Asokan India and the Gupta age are the terminal points of a span of one thousand years, from the fourth century B.C. to the sixth century A.D. The span extends over a period of considerable historical change; yet it is possible to perceive an underlying continuity. The origin of institutions which were to mould Indian culture is frequently traceable to this period.
The Asokan age saw the establishment of a centralised imperial structure which embraced almost the entire subcontinent and rested on a methodically organized and efficient bureaucracy. This was the first time that the imperial idea found expression in India.
In the subsequent period the personality of India acquired new contours and delineations which were both the result of an imperial system and the foreshadowing of other patterns the Gupta age, for a brief period, came close in spirit to the government of the Mauryas, but it carried the seeds of a new political system-the early stages of a feudal-type organization-which was not conducive to empire building. The Gupta age is better remembered as the age which saw the triumph of Sanskritic culture in many parts of the subcontinent.
Chandragupta Maurya conquered Magadha (south Bihar) and in 321 B.C. founded the Mauryan Dynasty with his capital at Pataliputra (in the vicinity of modern Patna). He proceeded to annex various parts of northern India and campaigned against the Greek, Seleucus Nicator, the former general of Alexander.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The successful outcome of this campaign brought him the Trans- Indus region and areas of Afghanistan. His son, Bindusara, continued the campaign into peninsular India. But it was his grandson Asoka who, inheriting the subcontinent, established an all-India empire and discovered both the advantages and problems inherent in such a political structure.
The mechanics of a centralized empire came into existence after a lengthy germination involving the life and death of numerous kingdoms and republics in northern India from the sixth century B.C. onwards.
Perhaps the earliest glimmerings of empire were visible to the Nandas, the dynasty which immediately preceded the Mauryas, though the actual birth of empire had to wait until the arrival of the latter. Asoka inherited an efficiently running machine dominated by a central administration. The imperial structure was provided with a base through the spread and establishment of an agrarian economy.
In later centuries, in spite of the contribution of other types of economic activity such as internal and overseas trade, agriculture remained the dominant factor in the economy, with these other activities providing substantial but subsidiary incomes.