032: The Mauryan Empire of India

Hi there, you're listening to The Hellenistic Age Podcast, Episode 32, The Mauryan Empire of India. Ten years being completed, King Peodaces showed piety to men, and from that time onwards he made men more pious. And all things prospered throughout the whole world. And the king refrained from eating living beings, and indeed other men and whosoever were the king's huntsmen and fishermen have ceased from hunting. And those who were without control over themselves have ceased as far as possible from their lack of self-control, and have become obedient to father and mother to elders, such as was not the case before. And in future, doing all these things, they will live more agreeably and better than before. Such is the royal inscription laid out in ancient Greek, carved upon the side of a mountain with its parallel translation in Aramaic listed beneath it. This rather philosophical proclamation, known as the Kandahar inscription, was found by scholars in the region of Kandahar in southeastern Afghanistan, and is held up as a remarkable example of the cultural diversity in the region during the 3rd century BC. The most fascinating aspect of this inscription is that the philosophy espoused is distinctively Buddhist, with the term piety interchanged from the complex idea of Dhamma or Dharma. And this carving is definitive proof that the ancient Greeks and Macedonians were exposed to the teachings of the Buddha to some extent. But who ordered it to be written, and why? The name mentioned, King Peodases, is the Greek version of the Sanskrit title Priyadarshin, literally translated as, quote, He who looks with kindness upon with everything, given to Emperor Ashoka the Great, ruler of the Maurya Empire of India between 273 and 232 BC. Founded by Chandragupta Maurya, the empire was almost unmatched in its extent by any of the later powers who dominated India up until the arrival of the Mughals during the 16th century AD. At its height, it theoretically stretched into southeastern Afghanistan and Iran, covering Pakistan and almost all of India except for the very southernmost tips of the subcontinent, and with the population numbering roughly 50 to 70 million people. In regards to our period, the Maurya had also ushered in an unprecedented level of trade and exchange between the Greco-Macedonians and India, engaging in diplomatic overtures that involved the likes of the Seleucid Empire and almost every major power in the Hellenistic world. In this episode, I wish to take a look at the Maurya realm, focusing on the reign of their first three and greatest kings, Chandragupta, Bindusara, and lastly Ashoka. What is also important to cover is to see how the relationship between the Greeks and India had developed and flourished through the rather amicable understanding between these two seemingly foreign worlds. I must also ask my pardon for any mistakes regarding my pronunciation with Sanskrit terms, and as much as I have been practicing, I will inevitably butcher some of them here and there. As we often do, let us begin our look by understanding our major sources for the period of the Maurya. Generally, it boils down to two groups, Native Indian authors and Greek ones. Perhaps the most famous Native Indian written work around the time of the Maurya is known as the Arthashastra, approximately translated as the Science of Politics. Discovered in the early 1900s, this text is an enormous body of work written by the famous advisor and political mastermind in the retinue of Chandragupta, a man known as Kautilya or Chanakya. This work has often been compared to as being the Indian equivalent of Machiavelli's The Prince or Sun Tzu's Art of War, as it was written to serve as a how-to guide for Indian emperors on how to rule effectively, offering up wisdom and tips regarding diplomacy, warfare, and other aspects of statecraft. The discovery of the Arthashastra has greatly excited Indian scholars both in the past and the present, who were usually limited to relying on the classical works of Greco-Roman authors to uncover the history of the Maurya, and some argue that the Arthashastra is an accurate reflection of the inner workings of the Maurya state and society. There is still a degree of controversy on the text in both its authorship and the accuracy of the material presented. Like with the controversy on the works of the Greek poet Homer, many have doubted that the work in its present form was actually penned by Chanakya in the 3rd century BC. It has been suggested that the Arthashastra was finally written and compiled together no earlier than the 2nd or 3rd century AD, and thus we cannot rule out later authors who added on to the original work after the time of the Maurya. In addition, if we continue with the analogy that the Arthashastra is similar to Machiavelli's The Prince, then we cannot automatically assume that it perfectly reflects the empire of the Maurya, no more than The Prince reflects the politics of 16th century Italy. As S.R. Goyal points out, the Arthashastra may describe things as they should be, but not necessarily as they are. With these criticisms in mind, it is still an invaluable work, brilliantly written on its own account, and still manages to illuminate the inner workings of the Mauryan state and the philosophy of Indian kingship. The quote that I read from the beginning of this episode comes from one of our greatest sources for this period, the Mauryan emperor himself, Ashoka, or Ashoka the Great. During his reign, stretching roughly from 273 to 232 B.C., he ordered a great number of inscriptions to be placed across his empire. These epigraphical sources include rather mundane and humanizing commentary, such as his personal displeasure at the ceremonies he was forced to preside over, to writings intended to espouse and proselytize his faith of Buddhism to his subjects, which had been placed as far as Afghanistan. These mark the first time in Indian history that a ruler recorded his own deeds, and they also give us an insight on the administrative aspects of the empire as well, demonstrating that there was a codification of laws, ranging from banning the killing of animals on certain days of the year, and the instruction of officials on how to conduct their business for the good of the public. For the majority of scholars studying the Maurya in the past, the most important source to aid them in their studies, and the most important to us in the context of our show, comes from an outsider, known as Megasthenes. The story of Megasthenes is so interwoven with the history of the Maurya and Greco-Indian relations that it is almost impossible to discuss them without discussing his life and works in