kharagpur an archaeological study into the history of bengal being conducted by a team from iit kharagpur has stumbled upon an exciting find king sandrocottus mentioned by greek explorer megasthenes was not chandragupta maurya but chandraketu whose fort chandraketugarh is in presentday north 24parganas about 35km from kolkatamegasthenes visited india in the third century bc after alexandars invasion of india and gives a detailed account of what he saw in indicahere he mentions king sandrocottus as one of the most powerful kings of gangahriday the gangetic delta that spread over the five mouths of the river and was a continuum of a landmass comprising anga banga and kalingathe exploration that has been underway for some months now centres around chandraketugarh interestingly it is progressing in tan dem with the one that is being conducted by the archaeological survey of india asi under the leadership of p mishra the recently retired directorgeneral of asi the iit faculty members who have been exploring the site say they have been able to find a direct correlation to certain names and contexts mentioned by megasthenes in indica to that related to chandraketugarh in fact they claim to have proof that sandrocottus was chandraketuthe popular belief is that chandraketu was chandra gupta maurya said joy sen head of iit kgps architecture department the principal investigator of the project being conducted under the institutes sandhi initiative funded by the ministry of human resources development but we will disprove that the greek account mentions xandramese who is definitely not nanda predecessor of chandragupta maurya again sandrocyptus of the greek account was not bindusara of the mauryan dynasty he added what this means is that chandraketu was a far mo re powerful king of anga desh towards the end of the 5th century or beginning of the 4th century so powerful that alexander himself met himthis has helped the faculty members to prove they say the very important point that it was not magadha of chandragupta maurya but angadesha that was the more important kingdom at that time in fact magadha which came a couple of centuries later was smaller than angadesh which was what undivided bengal looked like at that time it was much later that this got divided into anga banga and kalinga when the supremacy of the bengal kings started waningwe have been able to trace the antiquity of bengal to 2000 bc and have been able to show how right from the time of the ramayana through the mahabharata and jain and buddhist texts like jaina bhagabati sukta and anguttaranikaya there is a clear thread that shows how prosperous and powerful dynas ties ruled angadesh and have always been held in high esteem by the rest of india said joy sensen added that sandrocottus according to megasthenes had a large empire and they will prove that its outlines were different from the mauryan empire which did not even include kalinga so palibothra identified as pataliputra was the capital of sandrocottus and