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Chapter 7.1 Reading Quiz
1. Who was Chandragupta Maurya? (Time Period,
Location, Key Achievements)
 321BCE: became king of Magadha, (northern India),
began the Mauryan Empire
 Expanded territory, fought against Seleucus
 Raised huge army…heavily taxed peoples…set up
bureaucracy…divided empire into 4 parts…advised
by Kautilya
2. Who was Asoka? (Time Period, Location, Key
Achievements)
 Grandson of Chandragupta Maurya…took over in
269BCE…ruled Mauryan Empire (India)…converted
to Buddhism, helped spread Buddhism, Asoka’s
Edicts
3. Who was Chandra Gupta I (Time Period, Location,
Key Achievements)
 Married into a powerful family and came to power in
AD 320 (India)
 Began the Gupta Empire
 “Great king of kings”
Chapter 7.1 First Empires of India
I. Chandragupta Maurya Builds an Empire
 Believed to have been born in the powerful kingdom
of Magadha, (on lower Ganges River).
 321BCE: Chandragupta Maurya had gathered an
army, killed the Nanda king, and claimed the throne,
beginning the Mauryan Empire
A. Chandragupta Unifies North India
 Chandragupta then moved northwest, seizing all the
land from Magadha to the Indus
 305BCE: Chandragupta began battling Seleucus I
(one of Alexander the Great’s generals who had
inherited the eastern part of Alexander’s empire)
o Seleucus I was trying to reassert Greek control
over the Indus Valley
o Chandragupta finally won…gained territory
o By 303BCE- Mauryan Empire stretched more
than 2,000 miles and united northern India
politically for the first time.
 Chandragupta had raised a large army: 600,000
soldiers on foot, 30,000 soldiers on horseback, 9,000
elephants.
 Government levied high taxes to pay for this army
o Farmers paying up to ½ value of crops to the
king
o Also heavily taxed income from trading, mining ,
and manufacturing
B. Running the Empire
 Chandragupta relied on his advisor, Kautilya (a
Brahmin).
 Kautilya wrote the book, Arthasastra, about how to
hold a vast empire together
o Arthasastra- proposed very tough-minded
policies…army of spies, attack weak
neighbors…influenced later thinkers like
Machiavelli.
o “The welfare of the king does not lie in the
fulfillment of what is dear to him; whatever is
dear to the subjects constitutes his welfare.”
 Chandragupta created a highly bureaucratic
government, carefully chose officials and had them
closely supervised
o Chandragupta divided the empire into four
provinces, each headed by a royal prince
o Province then divided into local districts, whose
officials assessed taxes and enforced the law
C. City Life and Country Life
 Seleucus sent an ambassador, Megathenese, to
Chandragupta’s capital…ambassador was very
impressed
o Megathenese “Farmers are exempted from
military service and cultivate their lands
undisturbed by fear”
 301BCE: Chandragupta’s son assumed the throne
and ruled for 32 years, then his grandson, Asoka
took over and brought the Mauryan Empire to its
greatest heights
D.Asoka Promotes Buddhism
 Asoka became king of Mauryan Empire in 269BCE
 At first, he followed Kautilya’s advice, and waged
war to expand his power into Kalinga…about
100,000 soldiers were slain and even more civilians
 Asoka felt sorrow over the slaughter at Kalinga…he
then began studying Buddhism, and decided to rule
by Buddha’s philosophy of nonviolence, “peace to all
beings”
 Asoka erected stone pillars throughout the empire,
inscribed with new policies inspired by Buddhism
 Asoka’s Edicts
o Nonviolence, just rule, religious toleration
 Asoka also improved the infrastructure of India, with
extensive road system…and made roads safer and
travel easier, thus improving communication…trees
for shade, wells every 9 miles, rest houses
 After Asoka died in 232BCE, the Mauryan Empire
began to break up
II. A Period of Turmoil
 After Asoka’s death, there was a power
vacuum…regional kings challenged the imperial
government…kingdoms in central India regained
independence
o Andhra Dynasty arose and dominated central
India…profited from trade with Rome, Sri Lanka,
and Southeast Asia
 Northern India suffered wave after wave of new
people fleeing political instability: Greeks, Persians,
Central Asians…cultural diffusion, and disruption
 Southern India- turmoil- 3 kingdoms that had never
been conquered by the Mauryans…spoke Tamil
language…fought against eachother and other states
III. The Gupta Empire
 After 500 years of invasion and turmoil, strong
leader emerged in northern state of
Magadha…Chandra Gupta (no relation to earlier
Chandragupta Maurya)
 Established the 2nd empire- Gupta Empire- great
flowering of Indian civilization, especially Hindu
culture
A. Chandra Gupta Builds an Empire
 Came to power by marrying the daughter of an old,
influential royal family…took the title of “Great King
of Kings “ in AD 320
o Empire included Magadha, area to north, and
central region of Ganges River
 Chandra Gupta I’s son, Samudra, became king in AD
335…loved poetry, music, and war
o Samudra expanded the empire with 40 years of
conquest
B. Daily Life in India
 First period that we have a lot of info about daily life
in India
 Small villages: craftspeople and merchants clustered
in specific districts…shops on street level and
residence above
 Majority of villagers were farmers…walked daily
from towns to outlying fields
 Most Indian families were Patriarchal, headed by
eldest male.
 Farmers had to irrigate crops, tax on water, had to
donate day’s worth of labor each month to maintain
wells, roads, etc (corvee)
 Southern India followed different cultural
pattern…some Tamil groups were matriarchal,
(mother was head of the family…property and
throne was passed through family line)
o Famous queen of the Pandyas
C. Height of the Gupta Empire
 Chandra Gupta II(Royal court of the 3rd Gupta
Emperor was a place of great excitement
 Chandra Gupta II: defeated the Shakas (enemy
kingdom to the west coast)…then able to participate
in valuable trade with the Mediterranean World
 Chandra Gupta II also strengthened his empire by
negotiating diplomatic and marriage alliances
o Ruled for 40 years
o Faxian, Chinese Buddhist, recorded that his
subjects seemed happy
o After death of Chandra Gupta II, another wave
of invaders threatened northern India (Hunas/
White Huns/ Huns)
o Over next 100 years, Gupta Empire broke into
small separate kingdoms, which were then
overrun by the Huns and other Central Asian
nomads.