Chandragupta Maurya and Jainism

The tradition

Digambara accounts, elaborated in medieval texts and reflected in later inscriptions at Shravanabelagola, state that Chandragupta received Jain initiation from Bhadrabahu, accompanied him south during a twelve-year famine in Magadha, and ended his life by the fast to death on the hill now called Chandragiri. A cave there bears his name, and the site's importance to Digambara Jains is partly founded on the association.

The difficulty

The evidence is late. The earliest inscriptions at Shravanabelagola linking the site to a Bhadrabahu date to several centuries after the events, and some refer to a later teacher of the same name rather than the shruta-kevalin. Greek sources on Chandragupta, and the Arthashastra tradition, say nothing of an abdication or a Jain end. Buddhist sources make different claims about his religious affiliation, and Brahmanical ones different again.

Historians therefore treat the account as a tradition that grew around the site rather than as a record of what happened. What is not disputed is that Jainism was well established in Karnataka early, and that the association of the Mauryan founder with the tradition was believed and acted upon for a long period.

Why it matters

The claim is significant less for what it establishes about Chandragupta than for what it shows about how religious communities in India attached themselves to imperial memory. Buddhists claimed Ashoka, and could point to his edicts; Jains claimed his grandfather, and could point to a hill. Both claims shaped the sites, the patronage and the historiography that followed.