considerable depth. Megasthenes, born sometime around the 350s and died likely by 290 or 280 B.C., was a Greek author who penned a remarkable study of Mauryan India, known as the Indica, which has unfortunately not survived, but a large amount of fragments are preserved in the many quotations by later Greek and Roman authors like Strabo, Arian, and Diodorus Siculus. He certainly is not the first Greek author to talk about India. Others such as Herodotus and Ctesias in the 5th century devoted lengthy discussions in their works, with often dubious accuracy. Contemporaries of Megasthenes like Nearchus, the navarch of Alexander the Great, and Onescritus, a lower-ranked helmsman of Alexander's fleet, both wrote histories discussing their time in India during the Macedonian king's campaigns, the former being reliable but concerned with the journey back home down the Indus River in 325, and the latter was heavily criticized for his often inaccurate claims, including by Nearchus, who was technically Onescritus's superior officer. Megasthenes, on the other hand, was a key eyewitness to the inner workings of the Mauryan Empire, as he was the diplomat sent by Seleucus I to the court of Chandragupta in his capital at Pataliputra, located in the modern province of Bihar in eastern India. For a number of years he either stayed in residence at or near Pataliputra, or had made several lengthy trips acting as ambassador between the Seleucids and the Maurya, and thus was well inclined to provide a more accurate account of life in India, albeit in a manner that the Greeks would understand, and as we soon shall see, his claims tend to line up with native Indian sources rather well. His writings, ranging from ethnography to geography and political assessment, would become the most relied upon work in Europe regarding India until the Middle Ages. Megasthenes is not infallible, however, and we have to be careful when looking at his work. Megasthenes has a tendency to repurpose his observations on India into archetypes and imagery that would be recognized by his Greco-Macedonian readers, and sometimes he makes assertions that are flat out incorrect, such as claiming that there was no such thing as slavery in India, and the mythical race of dog-headed people. It has become common practice to use both Megasthenes and the Arthashastra to compare and contrast to see what views fit with each other and which do not. And while this isn't a conclusive answer on how the Maurya functioned, as Richard Stoneman puts it, two pieces of evidence are better than none. Having covered our sources, I feel that it is appropriate to give a general outline of Indian history up to Chandragupta's time. There's a lot to cover, so I'm only giving a skeletal structure to a much larger topic. The origins of the earliest civilizations of India stretch back as far as the 4th millennium B.C. As one of the great cradles of civilization, the alluvial plains of the Indus River system along the border of modern Pakistan and India fostered the development of complex urban cultures, what we typically know as the Indus Valley or Harappan civilizations, with famous cities like Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa reaching their peak from around 2600 to 1700 B.C. The collapse of Harappan civilization can be attributed to a number of factors, ranging from climate change to food and water shortages and political turmoil, much like the collapse of the late Bronze Age civilizations of the Near East and Mediterranean a few centuries later, resulting in the gradual simplification of urban and material culture, though a number of Harappan cities would remain populated down to the time of Alexander. For a long time, scholars have seen the end of this period as being due to a group of invaders penetrating India during the so-called Aryan invasion. This is a term that needs some clarification. It is not the same as the ethnic designation Aryan that would be commonly misappropriated by the ideology of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. To simplify an extremely complicated subject, Aryan was a term utilized by scholars and philologists as a designation for a language group, better known as the Indo-Aryans. Indo-Aryans were a collection of peoples, not necessarily of the same ethnicity, who shared a hypothetical mother language that would be the progenitor of many of the languages in modern India, such as Hindi, Punjabi, and Bengali, which trace their roots back through the classical Indian languages of Sanskrit and Prakrit. The Indo-Aryans, though themselves likely originating from somewhere around Afghanistan, were just one among many different groups that descended from the Indo-European speakers, who were linked from an original language group somewhere in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and migrated during the 3rd millennium BC across Eurasia to settle, including India via the Indo-Aryan speakers. This means that classical Sanskrit and Prakrit speakers shared many similarities with languages like Latin, Greek, and Celtic, despite being thousands of miles apart. For example, the word king, which is translated as rex in Latin, rex in Celtic, and veraz in Sanskrit. The original theory behind the collapse of the Indus Valley was that Indo-Aryan invaders moved into Pakistan and India around 2000 BC, bringing in more sophisticated weapons and tools like chariots and warhorses, combated with the native Dravidian populations, who would later become the modern speakers of languages like Tamil, and drove them south into the subcontinent. Further evidence was pointed to in the Rig Veda, one of the oldest extant works ever written in an Indo-European language, which chronicles the wars against a dark-skinned group of indigenous savages by these Indo-Aryan peoples. This theory has largely been discredited, and instead the origins of what would become Vedic India began less dramatically. The Indo-Aryans likely had settled in the Punjab for centuries prior to the collapse of the Harappans, and from 1500 to roughly 900 BC, these former nomads had developed a more agrarian civilization, gradually moving into northern and central India, settling along the Ganges River, which hugs the southern border of the Himalayans, perhaps in search for more suitable farming land. It was during this time that Vedic culture, as told through the Rig Veda and the other three pillars of Vedic literature, would flourish and lay the foundations of many aspects of Hindu India, with its rich mythology and social designations such as the caste system. But at this time, political organization remained relatively small-scale, and Vedic society was centered largely on tribal affiliations. However, from