________________
238 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
Kautilyas-Chandraguptam tu tato rājye bhishekshyati.1
The Milinda-Panho' refers to an episode of the great struggle between the Nandas and the Mauryas. : “There was Bhaddasāla, the soldier in the service of the royal family of Nanda, and he waged war against king Chandagutta. Now in that war, Nāgasena, there were eighty Corpse dances. For they say that when one great Head Holocaust has taken place (by which is meant the slaughter of ten thousand elophants, and a lac of horses and five thousand charioteers, and a hundred kotis of soldiers on foot), then the headless corpses arise and dance in frenzy over the battle-field.” The passage contains a good deal of mythical embellishment. But we have here a reminiscence of the bloody encounter between the contending forces of the Nandas and the Mauryas. 3
1 Some Mss. read dvirashtabhih in place of dvijаrshabhah. Dr. Jayaswal (Ind. Ant. 1914, 124) proposed to emend it to Virashtrābhih. Virashtrās he took to mean the Arattas and added that Kautilya was helped by the Ārattas "the band of robbers' of Justin. Cf. Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes, pp. 88, 89. Pargiter, however, suggests, (Dynasties of the Kali Age, p. 26, 35) that dvijarşabhah (the best among the twice-born, i.e., Brāhmaṇas) may be the correct reading instead of "dvirashtabhih."
2 IV. 8. 26. Cf. SBE, xxxvi. pp. 147-48. 3 Cf. Ind Ant., 1914, p. 124n.
