ASHOKA: THE EMPEROR WHO GAVE UP

WAR TIMELINE:

• 350 BCE - 275 BCE

Life of Kautilya, Indian stateman and philosopher,

chief advisor and Prime Minister of the Indian
Emperor Chandragupta.

• 340 BCE - 298 BCE

Life of Indian Emperor Chandragupta, first ruler of

the Mauryan Empire.

• 321 BCE - c. 297 BCE

Reign of Chandragupta Maurya, first ruler of the

Mauryan Empire.

• 321 BCE

Dhana Nanda, king of Magadha, is killed by

Chandragupta Maurya.
• 320 BCE

Chandragupta Maurya seizes the throne of

Magadhan and expands the kingdom over northern
and central India.

• 320 BCE - c. 180 BCE

Mauryan rule in the Gandhara region,

beginning with Chandragupta Maurya.

• 305 BCE

Emperor Chandragupta signs a treaty with Seleucos

I, establishing borders and giving the Punjab to
Chandragupta in return for 500 war elephants.

• 300 BCE - 273 BCE

Reign of Bindusara, the second ruler of the

Mauryan Empire.

• 298 BCE
 Chandragupta voluntarily abdicates the throne in
favour of his son Bindusara. Jain sources say that
Chandragupta turned into an ascetic and follower
of Jainism, migrated south and starved himself to
death.

• 297 BCE - 273 BCE

Chandragupta's son, Bindusara, rules and expands

the Mauryan Empire.

• 268 BCE

Ashoka becomes emperor of the Mauryan Empire

in India.

• 268 BCE - 232 BCE

Reign of Ashoka the Great, third ruler of the

Mauryan Empire.
• 260 BCE
 Ashoka conquers Kalinga. The bloodshed makes
him remorseful, and he turns towards non-
violence.

• 232 BCE

Indian ruler Ashoka dies and the Mauryan Empire

declines within fifty years.

• 187 BCE
Brihadratha, the last ruler of the Mauryan dynasty
is assassinated by his commander-in-chief,
Pushyamitra Shunga

SOURCES TO KNOW ABOUT MAURYAN EMPIRE:

The Mudrarakshasa मद्राराक्षसु is a Sanskrit-language
play by
Vishakhadatta that narrates the ascent of the king
Chandragupta Maurya to power in India. The play is an
example of creative writing, but not entirely fictional. It
is dated variously from the late 4th century to the 8th
century CE.
After the death of Alexander, one of his generals,
Selecus Nikator (meaning ‘victor’, from the same root
word which gives us Nike) sent his envoy, Megasthenes,
to the court of Chandragupta Maurya in Patna around
300 BC. Megasthenes’s work, Indika, is available to us
only through its quoted portions in other works but it is
the best source for the India of 2,300 years ago.
THE FIRST EMPIRE:
THE MAURYAN EMPIRE:
About 2,500 years ago Magadha became the most
important mahajanapada and many powerful rulers like
Bimbisara and Ajatashatru of Haryanka dynasty as well
as Mahapadma Nanda of the Nanda dynasty.

Chandragupta Maurya (c. 321 - c. 297 BCE), known as

Sandrakottos (or Sandrokottos) to the Greeks, was the
founder of the Maurya Dynasty and is credited with the
setting up of the first pan-Indian empire.
Aided by his mentor and later minister Chanakya or
Kautilya (c. 4th century BCE), he set up a vast
centralized empire, details of whose functioning,
society, military, and economy are well preserved in
Kautilya's Arthashastra.

