The Mauryan and Gupta Empires (South Asia) [individual assignment]
The Mauryan and Gupta Empires (South Asia)
To what degree the Indus River civilization was “Indian” remains unclear, as do the true foundations of Indian culture. Conventionally, these are said to have been laid around 1500 B.C.E., when the Indo-Europeans known as Aryans invaded northern India. These lighter-skinned horseback warriors conquered darker-skinned natives (collectively known as Dravidians), forming a common culture with them as they expanded southward. Variety within this culture was still astounding, however, with dozens of ethnicities and languages evolving throughout the subcontinent. India’s size and diversity kept it broken apart during much of its early history.
The first state to unify most of it was the Mauryan Empire (324–184 B.C.E.), founded by Chandragupta Maurya and ruled from the capital of Pataliputra on the eastern Ganges. The empire, which included all but India’s southernmost tip, developed an elaborate bureaucracy that collected a 25 percent tax on all agricultural production and maintained a network of informers to spy on its own people and enforce obedience. The Mauryans’ powerful army deployed elephants in addition to chariots and cavalry, and their trade network was extensive. They issued a standard currency and traded not just with East and Southeast Asia, but as far away as the Middle East and the eastern Roman Empire. Key exports included salt, iron, and cotton cloth.
The best known of the Mauryan emperors was Ashoka (269–232 B.C.E.). A successful warrior as a youth, Ashoka became sickened by war after one of his greatest victories. He converted to Buddhism and advocated peace and tolerance, advertising those ideals by raising stone columns carved with Buddhist teachings—the Pillars of Ashoka—throughout the country. He encouraged trade with China, especially for its silk, and opened trade routes to the north. He was admired for his justice and wisdom, and remains famous for creating harmony between India’s Buddhists, Hindus, and other believers. His efforts to spread Buddhism played a key role in establishing it as a formal religion.
In 184 B.C.E., the Mauryan empire collapsed due to attacks from outside enemies, and for the next five centuries, India reverted to a state of political disunity.
Not until 320 C.E. did another large empire rise up, also along the eastern Ganges: the Gupta Empire, which controlled most of north-central India, with vassal states to the east and northwest. The Gupta consciously imitated the Mauryan empire. Their first ruler, Chandra Gupta, borrowed his name from the first Mauryan emperor, and chose the Mauryan capital, Pataliputra, as his own.
The Gupta empire was smaller and less centralized than the Mauryan, and depended more on diplomacy to maintain its authority. Although the Gupta were Hindu, they practiced religious toleration. Gupta India traded by boat with Malaysia and Indonesia, exchanging cotton, metal wares, and salt for spices, and with China for silk. Their economic network included the Arabian Sea and eastern Mediterranean. At least in Afro-Eurasia, Gupta scholars are thought to have originated the decimal system (and the wrongly named “Arabic numerals”), including the concepts of zero and pi. As did the Mauryans, the Gupta imposed a 25 percent tax on agricultural products.
Not only did the Gupta strengthen the caste system, they were more patriarchal than the Mauryans, and the status of women declined. Women lost the right to own property and were forced to become more obedient to males. Among Hindus, the sati ritual of burning widows alive with their dead husbands became more common.
The Gupta emperors fell in the mid-500s C.E. As with the Mauryans before them, the main cause was outside military pressure, especially from the nomadic White Huns on the northwest frontier. From then until after 1000 C.E., India remained decentralized. Muslim invaders then moved into the subcontinent, decisively reshaping Indian politics and culture.
Questions for experts
1. What were the main points of the civilization?
2. What factors influenced the civilization?
Questions for the mixed groups
1. What was similar between the civilizations?
2. What was different between the civilizations?
3. What factors brought civilizations to contact each other?