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XANDRAMES AND SANDRACOTTUS'
(Classical Accounts Re-examined)
Upendranath Roy
(Irony of fate and the British rule in Irdia turned into the sheetanchor of Indian history what was insignificant and unworthy of even passing reference to ancient authors of India. The Cambridge History of India (Vol. I) devotes one-seventh of its space to the description of Alexander's invasion and the chronology of the textbooks used in our schools and colleges are solely based on the identification of certain names of individuals and places that occur in the classical accounts. Gangaridae and Prasioi are supposed to be parts of Bengal, Palibothra is equated with Pāfaliputra, Xandrames, Andrames or Aggrames is identified with some ruler of the Nanda dynasty while Sandracottus, Andracottus or Sandrocyptus is believed to be no other than Chandragupta Maurya. So the synchronization of Alexander and Seleucus with the Nanda and Maurya rulers and the chronology resulting from it have become almost articles of faith with our intellectuals. Few care to examine the facts. Current views are accepted widely not out of conviction but generally out of laziness (there is little time to spare for study and research) or fear (the conclusions drawn by the well-known scholars can be challenged on pain of being branded "fundamentalist” or "reactionary”. The few who are alert and courageous are disabled and suppressed by lack of resources. That makes it even more necessary to re-examine the relevant data add restore the truth now.
--Editor) Origin of the Dogma
For a long time, Christianity believed that the universe was ereated not more than 4004 years before Christ. It was heretical to the Jewish and Christian Scholars, therefore, to date anything earlier than that. They believed that the world owed all its wisdom and culture to Greece and Rome and the British and the French wero the successors and continuators of that tradition and had a mission of civilising. So they attempted to bring all that was glorious in India nearer in time to the Greek and Roman civilisations, if not posterior to it. This line of thinking left its impression upon even
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