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THE NANDA RULE IN KALINGA
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the last ruler) was allowed by Chāṇakya to leave his kingdom carrying with him all that he could place in one chariot (ratha). Accordingly, he put his two wives and a daughter in his carriage and loaded it with some treasure. While they were ready to move, the girl saw Chandragupta and fell in love with him, whereupon the ex-Nanda ruler allowed her to marry Chandragupta, because it is customary for Kshatriya girls to marry according to their choice'.? This seems to imply that the Nanda king was still claiming himself to be a Kshatriya.
The Nanda army was a powerful fighting machine, and we are told by the classical Greek and Latin writers that the last king of the line "kept in the field for guarding the approaches of his kingdom twenty thousand cavalry and two hundred thousand infantry, besides two thousand four-horsed chariots, and what was the most formidable force of all, a troop of elephants which ran up to the number of three thousand".2 Diodorus and Plutarch raise the number of elephants to four thousand and six thousand respectively. The latter puts the strength of the army of the Gangetic nation as eighty thousand horses, two hundered thousand foot-soldiers, eight thousand warchariots, besides six thousand fighting elephants.
It is no wonder, therefore, that the lord of such an immense host should aspire to be a sole monarch (Ekarāt) of the vast regions stretching from the Himalayas to the Godāvari and its neighbourhood. The historians of Alexander speak of the most powerful peoples who dwell beyond the Beas river as being under one sovereign. Pliny informs us that the Prasii nation surpasses in power and glory every other people in India, their capital being
1. Original: ---Prāyah kshatriya kanyānām sagyate hi svayamvarāh" 2. McCrindle, op. cit pp, 221-22.
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