MAURYAN EMPIRE

(c. 321185 BC), in ancient India, a state centred at Pataliputra (later Patna) near the junction of the Son and Ganges rivers. In the wake of Alexander the Great's death, Candra Gupta, its dynastic founder, carved out the majority of an empire that encompassed most of the subcontinent except for the Tamil south. The Mauryan empire was an efficient and highly organized autocracy with a standing army and civil service. This bureaucracy and its operation was the model for the Artha-sastra (Treatise on the Aims of Life), a work of political economy similar in tone and scope to Machiavelli's The Prince. Much is known of the reign of the Buddhist Mauryan emperor Asoka (reigned c. 265238 BC, or c. 273232 BC) from the exquisitely executed stone edicts that he had erected throughout his realm. These comprise some of the oldest deciphered original texts of India. Asoka campaigned little to expand the realm; rather, his conquest consisted of sending many Buddhist emissaries throughout Asia and commissioning some of the finest works of ancient Indian art. After Asoka's death the empire shrank because of invasions, defections by southern princes, and quarrels over ascension. The last ruler, Brhadratha, was killed in 185 BC by his Brahman commander in chief, Pusyamitra, who then founded the Sunga dynasty, which ruled in central India for about a century.