Overview
First pan-Indian empire; Ashoka and Buddhism spread
Maurya dynasty
Founding imperial dynasty of the Indian subcontinent. Established by Chandragupta Maurya c. 322 BCE through the overthrow of the Nanda kingdom of Magadha and expansion across the Gangetic plain; extended to Afghanistan after the Seleucid–Mauryan treaty c. 305 BCE; reached its zenith under Ashoka (r. c. 268–232 BCE) who after the conquest of Kalinga embraced Buddhism and promulgated dhamma through the rock and pillar edict corpus. The dynasty declined through seven late rulers attested mainly from the Puranas and ended with the assassination of Brihadratha by his senapati Pushyamitra Shunga c. 185 BCE.
Territory Phases
Maurya Empire318 BCE – 311 BCE
Early Chandragupta Maurya. Overthrew the Nanda dynasty, unified the Gangetic plain and eastern India. Pre-Seleucid treaty — western boundary at the Indus corridor.
Maurya Empire315 BCE – 297 BCE
Chandragupta's expanded empire after defeating Seleucus Nicator (~305 BCE). Gained former Achaemenid territories west of the Indus — Gandhara, Arachosia, Gedrosia. Treaty secured the northwest frontier.
Maurya Empire301 BCE – 287 BCE
Late Chandragupta / early Bindusara. Northwest territories consolidated. Empire extends from the Hindu Kush to Bengal. Chandragupta reportedly abdicated and became a Jain ascetic.
Maurya Empire298 BCE – 252 BCE
Bindusara's empire with southern Deccan expansion. Extended Mauryan control nearly to the tip of the peninsula. Ashoka served as viceroy at Ujjain. Only the far south Tamil kingdoms (Chola, Pandya, Chera) remained independent.
Maurya Empire265 BCE – 221 BCE
Ashoka's Maurya Empire at maximum extent. Conquered Kalinga (261 BCE). The entire subcontinent under centralized rule except the far south Tamil kingdoms. Promoted Dhamma through rock and pillar edicts across the empire. The Kalinga war's devastation led to Ashoka's embrace of non-violence and Buddhism.
Maurya Empire (declining)225 BCE – 184 BCE
Declining Maurya Empire after Ashoka's death (232 BCE). Peripheral territories fragment and break away. Control contracts to the Gangetic heartland around Pataliputra. Weak successors unable to hold the empire together.
Maurya Empire (remnant)188 BCE – 171 BCE
Final years of the Maurya dynasty. Reduced to the Magadha core. Ends with the Shunga coup by Pushyamitra (~185 BCE), who assassinated the last Maurya emperor Brihadratha.
Key Rulers
Chandragupta Maurya
Samrat
Also known as: Sandrokottos, Sandrocottus
322 BCE – 298 BCE
★★★★★
Founder of the Maurya empire. Overthrew the Nanda dynasty of Magadha with the counsel of his minister Chanakya (Kautilya), unified the Gangetic plain, and c. 305 BCE concluded a treaty with Seleucus I Nicator that ceded the former Achaemenid satrapies west of the Indus (Gandhara, Arachosia, Gedrosia, Paropamisadae) in exchange for 500 war elephants. Received Megasthenes as Seleucid ambassador at Pataliputra. Jain tradition records his abdication and death by ritual fasting (sallekhana) at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka.
Bindusara
Also known as: Amitraghata, Amitrochates
297 BCE – 273 BCE
★★★
Son of Chandragupta. The title "Amitraghata" ("slayer of enemies"), transmitted as "Amitrochates" by Greek sources, points to continued military expansion; Mauryan rule was extended southward into the Deccan during his reign. Maintained diplomatic relations with the Seleucid court (an exchange of envoys with Antiochus I is recorded by Strabo and Athenaeus).
Ashoka
Devanampiya Piyadasi (Beloved-of-the-Gods, He Who Looks With Affection)
Also known as: Asoka, Devanampiya Piyadasi
268 BCE – 232 BCE
★★★★★
The defining Mauryan ruler. Acceded c. 272 BCE after a four-year regency/interregnum following the death of Bindusara and was formally consecrated c. 268 BCE. Conquered Kalinga c. 261 BCE — Rock Edict XIII records 100,000 killed, 150,000 deported and "many times that number who perished" — and in remorse embraced the Buddhist dhamma. Inscribed the Major Rock Edicts, Minor Rock Edicts and Pillar Edicts across the empire (the earliest deciphered Indian writing in the Brahmi and Kharoshthi scripts), convened the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra, and despatched dhamma missions to Sri Lanka (under his son Mahinda) and to the Hellenistic kingdoms of Antiochus II, Ptolemy II, Antigonus Gonatas, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus.
Dasharatha Maurya
232 BCE – 224 BCE
★★
Grandson of Ashoka and his immediate successor according to the Puranic tradition. A short dedicatory inscription of "Dasalatha Devanampiya" at the Nagarjuni hill caves near Gaya, dedicating cave-dwellings to the Ajivika sect, provides independent epigraphic attestation for his reign.
