Parents Bindusara was born to
Chandragupta, the founder of the Mauryan Empire. This is attested by several sources, including the various
Puranas and the
Mahavamsa. The
Dipavamsa, on the other hand, names Bindusara as the son of the king
Shushunaga. The prose version of
Ashokavadana states that Bindusara was the son of
Nanda and a 10th-generation descendant of
Bimbisara. Like
Dipavamsa, it omits Chandragupta's name altogether. The metrical version of
Ashokavadana contains a similar genealogy with some variations. Chandragupta had a marriage alliance with the
Seleucids, which has led to speculation that Bindusara's mother might have been Greek or Macedonian. However, there is no evidence of this. According to the 12th century Jain writer Hemachandra's
Parishishta-Parvan, the name of Bindusara's mother was
Durdhara. Other
Puranas give different names for Chandragupta's successor; these appear to be clerical errors. The Jain work
Rajavali-Katha states that his birth name was Simhasena. Both Buddhist and Jain texts mention a legend about how Bindusara got his name. Both accounts state that Chandragupta's minister
Chanakya used to mix small doses of poison in the emperor's food to build his
immunity against possible
poisoning attempts. One day, Chandragupta, not knowing about the poison, shared his food with his pregnant wife. According to the Buddhist legends (
Mahavamsa and
Mahavamsa Tikka), the queen was seven days away from delivery at this time. Chanakya arrived just as the queen ate the poisoned morsel. Realizing that she was going to die, he decided to save the unborn child. He cut off the queen's head and cut open her belly with a sword to take out the foetus. Over the next seven days, he placed the foetus in the belly of a goat freshly killed each day. After seven days, Chandragupta's son was "born". He was named Bindusara, because his body was spotted with drops ("
bindu") of goat's blood. The Jain text
Parishishta-Parvan names the queen as
Durdhara, and states that Chanakya entered the room the very moment she collapsed. To save the child, he cut open the dead queen's womb and took the baby out. By this time, a drop ("
bindu") of poison had already reached the baby and touched its head. Therefore, Chanakya named him Bindusara, meaning "the strength of the drop".
Family The prose version of
Ashokavadana names three sons of Bindusara:
Sushima,
Ashoka and
Vigatashoka. The mother of Ashoka and Vigatashoka was a woman named
Subhadrangi, the daughter of a
Brahmin of the
Champa city. When she was born, an astrologer named Pingalwatsa predicted that one of her sons would be a king, and the other a religious man. When she grew up, her father took her to Bindusara's palace in
Pataliputra. Bindusara's wives, jealous of her beauty, trained her as the royal
barber. Once, when the Emperor was pleased with her hairdressing skills, she expressed her desire to be a queen. Bindusara was initially apprehensive about her low
class, but made her the chief queen after learning about her Brahmin descent. The couple had two sons: Ashoka and Vigatashoka. Bindusara did not like Ashoka because his "limbs were hard to the touch". Another legend in
Divyavadana names Ashoka's mother as
Janapada-kalyanibut according to scholar
Ananda W. P. Guruge, this is not a name, but an epithet. According to the
Vamsatthappakasini (
Mahavamsa Tika), the name of Ashoka's mother was Dhamma. The
Mahavamsa states that Bindusara had 101 sons from 16 women. The eldest of these was Sumana / Sushima, and the youngest was Tishya (or Tissa). Ashoka and Tishya were born to the same mother. == Reign ==