HOW ANCIENT GREEK SOURCES HELPED IN THE DATING OF INDIA'S ANCIENT HISTORY

One of the most fortunate events for the accurate chronological dating of India's history was the identification of Chandragupta Maurya with Sandrocottos, or Sandrokuptos of the Greeks was. The Greeks call him Sundracoptos, Sundracottos, and Androcottos. This identification was first done by Sir William Jones, and its accuracy has since been generally accepted; for the identification depends fully both on the similarity between their personal histories and on the positive identity of their names. Sanskrit names translated into Greek baffled all conjecture, until about the year1780, when Sir William Jones considered that the Sandracottus of the Greeks might be the Chandragupta of the Hindus; and then it was observed that the Greeks often wrote the name Xandra Coptus, and that the Hindus in a similar manner wrote Chandra Gupta, — Chandra being the moon, and Gupta, protected by the family-name of several dynasties which flourished during different eras.

325 BCE was the date of Chandra Gupta's accession, thus making him a contemporary of Alexander the Great and Seleukos Nikator; a fact which has long since been proven by several passages from the Greek historians. This discovery was a watershed  for Indian history;since was date was clearly determined, there was hope for properly adjusting the rest; however, as Sanskrit scholarship was a vast unmarked field, there was still a lot of work waiting to be done. 

The Gods and the Kings of Hindus were not clearly defined by specific dates. But now the drifting history began to find safe anchorage, and gradually Indra and Agni, Brahme and Brahma were arranged in chronological order; whilst Vishnu and Shiva were forced to give up their claims to remote antiquity. The Greek invasion and the reign of Chandragupta acted as strongholds, either before or after which all names and facts were to receive their proper places; coins, inscriptions, columns, rocks, temples, and statues, were the places which held the evidence for research. In 1787 Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society, in Calcutta.

It is impossible to reproduce in a reasonable space nearly all the information on record concerning the institutions of Chandragupta Maurya, and his immediate predecessors.The existence of an ancient government so thoroughly organized may come as a surprise to many;however, Chandragupta's administration was highly advanced. The dark sides of this story are the appalling wickedness of the statecraft taught in the Arihasdsira and the hateful espionage which tainted the whole administration and was inspired by the wicked statecraft of the books. 

EDITED FROM : GlobalSecurity.org