His life and events have been a subject of controversy creating debates among historians for years Chandragupta Maurya came from humble beginnings plagued by poverty. However, this man's journey through life was going to be anything but ordinary. From being a farmer boy in an unknown village to being a palace attendant in the capital city of Patliputra. The narrative moves on to the untold story of what happened after Chandragupta became the king. From the battlefields of Kalinga to the wars fought in the plains east of River Indus. The book traces the life of a man whose life took sharp ups and downturns till he ventured into the path of spirituality. Spanning 36 years and events in 6 countries of today, this book seeks to tell the story which exists in bit-n-pieces in annals of history.
Rajat did his MBA from IMI (New Delhi) and Ecole-Superieure-de-Commerce (France).He is currently working as Chief Manager in the Technology division of one of India's largest financial institutions. Previously, he had worked on five amateur movie projects. Also, he was part of a theatre group, performed in stage shows and street plays for cancer awareness. His other interests include reading books on India history and martial arts. (Email id – rajatpillai@sfs.com, Website - www.rajatpillai.com)
Acknowledgements 6
Prologue 9
A Boy from Gaval 18
The Gemstone Merchant 30
The Capital Town of Patliputra 34
A Palace Attendant 44
An Unlikely Partnership 54
One Midnight at Patliputra : Rakatyayan’s House 66
One Mid Night at Patliputra : The Siege 76
The Lion among Rebels 81
Change of Strategy 90
For a Peaceful Mind 97
A Girl from Patliputra 106
A Woman with an Objective 118
The Night Before an Important Journey 127
A Day for Scavengers 139
A Palace in Peril 148
Target of Assassination 159
The Initial Days 168
Period of Bliss 179
Our Samrat is Dead 184
The Origin of the Attacks 193
Darkness Thickens 200
In Denial Mode 206
The Hunt 216
The Enemy inside a Partner 225
A Disturbed Soul 233
A Surprising Revelation 243
An Ambitious Prince 250
Father Figure 259
The Nemesis 270
The Ferocious Elephant Men 274
Parting Words 283
EPILOGUE 292
BIBLIOGRAPHY 300
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A Boy from Gaval
(Year 235 After Buddha)
My childhood was the best time of my life. I didn’t know it back then, happens to most of us. Back then I used to see only the poverty, banter and misery, the small happiness was overlooked – Chandra
This was not going to be just another day, though it started like one. The latter half of the day was going to spring an unexpected turn of events. A fixed set of mundane rural activities were attached in a sequence to his routine. There were largely no deviations to this set pattern. Chandra got up from sleep like all days much before sunrise. Today again he had seen the same wretched nightmare in his sleep. A hazy image of him and his mother standing barefoot, picking low value coins from cracked barren ground which were seemingly falling from the sky in a sun scorched hot afternoon. The coins were falling into the cracks on the ground. “Why doesn’t this leave me?” he thought to himself. The oil of the only lamp illuminating the small hut was long over, and the hut was gripped by pitch darkness. His eyes were however trained to see in this low visibility. Looking outside the door of his hut he could see fireflies and hear creaking sound of insects in the dark. Rubbing his half closed eyes in the dark, he started his walk to the dumping ground area with a small pot of water in his hands. This place was a wasteland of tall grass, shrubs and some drying trees which villagers who had no private toilets, actually almost all the inhabitants of the village would use in the morning. He midway met his best friend and neighbour, a rather good looking boy called Swarit. In the darkness they had to select a place nobody else was sitting and where there were no thorny plants else it would poke them in the wrong places when they squatted. Today they got a place on either side of a dry tree and dug two small pits into the ground on either side to relieve themselves. While squatting with their back facing the dry tree on either side, they started talking on subjects ranging from their problems to the condition of the village to their ambitions. Swarit wanted to be an artist in plays, Chandra was not sure what he wanted to become in life. All he knew was that he hated the peacock taming profession of his ancestors. This intellectual discussion during the private moment would go on till the two friends felt lighter in their stomach again. After covering the pit with soil, they washed their hands with water and some ash at Swarit’s hut. Then the friends would break a stick from the nearby neem tree to clean their teeth by chewing the bitter stick, washing their face and rinsing their mouth with water before going to the farm. Being a follower of Hinduism, Chandra first prayed to the Sun god and later his farm which was his source of livelihood. This had been his routine since his grandfather’s days. Back then, they would together go for a stroll after these prayers.
