Chandragupta Maurya, born around 350 BCE, is said in later tradition to have met Alexander as a young man. With his adviser Chanakya, or Kautilya, a Brahmin teacher of Taxila and the reputed author of the Arthashastra, he raised an army from the peoples of the north-west.
After Alexander's death he drove out the Greek garrisons from the Punjab and overthrew the Nanda kings of Magadha, founding the Mauryan empire with its capital at Pataliputra. Around 305 BCE he fought Seleucus, Alexander's successor in the east, and gained the lands up to the Hindu Kush; Seleucus sent the ambassador Megasthenes, whose account of India survives in fragments.
Jain tradition says he gave up his throne and died as a monk, fasting, at Shravanabelagola in the south. His grandson Ashoka inherited an empire that included the whole of the Punjab.