01The ekarat of the Puranas
The Puranic king-lists say the Shaishunaga line ended with Mahanandin, and that his son Mahapadma, born of a mother of humble birth, uprooted every kshatriya dynasty and brought the earth under one umbrella. Jain and Buddhist memory agrees on the wealth: the Nandas were remembered as kings who counted gold in crores and taxed even skins and gum. Kalinga fell to him too. Two centuries later, King Kharavela’s Hathigumpha inscription names a canal opened by a Nandaraja and a Jina image he carried off from Kalinga.
02The army the Greeks feared
When Alexander’s men reached the Beas in 326 BCE they heard of a king beyond the Ganga, whom the Greek writers call Agrammes or Xandrames, usually identified with the last Nanda, Dhana Nanda. Curtius and Diodorus put his strength at about 20,000 horse, 2,00,000 foot, 2,000 chariots and 3,000 to 4,000 elephants. The Macedonian army refused to march on. That army and that treasury were what Chandragupta Maurya, guided by Chanakya, seized when the Nanda line fell around 321 BCE.