Samprati
224 BCE – 215 BCE
★★
Grandson of Ashoka (brother or cousin of Dasharatha in different Puranic traditions). Remembered in Jain tradition as a major royal patron of Jainism, parallel to Ashoka's patronage of Buddhism, credited with sending Jain missions across India.
Shalishuka
215 BCE – 202 BCE
★
Devavarman
202 BCE – 195 BCE
★
Shatadhanvan
Also known as: Satadhanvan
195 BCE – 187 BCE
★
Brihadratha
187 BCE – 185 BCE
★★★
Last Maurya emperor. Per the Harshacharita of Bana (Book V), Brihadratha was assassinated by his own senapati (commander-in-chief) Pushyamitra Shunga during a military review, c. 185 BCE, formally ending the Maurya dynasty and inaugurating the Shunga.
Key Events
Seleucid–Mauryan Treaty303 BCE
Treaty between Chandragupta Maurya and Seleucus I Nicator concluding the Seleucid–Mauryan war. Seleucus ceded the former Achaemenid eastern satrapies (Gandhara, Arachosia, Gedrosia and the Paropamisadae — roughly modern eastern Iran, southern Afghanistan and western Pakistan) in exchange for 500 war elephants, and Megasthenes was sent as Seleucid ambassador to the Mauryan court at Pataliputra. The elephants would contribute decisively to the Seleucid victory at Ipsus (301 BCE).
Battle of Kalinga261 BCE
Kalinga (modern Odisha)
Ashoka's conquest of the independent kingdom of Kalinga on the east coast. The scale and cost of the campaign are described in Ashoka's own words in Major Rock Edict XIII: "one hundred and fifty thousand were deported, one hundred thousand were killed, and many times that number perished". The edict attributes to the Kalinga war his subsequent remorse and his turn from military conquest (dig-vijaya) to conquest by dhamma (dhamma-vijaya).
Ashoka embraces dhamma and promulgates the edicts258 BCE
Following the Kalinga war, Ashoka publicly adopted the Buddhist dhamma and inaugurated the programme of edicts inscribed on rocks, caves and pillars across the empire. The edicts enjoin non-violence, religious tolerance, welfare measures (medical care for humans and animals, planting of shade trees, digging of wells) and the replacement of military conquest with dhamma-vijaya. They are the earliest surviving decipherable Indian writing, in Brahmi (and Kharoshthi in the northwest), and were the principal source for Thapar's reconstruction of Mauryan polity in Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas.
Ashoka's dhamma missions250 BCE
Major Rock Edict XIII records Ashoka's despatch of dhamma envoys to five named Hellenistic kings — Antiochus II Theos of the Seleucids, Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt, Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus — as well as to the Cholas, Pandyas and Tamraparni (Sri Lanka). The Mahavamsa independently records the Sri Lankan mission, led by Ashoka's son Mahinda, which established Theravada Buddhism on the island.
Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra250 BCE
Pataliputra
Convened under Ashoka's patronage in his 17th or 18th regnal year and presided over by the monk Moggaliputta Tissa. The council, attested by the Mahavamsa and the Dipavamsa, is credited in the Theravada tradition with the expulsion of heterodox monks, the compilation of the Kathavatthu (Points of Controversy), and the organisation of the dhamma missions to the Hellenistic kingdoms and Sri Lanka. The council is not independently attested in the edict corpus and is accepted primarily on the chronicle evidence.
Death of Ashoka232 BCE
Pataliputra
End of the reign of Ashoka and the effective close of the Mauryan imperial apex. The succession fragments in the Puranic tradition between Dasharatha and Samprati (different sources assign them to different provinces) and the empire enters the long late-Mauryan decline tracked by the maurya_225 and maurya_188 polygon phases.
Related Civilisations
Successors
Sources
- Thapar, R. (2002) Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
- Singh, U. (2008) A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India
- Bana (c. 625 CE) Harshacharita, tr. Cowell & Thomas (1897)(Sanskrit biographical prose-poem (akhyayika) composed by Bana at the court of Harsha c. 625 CE. Book VI contains the passage naming Vasudeva Kanva as the amatya of the last Shunga ruler Devabhuti and describing the assassination — the only non-Puranic ancient source for the founding of the Kanva dynasty. Standard English translation: Cowell, E.B. & Thomas, F.W. (1897) The Harsa-carita of Bana, Royal Asiatic Society, London.)
- Hultzsch, E. (1925) Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum Vol. I: Inscriptions of Asoka
- Puranas (Vishnu, Matsya, Vayu) — post-Mauryan dynastic lists
- Mahavamsa (Geiger ed. 1912)
- Megasthenes Indica (via Strabo, Arrian, Diodorus fragments)
- Raychaudhuri, H.C. (1953) Political History of Ancient India(The standard narrative reconstruction of the political history from the accession of Parikshit to the extinction of the Gupta dynasty. Chapters on Pushyamitra, the Indo-Greek wars, and the Shunga succession remain the most detailed stitching together of the Puranic king-lists with Patanjali and the Harshacharita.)