the 7th to the 5th century BC, this began to change, as these tribal groups began to centralize and develop, transitioning into groups known as Mahajanpandas. Apparently sixteen in number across northern India, these were generally either kingdoms or some sort of oligarchical system with many ruling figures spread out in clans. The increasing centralization of the Mahajanpandas also coincided with the rise of urban developments that were previously only seen at the height of the Indus Valley civilizations. In addition to this, there are some major developments happening in reaction to traditional Vedic ways of life, such as the birth of Jainism and Buddhism, which operated with much less reliance on the caste system. Outside forces began to make their way into India as well, with the arrival of the armies of Darius the Great of the Persian Empire in the late 6th century BC. They had managed to conquer the northwestern portions of India in Gandhara, and the subsequent taxation provided immense amount of tribute to the Persian treasury, spurring on famous legends of the utopia-like conditions of India and having apparently unfathomable amounts of luxury. The degree to which Persian administration influenced the development of the Mahajanpandas is unknown, but the first great kingdom of India, the Magadha, would emerge from the 16th as the most powerful of all between the late 5th and early 4th century BC. Located in the northeast of India, the Magadhan kingdom would be the foundation that the Maurya would later rest upon, and Chandragupta himself would be seen as another ruler atop the Magadhan throne rather than the ruler of the Mauryan Empire. Approximately around 364 BC, the reigning dynasty of the Magadha was overthrown by a man known as Mahapadmananda, apparently the low-born son of a barber who managed to battle his way for control of the realm and expanded on top of it. The Nanda dynasty had apparently instituted some degree of administrative control, given the immense amounts of wealth they apparently accumulated, though the degree to which they oppressed the locals caused immense resentment, as we soon shall see. With their great armies, numbering over 200,000 according to Greek authors, they managed to expand the kingdom's borders east and southwards, and with this very brief summation of Indian history we can ultimately conclude a few points. The subcontinent of India was not uniform. Politically there was no sense of a quote-unquote greater India dominated by one territory, though a number of states had begun to exert greater control over others, especially the kingdom of the Magadha under the Nandas, which had resulted in a degree of urbanization that was more complicated than anything that came before. Though the dominance of Vedic beliefs and culture continued to permeate much of northern India, this is not to imply that this was the only way of life. Jainism, Buddhism, and the various religions and cultures of the peoples who lived both within and south of the Mahajan Pandas indicated a variety of diversity of thought and beliefs. It is this landscape that would be present when the initial scouts of a great invasion force appearing over the Hindu Kush had begun to scope their way down into India. Alexander the Great had arrived. In 327-326 BC, the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great had descended into modern Pakistan and the Indus Valley in pursuit of further conquests. The Indian campaigns, as I covered extensively in episode 12, were seen by the Greek and Roman sources as something of a great watershed moment in the history of India. The Indian sources are rather silent upon the matter, treating Alexander as no different than the many raiders who would come and penetrate India over the millennia, and do not view him with the same reverence as either the Greco-Macedonians or the later Muslim conquerors, who like to compare their feats to that of Alexander's. This view can't really be blamed, given the brutality of the fighting and the many massacres of both combatant and non-combatant Indians by Alexander's forces, and the short amount of time the Indian provinces would remain under Macedonian control. At the extent of his reach, Alexander controlled roughly to the Hyphasis River, the modern Bayus, before his army had mutinied out of exhaustion and dissatisfaction with the notion of fighting the enormous armies of the Nandas. The Macedonian king agreed to halt his progress, and sailed down the Indus River to return back to Babylon. In his place, Alexander had left a number of officials in charge of his Indian provinces, but by the time the king's fleet managed to begin their journey down the Indus, the stability of the region was already in serious doubt. The displeasure to foreign rule had been further aggravated by the ruthless ambition of Alexander's commanders, particularly that of a man known as Eudemus, who had overthrown the vassal king Taxilis in roughly 320, and also assassinated the more famous Poros shortly thereafter. Other men, Philip and Nicanor, continued to dominate the Indus region for a number of years, until the leading Macedonian powers of India were eventually toppled. It is during this period that we have our first appearance of the man who would become lord of all of India. The Greco-Roman authors refer to him variously as Sandracatus or Andracatus, but to us he is better known as Chandragupta Maurya. The origins of Chandragupta are obscure and poorly documented. He was born sometime during the middle of the 4th century BC, maybe around the year 340 in the heart of the Magadan kingdom. He is believed to have been connected to the Nanda dynasty through his mother, who was a royal concubine to the Nanda king, but there is a strong tradition that he was of a family of royal peacock breeders, since the Sanskrit word for peacock is Mayura. The Mauryas like to portray themselves as belonging to the Kshatriya warrior caste, mainly to contrast themselves with the Nandas, who were apparently of low origin, but evidence suggests that he may very well be of Shudra peasant background, though the latter claim is from sources possibly hostile to the Buddhist and Jain leadings of the Maurya dynasty, and the Buddhist chronicles claim he was of noble origin. Two main Indian sources give us an account of his rise to power. The account covering his early life comes from the Jain epic poet Himachandra, who wrote a narrative poem in the 12th century AD on the history of early Indian rulers, including Chandragupta. In it, Chandragupta was conceived when his mother was convinced to, quote, drink of the moon, which was done by drinking a cup of water with the reflection of a full