The Mauryas 1

 INTRODUCTION

History encompasses our past, the entirety of our lived experience and our shared inheritance. It is also a most generous discipline: everyone has access to it and can claim it as their own, and it contains within it several other fields of study that endlessly diverge and converge to reconstruct it. It can be, at once, extremely comforting and totally intimidating; unbelievably vast and highly specific. As a practitioner in this field and one who has loved it ever since she read her first work of historical fiction as a child, I feel equipped and impelled to make certain general observations about it—to lay out the ground, as it were—before I tackle the Mauryas.

Let us begin with a truism: history is selective. The history that a non-historian reads is based on the selection of facts by a historian who then, despite their best efforts, will interpose themselves between you and the fact. So if you grow up swearing belief in a particular view of history, it is because you have decided, at some point, that the historian you have read is truthful and objective, and that their facts are sacrosanct. This, as anyone who is trained in the rigours of the discipline knows, is often very far from the truth.

So how does the non-historian arrive at an objective view of the past? Put very simply, if one gathers information from various secondary sources, it is possible to garner a more or less accurate picture despite the large gaps that will inevitably exist in our knowledge given the lack of sources for some periods in history. However, it definitely does not mean that anyone and everyone can master the subject from merely ploughing through a pile of books. History is a very specialised discipline, as noted above, and you should, ideally, undergo the rigorous training and research regimen that goes with the field before you appropriate the right to make statements about it. Making sweeping assertions about the past simply because you like history and you think you know about it is as unfair and unjustifiable as pontificating on Physics simply because you are interested in the universe and its workings. It also does not mean, for instance, that anyone with a mastery over myth can proceed to label themselves as a historian. Myth is, emphatically, not history and there is nothing irreverent or injurious about reiterating this simple fact. Myths might reflect some aspects of the past, particularly of the times in which they were composed, but to see them as a straightforward rendition of historical fact is ridiculous and completely unwarranted.

It is also unfair to expect someone with a background in historical studies to know everything about the past. To say that the canvas of history is vast is akin to noting that the sky is large. History is, basically, everything that happened from the beginning of time to the present, so you cannot actually ask a specialist in medieval history, for instance, to tell you all about the Indus Valley civilisation. She will, undoubtedly, know the basics but, in all probability, not much more than that. Academics across the board are required to micro-specialise in areas of their interest and historians are no exception. Whether that is a sensible factor or not is a different discussion altogether.

Everyone is familiar with the contention that history favours the victor and suppresses facts about the vanquished and the oppressed. This is true but is, actually, the tip of the iceberg. The point is that a historical narrative cannot possibly contain the names of each and every person who has ever appeared on the historical stage. Consider the massive geographical breadth of this country, coupled with the thousands of regions within it with their own specific political and social trajectories. To include everyone who wielded any political and/ or social influence at all in our historical narratives would be a logistical nightmare. Textbooks would, in that case, be voluminous and near-impossible to negotiate, and general histories would be largely unreadable.

Historians who author textbooks or general narratives are, therefore, forced to make a somewhat judicious selection of some important people who left a considerable mark on history—by dint of effecting political changes, or leaving behind information on themselves in different sources, or having caught the popular imagination for a range of reasons—and omit a whole lot of others. By some tacit—and often insidious—consensus, certain names alone are mentioned repeatedly in historical delineations of the Indian past, thereby creating the impression that they were the only ones whose existence mattered.

The casualties of this approach are those who fall into the cracks of history and remain there in oblivion unless they have the fortune of being resurrected by some historian or the other to suit particular research agendas. For every individual who is ‘known’, there are several more—equally remarkable and noteworthy and fascinating—waiting on the sidelines for some sort of popular acknowledgement. Yet, we often lack the ability to look beyond the obvious into the enchanting shadows of the past. Ironically, though, the sources testify to their existence and provide tantalising glimpses of their personalities and contributions but they are deemed to be insignificant in the scheme of things, persons who would mar the neat outline of the ubiquitous historical narrative. Thus, they are consigned to what has been poetically referred to as ‘the dustbin of history’.

