THE END OF THE MAURYA EMPIRE AND THE NORTHERN INVADERS

The history of the Maurya empire after the death of Ashoka is not very well recorded. There are only stray references in Buddhist texts, the Indian Puranas and some Western classical texts and these references often contradict each other. None of Ashoka’s successors produced any larger rock edicts. Perhaps the paternal tone of these edicts and the instruction to recite them publicly on certain days of the year had caused resentment among the people. Buddhist texts maintain that there was evidence of the decay of the empire even in the last days of Ashoka but this view is not generally accepted. The more distant provinces probably attained independence from the empire after Ashoka’s death. There is, for instance, no evidence in the south or in Kalinga for the continuation of Maurya domination after Ashoka. Perhaps even the central part of the empire in the north may have been divided among Ashoka’s sons and grandsons. One descendant, Dasaratha, succeeded Ashoka on the throne of Magadha, and he is the only one whom we know by name because he left some otherwise unimportant stone inscriptions with which he established some endowment for the Ajivika sect at a place south of Pataliputra.

The last ruler of the Maurya dynasty, Brihadratha, was assassinated by his general, Pushyamitra Shunga, during a parade of his troops in the year 185 BC. The usurper then founded the Shunga dynasty which continued for 112 years but about which very little is known. No inscriptions of this dynasty have ever been discovered. Pushyamitra is reported to have been a Brahmin and it is said that his rise to power marked a Brahmin reaction to Buddhism which had been favoured for such a long time by previous rulers. Pushyamitra once again celebrated the Vedic horse sacrifice. This was certainly a clear break with Ashoka’s tradition which had prohibited animal sacrifices altogether.

There is some other evidence, too, for the inclination of Indian kings to violate the rules established by the Mauryas and to revive old customs which had been forbidden by them. King Kharavela stated in an inscription of the first century BC near Bhubaneswar that he had reintroduced the musical festivals and dances which were prohibited under the Mauryas. There were reactions against the religious policy of the Mauryas, indeed, but this does not necessarily imply that Buddhism was suppressed and that the Shungas started a Brahmin counter-reformation as some Buddhist texts suggest. Several Buddhist monasteries, for instance the one at Sanchi, were renovated and enlarged under the Shunga rule. At Bharhut, south of Kausambi, they even sponsored the construction of a new Buddhist stupa. The Shunga style differed from the Maurya style, which was greatly influenced by Persian precedent. Old elements of folk art and of the cult of the mother goddess reappeared in the Shunga style which was ‘more Indian’ and is sometimes regarded as the first indigenous style of Indian art.

Immediately after taking the throne, Pushyamitra had to defend his country against the Greek invaders from Bactria who came to conquer the Indian plains. Pushyamitra prevented their complete success but nevertheless the whole area up to Mathura was finally lost. His son, Agnimitra, is supposed to have been posted as viceroy at Vidisha near 

Sanchi before ascending the throne. This was reported by the great poet Kalidasa, several centuries later. Towards the end of the second century BC the Greek ambassador, Heliodorus, who represented King Antialkidas, erected a tall Garuda pillar at Besnagar, very close to Vidisha. In his inscription on this pillar, Heliodorus calls himself a follower of the Bhagavata sect of the Vaishnavas and mentions a king by the name of Bhagabhadra who seems to have been a member of the Shunga dynasty. So Vidisha was probably still under the control of the Shungas, but they had obviously lost Ujjain, the old provincial capital situated about a hundred miles further to the west. The last king of the Shunga dynasty was murdered around 73 BC by a slave girl and, it is said, instigated by the king’s Brahmin minister, Vasudeva.

The short-lived Kanva dynasty, which was founded by Vasudeva after the Shunga dynasty, witnessed the complete decline of Magadha which relapsed to its earlier position of one mahajanapada among several others. The political centre of India had shifted to the northwest where several foreign dynasties struggled for supremacy. In 28 BC the last Kanva king was defeated by a king of the Shatavahana (or Andhra) dynasty of central India. This fact not only signalled the end of the Magadha after five centuries of imperial eminence but also the rise of central and southern India which continued throughout the subsequent centuries.

Greek rulers of the northwest 

When the Maurya empire was at the height of its power it could thwart all attempts of the Seleukids to claim Alexander’s heritage in India. Chandragupta had repulsed Seleukos Nikator at the end of the fourth century BC and a later king of the same dynasty, Antiochos III, who tried to conquer the Indian plains about one century later was equally frustrated. But this was due less to the efficacy of Indian resistance than to the great upheavals which had occurred in Bactria, Persia and southern Central Asia in the meantime.

Around 250 BC the Parthians, under King Arsakes, had won their independence from the Seleukids. After a century of tough fights against their former masters and against Central Asian nomadic horsemen, they had established hegemony over Western Asia. Until their final defeat about AD 226 they remained the most dangerous enemies of the Romans. At about the same time that Arsakes won independence from the Seleukids, the viceroy of Bactria, Diodotos, did the same and established a kingdom of his own. But only the third Greek king of Bactria, Euthydemos, was able to get formal recognition from the Seleukid king, Antiochos III, when he was on his Indian campaign which has been referred to above.