Helena, naturally, would have been there walking under the mango groves with her retinue of dasis: maids meant to serve her. It was at Kumhrar that the palace of Chandragupta Maurya once stood.

In doing so, a swarm of questions come to life. On a still moonlit night as you walk along the ancient ruins of Kumhrar, Bulandibagh or the ancient ghats of the river Ganga in today’s Patna, you perhaps will have the eerie feeling of making an imaginary rendezvous with Helena. It was a most turbulent time of history, when the Vishkanyas or poison maidens ruled the diplomatic, political scenario here. Taking place in 305 BCE, it was the first Indo-Grecian political marriage in the subcontinent. Helena was teen-aged when she married Sandrocottos: as the Greeks called Chandragupta Maurya, ruler of the Magadh Empire. Her real-life character, however, was a very dominant female character in those ancient days. The woman in question, her father a Macedonian and mother an Iranian, married the Vishpurush some 2,300 years ago in Pataliputra, today’s Patna in Bihar.įolklore, archaeological evidence, books in Jainism, Buddhism, Brahmanism and the records of ancient Grecian chroniclers make Helena a character shrouded in mystery. The most sensible answer to this very interesting note of interrogation may be an emphatic No, but just the contrary took place in one case. Can the daughter of a military commander of a far foreign land marry an Indian king who is Vishpurush – poison man?

Chandragupta maurya serial 39