Chandraguta Maurya

Chandragupta Maurya was the founder of the Maurya Empire in India. He is credited with bringing together the small fragmented kingdoms of the country and combining them into a single large empire. As per the Greek and Latin accounts, King Chandragupta Maurya is known as Sandracottos or Andracottus. During his reign, the Maurya Empire stretched from Bengal and Assam in the East, to Afghanistan and Balochistan in the West, to Kashmir and Nepal in the North and to the  Deccan Plateau in the South.

Ultimately, Chandragupta seems to have grown weary of being a king and conqueror. In 298 B.C., he either converted to or returned to Jainism (his earlier religious beliefs are unknown), and abdicated from the throne. After living an extreme ascetic lifestyle for an unknown amount of time, he chose to die by fasting, a Jain ritual known as santhara and seen as an ethically acceptable alternative to suicide when one feels one has achieved one's goals and purpose in life and is spiritually prepared for death. A temple in Karnataka supposedly marks the site where Chandragupta ended his life.
In 298, following the abdication, Chandragupta's son Bindusara took the throne. He in turn was the father of Ashoka, the first Maurya emperor to convert to Buddhism.