moon in it. Soon, Chandragupta was born, and even from a young age, he seemed to be naturally inclined to carry himself with a kingly disposition, a common literary trope present in the stories of Romulus, Cyrus the Great, and Alexander, since he would delegate and pretend to act as a judge over his other peers. As part of a great Machiavellian scheme, his advisor and mentor Chanyakya whisked the young lad away to northern Pakistan to the great intellectual center at Takshila, better known to the Indians as Takshashila, where Chanyakya was a teacher and instructed the young lad in all things political. It is during his education here that he apparently comes into contact with the army of Alexander the Great, reported by the biographer Plutarch and Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus. According to the tradition of Justin, Chandragupta had led a resistance movement against the Macedonians after personally insulting Alexander and incurring a bounty upon his head. A caveat must be made here, because that is what is said according to my 1846 translation of Justin. However, I have discovered that there seems to be controversy regarding the manuscripts that survives of Justin's epitome, and that Alexander should be instead amended to Nanda. This is because only two of the manuscripts that survive seem to have this error, and the copyist responsible assumed the Latin Nandrum must be Alexandrum, thus Chandragupta had led a band of followers against the Nandas instead. This is an important reminder for everyone to investigate their translations before taking things as gospel. Plutarch also recounts a story, whereby Chandragupta apparently mused on the departure of Alexander from India as a great irony, since the warlord could in fact have easily conquered India given the civil unrest and the low origin of the Nanda rulers. The impact of Alexander on the development of Chandragupta's political ambitions has been hotly debated, with some scholars arguing that the organization and imperial ideology of Alexander's campaigns had resulted in the increased complexity of state building in India, while others have argued that the Macedonian was seen as a foreign oppressor, and Chandragupta, as some Indian proto-nationalist, had united and liberated the peoples of India against outside rule on his own initiative. In some respects, the invasions of the Macedonians certainly must have had some level of impact, as Chandragupta possibly could have honed his skills in leadership and warfare while combating the remaining Macedonians, but our sources are completely lacking in this area, and much of it is speculative at best. Comparing the Greco-Roman and Indian sources on Chandragupta results in two major points of focus. The Greco-Romans imply that it was Alexander the Great who would spark the imperial ambitions of the soon-to-be Indian emperor, as Plutarch recalls in his Moralia that Chandragupta had honored Alexander afterwards as some heroic figure, while the Indian sources stress that it was almost entirely thanks to the political mastermind that was Chanakya. Events after Alexander also remain muddy, but in the latter half of the 320s, Chandragupta had declared war against the Nandas and attempted to claim the throne of Magadha. In conjunction with Himachandra's work, an Indian play known as Mudrarakshasa, dating to the 5th or 6th century AD, also chronicles the events of Chandragupta's war. According to both, he had apparently allied himself with King Porus, the same one that Alexander had fought, and attempted to besiege the main capital of Pataliputra. Chanakya had apparently engineered this entire war because he believed himself to be destined as a sort of quote-unquote shadow king behind the next ruler after the Nandas, or he was disrespected by the last Nanda king, Dhanananda, and sought revenge for the slight by cultivating Chandragupta as a weapon. There's so many traditions of this tale, rooted in the literature of various different religious angles like Jainism, Buddhism, and Brahmanism, that it's almost impossible to properly assess what is more likely to be true than of others. The sources agree that roughly by the year 320 BC, Chandragupta managed to successfully capture Pataliputra, having besieged it with a rather diverse army which included Bactrians, Scythians, and Greeks. In addition, the alliance with Porus had come to an abrupt end, some sources claiming that Porus had died because of political opportunism on the part of Chanakya, but an interesting theory has been brought up. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Macedonian general Eudemus had been the one to assassinate Porus and was allied with Chandragupta, thus explaining why in the Indian sources they refer to Chandragupta's multi-ethnic troops, given that Eudemus had controlled the regions on the borders of Bactria and Sogdiana, and it would reconcile within Chanakya's political pragmatism. The sudden collapse of the Nanda dynasty, though hastened by the military and political genius of Chandragupta and Chanakya respectively, was also indicative of the resentment built up towards their rule, with heavy financial burdens and quote-unquote their mean origin. This is still an impressive feat, given that the army of the Nandas numbered somewhere around 300,000, which according to Plutarch was enough to be the final straw for the Macedonians serving under Alexander. Chandragupta's rule over most of India would not be contested by any insider, but rather by an outside force. In approximately 306 BC, Seleucus I, one of the successor generals of Alexander the Great turned king, had launched a campaign in the eastern part of Alexander's former empire, capturing the territories of Bactria and Sogdiana. In an effort to retake control of the former Indian provinces, Seleucus invaded India in 305 BC, directly coming into contact with the army of Chandragupta himself. If you remember my discussion on the life and career of Seleucus in episode 29, you should remember that we already covered the Seleucid warrior war. Unfortunately, there isn't much to cover anyways, given the near absence of any particular details about the conflict. According to the Roman author Appian, Seleucus is said to have managed to penetrate the Indus River, though how far he got into the Indian interior remains a mystery, but the two engaged in open battle a number of times. The war would last down to 303 BC, before a decisive peace would be brokered between the kings through a treaty with three clauses. Number one, Seleucus would relinquish control over the Indian provinces of Aracosia and Gedrosia, which would be the portions of central and southern Pakistan. This meant limiting