Introduction
Dhana Nanda was the last king of the powerful Nanda dynasty of Magadha, whose overthrow by Chandragupta Maurya, guided by the strategist Chanakya, marks the founding moment of the Maurya Empire.
Family
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The Fall of a Dynasty
Greek and Latin sources describe the Nanda kingdom Alexander's forces heard of but did not attempt to invade as extraordinarily wealthy and militarily formidable, making its overthrow by the comparatively obscure Chandragupta all the more significant a historical turning point. Buddhist (Mahavamsa) and Jain (Parishishtaparvan) traditions differ in specific narrative details of the conflict, but agree on its broad outline: Dhana Nanda's unpopular or oppressive rule, Chanakya's personal grievance against the Nanda court, and the eventual military campaign that installed Chandragupta as the founder of a new imperial line.
This article records the Maurya Empire (c. 4th-2nd century BCE) as historical genealogy reconstructed from Ashoka's own rock and pillar edicts, Greek and Latin accounts of contact with the Mauryas, and later Buddhist, Jain and Puranic traditions composed well after the events they describe; where these traditions genuinely disagree, that disagreement is noted rather than resolved into invented certainty.