India: Political History and Notable People

1700 BCE - 28 BCE - Maghada Kingdom / Empire (All Facts)

• Located in North India

• The history of the monarchs of Magadha, particularly in the Pre-Mauryan period, is shrouded in mystery and legend with various sources claiming different things

1700 BCE - 682 BCE - Brihadratha Dynasty (All Facts)

• 1st Dynasty of Ancient India

544 BCE - 413 BCE - Haryanka Dynasty (All Facts)

• 2nd Dynasty of Ancient India

544 BCE - 492 BCE - Bimbisara (All Facts)

• 1st King and Founder of the Haryanka Dynasty

• Led the Kingdom of Magadha against the Vrjji in a war over the Ganges River Valley, which he won

• Was a firm friend of Buddha

• Established a hierarchical system of administration whose goal was to

  • maintain order in the provinces

  • organize the collection of taxes

492 BCE - 460 BCE - Ajatasatra / Ajatashatru (All Facts)

• 2nd King of the Haryanka Dynasty

• Deposed his father and had him imprisoned before making himself king

• Secured the final defeat of the Vrjii people

• Fortified his capital at Rajagrha

• Built a fort at Pataligrama

400’s BCE - Panini (All Facts)

• Indian scholar who analyzed and organized the grammar of the Sanskrit language, having formulated 4,000 grammatical rules

322 BCE - 185 BCE - Mauryan Dynasty / Empire (All Facts)

Dynasty of Notable Kings including

• Chandragupta

• Bindusara

• Ashoka

322 BCE - 298 BCE - Chandragupta Maurya (All Facts)

• 1st King and Founder of the Mauryan Dynasty / Empire

• Destroyed the previous Nanda Dynasty in the Ganges River Valley and consolidating and controlling much of central and northern India

• Unified the Indian sub-continent

• Established the Mauryan capital at Pataliputra (Patna) in the east of the country

• Organized northern India into 16 large states under one monarch but with decentralized government, in which daily decision-making was relegated to local deputies

• Under his rule, Buddhism and Jainism greatly flourished

• Signed a peace treaty with Seleucus Nicator and the Seleucid Empire in 302 BCE, which established friendly relations between the two empires

  • Before he did this, he had initially fought against him and Alexander the Great’s Greek garrisons, of which he drove out of India

  • After he did this, he also exchanged gifts and ambassadors with Seleucus Nicator

• Near the end of his reign, he converted to Jainism

• Abdicated his kingship to become a Jain monk, in which he claimed he was firmly resolved to pursue an ascetic existence for the rest of his life

  • Gave the throne to his son

298 BCE - 272 BCE - Bindusara (All Facts)

• 2nd King of the Mauryan Dynasty / Empire

268 BCE - 232 BCE - Ashoka the Great (All Facts)

• 3rd King of the Mauryan Dynasty / Empire

• Converted to Buddhism

  • Shocked by the horrors of the Kalinga War, in which 100K were slain

  • He merged spiritual and temporal power in order to establish a state based on “universal order”

  • Made his conversion clear across all the rocks and stone pillars erected during his rule with inscriptions announcing his conversion

    • These rocks and pillars wrote that he pledged that he would rule his empire through the principles of kindness, liberality, truthfulness, and purity of deed and thought

  • Was the first Indian monarch to be converted to Buddhism

• Ruled over a vast empire that was divided into four provinces, each administered by a prince of royal blood

• Divided his population into seven castes

  • Brahmans monopolized spiritual power

  • Kshatriyas monopolized temporal power

• Rule was

  • Paternal

  • Carried out by a centralized bureaucracy

• Built Stone Palaces at Pataliputra, the capital of the Mauryan Empire

• Founded monasteries

  • Founded the Shrine of Sanchi in the state of Madhya Pradesh, which became one of the great religious centers of Indian Buddhism after his death

• Financed irrigation schemes

• Established public health services

• Created a welfare state

  • Based on the teachings of the Buddha

  • Impoverished the treasury

• Practiced the principle of universal toleration to all religions in his kingdom

  • In other words, he allowed tolerance of other religions within the empire during his reign

• Administered enlightened policies, which arguably sowed the seeds of decline of the Empire whose peak was represented by his rule, including

  • Concentration of power which created an administration that was too brittle and distant to adapt to changing circumstances

• War with Bactria, a Greek kingdom, made him and his Empire suffer greatly

  • He lost the Punjab region from it

187 BCE - 185 BCE - Brihadratha (All Facts)

• 9th and Final King of the Mauryan Dynasty / Empire

• Assassinated by his commander-in-chief at a military review who would succeed him and found a new imperial dynasty

  • His death seemed inevitable, the logical conclusion of the decline of the Mauryan Dynasty / Empire

185 BCE - 75 BCE - Shunga Dynasty / Empire (All Facts)

Dynasty of Notable Kings including

• Pushyamitra

185 BCE - 149 BCE - Pushyamitra Shunga (All Facts)

• First King and Founder of the Shunga Dynasty / Empire

165 BCE - 130 BCE - Menander (All Facts)

• Indo-Greek king who ruled parts of India

• Was a contemporary of the Shunga Emperors, although he ruled over a different part of the Indian lands

• Led an expedition into the Ganges River Valley reaching Pataliputra (Patna)

• Best remembered for his conversion to Buddhism by a scholar-priest named Nagasena