the Seleucid kingdom to the borders of the Indus River. Number two, Chandragupta would gift 500 Indian war elephants, the best of their kind to Seleucus. And number three, a marriage contract between the Seleucids and the Maurya. These terms seemed to favor Chandragupta pretty heavily, since paying 500 elephants out of a stockpile of thousands was not a troubling investment to acquire territory of considerable size, and controlling the area of the Punjab allowed for the Maurya to control a region which acts as a highway for invaders. But this gift would prove invaluable to the Seleucid military in defeating their rival Hellenistic kingdoms, essentially kickstarting the great war elephant arms race, and India was the number one provider. The last clause has been heavily debated in the last number of years, with the original interpretation suggesting that a Seleucid princess was handed as a bride for Chandragupta, leading to the possibility that later Maurya kings like Ashoka would be of partial Macedonian descent. However, evidence suggests that the terms actually refer to the laws regarding Greco-Macedonians living within the borders of the Mauryan Empire. Many had been settled in Aracosia by Alexander, and inevitably would start seeking native Indian wives. According to the caste rules, however, the Greeks would be seen as casteless barbarians, known as melekshas. The casteless position of the Greeks would mean that their marriage would not be legally recognized, and any offspring from such a union would also be casteless. After concluding the war between himself and Seleucus, Chandragupta would not live out the rest of his days as emperor. The Jain tradition seems to be the most commonly cited version of events, and according to Himachandra, a twelve year famine had gripped India so fiercely that it pushed Chandragupta to voluntarily abdicate the throne to his son, Bindusara, in the year 298. The former conqueror and emperor would then become a true convert to Jainism, and chose to starve himself as an ascetic monk in compassion for his suffering subjects, and died the following year. By the end of his reign, Chandragupta had conquered all of northern India from the Bay of Benegal to the Sindh province of modern Pakistan, and laid the groundwork of consolidation to Bindusara, who ruled from 298 to 273. Bindusara's reign is not very well documented in comparison to his father or his son, but from what we can gather, Bindusara had continued to expand the realm to some degree, pushing further south into the subcontinent in a conquest either he or Chandragupta had begun. Attesting to his martial spirit, the Greeks recognized him as Amitokratis, possibly a derivation of the Sanskrit Amitragatha, meaning destroyer of foes. His conquests would not be finished by the time of his death in 273, whereupon his son, Ashoka the Great, would bear the burden of rulership. Much like his father, Ashoka's life was subject to many legends and different accounts, though the primary source can be found in the Buddhist text Ashokavadana. The Buddhists claim that his mother, Subhadrangi, was the daughter of a well-to-do Brahmin, and was an incredibly ambitious young woman, making sure that she would become the primary wife of Bindusara. Through her charm and beauty, she entrapped the emperor's heart, and bore him Ashoka, whose name translates roughly to, is without sorrow. Ashoka's early years were not something to be envied. Though technically a prince in the house of the Maurya, he was considered a very ugly child, and was not the first in line to the throne, contending with a number of siblings to become emperor. He was given a posting as governor of Takshila, successfully putting down an attempted revolt. His rise to power is relatively unknown, but most accounts suggest that some kind of civil war had resulted in Ashoka killing a number of siblings, and the Ashokavadana claims he disposed 99 of them, which is quite the claim, but we probably can confirm he indeed killed a number of rivals before assuming the throne. Continuing the martial tradition of his forefathers, Ashoka sought to expand his realm, and finish off the last conquests. Traditionally, it is during Ashoka's reign that we see the empire at its greatest extent, and very often when you look up at a map of the Maurya Empire, which I will include in the show notes for this episode, you will see the political reach stretch down to the subcontinent, just stopping at the very southernmost tip. Some scholars have posited that this possibly wasn't the case. The interior of India was notoriously challenging to campaign in, and filled with hostile tribes. Based upon the known distribution of Ashoka's edicts, there seems to be a definite outline of directly controlled territory, while the center has few, if any, to be found. If there was some quote-unquote grand strategy of the Mauryan Empire, the philosophy behind a decision seems to be controlling the major highways of trade, which meant controlling the coasts and along the rim of the Himalayas, and it makes considerable sense, lest the administration find itself overtaxed and overstretched in trying to deal with provinces that were not profitable nor easy to make submit. This is perhaps why Ashoka turned to the eastern Kalinga Kingdom, located largely in modern Odisha. They had resisted against Maurya rule for some time, and since they were located on the eastern seaborne, they were the logical next step in the conquest. Unsurprisingly, it was a rather brutal and bloody affair. Curiously, we have the recorded number of Kalinga's casualties, coming from none other than Ashoka himself. But unlike Julius Caesar's accounts of the Gallic Wars, who treats the number of enemies slain and captives taken as almost a point of pride, Ashoka bemoans having killed them, and appears to be remorseful. Quote, Beloved of the gods, King Piyadasi conquered the Kalingas eight years after his coronation. 