Person · Mauryan emperor · India
Bindusāra
Also known as Bindusara, Amitrochates, Allitrochades
Chandragupta's son and Ashoka's father, who held the empire together for about twenty-five years and is the least documented of the three. Greek writers call him Amitrochates, and his reign is where the Mauryan state's relations with the Hellenistic kingdoms are at their most ordinary and least warlike.
- Date
- -320–-273
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 25.612, 85.158
Worth knowing
Athenaeus records that he wrote to Antiochus I of Syria asking for sweet wine, dried figs and a Greek philosopher; Antiochus sent the wine and the figs and replied that Greek law did not permit the sale of philosophers. Antiochus's ambassador Deimachus was resident at his court, as Megasthenes had been at his father's.
About the place
Placed at Pataliputra, the Mauryan capital he ruled from between Chandragupta and Ashoka.
Connections (2)
- Power passed toChandragupta Maurya
Chandragupta's abdication in favour of his son is the one Mauryan succession that was not contested, according to the traditions that report it, and it is the hinge between the founder and Ashoka's father. Bindusara then held the empire for about twenty-five years and left it larger than he found it, which is more than the record credits him with.
- Court associationAntioch
Athenaeus preserves a letter in which Bindusara, whom the Greeks called Amitrochates, asks Antiochus I of Syria for sweet wine, dried figs and a Greek philosopher; Antiochus sent the wine and the figs and replied that Greek law did not permit the sale of philosophers. Antiochus's ambassador Deimachus was resident at Pataliputra, as Megasthenes had been under Chandragupta.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Bindusara”. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae XIV.652–653, on the letter to Antiochus; Strabo, Geography II.1.9, on Deimachus; Romila Thapar, Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1961).
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