A carved stone ring with goddesses and water plants, from the Mauryan period
Ring stone with goddesses and aquatic plants, 3rd–late 2nd century BCE
Marked Pataliputra (Patna)

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Mauryan empire and Ashoka

Chandragupta Maurya founded the first empire to cover most of South Asia. His grandson Ashoka, sickened by his conquest of Kalinga, had edicts about kindness and right conduct carved on rocks and pillars across India.

Date
About 322 to 185 BCVI · The classical world
Place
Pataliputra (Patna) · Kalinga · Sarnath · SanchiAsia
Laid out as
An empireOne power across a long stretch of time: how it grew, held together, and came apart.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IChandragupta and Chanakya
  2. IIPataliputra
  3. IIIThe war in Kalinga
  4. IVAshoka’s edicts
  5. VThe lion capital
  6. VIReading Brahmi again

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Chandragupta Maurya
  • Chanakya
  • Ashoka
  • James Prinsep

Objects

  • The lion capital of Sarnath
  • Rock edicts
  • The Great Stupa at Sanchi

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

322 BC to 185 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?