150,000 were deported, 100,000 were killed, and many more died from other causes. Now Beloved of the gods feels deep remorse for having conquered the Kalingas. Indeed, Beloved of the gods is deeply pained by the killing, dying, and deportation that take place when an unconquered country is conquered. But Beloved of the gods is pained even more by this, that Brahmins, ascetics, and householders of different religions who live in those countries, and who are respectful to superiors, to mother and father, to elders, and who behave properly and have strong loyalty towards friends, acquaintances, companions, relatives, servants, and employees, that they are injured, killed, or separated from their loved ones. Even those who are not affected by all of this, suffer when they see friends, acquaintances, and companions and relatives affected. These misfortunes befall all as a result of war, and this pains Beloved of the gods. Therefore, the killing, death, or deportation of a hundredth, or even a thousandth part of those who died during the conquest of Kalinga, now pains Beloved of the gods. Now Beloved of the gods thinks that even those who do wrong should be forgiven where forgiveness is possible. The end of the Kalinga war marked a sudden and sharp transformation into the way Ashoka conducted his life and his role as the emperor. While he was already courting Buddhism by the time of his campaigns against the Kalingas, Ashoka experienced an epiphany and devoted himself to living closely to the tenets of the Buddha. Not only did he see himself as a convert to Buddhism, he also sought to share the Buddha's message with the residents of his empire. He conducted a pilgrimage to Mahabodhi, where the founder of Buddhism had apparently achieved his enlightenment under a Bodhi tree, and established a great temple and the famous Diamond Throne. Ashoka then proceeded to do a round tour across the realm, engaging in dialogues with the peoples of his lands, and sought to educate them in the ways of Dharma. And to immortalize his wishes and desires, he ordered the production of dozens of inscriptions along major highways so that his message would be spread, including in the languages of Greek and Aramaic, as I recounted earlier. His messages ranged from his lamentation over his cruelty during the Kalinga war, to the urging or outright ban against eating animals on certain days of the year. In effect, Ashoka was to Buddhism as Constantine was to Christianity, overseeing the Third Buddhist Council, and dispensing missionaries to preach. And though Buddhism would not remain as popular in its homeland of India, it would be carried on by successive rulers thanks to the work of Ashoka, and spread across into East Asia as one of the world's great religions. It is during the reign of Ashoka, and at the height of Maurya power, that we will pause our narrative, and instead turn to see how the empire was run, along with a regrouping of our friends Chanakya and Megasthenes. By Chandragupta's abdication from the throne in 298, the Mauryan imperial identity had firmly established itself, and based upon the work done by Megasthenes and Chanakya from the same time, it is during this period that we can most accurately determine the inner workings of the empire. At the very top of the political pyramid would be the king or emperor. The imperial rule of the Maurya was a natural by-product of the political developments of the Mahajan Pandas and the Rajas who dominated them during the 6th century, but on an unprecedented scale. The king, as told by Chanakya, is functionally the embodiment of all political powers of the state, and thus must represent his constituents as best as he can. A king who observes his duty of protecting his people justly, according to law, goes to heaven, unlike one who does not protect his people, or inflicts unjust impunishment. Chanakya further sets out how the king's daily schedule should be divided into 16 parts, 8 during the daytime and 8 during nighttime, much of it spent addressing the various needs and concerns of his kingdom. These activities can range from inspection of municipal roads to addressing the judicial issues brought to his attention, something which Megasthenes also attests to by saying that the king must answer the needs of his people by holding court and judging cases outside of his palace. During the reigns of the first three Mauryans, the king was also responsible for overseeing matters of war and peace. The military might of the Maurya was reported by the Greco-Roman authors as being skilled and quite large, though the claim of 600,000 infantry probably refers to the population size that is able to be drawn for the army, rather than its actual standing value, given the immense costs in maintaining such a force. We don't have much in the way of visual evidence besides the reliefs of Sanchi, but based upon similar techniques and tactics to what Arrian describes at the Battle of Hydaspes in the Army of Poros, standard elements appear, bowmen using arrows with a length of about 1.5 yards long that require the user to plant the bow on the ground just to be able to shoot it, war chariots, sword-wielding infantry, and of course, war elephants. Evidence suggests that Chandragupta used auxiliary forces drawn from the territories around him, including Macedonians, Bactrians, and horse archers, though to what extent he used them, or if his successors also did, is unknown. In the Arthashastra, Chanakya outlined his maxims regarding what a king must do when it comes to his foreign policy, the famous Mandala Theory. Under this presumption, diplomacy and subterfuge must be utilized to undermine your immediate neighbors that may pose a threat to your kingdom, and take over the neighbors that are determined to be sufficiently weak enough. Though open warfare may be more preferable in terms of righteousness, the good of the kingdom prefers pragmatism over honor, and if the king can get away with assassination of a rival instead of mobilizing his army, then all the better. This pattern seemed to be carried on under Chandragupta and Bindusara, but during Ashoka's conversion post-Kalinga conquest, the Maurya realm stopped expanding outright out of professed moral concerns regarding their Buddhist ideology, though as I mentioned before, it may have also been out of practicality to prevent the empire from expanding its borders too greatly. To assist the king in his endeavors, his immediate person would be provided with a group of counselors, whether political advisors like Chanakya, Brahmin priests, or other officials. The most important of these counselor positions would be the treasurer and collectors, who would be responsible for maintaining the budget of the state, and collecting and documenting the taxation of the territories. These tax collectors would be extremely well-paid and well-staffed. One of the most fascinating aspects of the Maurya state was the apparently extensive system of spies that would act as the king's eyes and ears on the ground. Chanakya spends a great deal discussing the role that espionage and spies would play in the ideal kingdom, and emphasizes the need to watch out for internal dissent above all else before proceeding outwards. The spies should be generally inconspicuous, yet frequently be able to overhear the important what's what. Occupations like artisans, sweepers, and prostitutes were generally preferred. And Megasthenes agrees on this, but emphasizes a part about