________________
EXTRACTION OF THE MAURYAS 355 In the Mundaka Upanishad' we have the following Sloka :
ΡΙαυα hyete adrilha γαλατρά ashțādaśoktam avaram yeshu karma etachchhreyo ye’bhinandanti mūdhā
jarūmrityuin te punareväpi yanti. “Frail, in truth are those boats, the sacrifices, the eighteen in which this lower ceremonial has been told. Fools, who praise this as the highest good, are subject again and again to old age and death.” In the Chhāndogya Upanishad? Ghora Angirasa lays great stress on Ahimsā.
As to the second statement we should remember that tradition is not unanimous in representing the Mauryas as of Kūdra extraction. Certain Purūnic texts assert no doubt, that after Mahāpadma there will be kings of Śūdra. origin. But this statement cannot be taken to mean that all the post-Mahāpadman kings were sudras, as in that case the sungas and the Kāṇvas also will have to be classed as sūdras.* The Mudrārākshasa, the evidence of which is cited to prove that Chandragupta was a Śūdra," is a late work, and its evidence is contradicted by
1 1.2, 7: S. B. E. The Upanishds, pt II. p. 31. 2 111. 17. 4.
3 Tatah prabhritirājāno bhavishyāḥ śudrayonayah, The reading in other texts is, however, Tato nripā bhaviskyanti Sudraprāyāstvadhārmikāh (DKA, 25).
4 Among real Śūdra (or partially Śūdra) kings may be included the Nandas, a few rulers mentioned in the Garuda Purāna (Ch. 145. 4) and the Si-yü-ki of Hiuen Tsang (Watters, I. 322 ; II. 252), and certain princes of Western India and the Indus Valley mentioned on pp. 54-55 of Pargiter's Dynasties of the Kali age.
5 In the play Chandragupta is styled 'Nandānvaya' and VỊishala. As to the former appellation we should note that the play describes Nanda as abhijana. Further it calls Chandragupta Mauryaputra, and though commentators try to reconcile the epithets Naudānvaya and Mauryaputra, we learn from early Buddhist writers that Maurya is not a metronymic of Chandragupta or of his father, but the designation of an old clan. The Greeks, too, refer to a tribe called Morieis (Weber IA. ii. (1873) p 148 ; Max Muller, Sans. Lit., 280 ; Cunn. J ASB, XXIII, 680). As to the epithet Vrishala it should be remembered
