Magadha, slew his old enemy the Nanda king with all male members
of the family, and reigned in his stead as Chandragupta I, of
the house of Maurya. That was in 321. Master then of a highly
trained army of about 700,000, he spread his empire over all
Hindustan. In 305, Seleucus Nicator, Alexander's successor in
Asia, crossed the Indus with an army, and was defeated; and in
the treaty which followed, gave up to Chandragupta all claim to
the Indian provinces, together with the hand of his daughter in
marriage.--and received by way of compensation 500 elephants
that might come in useful in his wars elsewhere. Also he sent
Megisthenes to be his ambassador at Pataliputra, Chandragupta's
capital; and Megasthenes wrote; and in a few quotations from
his lost book that remain, chiefly in Arrian,--we get a kind of
window wherethrough to look into India: the first, and perhaps
the only one until Chinese travelers went west discovering.

Here let me flash a green lantern. If at some future time it
should be shown that the Chandragupta Maurya of the Sanskrit
books was not the same person as the Sandacottos of Megasthenes;
nor his son Bindusara Amitraghata, the Amitrochidas of the
Greeks; nor his son and successor, Asoka, the Devanampiya
Piadasi whose rock-cut inscriptions remain scattered over
India; nor the Amtiyako Yonaraja--the "Ionian King Antiochus"
apparently,--Atiochus Theos, Selecus Nicator's granson: as is
supposed; nor yet the other four kings mentioned in the same
instricption in a Sanskrit disguise as contemporaries, Ptolemy
Philadelphos of Egypt (285-247); Magas of Cyrene (285-258);
Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon (277-239), and Alexander of Epirus,
who began to reign in 272;--if all these identifications should
fall to the ground, let no one be surprised. There are passages
in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky that seem to suggest there is
nothing in them; and yet, after studying those passages, I do
not find that she says so positively: her attitude seems rather
one of withholding information for the time being; she supplies
none of a contrary sort. The time may not have been ripe then for
unveiling so much of Indian history; nor indeed, in those days,
had the pictures of these kings, and particularly of Asoka, so
clearly emerged: inscriptions have been deciphered since, which
have gone to fill out the outline; and the story, as it his been
pieced together now, has an air of verisimilitude, and hangs
together. Wi