Mauryan Empire: Ashoka, Edicts and Administration

The Mauryan Empire was the first state to bring almost the whole of the Indian subcontinent under one administration, and it is the single most heavily examined chapter of ancient Indian history. Founded about 321 BCE and ended about 185 BCE, it gave India its first dated inscriptions, its first professional bureaucracy described in a surviving manual of statecraft, and in Ashoka a ruler whose own words can still be read on rock and stone.

Foundation under Chandragupta Maurya

Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the last Nanda ruler of Magadha, Dhana Nanda, with the help of his teacher and minister Chanakya, also called Kautilya or Vishnugupta. The empire he built was centred on Pataliputra, the Magadhan capital at the meeting of the Ganga and the Son. In about 305 BCE Chandragupta fought Seleucus Nicator, the Greek general who had inherited Alexander's eastern provinces; the treaty that followed gave the Mauryas the territories of Aria, Arachosia, Gedrosia and the Paropanisadae in return for five hundred war elephants, and Seleucus sent Megasthenes as his ambassador to Pataliputra. Megasthenes wrote the Indica, which survives only in quotations by later Greek writers and which describes the capital's wooden walls, its municipal boards and a society divided into seven classes. Jain tradition holds that Chandragupta gave up the throne, became a Jain ascetic under Bhadrabahu and died by the rite of sallekhana at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka.

Bindusara and the accession of Ashoka

Bindusara, the son of Chandragupta, was called Amitraghata, the slayer of foes, by Greek writers, who record that he asked the Seleucid king Antiochus I for sweet wine, dried figs and a philosopher. Antiochus sent Deimachus as ambassador to his court. Bindusara held the empire together and probably extended it into the Deccan; the far south, with the Cholas, Pandyas, Satiyaputras and Keralaputras, stayed outside the empire but is named in Ashoka's edicts as neighbouring realms.

Ashoka and his edicts

Ashoka, who ruled roughly from 268 to 232 BCE, is known from his own inscriptions, where he calls himself Devanampiya Piyadasi, the beloved of the gods, of amiable appearance. His personal name Ashoka appears only in a few minor rock edicts, such as the one at Maski in Karnataka and those at Gujarra, Nettur and Udegolam. His war on Kalinga, fought in about the ninth year of his reign, is described in Major Rock Edict XIII, the only edict not inscribed in Kalinga itself; the remorse it records turned him to Dhamma, a code of social ethics rather than a sect, enforced through officers called Dhamma Mahamattas. The inscriptions were engraved in Brahmi in most of India, in Kharoshthi in the north-west at Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra, and in Greek and Aramaic at Kandahar. James Prinsep deciphered the Brahmi of these edicts in 1837, and the empire's history has been rebuilt from them ever since.

Administration, economy and society

The Arthashastra of Kautilya, a manual of statecraft rather than a history, describes a highly centralised state. The king was helped by a council of ministers; the Samaharta was the chief collector of revenue and the Sannidhata the chief treasurer. Four provinces are named in the edicts with their headquarters at Taxila, Ujjain, Tosali and Suvarnagiri, each usually under a prince called Kumara. Below them the empire was divided into districts and villages, with officers such as the Rajukas, Pradeshikas and Yuktas, and the Rajukas were also given the duty of touring on circuit every five years. The state collected the bhaga, a share of the produce, and the bali, and ran mines, forests and irrigation works; the Junagadh rock inscription of the Shaka ruler Rudradaman records that the Sudarshana lake in Saurashtra was built by Pushyagupta, a governor of Chandragupta, and provided with conduits by Tushaspha under Ashoka.

Art, architecture and decline

Mauryan art is known for its monolithic polished sandstone pillars, their animal capitals and the rock-cut Barabar caves near Gaya, which Ashoka and his grandson Dasharatha granted to the Ajivika sect. The Lion Capital from Sarnath, a four-lion capital over an abacus carrying a bull, a horse, a lion and an elephant separated by wheels, was adopted as the State Emblem of India. The Third Buddhist Council was held at Pataliputra under Moggaliputta Tissa, and missions were sent abroad, including Mahinda and Sanghamitta to Sri Lanka. After Ashoka the empire broke up under weak successors, a heavy administrative burden and pressure on the frontiers, and the last ruler Brihadratha was killed by his commander-in-chief Pushyamitra Sunga, who founded the Sunga dynasty.