Crossword-Solution: CHANDRAGUPTA 12 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 21

Pataliputra became the capital of India under Chandragupta Maurya, who, soldier of fortune and usurper that he was, transformed the small kingdom of Magadha into a mighty empire.

Known to Greek historians as Sandrokottos, young Chandragupta had been in Alexander's camp on the Indus, and had even, it is said, offered his services to the Macedonian king.

But behind Chandragupta the power of the Brahman was still clearly entrenched, for his chief minister was a Brahman, Chanakya, who had followed his fortunes from their first adventurous beginnings.

The stately fabric which Chandragupta built up during his own twenty-five years' reign, _circa_ 322-297 B.C., endured during the reign of his son Bendusara, of whom scarcely anything is known, and at the end of another twenty-five years passed on, undiminished, to his great successor, Asoka, whose unique experiment would have been scarcely possible had he not succeeded to an empire already firmly consolidated at home and abroad.

Strange to say, however, his fame has never been so popular as that of his son, Chandragupta II., Vikramadytia, the Sun of Power, who reigned in turn for nearly forty years, and has lived in Hindu legend as the Raja Bikram, to whom India owes her golden age.