Which of the following is not associated with Chandragupta Maurya ?

Question

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Correct — C, Sanchi. Read the stem carefully first: the word 'not' is set in bold italic in the booklet, so this is a negative question and the answer is the odd one out, not the best match. Three of the four options attach to Chandragupta Maurya and one does not. Sanchi does not. The Great Stupa at Sanchi, on its hilltop in Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh about 46 km north-east of Bhopal, was originally commissioned by Ashoka in the third century BCE as a hemispherical brick structure over relics of the Buddha, later encased in stone and given its carved gateways generations afterwards; the site's other Mauryan remains, the pillar with its lion capital and the earliest phase of Temple 40, are Ashokan too. Nothing at Sanchi is attributed to Ashoka's grandfather, and Chandragupta's name does not appear in the site's record at all. By contrast (a) the Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman I, cut shortly after 150 CE at the foot of Girnar, states in line 8 that the Sudarshana lake was made 'by the Vaishya Pushyagupta, the provincial governor of the Maurya king Chandragupta', and adorned with conduits under Ashoka by the Yavana governor Tushaspha — it is the single most important epigraphic record naming Chandragupta Maurya. (b) Vishnugupta is the personal name under which the Arthashastra's last verse identifies its author, conventionally the same person as Chanakya and Kautilya, Chandragupta's mentor and minister. (d) Susima was Bindusara's eldest son, and therefore Chandragupta's own grandson. Sanchi is the only option with no thread to him at all.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Associated, and in the most direct way any option here is. Its first eight lines are a history of the Sudarshana reservoir near Girnar in Gujarat from Chandragupta Maurya's reign down to Rudradaman's own repairs around 150 CE, naming Chandragupta's governor Pushyagupta as the builder. The inscription is also the first long record in more or less standard Sanskrit, which is why it is separately famous — and why a candidate may file it under 'Western Satraps' and forget the Mauryan opening.  (b) Associated. Vishnugupta is one of the three names of Chandragupta's Brahmin mentor and minister — Chanakya in the narrative sources, Kautilya as the clan name used throughout the Arthashastra, Vishnugupta in the single verse where the text gives a personal name. The trap is that Vishnugupta is also the name of a late Gupta emperor of the sixth century CE, and 'gupta' in a Mauryan question invites exactly that confusion.  (d) Associated, though less tightly than the other two, and this is where the question is weak. Susima was the eldest son and heir-apparent of Bindusara, hence Chandragupta's grandson, and he lost the succession struggle to his half-brother Ashoka. He belongs to Chandragupta's dynasty and family but appears in no episode of Chandragupta's own reign, so a candidate can argue he is unassociated too — the only reading that leaves the item a single answer is the one that counts a documented blood relationship as association and Sanchi's complete silence as none.

Concept: Almost everything known about Chandragupta Maurya comes from sources written long after him, which is why questions about him are really questions about which source says what. He rose in the disturbance after Alexander's death, overthrew the Nandas of Magadha around 322–319 BCE with Chanakya's help, and by about 305–303 BCE had concluded a marriage alliance with Seleucus I Nicator that brought him territory in the north-west and Megasthenes to his court at Pataliputra. The evidence divides into four streams. Greek and Roman authors — Megasthenes through Strabo, Arrian and others — call him Sandrokottos and give the outside view. Sanskrit drama, above all Vishakhadatta's Mudrarakshasa, dramatises the court intrigue between Chanakya and the Nanda minister Rakshasa. Jain tradition, in Hemachandra's twelfth-century Parishishtaparvan and the Digambara inscriptions at Shravanabelagola, has him abdicate, follow Bhadrabahu to Karnataka and die by sallekhana — a tradition disputed by Svetambara Jains and by several modern historians. And there is exactly one contemporary-adjacent epigraph that names him: Rudradaman's Junagadh inscription, written more than four centuries later but recording an administrative fact from his reign.

State PCS 2025 Q92 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q92 — History PYQ with Answer