Who among the following sent Megasthenes to the court of Chandragupta Maurya?

Correct — B. Seleucus I Nicator, the general who took the eastern share of Alexander's empire, sent Megasthenes as his ambassador to Chandragupta Maurya at Pataliputra.

The embassy followed a war. Seleucus fought Chandragupta around 305 BCE, came off worse, and settled: territory in the north-west passed to the Mauryas, Seleucus received 500 war elephants, and diplomatic contact was opened.

Megasthenes wrote up what he saw in the Indica. The king who sent him is option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Alexander III — Alexander III — Alexander the Great — died in 323 BCE, before the Mauryan empire took shape, and his army never reached the Ganga valley: it turned back at the Beas.
• (c)
  Antiochus I Soter — Antiochus I Soter, Seleucus's son, did send an envoy to India, but that envoy was Deimachus and the court he came to was Bindusara's.
• (d)
  Antiochus III — Antiochus III ruled the Seleucid empire more than a century after Seleucus I, long after Chandragupta's reign, and has no connection with Megasthenes.

Greek contact with the Mauryas came in a fixed sequence of envoy and king, and SSC asks it as pairs.

Megasthenes was sent by Seleucus I Nicator to Chandragupta Maurya, and wrote the Indica. Deimachus was sent by Antiochus I Soter to Bindusara.

The Indica does not survive as a book. What we have are quotations from it in later Greek writers such as Strabo, Arrian and Diodorus, which is why accounts of Mauryan Pataliputra drawn from it are secondhand.

Key facts

• Seleucus I Nicator sent Megasthenes as ambassador to Chandragupta Maurya's court at Pataliputra.
• Megasthenes wrote the Indica, which survives only as quotations in later Greek writers.
• The treaty ending the Seleucus-Chandragupta war gave Chandragupta territory in the north-west and Seleucus 500 war elephants.
• Antiochus I Soter sent Deimachus as his envoy to Bindusara.

Common traps

• Pairing Megasthenes with Alexander, because both names sit in the same chapter on Greek contact.
• Swapping Megasthenes and Deimachus, and with them Chandragupta and Bindusara.

No directly related past PYQ was found.