Mauryan and Gupta Empires

1. Mauryan and Gupta Empires By Zoe Stephan

2. Chandragupta Maurya • The Mauryan Empire was founded by Chandragupta Maurya, who was the king of Magadah, the strongest kingdom in the Ganges River Valley. • He conquered most of northern India, as well as Afghanistan. • No one’s sure if he ruled as a monarch or more of a president. • His son, the second emperor, expanded the Mauryan Empire farther into the south.

3. Mauryan Culture and Economy • Under Chandragupta Maurya, the whole of northern India was united, which caused trade to flourish and grow. • During this time, agriculture was also regulated. and weights and measures were standardized. • The government also created irrigation facilities to help water crops, and to make land that used to be infertile useful for agriculture. • Money also first came into use during this time. • The whole region prospered, partly because sanitation and famine relief became a concern of their leader instead of simply something for the people to deal with. Taxation was also regulated.

4. Did Slavery Exist in the Mauryan Empire? • As far as historians can tell, slavery was only beginning to make an appearance in India during the time of the Mauryan empire. • However, the Indian system of slavery was very different from other places in may ways, since it was much more flexible. • A person usually became a slave if he decided to sell himself, was a prisoner of war or was serving a judicial sentence. All slaves were allowed to buy back their freedom at any time. • Once a slave was free, if he was an Aryan he could regain the status he earlier had had before. • At that time the main the deciding factor of how much freedom someone had was the caste of that person.

5. Asoka • Asoka was the third emperor of the Mauryan empire. As the emperor, he had absolute power. • He was born in 304 BC to Mauryan Emperor Bindusara. • As emperor, Asoka launched brutal attacks to expand his empire. These lasted for around eight years. • During this time, his queen, Devi, who was actually Buddhist, gave birth to Prince Mahindra and Princess Sanghamitra. Interesting facts - • He actually had several older brothers, whom he killed in order to gain the throne. • His reign was the first that we have detailed and reliable written records about.

7. Asoka and Buddhism Asoka's entire outlook on life changed when after the Battle of Kalinga, which historians actually don’t know much about, especially about exactly why it started. • One main theory is that one of Asoka's brother took shelter in the city. • They do know that the entire province was plundered and thousands were killed. • After the battle, Asoka road through the city and saw all the death and destruction the battle had caused. It was said that even after he’d returned home, he continued to have nightmares. • This, combined with the fact that his wife left him after seeing what he’d done, prompted him to convert to Buddhism. • He sent out many missionary groups to spread his religion, especially into Tibet, where it remains the most prominent. • He unified the empire by spreading the ideas of tolerance and respect. • He even tried to get rid of the caste system in his empire.

8. The Pillars of Asoka • Asoka was the first ruler to stay in direct contact with his people through edicts he wrote and had engraved on rocks, pillars and caves. • These where known as the pillars of Asoka, and contained 44 royal orders, which were meant to influence the general behavior of the people.

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10. Mauryan Politics • The Mauryan Empire was very centralized, like the Roman empire. All of the political decisions were made in Pataliputra, the capital city. • Also like the Romans, the Mauryans built many roads to connect the empire, some which are still in use today. • They also kept a huge standing army, always ready to defend the empire from outside threats. However, it didn’t protect them from problems within the empire…

12. After Asoka In the end, the Mauryan empire barely lasted two hundred years. • After Asoka’s death, the Mauryan empire dissolved into several smaller kingdoms due to weak leadership. • They were invaded by various groups, though most didn’t make it very far. • One groupthat did were the Sakas, who arrived about 130 BC and penetrated much farther into India, eventually gaining control over a large territory. • The the Kushans and the Parthians, other tribes from Central Asia, followed the Sakas. • These three groups loosely controlled northwestern India all the way until the third century AD. Then, the Gupta came.

13. The Beginning of the Gupta • Chandragupta I founded the Gupta Empire in 320 AD through a series of military campaigns that allowed him to take over many of the small kingdoms and control all of northern India. • He became emperor in 335 AD, and ruled for twenty years. • His son, Samudragupta, took over after him.

15. Religion and Economy • As international trade increased, the Gupta economy became more based on crafted goods. Like all economies at that time, however, it was still very dependent on agriculture. • At first, the Gupta rulers tolerated the practice of various religions, just like the Kushankings had. • A major revival of Hinduism eventually pushed the other faiths aside. • At the same time, Buddhism became more and more major in China, Japan, Tibet, and Sri Lanka. This was partly due to Asoka’s missions.

17. Culture • The Gupta Empire is considered by many to be the classical era in Indian history due to it’s many artists, writers, and builders who created the classical Indian styles of poetry, drama, painting, and architecture. • For example, the Indian poet and playwright Kalidasa, who was active around 400 AD, holds the same place in Indian culture today as Shakespeare does to us. • Also, two very famous classics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which been told and retold orally since at least 600 BC, were re-written into the form we know them today during this time.

19. Politics • The Gupta Empire was not politically unified. • The central government allowed the local rajas (nobility of even kings) to continue ruling their own kingdoms within the empire. • One advantage of this was it allowed things to continue similarly to the way they were before, allowing life to continue uninterrupted by any major reorganization of the government. • The biggest disadvantage to this system was that the empire was not very centrally controlled, and was instead made up of many small monarchies, whose leaders occasionally challenged the emperor’s decisions or even his right to rule.

20. The Beginning of the End In the end, like all the others, the Gupta empire fell. Why? There were three main reasons – • First of all, the rival claims to the throne by other small ruling families created major conflict within the nation. • The first reason led to the second – the small groups created when different people supported different kings led to unrest and among the people, preventing them from uniting. • The last contributor to the fall of the Gupta empire was the uprisings that began when the government proved itself weak and ineffective.

21. The Fall of the Gupta Empire The events listed in the previous slide caused a civil war, which gave the Huns a chance to attack the empire. They were so destructive, they effectively destroyed the it. Though India remained culturally bound together, politically, it again became a series of small kingdoms, bringing to an end the Gupta Empireafter only 230 years. Interesting fact – The Huns sacked and burned many of the Buddhist monasteries, which is one of the main reasons Buddhism never took hold in India.

22. The Two Empires The Mauryan Empire The Gupta Empire