the prostitutes. The realm was divided into three categories, core areas, conquered areas, and buffer areas. Core areas were heavily administrated, and would be where the bulk of the political authority would be based around, such as the Magadha region. Conquered areas would be recently incorporated provinces such as the Northwest region that was part of Alexander's former empire, and the conquests of Ashoka and Kalinga. And while they too would also be governed, it would be with a more gentle hand lest they cause too much resentment. For example, Ashoka did not place any edicts regarding his lamentation for conquering the Kalingas in the realm of the Kalingas. The buffer areas would be territories adjacent to unconquered tribes, and they would be frequently engaged in diplomatic matters to acquire resources like elephant and gold. Outside of his immediate self, the king would delegate power to other individuals as the empire was broken up into five sub-provinces. The first province at Magadha would be controlled directly by the king, and the other four would have their own governors, generally staffed by members of the royal household at the provincial capitals, the most famous being Takshila. These provinces would be again broken down into districts, watch over by various administrators of different levels, acting as judges of local or provincial towns, or overseeing particular aspects of the economy and taxes. Magasthenes observed these bureaucrats, calling them officers, who were responsible for many of the same tasks, including public works and regulation, and were divided into six different classes or groupings. To facilitate faster communication across such a giant swath of land, the Moria constructed what the Greeks referred to as the Royal Road, recalling the same system utilized by the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, but is often more known today as the Grand Shrunk Road. From what we can gather then, is that the empire was remarkably well-administrated and centralized, whose complexity was able to provide the necessary support in governing an area approximately 2 million square miles. The administrative center of the empire would be located at Pataliputra, located in the northeast province of Bihar, adjacent to the modern capital city of Patna. While the city was built in the early 5th century BC by the previous rulers of Magadha, under the Moria, it would reach new levels of affluence and political supremacy. Magasthenes reported to have visited what he called Palembrothra, and was quite impressed by the scale and size of the great city, despite coming from the employment of a city founder like Seleucus I himself. He describes it in considerable detail, locating it at the intersection between the Ganges and Son River. Its dimensions would reach somewhere around 1.5 miles in length on either side, fortifications such as a wooden wall containing 570 towers and 64 gates to enter and exit the city, and a great moat that spanned 200 yards in width and 60 feet in depth, plus crocodiles to make quite a formidable barrier to enemy attack, but apparently it also acted as a sewage disposal system. It has been calculated that the dimensions of the city suggest a population of 400,000 individuals that could be supported, making Pataliputra perhaps one of, if not the most populated city in the world during the early 3rd century BC. The magnificence and description of the city did not seem to agree with the recommendation of Chanakya, who believed that cities should be square in shape, and have stone fortifications rather than wood, but it was during the reign of Ashoka that stone was likely added to the structure of Pataliputra. In many ways, the Mauryan Empire's patronage over the city included design philosophies from outside of India, such as Ashoka's construction of open hall palaces reminiscent of the Achaemenid Persian palaces of Ekbatana and Susa and Persepolis, and they also incorporated Hellenistic style columns. These would be adorned with beautiful Indian sculptures, which seemed to be the defining art form of the Maurya, and they loved to use distinctively Indian motifs such as peacocks, palmettes, and lotuses. And for the best example of surviving Mauryan art, look no further to the reliefs of Sanchi, famous for their detail and complexity adorning the Buddhist Stupa shrine, or the famous pillars of Ashoka, adorned with the carvings of three adjacent lines, which has since become the national symbol of India. When it comes to the people and society that functioned in Mauryan India, Megasthenes has quite a large amount of it to say, including a commentary on the caste system. To unfamiliar listeners, the caste system is a hierarchical structure that divides much of modern Hindu-Indian society into separate components based upon their birth and family, and limits the amount of social mobility of members of that caste. In ancient India, this has been largely established during the Vedic period, and would separate Indian society into four sections of descending rank – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras. Brahmins, which Megasthenes refers to as the Indian philosophers, form the religious backbone of Vedic society, and therefore held considerable political sway, though under the Buddhist and Jain leanings of the Mauryan emperors, they did not hold the same position as they once did before. Kshatriyas were the upper nobility, forming much of the ruling and administrative elite warrior class that acted at the needs of the emperor. Vaishyas were a mercantile and agricultural class, often raising valued livestock and animals, or establishing trading communities. The last caste are the Shudras, the vast majority forming the peasants who would work the lands of the agriculturalists, though the difference between Vaishyas and Shudras was often blurred, as the Shudras could sometimes be found involving themselves in trade and exchange as well. Most of the population would be involved in agriculture to some extent, and donated their taxes in the form of coin money, which was used extensively by the Maurya, or if they were artisans or craft workers, they could be called upon to dedicate time for the state. These fields would often be worked by mainly the Shudra class, but slaves were also frequently employed, contrary to Megasini's claim that slavery did not exist in India. Outside of the caste would be the Malakshas, barbarians of non-Indian origin which include the Greeks and steppe nomads, and they were not legally recognized for marriages to Indian men and women, which was one of the main points of discussion brought up in the treaty between Seleucus I and Chandragupta. Megasini seems to