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The Maurya Empire (c. 321–185 BCE) was the first state to unite most of the Indian subcontinent. Its third ruler, Ashoka, turned away from conquest after the bloody Kalinga war and promoted a moral code he called dhamma through edicts carved on rocks and pillars. The later Gupta Empire (c. 320 to the mid-500s CE) ruled a smaller area of northern India but presided over a flowering of Sanskrit literature, Hindu temple culture and mathematics. Comparing the two shows two models of rule: a large, centralized empire and a smaller, looser one built on alliances with regional rulers.
Read a translated Ashokan edict as a primary source and ask what it reveals about how a ruler wanted to be seen. Then compare maps of the two empires and list how each governed its provinces. A side-by-side chart with the Han Empire or Rome helps students see classical India as one of several large states of the period.
When Alexander the Great reached the Indus valley in 326 BCE, northern India was divided among many kingdoms. A few years later, around 321 BCE, Chandragupta Maurya seized power in the kingdom of Magadha, with its capital at Pataliputra on the Ganges. He and his successors built the first empire to cover most of the subcontinent. A Greek ambassador from the Seleucid kingdom, Megasthenes, lived at the Mauryan court, and fragments of his account survive in later Greek writers. Indian tradition links a text on statecraft, the Arthashastra, to Chandragupta's minister Kautilya, though scholars debate its date and authorship.
Chandragupta's grandson Ashoka ruled from about 268 to 232 BCE. Early in his reign he conquered Kalinga, on the east coast. In a later edict he wrote that a great many people were killed or deported, and that he felt deep remorse. From then on he presented himself as a ruler guided by dhamma: honesty, kindness, respect for parents and teachers, and care for animals. He had these messages carved on rocks and pillars across his empire, mostly in local Prakrit languages and the Brahmi script. These edicts are among the earliest readable written records from India. Ashoka also supported Buddhist monasteries and missions, which helped Buddhism spread to Sri Lanka and beyond. The empire weakened after his death and ended around 185 BCE.
For about five centuries no single dynasty ruled as much of India, though states such as the Kushan Empire held large parts of the north. Then, around 320 CE, Chandragupta I founded the Gupta dynasty. His successors Samudragupta and Chandragupta II expanded it through war and through alliances with local rulers who kept their lands in return for tribute. The Gupta state was smaller and looser than the Mauryan one.
The Gupta period is remembered for culture more than conquest. The poet Kalidasa wrote Sanskrit plays and poems. Hindu temples and sculpture took on forms that lasted for centuries. The mathematician Aryabhata, born in 476 CE, worked on astronomy and calculation, and Indian scholars used a place-value system of numerals that later passed west through the Islamic world. The Chinese pilgrim Faxian visited in the early 400s and described a peaceful, prosperous land. From the mid-400s, invasions by Huna peoples from Central Asia weakened the empire, and it broke apart in the 500s.
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