks him in the posterior. Cāṇakya bursts out in anger, promising to destroy Nanda along with his treasures, courtiers, friends, sons and armies.⁹²

After his humiliation at Nanda’s court and his vow to destroy the king, Cāṇakya leaves the city. Recalling the prophecy that he would rule from behind the scenes, he be-gins to search for a candidate, procures some gold on the way,⁹³ and in his wanderings comes across Candragupta, a village youth playing that he is the king of the other chil-dren.⁹⁴ A while later they attempt to storm Pāṭaliputra but fail miserably. While hiding from persecution by Nanda and begging for food in a village, they see a child trying to eat from the middle of a bowl of hot gruel and scalding his fingers. “You know nothing, like Cāṇakya,” his mother says,⁹⁵ and when the brāhmaṇ inquires why his name has become proverbial for ignorance, she tells him that kingdoms and bowls of gruel alike should be attacked from the edge inward.⁹⁶

89 Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.216, agre datteṣv āsaneṣu niṣasādādimāsane.

90 Not named in the Pariśiṣṭaparvan but apparently called Siddhaputta in all three commentarial sources. KOCH (1992:261) translates this as “with a Siddhaputra,” which seems to imply that this is some sort of

supernatural being. There is, however, no other indication of this in the story (while Hemacandra’s version unambiguously talks about Nanda’s son), so I am more inclined to read the word as a name.

91 Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.218, brāhmaṇo niṣasādaiṣa cchāyām ākramya bhūpateḥ; Āvassaya-cuṇṇi, esa baṃbhaṇo ṇandavaṃsassa chāyaṃ akkamiūṇa ṭhito. KOCH (1992:261) translates the latter as “This Brahmin, although he stepped in the shadow of Nanda, he does not move,” while TRAUTMANN (1971:25) comments on the former that Cāṇakya first steps on the king’s shadow, then insults him further by occupying his seat. On my part, I am convinced that there was no actual stepping on any shadow (Cāṇakya had, after all, sat down before the king’s entry), and chāyām ā-√kram is an idiom meaning “insult the dignity of.” Note in support of this that in the Āvassaya-cuṇṇi he “steps on the shadow” of the entire dynasty, which could hardly be meant literally.

92 Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.225, sakośabhṛtyaṃ sasuhṛtputraṃ sabalavāhanam| nandam unmūlayiṣyāmi mahāvāyur iva drumam|| A very similar vow expressed in a more elaborate metaphor (notably in Sanskrit, though the surrounding text is Apabhraṃśa) is also found in all three of the commentarial sources studied: kośena bhṛtyaiś ca nibaddhamūlaṃ putraiś ca mitraiś ca vivṛddhaśākham| utpāṭya nandaṃ parivartayāmi mahādrumaṃ vāyur ivogravegaḥ||

93 According to Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.253, by means of dhātuvāda, which may mean knowledge of ores or alchemy.

In the commentarial tradition he prosaically looks for deposits in holes (mines?) (Āvassaya-cuṇṇi: cāṇakko ya dhāubilāṇi maggaï).

94 I abridge the story quite drastically, concentrating on elements relevant to the present inquiry. See JACOBI 1932:lxxiii–lxxx and KOCH 1992:262–265 for details. The village is called Mayūrapoṣaka, “peacock

nourisher” or inhabited by mayūrapoṣakas, “peacock tenders,” providing a “popular etymology” for the dynastic name Maurya.

95 Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.293, na kiṃcid api jānāsi cāṇakya iva bālaka. In earthy Apabhraṃśa, the Uttarajjhayana-ṭīkā gives a more credible rendering of a village woman: cāṇakkamaṃgula! bhottuṃ pi na yāṇasi? (The Āvassaya commentaries lack the question and may be corrupt as regards the expletive. I take maṅgula to mean something along the lines of “moron,” possibly related to Sanskrit maṅku, “shaking.”)

96 Like the prophecy of the teeth, this episode is also more coherent here than in the Mahāvaṃsa-ṭīkā.

Accordingly, Cāṇakya and Candragupta go to the Himalayas and there make alli-ance with a king called Parvataka, offering him half the kingdom for military aid.⁹⁷ They conquer the realm from the edge inward and, after further adventures, finally occupy Pāṭaliputra. They allow Nanda to leave unscathed with his family and as much wealth as a cart can carry, but as they depart, his daughter glimpses Candragupta, falls in love with him and they marry. Another marriage has rather more macabre consequences. The con-querors find in Nanda’s palace a beautiful girl who had been fed on poison.⁹⁸ Parvataka falls in love with her and Cāṇakya consents to their marriage. When they hold hands at the ceremony, Parvataka is sickened by the poison in the sweat of her palm and cries out for help. Candragupta rushes to try and save him, but Cāṇakya prevents him from doing so, warning him that Parvataka is a dangerous rival whose death would be salutary.⁹⁹

