Note 45 — Kyros

The same “playing king” is found in the Hindoo myth of Candragupta, the founder of the Maurja dynasty, whom his mother exposed after his birth, in a vessel at the gate of a cowshed, where a herder found him and raised him. Later on he came to a hunter, where he as cow-herder played “king” with the other boys, and as king ordered that the hands and feet of the great criminals be chopped off. [The mutilation motive occurs also in the Kyros saga, and is generally widely distributed.] At his command, the separated limbs returned to their proper position. Kanakja, who once looked on as they were at play, admired the boy, and bought him from the hunter for one thousand Kârshâpana; at home he discovered that the boy was a Maurja. (After Lassen’s Indische Altertumskunde, II, 196, Annotation 1.)