Chandragupta's Period: Political Setting

India around the 4th century BCE was divided into
numerous kingdoms and republics. The foremost
among them was the Magadha Kingdom in eastern
India, whose rulers beginning with King Bimbisara (543-
492 BCE) had embarked on a quest for empire building.
Magadha's boundaries had thus been much extended
over time and contained a good part of central, eastern,
and north-eastern India. Alexander the Great (356-323
BCE) invaded India in 326 BCE, and in consequence,
much of northwestern India was thrown into turmoil
and political chaos.
The Magadha ruler during these times was Dhanananda
(329-322/321 BCE) of the
Nanda Dynasty. He possessed a vast treasure and an
army numbering 20,000 cavalry,
200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots, and 3,000 elephants,
according to the Roman historian Curtius (c. 1st century
CE). Known to the Greeks as Xandrames or Agrammes,
the knowledge of his Magadhan might had also added
to the despair of the already war weary Macedonian
troops on India's north-west, forcing them, among
other reasons, not to press further into India.

Debate on Origins

Chandragupta's social origins, particularly his caste, are

still debated. Buddhist, Jain, and ancient literary works
all give different versions. He is mentioned variously as
belonging to the Kshatriya Moriya clan ruling
Pippalivahana on the present-day Indo-Nepal border, as
being from a tribe of peacock-tamers, a son of a woman
named Mura (hence the title, Maurya) and even closely
or distantly related to the Nandas, but scorned and
driven away as Dhanananda was jealous of his far-
superior talents.
Historians are thus divided as to his social origins. Some
claim that “he seems to have belonged to some
ordinary family” (Sharma, 99) and that “he was not a
prince but a mere commoner without any direct title to
the crown of Magadha”.
Some other historians state that he indeed belonged to
the Moriya or Maurya clan, which by the 4th century
BCE had fallen into hard times, and thus Chandragupta
“grew up among peacocktamers, herdsmen, and
hunters”.
Buddhist texts and medieval inscriptions mention him
as a Kshatriya. Thus, it can be conjectured that he
would have belonged to a Kshatriya (ruler/warrior
caste) or a related caste, as the Brahmin Kautilya, in
keeping with the caste rules, would not have favoured
him otherwise for rulership.

Chandragupta Maurya's empire extended from Kabul

and Kandahar in the North-West to Mysore in the
south; and from Bengal in the east to Saurashtra in the
west.
Bindusara (298 B.C.-273 B.C.), son of Chandra Gupta,
was the second to sit on the throne of the Great
Mauryan Dynasty.
Chandra Gupta ruled for about twenty five years and
then became a
Jain ascetic, leaving behind him a fairly huge Empire
which included Baluchistan, Afghanistan, Assam ,
Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar, Mysore, Vindhyas, Narmada
and Hindukush, for his son to inherit.
Bindusara further expanded the Mauryan Dynasty as far
as Mysore down south. It is said that he conquered
sixteen states to extend the empire between the two
seas. Bindusara did not attack the Dravidian Kingdoms
of the Cholas, the Pandyans and the Cheras perhaps
because they were friendly with the Mauryan Empire.
He ran the administration smoothly and maintained a
good relation with distant countries like the Greeks, the
Syrians and the Egyptians. Ambassadors from these
countries lived in the King’s Court. He was called
‘Amitrochates’ or the destroyer of enemies by the
Greeks.
The Mauryan Empire reached its peak during the rule of
Ashoka, the son of Bindusara. He defeated Kalinga in a
devastating war but he underwent a transformation
after seeing the goriness of the war. He embraced
Budhhism and started preaching non-violence. The
dynasty crumbled rapidly after him.

EXTENT OF BINDUSARA’S EMPIRE

ASHOKA THE GREAT:
Ashoka, also known as Ashoka the Great, Piodasses in
ancient Greece, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya
Dynasty son of Bindusara Maurya, who ruled almost all
of the Indian subcontinent from c. 268 to
232 BCE. Ashoka promoted the spread of Buddhism
across ancient
Asia.
Born: Pataliputra
Died: 232 BC, Pataliputra
Children: Mahinda, Sanghamitta, Kunala, Charumati,
Jaluka, Tivala
Parents: Bindusara, Subhadrangi
Grandparents: Chandragupta Maurya, Durdhara
Spouses
Maharani
Devi
m. 286 BC
Asandhim
itra
m. 270 BC–240

