Indian History · Chronicle IV of XI
Chandragupta and Ashoka
India's first empire, from Chandragupta and Chanakya to Ashoka's turn to the Buddhist dharma.
The FoundingPolitical
Guided by the shrewd Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya overthrows the Nandas and founds India's first empire.
A young adventurer aided by the brilliant strategist Chanakya — author of the Arthashastra, a ruthless manual of statecraft — Chandragupta seized the Nanda throne at Pataliputra and forged a centralized empire across northern India. From a single capital he ruled through a vast bureaucracy, standing army and network of spies.
The FoundingPolitical
Chandragupta defeats Seleucus, Alexander's successor, gaining vast lands and 500 war-elephants in the peace.
When Seleucus tried to recover Alexander's Indian conquests, Chandragupta drove him back and won the eastern provinces of the Greek empire, sealing the peace with a marriage alliance and a gift of five hundred elephants. The Greek envoy Megasthenes lived at Pataliputra and described its splendour, giving the classical world its first detailed picture of India.
Ashoka the GreatPolitical
Chandragupta's grandson Ashoka inherits and extends the empire to nearly the whole subcontinent.
The greatest of the Mauryas came to power as a hard and ambitious ruler. Under Ashoka the empire reached its height, stretching from Afghanistan to the south of the peninsula — the most nearly complete unification of India before modern times. Only the far south lay beyond his grasp.
Ashoka the GreatMilitary
Ashoka's brutal conquest of Kalinga, with its vast slaughter, fills him with remorse and changes his life.
The war against the independent kingdom of Kalinga was won at a terrible cost — by Ashoka's own account, a hundred thousand slain and many more deported. Sickened by the suffering he had caused, the emperor renounced war forever. It was, he declared on stone, the moment he embraced the dharma — a rare confession of guilt by any ruler in history.
The DharmaReligious
Ashoka has his message of dharma — tolerance, non-violence and welfare — carved on rocks and pillars across the empire.
In edicts inscribed on polished stone pillars and rock faces — the earliest surviving Indian writing since the Indus — Ashoka urged compassion, respect for all faiths, care for animals, and the planting of wells and shade-trees. He appointed officers of dharma and softened the harsh Mauryan state. His lion capital at Sarnath is today the emblem of the Republic of India.
The DharmaReligious
Ashoka sends Buddhist missionaries as far as Sri Lanka and the Greek kingdoms, spreading the faith beyond India.
Ashoka convened a great Buddhist council and dispatched missions across Asia and to the Hellenistic west. His son Mahinda is said to have carried the teaching to Sri Lanka, where it took deep root. Through his patronage a regional creed began its transformation into one of the great world religions.
The FallPolitical
Half a century after Ashoka, the last Maurya is overthrown and the great empire dissolves.
After Ashoka's death the empire weakened, its huge army and bureaucracy a burden as central control slipped. In 185 BC the general Pushyamitra Shunga killed the last Maurya emperor and seized the throne. India fragmented once more into regional states, but the Mauryan ideal of a united subcontinent endured as a memory and a model.
