was one of the largest political and military empire in ancient India. Originating from the kingdom of Magadha in the Indo-Gangetic plains of modern Bihar and its capital city of Pataliputra (near modern Patna), the Empire was founded in 321 BCE by Chandragupta Maurya, who had overthrown the Nanda Dynasty and began expanding his power across central and western India. The Empire stretched to the north along the natural boundaries of the Himalayas and to the east, stretching around the modern boundaries of Assam and West Bengal. To the west, it reached beyond modern Pakistan and included significant portions of modern Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan and Baluchistan. The Empire was expanded into India's central and southern regions by Emperor Bindusara, but excluded a small portion of unexplored trial and forested regions near Kalinga. Following the conquest of Kalinga in a major war, Ashoka ended the military expansion of the empire. The kingdoms of Pandya and Chola in southern India thus preserved their independence, accepting the supremacy of the Mauryan emperor. The Mauryan Empire was perhaps the greatest empire to rule the Indian subcontinent second only to the Bharatvarsha. Its decline began fifty years after Ashoka's rule ended, and it dissolved in 185 BCE with the foundation of the Sunga Dynasty in Magadha.
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Under Chandragupta, the Mauryan Empire liberated the transindus, which was under macedonian occupation. He then defeated the invasion led by Seleucus I, a Greek general from Alexander's army. Under Chandragupta and his successors, internal and external trade, agriculture and economic activities thrived and expanded across India, with the creation of a single and efficient system of finance, administration and security. After the Kalinga War, the Empire experienced half a century of peace and security under Ashoka. Under him, India was a prosperous and stable empire of great economic and military power whose political influence and trade extended across West and Central Asia and Europe. Mauryan India was also exposed to an era of social harmony, religious transformation and expansion of the sciences and knowledge. Chandragupta Maurya's embrace of Jainism increased social and religious renewal and reform across society, while Ashoka's embrace of Buddhism was the foundation of the reign of social and political peace and non-violence across India. Ashoka sponsored the spreading of Buddhist ideals into Sri Lanka, South East Asia, West Asia and Mediterranean Europe.
.... The Mauryan empire is considered one of the greatest periods in Indian history. The Lion Capital of Asoka at Sarnath, is the emblem of India.
When Alexander the Great conquered the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent in 326 BCE, he allied with king Ambhi of Taxila (called Taxiles or Omphis in Greek sources), and with his support managed to subdue king Porus of Pauravas, a state of eastern Punjab, defeating him at the Battle of the Hydaspes River. Alexander thereafter established vassal states (satrapies), headed by the previous kings Ambhi and Porus, and founded several garrison towns. A Greek satrap named Philippus controlled a Macedonian occupation force. After his assassination he was replaced by the Thracian Eudamus. Alexander's steady inroads into the Indian subcontinent caused instability and panic amongst the small kingdoms who did not possess the strategic resources to forestall the invaders. Like Ambhi, several kings allied themselves with the Alexander to prevent their destruction and rub out regional competitors.
Following Alexanders' advance into Punjab, a brahmin named Kautilya Vishnugupta Chanakya travelled across the kingdoms of India's central regions in an attempt to build a coalition that would resist Alexander's forces. But he faced odds that rendered his mission futile: the kingdoms lacked resources and leadership to form the radical concept of a coalition. Chanakya traveled to Magadha, a kingdom that was large and militarily powerful and feared by its neighbors, but was again dismissed by its king Dhana, of the Nanda Dynasty. However, the prospect of battling Magadha in a major war was one of the factors that caused the refusal of his troops to go further east, Alexander returned to Babylon, and redeployed most of his troops west of the Indus. When Alexander died in Babylon soon after in 323 BCE, his empire fragmented, giving rise to Indo-Greek kingdoms across northwest India led by his erstwhile generals.
Chandragupta Maurya's rise to power is complemented by origins shrouded in mystery and controversy. On the one hand, a number of ancient Indian accounts, such as the drama Mudrarakshasa (Poem of Rakshasa - Rakshasa was the prime minister of Magadha) by Visakhadatta, describe his royal ancestry and even link him with the Nanda family. On the other, his fortune is often accounted to a twist of fate wherein his preceptor, Chanakya, is said to have observed this village boy's leadership of his peers, and a promising toughness of character. Supposedly the son of a peacock tamer (hence the name Maurya), he was given an advanced education by Chanakya. Chandragupta first emerges in Greek accounts as "Sandrokottos". As a young man, he is said to have met Alexander, angered him, and to have made a narrow escape. Chanakya's original intentions were to train a guerilla army under Chandragupta's command. Gathering young men and ex-soldiers from across central India, the guerilla forces attacked the demoralized and retreating Greek forces and defeated the Macedonian garrisons. Under principles outlined in the Arthashastra, Maurya built an extensive intelligence network, the first of its kind in India - of spies and informers who betrayed enemy plans and mis-informed them of Maurya's design.
Alexander's exit and death created a power vacuum and instability in India. Chanakya thus encouraged Chandragupta and his army to take over the throne of Magadha. Using his intelligence network, Chandragupta gathered many young men from across Magadha who were upset from the corrupt and oppressive rule of king Dhana, and resources necessary for his army to fight a long series of batles.