After Candragupta’s enthronement¹⁰⁰ some men faithful to Nanda turn to ban-ditry. One day Cāṇakya meets a man who sets fire to ant heaps because an ant has bitten his son. Cāṇakya, thinking he has found the man with the right mindset, charges him to exterminate the bandits, which he soon accomplishes. The commentaries to the Āvassaya and the Uttarajjhayaṇa have no further episodes pertinent to the Mudrārākṣasa story, but the Pariśiṣṭaparvan has two more. To protect Candragupta against assassination, Cāṇakya starts feeding the king increasing doses of poison to increase his tolerance. The story pro-ceeds as in the Mahāvaṃsa-ṭīkā, except that the boy’s name is explained by a drop of poison that has reached his head. After Bindusāra’s coronation Cāṇakya appoints a talented man named Subandhu to help him manage the affairs of the kingdom. The ungrateful Subandhu, scheming to become the sole minister, tells Bindusāra that Cāṇakya killed his mother. The young king becomes inimical to Cāṇakya, but the latter decides that he is weary of worldly affairs anyway and prepares to commit ritual suicide by starving himself to death. Meanwhile, Bindusāra finds out that the charge of murder had not been quite true and turns his enmity on Subandhu. The latter offers to appease Cāṇakya and goes to

97 Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.297–299, cāṇakyo himavatkūṭaṃ tato ’gāt sanniveśanam|| tatra parvatakākhyena nṛpeṇa saha sauhṛdam| candraguptaguruś cakre tatsāhāyakakāmyayā|| tam anyad oce cāṇakyo nandam unmūlya pārthivam|

tadrājyaṃ saṃvibhajyāvāṃ gṛhṇīva bhrātarāv iva|| and Uttarajjhayana-ṭīkā: gatā himavaṃtakūḍaṃ. tattha pavvao rāyā. teṇa samaṃ mettī kayā. bhaṇaï. naṃdarajjaṃ samaṃ sameṇaṃ vibhaṃjayāmo. paḍivaṇṇaṃ teṇa. (The two Āvassaya commentaries say largely the same as this, but omit a few words making the story harder to reconstruct. Both spell the mountain king’s name pavvaïo, but the variant Pavvataga/Pavvayaga is also used later on in all three commentarial works.)

98 Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.328, tatrābhūt kanyakā caikā sarvasvam iva rakṣitā| nandabhūpatir ājanma tām upājījivad viṣam||

The commentarial tradition is extremely terse, e.g. Āvassaya-cuṇṇi: egā kannagā visabhāviyā. tattha pavvatagassa icchā. sā tassa diṇṇā.

99 Pariśiṣṭaparvan 8.335–336, kuru maunam apekṣasva svasti te syād amuṃ vinā|| ardharājyaharaṃ mitraṃ yo na hanyāt sa hanyate|. Āvassaya-cuṇṇi: candagutto ruṃbhāmi tti vavasito. cāṇakkeṇa bhiguḍī ṇiyatto. do rajjāṇi tassa jātāṇi. Interestingly, the Uttarajjhayana-ṭīkā (but not the cuṇṇi or ṭīkā of the Āvassaya-ṇijjutti) adds a verse in Sanskrit at this point (spoken by Cāṇakya), which is echoed in Hemacandra’s text cited at the beginning of this note: tulyārthaṃ tulyasāmarthyaṃ marmajñaṃ vyavasāyinam| ardharājyaharaṃ bhṛtyaṃ yo na hanyāt sa hanyate|| See note 179 on page 127 for more about this stanza.

100 The commentarial sources tell of several events in Candragupta’s reign, and the Pariśiṣṭaparvan narrates even more. I omit all that have no connection to the Mudrārākṣasa story.

visit him, but secretly sets fire to the place where he awaits death. Finally, in canto 9 of the Pariśiṣṭaparvan, it turns out that Cāṇakya had laid a last trap for Subandhu. While look-ing for treasure among the deceased minister’s possessions, Subandhu inhales a special perfume, then finds a letter informing him that whoever has inhaled this scent must be-come an ascetic or die and reluctantly retires from worldly affairs.

From Candragupta’s Coup to Cāṇakya’s Revenge

While the elements of the core story of Cāṇakya (an astute politician of grumpy nature boosting a new king to the throne) are consistently found in the concise early ver-sions and have a ring of plausibility to them that may even signify that they are very close to factual history, the above stories of Cāṇakya’s revenge seem to be made of the stuff of tales: they make a captivating anecdote rather than plausible history. The idea that the whole coup was achieved by the manipulations of a political genius in whose hands the upstart king was a mere puppet sounds a tad unlikely,¹⁰¹ while the suggestion that the sole motivation for this world-shaking deed was retribution for a trivial insult is closer to pre-posterous. Nonetheless, the humiliation and the revenge are worked out in depth in both the Jaina and the Buddhist tale. The account of the former is remarkably similar in these two traditions, while the story of the war and its aftermath agrees on a few points and diverges on others. What they do have in common is that they seek to offer an answer to the questions left open in the core story: why did Cāṇakya do all this and how did he do it?

Now it is of course impossible to prove that none of these “why and how” stories are rooted in historical fact, yet I contend that other tales about enmity between kings and brāhmaṇ ministers had a serious influence on the evolution of Cāṇakya’s tale. The following chapter will examine such tales in detail.

101 BRONKHORST (2011) further points out that whereas the Maurya dynasty was by all appearances associated with Jainism, Ājīvikism and Buddhism, there is no evidence that any its rulers had any interest in

Brāhmaṇism. The legend that has a brāhmaṇ minister raising Candragupta to kingship was therefore likely invented for propagandistic purposes: “Future rulers who heard it were reminded of the importance of finding a suitable Brahmanical counsellor” (ibid. 113).