Chandragupta gave Seleucus war elephants, and Seleucus sent an ambassador to Chandragupta’s court. This ambassador was Megasthenes, and we owe much of the information that we have about Chandragupta to Indica , the account written by Megasthenes. The original of this work is lost, but many Greek historians had reproduced parts of his account describing the court of Chandragupta and his administration. Chandragupta Chandragupta was obviously a great ruler who had to reinvent a strong administrative apparatus to govern his extensive kingdom.
(The system of governance and polity is discussed in the next section.) Chandragupta was ably advised and aided by Chanakya, known for political manoeuvring, in governing his empire. Contemporary Jain and Buddhist texts hardly have any mention of Chanakya. But popular oral tradition ascribes the greatness of Chandragupta and his reign to the wisdom and genius of Chanakya. Chanakya, also known as Kautilya and Vishnugupta, was a Brahmin and a sworn adversary of the Nandas.
He is credited with having devised the strategy for overthrowing the Seleucus Nicator Chandragupta (modern representation) XI History - Lesson - - Emergence of State and Empire recorded military expedition of the Mauryas. The number of those killed in battle, those who died subsequently, and those deported ran into tens of thousands. The campaign had probably been more ferocious and brutal than usual because this was a punitive war against Kalinga, which had broken away from the Magadha Empire (the Hathigumpha inscription speaks of Kalinga as a part of the Nanda Empire). Ashoka was devastated by the carnage and moved by the suffering that he converted to humanistic values.
He became a Buddhist and his new-found values and beliefs were recorded in a series of edicts, which confirm his passion for peace and moral righteousness or dhamma ( dharma in Sanskrit). Edicts of Ashoka The edicts of Ashoka thus constitute the most concrete source of information about the Mauryan Empire. There are edicts comprising Major Rock Edicts, known as Kalinga edicts, Pillar Edicts, some Minor Rock Edicts and a few Minor Pillar Inscriptions. The Major