identify aspects of the caste system, and recognizes the four levels, but extrapolates it into seven divisions of society. This may be due to the fact that seven is a popular number to be used by Greek ethnographers to ascribe to foreign peoples, but more likely is that Megasini was just confused than anything. Romila Thapar suggests that the caste system under the Maurya was not as rigid as it would become in later periods, since caste is strongly tied to Hindu teachings versus that of Buddhism or Jainism. But being a peasant under the Maurya was probably not that noticeable a difference compared to earlier or later rulers, much like many other parts of the ancient world. In regards to the Hellenistic world, the negotiated treaty between the Maurya and the Seleucids would be the beginning of a strong diplomatic relationship between the Hellenistic kings and the Mauryan emperors afterwards. In addition, it would foster some of the highest levels of exchange and interaction between the worlds of India and the Yona or Yawanas, the rendition of the word Ionian, which would become the standard Sanskrit term used to refer to all Greeks. Royal diplomats would be routinely sent between the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Maurya. While Megasini was the most famous, we also have other named ambassadors like Dymachus of Plataea, who wrote his own Indica around the time of Bindusara, and the Ptolemaic official Dionysius during the reign of Meshoka. The written works of these ambassadors and other contemporaries would provide a far greater understanding of India's peoples, its natural history, and ways of life than the time of Herodotus and Ctesias two centuries prior. The Hellenistic and Mauryan rulers would frequently exchange gifts. The latter would commonly offer wild animals like a tiger, which was regifted by Seleucus all the way back to Athens, and elephants, which became the prestige item of the Hellenistic world. In addition, other gifts like aphrodisiacs and anaphrodisiacs were sent to Seleucus by Chandragupta. And as far as my knowledge goes, the only known gift to the Indian emperors was from Antiochus I to Bindusara, as the latter requested figs, wine, and a sophist. The first two were granted, but allegedly Antiochus did not offer a philosopher because he was quote, against the law, which is quite vague and unsatisfactory, but it does indicate that the emperors were also curious about learning Greek philosophy. In the 13th Edict of Ashoka, the emperor specifically names four Hellenistic kings, Antioga, Antiochus II, Ptolemaia, Ptolemy II, Antikyna, Antigonus Gonatas, and Maka, Magas of Cyrene, as being part of the great kingdoms who have heard his spread of Dharma. The fact that Ashoka had endeavored to order at least one of his inscriptions be written in Greek shows that the amount of Greek-speaking population within India had grown substantially. Though it would be some time before the invasions and conquests by the Indo-Greek kings, the Memoria had an influx of Greco-Macedonians, whether settlers from the time of Alexander and the immediate successors, or adventurers and traders looking to make their fortune on the various goods of India, such as ivory, spices, and pearls. Some of these Greeks adopted Buddhism, especially during the time of Ashoka, who sent missionaries like Damarakita, aka Demetrius, and Maharakita into territories largely settled by Greeks in the northwest territories of Gandhara and Kandahar. The extent to which Greek culture influenced Memorian attitudes can be seen with some of the artistic designs of the main palace at Pataliputra, but this period only marks the beginning of the cultural interchange that would eventually display itself in full force, as centuries of Greek settlement in India would mutually influence each other's religious and artistic traditions. Consider this a teaser for my eventual discussion on the Indo-Greek kings and Gandhara way down the line. The death of Ashoka the Great in 232 BC generally marks the end of the height of the Morian Empire, as the successors seemingly were not up to the task at handling the problems that would begin to plague them, based upon the limited evidence in the historical record. There have been theories put forth about the populace's and Brahmin class's resentment to the Morian preference for Buddhism and Jainism over Vedic Hindu traditions, or the lack of martial spirit previously invoked by Chandragupta and Ashoka pre-conversion. These remain largely speculative, but the conquered provinces fell away one by one before the last Morian emperor, Brihadaratha, would be murdered in 185 BC by a rogue general named Pushyamitra Shunga, who would begin his own primarily pro-Hindu dynasty. Having ruled over the Indian subcontinent for 135 years, the Morian Empire was a remarkable turning point in the development of empire in India. Their first three emperors, Chandragupta, Bindusara, and Ashoka, would be considered some of the greatest rulers India has ever produced, ushering in the Classical Age of India, which would end with the Guptas in the 6th century. Their administrative work laid the foundations for later Indian empires, both native and foreign, ranging from the Indo-Greeks and Kushans to the Guptas during the 5th century AD. Perhaps their most important legacy can be seen with the promotion and spread of Buddhism to transform it into one of the world's great religions. It was under their banner that Indo-Greek relations were fostered and developed on an unseen scale, and would continue to do so after their passing. And so ends our discussion on the Moria Empire. Unfortunately, if you wanted to learn more about the Morians, there does not appear to be an easily accessible single-volume treatment on them in English that I can recommend. I have included many extremely valuable references in my episode notes on my website that you can check out, which have helped immensely in my understanding and research for this subject. Once again, thank you all for listening, and if you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing to the show on the podcast platform of your choice, ranging from iTunes to Spotify and more. I also wish to say thank you to my listeners who donated to the Ko-fi page I had set up, and it has really helped a lot, so I appreciate all your generosity. If you're looking to support the show, you could consider heading to my Ko-fi page, or just simply leave a review for my show off if you're on iTunes. All of these links can be found in the podcast description or by heading to my website at hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com. And with that, you've been listening to The Hellenistic Age Podcast.