Preparing to invade Pataliputra, Maurya then hatched a plan devised by his preceptor. A battle was announced and the Magadhan army drawn from the city to a distant battlefield to engage Maurya's forces. But upon arrival, the army under the command of Magadha's prime minister, Rakshasa, found no enemy. Maurya re-directed his forces to sneak up on the city, and conducted a secretive and swift raid on the royal buildings, killing the monarch, loyal aides and royal officials. His army overpowered the city guard (weakened by the absence of the army). When the Magadhan army turned around towards the city, Chanakya made a diplomatic effort to make peace. He informed Rakshasa that his king was dead and re-assured him that the city was safe. He encouraged him to understand that his loyalty was to Magadha, not its dynasty, and insisted that he continue as prime minister. Chanakya also reiterated that choosing to fight would start a war that would severely affect Magadha and destroy the city. Rakshasa accepted Chanakya's efforts, and Chandragupta Maurya was legitimately installed as the new King of Magadha. While Rakshasa became Chandragupta's chief advisor, Chanakya assumed the position of an elder statesman.
Becoming the king of one of India's most powerful states, Chandragupta invaded the Punjab, after one of Alexander's satraps, Peithon of Media had tried to raise a coalition against him. He managed to conquer the Punjab capital of Taxila, one of ancient India's most important cities, increasing his power and consolidating his control.
Chandragupta was again in conflict with the Greeks, when Seleucus I, ruler of the Seleucid Empire, tried to reconquer the northwestern parts of India which had been lost, during a campaign in 305 BCE. He defeated Seleucus and then the two rulers exchanged a peace treaty, Chandragupta received the daughter of the Seleucid king Seleucus I and the strapies of Paropamisadae (Kamboja and Gandhara), Arachosia (Kandhahar) and Gedrosia (Balochistan) and Seleucus I received 500 war elephants that were to have a decisive role in his victory against western Hellenistic kings at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BCE. Diplomatic relations were established and several Greeks, such as the historian Megasthenes, resided at the Mauryan court. Chandragupta established a strong centralized state with a complex administration at Pataliputra, which, according to Magasthenes, was "surrounded by a wooden wall pierced by 64 gates and 570 towers— (and) rivaled the splendors of contemporaneous Persian sites such as Susa and Ecbatana."Chandragupta's son Bindusara extended the rule of the Mauryan empire towards central and southern India. He also had a Greek ambassador at his court, named Deimachus (Strabo 1–70).
Chandragupta's great grandson Ashokavardhan Maurya, better known as Ashoka (273- 232 BCE), is considered by contemporary historians as perhaps the greatest of Indian monarchs, and certainly one of the greatest throughout the world.
As a young prince, Ashoka was a brilliant commander who subjugated Ujjain and Taxila into the Empire. As monarch, he was ambitious and aggressive, re-asserting the Empire's superiority in southern and western India. But it was his conquest of Kalinga which proved to be the pivotal event of his life. Although Ashoka's army succeeded in overwhelming Kalinga forces of royal soldiers and civilian units, an estimated 100,000 soldiers and civilians were killed in the furious warfare. Hundreds of thousands of people were adversely affected by the destruction and fallout of war. When he personally witnessed the devastation, Ashoka began feeling remorse. Although the annexation of Kalinga was completed, Ashoka embraced the teachings of Gautama Buddha, and renounced war and violence. For a monarch in ancient times, this was a historic feat.
Ashoka implemented principles of ahimsa by banning hunting and violent sports activity and ending indentured and forced labor (many thousands of people in war-ravaged Kalinga had been forced to labor and servitude). While he maintained a large and powerful army to keep the peace and maintain authority, Ashoka expanded friendly relations with states across Asia and Europe, and sponsored Buddhist missions. Embarking on a massive public works building campaign across the country, over 40 years of peace, harmony and prosperity made him one of the most successful and famous monarchs in history. He remains an idyllic figure of inspiration in modern India.
The Edicts of Ashoka, set in stone, some of them written in Greek and Aramaic, refer to the Greeks, Kambojas and Gandharas as a people forming a frontier region of his empire and also attest that Ashoka sent envoys to the Greek rulers in the West as far as the Mediterranean. The edicts faultlessly name each of the rulers of the Hellenic world at the time such as Amtiyoko (Antiochus), Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander.
The reign of Ashoka was followed for 50 years by a succession of weaker kings. Brhadrata, the last ruler of the Mauryan dynasty, ruled territories that had shrunk considerably from the time of emperor Ashoka, but he was still upholding the Buddhist faith. He was assassinated in 185 BCE during a military parade by the commander-in-chief of his guard, the Brahmin general Pusyamitra Sunga, who then took over the throne and established the Sunga dynasty.
The assassination of Brhadrata and the rise of the Sunga empire led to a wave of persecution for Buddhists, and a resurgence of Hinduism. The fall of the Mauryas left the Khyber unguarded, and a wave of foreign invasion followed. The Greco-Bactrian king, Demetrius, capitalized on the break-up of Pan-Indian power and conquered Southern Afghanistan and parts of Northwestern India around 180 BC. The Greeks would maintain holdings on the trans-indus and make forays into central India for about a century. However, the extent of their domains and the lengths of their rule are subject to much debate. Numismatic evidence indicates that they retained holdings in the subcontinent right up to the birth of Christ. Although the extent of their successes against indigenous powers such as the Shungas, Satavahanas, and Kalingas are unclear, what is clear is that Scythian tribes brought about the demise of the Indo-Greeks and retained lands in the trans-indus and Gujarat.
