THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRESlimits of political feasibility. It was recognised that high taxes and forced
labour would drive the population into the arms of the enemy and,
therefore, the king had to consider the welfare and contentment of his
people as a necessary political requirement for his own success.
The history of the Maurya empire after Chandragupta’s defeat of
Seleukos and the acquisition of the northwest remains a matter for
conjecture. Since at the time of Ashoka’s accession to the throne in 268 BC
the empire extended as far as present Karnataka, we may conclude that
either Chandragupta or his son and successor Bindusara (c. 293 to 268 BC)
had conquered these southern parts of India. Old Jaina texts report that
Chandragupta was a follower of that religion and ended his life in
Karnataka by fasting unto death, a great achievement of holy men in the
Jaina tradition. If this report is true, Chandragupta must have started the
conquest of the south. At Bindusara’s court there were ambassadors of the
Seleukids and of the Ptolemaeans but they have not left us valuable reports
as Megasthenes did a generation earlier.
Ashoka, the Beloved of the GodsAshoka’s reign of more than three decades is the first fairly well-
documented period of Indian history. Ashoka left us a series of great
inscriptions (major rock edicts, minor rock edicts, pillar edicts) which are
among the most important records of India’s past. Ever since they were
discovered and deciphered by the British scholar James Prinsep, in the
1830s, several generations of Indologists and historians have studied these
inscriptions with great care. The independent Republic of India selected
Ashoka’s lion pillar as the emblem of the state.
According to Buddhist tradition Prince Ashoka started his political
career when he was appointed governor of Taxila in the northwest where
he successfully suppressed a revolt. He was then transferred to Ujjain, the
famous capital of the earlier kingdom of Avanti in central India. The
precise date and the circumstances of Ashoka’s accession to the throne are
not yet known. Buddhist texts mention that Ashoka had to fight against
his brothers and that he was crowned only four years after his de facto
accession. But the Dutch Indologist Eggermont thinks that these are only
legends which were invented later by the Buddhists, and he feels confident
about dating Ashoka’s reign from 268 to 233 BC.
The first important event of Ashoka’s reign led to a crucial change in his
life: in 261 BC he conquered Kalinga, a kingdom on the east coast which
had resisted Maurya expansionism for a long time. In his inscriptions
Ashoka told the cruel consequences of this war: ‘150,000 people were
forcibly abducted from their homes, 100,000 were killed in battle and
many more died later on.’ Due to this experience Ashoka abjured further
warfare and turned to Buddhism. In his famous thirteenth rock edict he