Post-Mauryan Period: Kushanas, Satavahanas and PYQs

The years between the fall of the Mauryas about 185 BCE and the rise of the Guptas in 319 CE are called the post-Mauryan period. No single power held the whole subcontinent in these centuries. The Sungas and the Kanvas ruled Magadha, a chain of foreign dynasties entered through the north-west, and the Satavahanas built the first large state of the Deccan. Examiners return to the period because it is full of fixed pairs that can be asked in one line: a ruler and his inscription, a king and his court scholar, a dynasty and its capital.

The Sungas and the Kanvas

Pushyamitra Sunga, the commander-in-chief of the last Mauryan ruler Brihadratha, killed his master about 185 BCE and founded the Sunga dynasty. Pataliputra remained the capital and Vidisha served as an important second centre. Pushyamitra performed the Ashvamedha sacrifice, which marks the revival of Brahmanical ritual after the Mauryas. The stupa at Bharhut and the stone railing and gateways added to the Sanchi stupa belong to Sunga times. Patanjali, who wrote the Mahabhashya as a commentary on the grammar of Panini, lived in this age. The last Sunga ruler Devabhuti was killed by his own minister Vasudeva, who founded the short-lived Kanva dynasty about 73 BCE.

Indo-Greeks, Shakas and Parthians

The Indo-Greeks, also called Bactrian Greeks or Yavanas, were the first rulers in India to issue gold coins and the first whose coins carry the portrait and the name of the issuing king. Menander, called Milinda in Indian sources, is their best known ruler, and his conversation with the Buddhist monk Nagasena is recorded in the Pali text Milindapanho. The Heliodorus pillar at Besnagar near Vidisha was raised by Heliodorus, a Greek envoy of Antialcidas, who describes himself on it as a devotee of Vasudeva. The Shakas or Scythians followed them into western India. Rudradaman I of the Western Kshatrapa line is the famous Shaka ruler; his Junagadh rock inscription of about 150 CE is the first long inscription in polished Sanskrit and records the repair of the Sudarshana lake, a reservoir first built in Mauryan times. Nahapana of the Kshaharata Shaka family was defeated by the Satavahana king Gautamiputra Satakarni, who restruck his silver coins. The Parthians or Pahlavas ruled briefly in the north-west under Gondophernes, in whose reign St Thomas is believed to have come to India.

The Kushanas and Kanishka

The Kushanas were a branch of the Yuezhi people of Central Asia. Kujula Kadphises founded the line, Vima Kadphises issued a large gold coinage and showed himself as a devotee of Shiva, and Kanishka I, who ruled from about 78 CE, is counted the greatest of them. The Saka era, which began in 78 CE and is the basis of the Indian national calendar, is generally credited to Kanishka. His capital was Purushapura, the modern Peshawar, and Mathura grew into the second capital of the empire. The Rabatak inscription, found in Afghanistan, gives the royal genealogy of the family. Kanishka convened the Fourth Buddhist Council in Kashmir under the presidency of Vasumitra with Ashvaghosha as his deputy, and there the Mahayana school took firm shape. His court is remembered for Ashvaghosha, the author of the Buddhacharita, the physician Charaka and the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, who taught the doctrine of Shunyavada.

The Satavahanas of the Deccan

Simuka founded the Satavahana dynasty, whose capital was Pratishthana, the modern Paithan on the Godavari. Satavahana kings took their mothers' names, so a king is called Gautamiputra or Vashishthiputra, an unusual matrilineal naming in a patriarchal society. Gautamiputra Satakarni is the greatest ruler of the line; the Nasik prashasti, issued by his mother Gautami Balashri, praises him as the destroyer of the Shakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas and as the one who stopped the mixing of the four varnas. Vashishthiputra Pulumavi succeeded him. Hala, another Satavahana king, compiled the Gathasaptasati, an anthology of seven hundred love verses in Prakrit. The Satavahanas were the first Indian rulers to make land grants to Brahmins and to Buddhist monks by inscription, a practice that shaped later Indian polity.

Art, trade and what survives

Three schools of sculpture grew in these centuries. The Gandhara school worked in grey schist in the north-west and shaped the Buddha with Greek and Roman features, wavy hair and heavy drapery. The Mathura school used spotted red sandstone and produced indigenous figures of the Buddha, the Jain tirthankaras and Hindu deities. The Amaravati school of the lower Krishna valley, under Satavahana patronage, carved white marble panels of scenes from the life of the Buddha. The first images of the Buddha in human form belong to this period, to Gandhara and Mathura alike. Trade with the Roman world was at its height: the Greek handbook Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describes the ports of the western coast, and Arikamedu near Puducherry has yielded Roman pottery and coins. The rock-cut chaitya at Karle, the caves at Nasik and Bhaja and the monastery sites of the Deccan were cut with the gifts of merchants and guilds of this trading age.