Nanda dynasty

01Ekarat: the one king

The Puranas call Mahapadma Nanda ekarat, sole sovereign, and sarva-kshatrantaka, ender of the old kshatriya houses. The list of those he swept away runs from the Ikshvakus of Kosala to the Panchalas, Kashis, Haihayas, Kalingas, Ashmakas, Kurus, Maithilas and Shurasenas. The Puranas say he was born to the last Shishunaga king by a shudra mother. Greek writers heard a harsher version: that the founder was a barber who became the queen’s lover and killed the king. Either way, a man outside the old royal clans now held the Ganga plain.

02The army at the Beas

In 326 BCE Alexander’s army reached the Beas. Beyond it, they were told, lay the kingdom of the Gangaridai and the Prasii under a king the Greeks called Agrammes or Xandrames. Diodorus records his strength as 20,000 cavalry, 2,00,000 foot soldiers, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 war elephants. The Macedonians refused to march further and Alexander turned back. Wealth matched the army: Tamil Sangam poems speak of the hoard the Nandas hid in the Ganga, and Kharavela’s Hathigumpha inscription says a Nandaraja had dug a canal in Kalinga and carried a Jina image from it to Magadha.

Place · Fortified by Ajatashatru, made capital by Udayin, 5th century BCEPataliputraCapital of Magadha, of the Nandas, the Mauryas and the Guptas, on the Ganga where the Son once joined it. Under modern Patna lie the timber palisade Megasthenes described and the pillared hall of the Mauryas.Read →

03Chanakya’s vow

The last Nanda, Dhana Nanda, is remembered for his greed and taxes. The tradition shared by the Mudrarakshasa and the Buddhist and Jain accounts says he insulted the brahmana Chanakya at his court, and that Chanakya untied his shikha and vowed not to tie it again until the Nandas were destroyed. He found the young Chandragupta, trained him, and after a first failed attack on the capital they took the frontier lands first and then Pataliputra itself, about 321 BCE. The Nanda minister Rakshasa was won over to serve the new king.

The rulers

1. 1Mahapadma Nanda (Ugrasena)Ekarat; founder of the empirec. 345 BCE onward
2. 2PandukaNamed in the Mahabodhivamsa list of ninedates unknown
3. 3Pandugati, Bhutapala, Rashtrapala, Govishanaka, Dashasiddhaka, KaivartaThe other Nanda brothers, by the Mahabodhivamsadates unknown
4. 4Dhana NandaOverthrown by Chanakya and Chandraguptato c. 321 BCE

What they left

• The first empire of the Ganga plain, inherited whole by the Mauryas
• A standing army large enough to stop Alexander’s advance
• A canal in Kalinga still remembered by Kharavela three centuries later