Did Chandragupta Marya become a Jain monk
There is absolutely zero historical evidence that Chandragupta Maurya ever renounced his Vedic Hindu faith to become a Jain monk.
This myth actually traces back to a mistaken reading of a 7th-century inscription at Śravaṇa Beḷagoḷa by B. Lewis Rice, Director of Archaeology in Mysore, in 1889. The inscription describes a Jain monk, Bhadrabāhu, who traveled south with his disciple, an ācārya named Prabhāchandra, and who later died after performing the Jain ritual fast (sallekhanā). Rice assumed that this Prabhāchandra was simply Chandragupta Maurya under a monastic name.
But that interpretation doesn’t hold up!
As historian John F. Fleet clarified in The Indian Antiquary (Vol. XXI, 1892), Rice’s conclusion was based on a complete misreading. The inscription actually refers to a later Bhadrabāhu, from Ujjain - not the one from Mauryan times and his disciple Prabhāchandra, who had no connection to Chandragupta Maurya.
Some Digambara Jain traditions later speculated that this Prabhāchandra may have been Samprati Maurya, Ashoka’s grandson, but even that remains uncertain. What is certain is that Chandragupta Maurya is not mentioned anywhere in the Śravaṇa Beḷagoḷa inscription.
So, to be clear: There is no inscription, literary, or archaeological evidence that Chandragupta Maurya became a Jain monk or died through sallekhanā.
The entire lie is a 19th-century colonial-era blunder of a misinterpretation that was repeated often enough to pass as a “fact”.
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