62 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 2 ! 



of the information obtained from the Mahawanso and its subordinate 

 commentaries. It would seem that there were nine Nandas, the pre- 

 decessors of Chandra Gupta, who ruled conjointly,* forming a co-equal 

 brotherhood similar to those of lower degree, so common amid the still 

 existing village communities of India ; designated in the vernacular 

 dialect, Bhaiydchdrd, proprietary fraternities. f TheBrahmanical chro- 

 nicles, though they do not directly confirm this statement of the 

 contemporaneous sovereignty of the Nandas, incidentally support such 

 a conclusion, as in the expressions, " the Brahman Kautilya will root 

 out the nine Nandas ;"$ and in the southern legend, quoted in the 

 introduction to the Play of the Mudrd Bdkshasa, the king is represent- 

 ed as, consigning the kingdom to his nine sons.§ I advert to this point 

 the more prominently, as one of the great difficulties has hitherto been 

 to explain or reconcile the apparent anomaly of Krananda's designating 

 himself in the coin legends as " the King, the great King, Krananda, 

 the brother of Amogha ;" and the question naturally arose, if Amogha 

 had no title, and no apparent position in the government, what was 

 the object of his brother's claiming relationship in so formal a manner 

 upon the state coinage ? The coincidence may now be satisfactorily 

 accounted for, by supposing Amogha to have been the eldest living 

 brother in the family oligarchy, a position recognised to this day, 

 while Krananda had already justified, by his talents and administrative 

 ability, the choice of the brotherhood, who had apparently elected him 



* Mahawanso, p. 21. " Kalasoko had ten sons; these brothers (conjointly) 

 ruled the empire, righteously, for twenty-two years. Subsequently there were 

 nine ; they also, according to their seniority, reigned for twenty-two years." 



Mahawanso, p. xxxviii. [from the commentary, the Tikct]. " Kalasoko' s own 

 Sons were ten brothers. Their names are specified in the Atthakatha. The 

 appellation of ' the nine Nandos' originates in nine of them beai'ing that pa- 

 tronymic title. ... in aforetime, during the conjoint administration of the (nine) 

 sons of Kalasoko. . . . His brothers next succeeded to the empire in the order 

 of their seniority. They altogether reigned 22 years. It was on this account 

 that (in the Mahawanso) it is stated that there were nine Nandos." See also 

 J. A. S. B. vi. 714, 726 (Buddhaghoso's Atthakatha) "the ten sons of Kalasoko 

 reigned 22 years. Subsequently to them, Nawanando reigned 22 years." 



f Wilson derives the chara from the Sanskrit dchdra, " institute." I should 

 prefer the local ch&ra, " pasturage," especially as the associate Bliaiya is in the 

 Indian form of the classic Aryan. Blvrdta. 



% Wilson's " Vishnu Purana," p. 467. See also note, p. 468, for various read- 

 ings from Bhagavata, Vayu and Matsya Pnranas. 



§ The Mudra Rakshasa, in Wilson's " Hindu Theatre," vol. ii. p. 144. For 

 other notices of the Nandas, see " Asiatic Researches," xx. 167 ; Rev. W. H. Mill, 

 J. A. S. B. iii. p. 343. Wilson's " Essays on Sanskrit Literature," i. 174, 178 ; 

 Burnouf, " I. 359 and Lotus de la bonne loi," p. 452 ; Max Muller, " Sanskrit 

 Literature," 275. 