BC Padmavati

m. 266 BC
Tishyaraksha
Karuvaki
Ashoka waged a destructive war against the state of
Kalinga (modern Odisha), which he conquered in about
260 BCE. According to an interpretation of his Edicts, he
converted to Buddhism[8] after witnessing the mass
deaths of the Kalinga War, which he had waged out of a
desire for conquest and which reportedly directly
resulted in more than 100,000 deaths and
150,000 deportations. He is remembered for erecting
the Ashoka pillars and spreading his Edicts, for sending
Buddhist monks to Sri Lanka and Central Asia, and for
establishing monuments marking several significant
sites in the life of Gautama Buddha.

EXTENT OF ASHOKA’S EMPIRE

Ashoka's empire extended from Afghanistan in the
northwest and Nepal in the north to Karnataka and
Andhra Pradesh in the south, and from Bengal in the
east to Saurashtra in the west.

MAURYAN ADMINISTRATION:
Administration:
The king was the head of the state and controlled the
military, executive, judiciary, and legislature. He took
advice from a council comprising the chief minister, the
treasurer, the general, and other ministers. The
kingdom was divided into provinces under governors,
who were often royal princes. Provinces were further
composed of towns and villages under their own district
and village administrators. It was a large bureaucracy
that the king employed. Like today, the rungs in the civil
services were clearly defined, and those at the very top
were far removed from the lower grades. For example,
the ratio of a clerk's salary to the chief minister's has
been estimated at 1:96. With such high levels of salary,
we can assume that the higher officers were expected
to carefully oversee the functioning of their
departments.
There were departments to govern, look after, and
control almost every aspect of social life: industrial art,
manufacturing facilities, general trade and commerce,
foreigners, births and deaths, commercial taxes, land
and irrigation, agriculture, forests, metal foundries,
mines, roads, and public buildings. The high-ranking
officers were expected to go on inspection tours to
ensure that the bureaucracy was discharging its duties
well.
The empire also had a large spy network and
maintained a large standing army. The king's army was
not really disbanded even after the third Mauryan king,
Ashoka, gave up war. Next to the farmers, it was the
soldiers who formed the bulk of the population.
Soldiers were expected to only fight and were not
required to render any other service to the king; when
there was no war, they could amuse themselves in
whatever manner that caught their fancy. There were
separate departments for the infantry, cavalry, navy,
chariots, elephants, and logistics. Soldiers not only drew
their salary from the exchequer but were also provided
with arms and equipment at the state's expense. We
have descriptions of some of the arms that these
soldiers carried: foot soldiers carried man-length bows
(and arrows), ox-hide bucklers, javelins, and
broadswords. The cavalry rode bareback and used
lances and bucklers.

KALINGA WAR
Eight years after seizing power around 270 B.C., Ashoka
led a military campaign to conquer Kalinga, a coastal
kingdom in east-central India. The victory left him with
a larger domain than that of any of his predecessors.
Accounts claim between 100,000 and 300,000 lives
were lost during the conquest.That human toll took a
tremendous emotional toll on Ashoka. He wrote that he
was “deeply pained by the killing, dying, and
deportation that take place when an unconquered
country is conquered.” Thereafter, Ashoka renounced
military conquest and other forms of violence, including
cruelty to animals. He became a patron of Buddhism,
supporting the rise of the doctrine across India. He
reportedly dispatched emissaries to several countries,
including Syria and Greece, and he sent his own
children as missionaries to Sri Lanka.
RELIGION:

According to the accepted account, once Ashoka

embraced Buddhism, he embarked on a path of peace
and ruled with justice and mercy. Whereas he had
earlier engaged in the hunt, he now went on pilgrimage
and while formerly the royal kitchen slaughtered
hundreds of animals for feasts, he now instituted
vegetarianism. He made himself available to his
subjects at all times, addressed what they considered
wrongs, and upheld the laws which benefited all, not
only the upper class and wealthy.