#ChandraguptaII

“The most-praised reign in ancient Indian history is the one where we finally stop having to take the king's word for it — a foreign monk vouched for the peace, a rustless iron pillar still vouches for the engineers, and a banned-feeling fragment of a play vouches that the family's dirty secret was real enough to need deleting.”

“He finished the empire his father built, annexed India's western coast and its ports — and then a Chinese pilgrim walked across the whole machine and wrote down what it was like, giving India its first outside report card: glowing on prosperity and freedom, damning on untouchability.”