Category Social Sciences

          We know about, life during the Mauryan rule through the accounts Of Chanakya and Megasthenes. People lived in cities and villages. Agriculture was the main source of livelihood. A lot of artisans thrived during this period.

          Also, there were traders and merchants who sold their goods to far-off lands and even overseas. Soldiers defended the kingdom while philosophers and religious practitioners sought the truth of life and death.

          The Mauryans had contact with different regions of the world including Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Egypt, Syria and Macedonia. Ring wells and stupas were common during this period, the most famous stupa being the Sanchi Stupa in Madhya Pradesh.

          Punch-marked coins, silver coins stamped with different symbols like the sun, elephants, snakes, and trees, dogs catching hares, rabbits and mushrooms were also widespread.

          There are hundreds of other symbols. They may have been signs of particular kings, or may have indicated groups of merchants and artisans.

          The Mauryan Empire had set exemplary standards in administration as well.

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          After the war with Kalinga, Ashoka found himself busy with the mission of eradicating sorrow from his land. He called himself Devanam priya priyadarsin, or the beloved of the gods, the one dear to be-hold. His policy of Dharma was carved onto rock pillars and the rest of his life was devoted to charity. He had trees planted, wells dug, and hospitals built for humans and animals. He also made sure that parents were honoured and received respectful treatment from their children.

          He made sure that animals were not killed unnecessarily and banned the killing of animals for meat. He also made a long list of animals, birds and fish which were never to be killed; the list included animals with young ones, squirrels, monkeys, boneless fish, and the queen ant. Ashoka appointed officials, known as Dhamma Mahamattas, to see that all this was done.

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          Up until the war with Kalinga, Ashoka was quite a bloodthirsty king, with a fierce urge to conquer the world. The battle- fields of Kalinga changed Ashoka’s life; a power-hungry king who believed in the mantra of ‘conquer and rule’ became a follower of Buddha, who firmly believed in the ultimate victory of Dharma.

          Kalinga was an independent kingdom in present-day Orissa and lay in the path of many important trade routes. It was not difficult for a ruler like Ashoka to conquer Kalinga. Once the war ended, Ashoka ventured out to roam around the countryside. Though he expected to see glory around, all he could find were burnt houses and scattered corpses. The inscription on his thirteenth rock edict says, ‘One hundred and fifty thousand people were captured, one hundred thousand were killed and many times that number perished’.

          The war of Kalinga transformed him. The vengeful king became a stable and peaceful emperor. Realizing that the real conquest was the conquest of the heart, he became a patron of Buddhism.

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          During Ashoka’s reign, the Mauryan Empire stretched across present-day Afghanistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east. With its capital in Pataliputra, his empire had provincial capitals at Taxila and Ujjain during his rule from 268 to 232 BC. There was not a similarly large empire, so majestic in the Indian subcontinent again until the medieval period. The grandson of the founder of the Maurya dynasty, Ashoka the Great is considered by many to be one of India’s greatest emperors.

          King Ashoka wanted his words to be remembered and known for as long as the sun and the moon existed. Therefore, his words were engraved on rock pillars. We know a lot about Ashoka from these edicts, found across present-day Afghanistan in the north-west, to Karnataka in the south. Ashoka wanted the common man to understand these inscriptions, so they were written in Pali, rather than Sanskrit.

          Ashoka died in 232 BC and just fifty years after his death, the last Maurya ruler, Brihadratha, was assassinated.

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          After Chandragupta Maurya’s death, Bindusara ascended the throne of the Mauryan Empire in 297 BC. His fancy name made way to a lot of legends. A popular one is as follows:

          His mother was poisoned before he was born, so the unborn child was placed in the womb of a goat. When he was born, his body was covered with spots and hence the name Bindusara, the spotted one. Among the Greeks, Bindusara was known as Amitrochates. This Greek-sounding name came from the Sanskrit ‘Amitra-ghata’ which meant the slayer of foes’.

          Unlike his father Chandragupta or son Ashoka, Bindusara’s life has not been well documented, and most of what we know about him comes from legends. He is said to have conquered parts of south India. The works of early Tamil poets tell us about Mauryan chariots with white flags racing across their land.

          He preferred the Ajivika philosophy over Jainism; the Ajivikas were considered atheists then.

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