Indian History Quiz: Mauryan Empire

The correct answer is B, Megasthenes. After the treaty of about 305 BCE between Chandragupta Maurya and Seleucus Nicator, the Greek ruler sent Megasthenes to Pataliputra as his ambassador. Megasthenes wrote an account of India called the Indica, which is lost and survives only in quotations by later Greek writers such as Arrian, Strabo and Diodorus; it describes the wooden walls of Pataliputra, the municipal boards that ran the city and a society said to be divided into seven classes.

Option A, Deimachus, was an ambassador too, but he was sent by the Seleucid king Antiochus I to the court of Chandragupta's son Bindusara, which is the usual trap in this question. Option C, Dionysius, was sent by Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt and belongs to a later reign. Option D, Ptolemy, was the ruler who sent Dionysius, not an ambassador himself.

The correct answer is B, Major Rock Edict XIII. It is the longest of the fourteen major rock edicts and the only source in Ashoka's own words for the war on Kalinga, the number of people killed, deported and dead of other causes, and the remorse that turned him from conquest by arms to conquest by Dhamma. The edict also names the Greek kings of the west and the southern peoples beyond his frontier.

Option A, Major Rock Edict XII, is the edict on tolerance, which asks the followers of every sect to honour one another and to avoid praising their own sect while running down others. Option C, Pillar Edict VII, is Ashoka's late review of the measures he had taken for Dhamma, not a record of the war. Option D, Minor Rock Edict I, records his personal commitment to Buddhism and his effort since joining the order, and in a few copies it gives his personal name.

The correct answer is B, James Prinsep. Prinsep, an official of the mint at Calcutta and secretary of the Asiatic Society, worked out the values of the Brahmi letters in 1837 and so made Ashoka's edicts readable. Until then the inscriptions were known but silent, and the identification of Devanampiya Piyadasi with the Ashoka of Buddhist tradition followed from this work.

Option A, Alexander Cunningham, was the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India and surveyed many of the sites, but he came later and used the readings Prinsep had established. Option C, John Marshall, headed the Archaeological Survey in the early twentieth century and is associated with the announcement of the Harappan discoveries, not with Brahmi. Option D, William Jones, founded the Asiatic Society in 1784 and showed the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, but he died long before the script was read.

The correct answer is B, Sarnath. The Sarnath capital has four lions standing back to back on an abacus that carries an elephant, a bull, a horse and a lion separated by wheels, the whole resting on an inverted lotus. It was adopted as the State Emblem of India, and the wheel from its abacus is the chakra of the national flag. Sarnath, near Varanasi, is also where the Buddha preached his first sermon.

Option A, Sanchi, has an Ashokan pillar with a four-lion capital as well, but it is broken and it is not the emblem. Option C, Vaishali, carries a pillar with a single lion capital facing north, the direction of the Buddha's last journey. Option D, Lauriya Nandangarh in Bihar, also has a single lion capital on a well preserved shaft, so all three are plausible distractors for a student who remembers only the word lion.

The correct answer is B, Samaharta. In the Arthashastra the Samaharta is the officer in charge of assessing and collecting the revenue of the realm from land, mines, forests, trade routes and city dues, and of keeping the accounts of income and expenditure on which the state ran.

Option A, the Sannidhata, was the chief treasurer, the officer who looked after the storehouses and the treasury into which that revenue was paid; the pair is the standard trap in this question. Option C, the Rajuka, was a rural officer with authority over the countryside, who in Ashoka's Pillar Edict IV is given powers of reward and punishment and is told to work for the welfare of the people. Option D, the Pradeshika, was a district level official, associated in the edicts with touring on circuit every five years along with the Rajukas and the Yuktas.

The correct answer is A, the minor rock edict at Maski. Almost all of Ashoka's inscriptions call him only Devanampiya Piyadasi, the beloved of the gods, of amiable appearance. The Maski edict in Karnataka is the famous exception that uses the personal name Ashoka and confirmed that the Piyadasi of the edicts is the Ashoka of Buddhist tradition; Gujarra, Nettur and Udegolam carry the name as well.

Option B, the Girnar rock in Gujarat, carries the set of fourteen major rock edicts, all of them under the royal titles only. Option C, the Sarnath pillar edict, is the so called schism edict warning monks and nuns against dividing the order, and again uses the titles. Option D, the Barabar cave inscriptions, record the gift of caves to the Ajivikas, and they too use the title Devanampiya rather than the name.

The correct answer is C, Brihadratha. He was the last of the Mauryas and was killed about 185 BCE by his own commander-in-chief Pushyamitra Sunga, who then founded the Sunga dynasty with its capital at Pataliputra. The event closes the Mauryan period in every standard chronology.

Option A, Dasharatha, was a grandson of Ashoka who ruled soon after him and who, like his grandfather, granted caves in the Nagarjuni hills to the Ajivikas. Option B, Samprati, is remembered in Jain tradition as a patron of that faith and is placed among the later Mauryas. Option D, Shalishuka, was another of the weak successors named in the Puranic lists. All three belong to the decline of the dynasty, but the ruler on the throne when it ended was Brihadratha.

The correct answer is A, Rudradaman I at Junagadh. The Junagadh rock inscription of the Shaka ruler Rudradaman, the earliest long inscription in polished Sanskrit, records that the embankment of the Sudarshana lake in Saurashtra was originally built by Pushyagupta, a governor of Chandragupta Maurya, and that conduits were added by Tushaspha in Ashoka's reign; it then describes the repair of the dam in Rudradaman's own time.

Option B, the Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela of Kalinga, describes that king's campaigns and public works, not the Saurashtra lake. Option C, the Prayag prashasti of Samudragupta, composed by Harisena, lists the Gupta ruler's conquests. Option D is wrong because the Kandahar inscriptions of Ashoka are bilingual Greek and Aramaic texts on Dhamma, and the same rock at Junagadh, not Kandahar, carries Ashoka's major rock edicts in Gujarat.

The correct answer is B, Moggaliputta Tissa. Buddhist tradition places the Third Council at Pataliputra in Ashoka's reign under the presidency of Moggaliputta Tissa, who is credited with settling disputes in the order and with the compilation of the Kathavatthu, a work of the Abhidhamma Pitaka. Missions were sent out after the council, including that of Mahinda to Sri Lanka.

Option A, Vasumitra, presided over the Fourth Council held in Kashmir in the reign of Kanishka, with Ashvaghosha as his deputy. Option C, Mahakassapa, presided over the First Council at Rajagriha soon after the death of the Buddha, when Ananda and Upali recited the teachings. Option D, Sabakami, presided over the Second Council at Vaishali about a century after the Buddha, called over disputes about monastic discipline.

The correct answer is A, the Ajivikas. The dedicatory inscriptions in the Barabar hills record the gift of the caves by Ashoka, and of the nearby Nagarjuni caves by his grandson Dasharatha, to the Ajivikas, an ascetic sect founded by Makkhali Gosala that taught a strict doctrine of destiny. The caves are famous for their mirror-like polished interiors, the same finish seen on the Mauryan pillars.

Option B is wrong because Jaina rock-cut caves of the period are found instead in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri hills of Odisha, excavated under Kharavela. Option C is wrong because the earliest Buddhist rock-cut chaityas and viharas, such as those at Bhaja, Karle and Kanheri, belong to the later centuries of the Western Deccan. Option D is wrong because Shaiva rock-cut temples, such as the Kailasa at Ellora, are many centuries later.