Chandra’s grandfather made a controlled fire and created some farm land out of the edge of a forest area many years ago. After two years of possession and no disputes from anybody, he got his ownership of the land documented on a copper plate. He had nominated his grandson to inherit the land after his death. It was a mid-sized farm. The old man had this habit of smoking cannabis from a clay pipe. Chandra saw him turn from a strong healthy man, to a weak one, to become a badly made portrait on the walls of his mud house. After his grandfather’s death, Chandra and his mother felt orphaned. However, with time they learned to pull on.
Chandra’s mother Muraa would often suffer from a bad headache. She used to make his lunch in the morning itself and dinner in the afternoon so that he need not prepare anything during a hectic day. Then towards the latter half of the morning she would make fans, artifacts out of peacock feathers and some small handicrafts of cane. A customized “ladies beauty kit” being her speciality. The whole hut was full of artifacts made of peacock feathers. By the afternoon she would have severe headache, she would tie a strip of cloth tightly around her head and then she would not get up from bed till the next
morning. That was her normal day.
Chandra started his work by drawing water from a well on the edge of his land into his two clay pots. This well was on the edge of his farm boundary. His grandfather had spent considerable amount of time and money in the digging activity for this deep well. The water level was now too low and the rope used for pulling out the water was now fully utilized almost reaching the bottom of the well. He would draw the water up, fill and drag the clay pots of water to his farm. However, by the time he reached his destination, half of the water would have anyway spilled out the clay pots. Then he would push water into the narrow alleys across his farm. The more water he pushed into the field the more it disappeared into the small cracks that had now appeared in the farm. His village was called Gaval and was part of the Magadha kingdom. This area referred in official records as Kajangala was in a state of constant drought for the past three years. The irrigation system that the ruling Nanda Kings of Magadha had built was now proving ineffective. Low quantity of muddy slush was now what was available out of these irrigation systems for their farms. Being practical, Chandra thought that using this thick mud to plaster the walls of his hut was a good idea to make this irrigation system be of some use to the poor farmers. Chandra then went to his hut to get the wooden plough and ox he had borrowed for a couple of days from his grandfather’s friend. He was the Gramapala or headman of the village and lived nearby. He then ploughed the other side of his farm in the heat of the scorching sun. This was in preparation for the crop in the coming season. It was a tedious manual process, the land on this side was hard and the boy had to exert a lot of force to loosen it. All this work with just air and lots of water in his stomach. This activity once completed left Chandra panting and sweating. He then walked across to Swarit’s house and collected cow dung from his cattle shed of three cows. The cows, just like the villagers were also not getting enough grass to eat, a skeleton of a cow had very less to offer, so even cow dung was a precious commodity. This dung was the fertilizer for Chandra’s crops which was different this year. Normally the farmers in this area used to grow Sali rice. However this year water shortage left no scope for cultivation of rice. Chandra and Swarit’s father were growing millets this summer season. These were the crops suited for near famine situations, also millets provided good fodder for Swarit’s cows. Both families used to exchange whatever little was left of the produce. Their meals were standard, lunch was bread made of sorghum and dinner was porridge made of millets. However once in a while, Swarit used to be kind to share some part of the excess milk in his house with Chandra so that he can have some variety in his food intake. Maintaining a cow was also getting difficult. Swarit’s father was burdened by the announcement of increase in cattle tax which was effective from the coming year.
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