outline

• Introduction and Prologue
• Takṣaśilā Kāṇḍa
• Mathura Kāṇḍa
• Yavana Kāṇḍa
• Āryāvarta Kāṇḍa
• Magadha Kāṇḍa
• Dakṣiṇapatha Kāṇḍa
• Uttara Kāṇḍa
• Subplots (interwoven or supplement)
  • Vāsudeva (interwoven)
  • Dāśarājña (interwoven, short)
  • The Men who Built India (interwoven)
  • The Great Indian Civil War (supplement)
  • Delhi 1200 BC (interwoven if possible, short)
  • Age of Iron (interwoven if possible, short)
  • The Man who built Civilization (supplement, series of shorts)

chapter title ideas: Commanding heights; Co-operating with the enemy; Bureaucracy; Conspiracy theories; The relations between truths

Strategy

• Getting an army
  • Establish Candragupta as a king via Aśvakāyana and Sanjaya/Scythian connections, seduction of Bactrian women etc.
  • Get Magadha (mostly vassal) army to fight Greeks via forgery, and maneuver to have Candragupta be its commander
  • Now Candragupta is firmly the king of Audicya, and also in the eyes of the Greeks the king of the Central Country
  • Seal of the Peacock; rob their treasury when left unguarded due to civil war
• Controlling the flow of information
  • Manipulate Magadha into closing itself off to trade, via starting provocations/cold war with Arjunāyanas etc. and having Rupakośa tell Augraseniya what to do in response
  • Control what information Magadha receives about the war in the Western theatre; send conflicting claims to any true information so they don’t know what’s true and what’s false
  • Forgeries, often accompanied by assassinations of key people to maintain plausible deniability (and making it seem traitorous to defy the hawkish will of a dead man)
• Mess up Magadha
  • Create a civil war between Augraseniya, Sakadala, Pabbata and a fourth party
  • Make them too occupied to maintain stability among their vassals or suppress dissension
  • Give the most loyal factions of their army to the Greeks
• Staged invasion
  • Idea: first, get the Scythians in and corner them with Magadha. Then, get the Scythians past the Magadha army and corner the Magadha army with them.
  • Scythians invade India: they pass through Candragupta’s territory because of canakya_ghrtaci_more_convo
  • The Greeks “betray”, and the Greek-Scythian combined army makes large gains against the Magadhan vassals.
  • Pabbata conducts a direct attack on Pataliputra, assassinating Augraseniya. Kaivarta is crowned king. Magadha refuses help against Greeks/Scythians, maybe forgery.
  • Sakadala captures and executes Pabbata, making him a martyr. And he has only said good things about Cāṇakya and Candragupta, so now Magadhas are sympathetic. martyr
  • Candragupta arrives with his army from the North-West, capturing away from Greeks/Scythains, and places his own men in their place
  • Magadha attempts to intervene, but a second invasion is rumoured. The armies have to unite. Sakadala takes over, and pledges support. (He’s suspicious: how did the Scythians pass through Chandragupta’s territory? Because Gandhara betrayed, under a Greek general from Arachosia.)
  • But he demands that Candragupta take his forces to the Western frontier. They bicker.
  • Meanwhile, captured Greek and Scythian forces are secretly released, and they rampage further East, at Cāṇakya’s word.
  • Sakadala realizes what’s happening, forms a defensive position around Magadha proper (not the empire), hoping Cāṇakya does not have ambitions of conquering Magadha itself. But his horses have to go first to stop the urgent Scythian threat, and they kill each other. resistance_futile
  • Cāṇakya has left the Scythians to die at Sakadala’s hand, and instead is going around establishing garrisons and support among vassal kings and sabotaging the elephantry. conference
  • Candragupta’s army is hesistant, but he convinces them and leads a cavalry charge into Magadha, bypassing Sakadala’s elephantry via the burned land the left by the Scythians. speech
  • Cāṇakya constructs some fake camps as a decoy against Sakadala’s elephants: local craftsmen logged and cleared land and hauled wood and stone, Greeks built a fortress, Indians booby-trapped it and Persians decorated it to make it look convincing. Rapti Ghaghara confluence.
  • possibly: greek_dark_day
• Getting the corporations to come around — so far they’ve been told two different kings would rule from two different sides. Some of them are already in pocket from Candragupta’s earlier connections

durdhara_marriage
first_steps
friend_foe
spoiler
Thera’s perspective, e.g. what’s in the introduction
last_amazon

(321 BC, age 26) durdhara_death
(320 BC, age 27) Chandragupta is also troubled by the incident and goes to Bhadrabahu, being suspicious of Cāṇakya deep down.
(319 BC, age 28) bhadrabahu_debate
(314 BC, age 33) Chandragupta returns to Pataliputra after 5 years in the South.

Dreams order

• Before Durdhara’s death (321bc): Dream 2 (kalpavriksha).
• Before Southern campaign (320bc): Dream 11 (young bulls)
• 313, 312 … 300 bc: all the other dreams.

(310 BC, age 37) Bindusara admitted to Taxila.

(298 BC, age 49) While initially Chandragupta tries to prevent what Bhadrabahu says about the dreams, but later dreams have worse interpretations, like “the king will assist in oppressing the people”. Etc. Chandragupta doesn’t want to be that king, and decides to abdicate. canakya_candragupta_final_words

Chanakya goes to Pataliputra to advise Bindusara on Chandragupta’s request who is now 24.

Cāṇakya’s son — call him Kāmaṇḍaka for now
He’s impressed by the Śukra school, and by the barbarian methods
Makes convincing case for becoming barbarians, Cāṇakya hits him
He rebels against the empire, is caught and sentenced to exile. Cāṇakya tells him to go make his own empire, among the barbarians.
He goes with a blackbuck
speech; exercise the three puruśārtha on the conquered countries

Timeline
(288 BC, age 59) “You need to marry a new woman and start producing more princes immediately. One of your sons thinks that life has no value, the other thinks that the value of life lies in its death.” “Bindusara: I thought you liked me. Chanakya: I do like you. Bindusara: Well, how do you speak to kings you don’t like? Chanakya: I don’t speak to them, I end their lineages.” And while death is not a traditional penalty for failing an exam, for these two … please consider it.
(278 BC, age 69) Rebellion at Taxila as it is Buddhistifying, Ashoka sent to pacify it. Returns reporting that “They have no problem with the Emperor, only his ministers” in order to get Chanakya out of the picture. Cāṇakya convincingly points out