Let us, for instance, talk about what history as we know it today is mostly about. It is, in fact, his-story and has very little to do with the women of the past. So the overwhelming impression conveyed—through textbooks and a majority of secondary sources—is that it was the men who went out and fought battles, founded kingdoms, made the laws, built magnificent structures and so on. There is usually a token passage on ‘the status of women’ in differing historical periods that, more often than not, focuses on the jewellery and clothes that they wore, which implies that all through history, women were obsessing daily about how they looked while the men did the real things. This flies in the face of the evidence that a wide range of historical sources convey about women in the past.

The truth is that women were hugely important in the political, social, economic and religious spheres in every historical period, some of them—in certain phases of the past—ruling on or behind the throne, mediating in court politics, building structures to perpetuate their names and donating to different causes—and this applies to both the royal and non-royal sections of society. Yet, most historians ignore what the sources say, in this regard, and choose to tell you a different tale altogether. The familiar spectre of the historian and their agenda between you and the source again! Thus, there is an unfortunate but concerted effort to invisibilise women and their contributions in historical narratives, leading to a male-centric—and, therefore, skewed—version of the past across age groups.

Notable exceptions to this trend are a handful of names—Razia Sultan, Rani Lakshmibai, Jahanara and Mother Teresa—and these are the ones that schoolchildren across the country obediently trot out when asked to identify some women in Indian history that they remember reading about. When, however, you ask them to name any woman before the thirteenth century, the date pertaining to Razia (the earliest woman usually mentioned), they draw a collective blank. If you extend this line of enquiry and go further back in time, some of them instinctively say ‘no’ when asked whether women existed during the Indus Valley civilisation, for instance, and then proceed to look sheepish when the ludicrousness of their answer dawns upon them.

Yet, such is the insidious nature of the gender bias that exists in the writing of history that leads most people to believe that women were irrelevant to the larger concerns of the past and can be dispensed with altogether. This is not to say that sources on women in history are readily available or plentiful. The further back in time you go, the more difficult it is to retrieve their presence. Yet the very fact that one can problematise the issue and be aware of the one-sided nature of most historical narratives is a promising beginning. When one is reading a purportedly ‘comprehensive’ history, therefore, one needs to exercise caution in one’s expectations. Something or someone will, inevitably, be left out of the rendition and you need to be aware of this fact.

The selective approach to history impacts the reconstruction of the past in other ways as well, notably, when we try to put together ruling lines or dynasties: one or the other aspect will usually take precedence over others and one or more rulers will tend to be highlighted rather than all, depending on who is looking at the sources and what they are trying to say. And this brings us to the focus of this book, the Mauryan dynasty, which constitutes one of the most interesting and vibrant phases of the ancient Indian past but whose details are, by no means, completely known and whose rulers are not always accorded equal importance, their narrative being plagued, as it is, by some of the issues noted above. Sources pertaining to the Mauryas, who ruled from c. 324/321 BCE to c. 181 BCE and over almost the entire Indian subcontinent, are not necessarily plentiful but have often been used selectively so that the second Mauryan ruler, Bindusara, for instance, slips through the cracks of known history, sandwiched between his well-known father and founder of the dynasty, Chandragupta Maurya, and his even more well-known son, Ashoka, the most powerful Mauryan ruler and one of the best-known monarchs in Indian history.

Ashoka himself has spent nearly 2,000 years of floating around in half-remembered legend and tradition, in and out of public memory and more or less buried in oblivion, until a sheer accident of discovery and interpretation brought him back firmly into the light. Today, the tale of his transition from violence to non-violence is widely known as he documented this fact all over his empire, most innovatively, through inscriptions on pillars and rocks—a brilliant and pioneering method of communicating with his people. The writing and reconstruction of history, therefore, is a continuous, ongoing process. The more you know in this field, the more you realise how much you do not know—and therein lies the backbreaking but highly enjoyable and rewarding process of research and interpretation.

The Mauryas attempts to provide as accurate an account of the Mauryan dynasty as possible but, at the same time, involve the general reader in the evolving of a very interesting segment of our collective past whose legacy has proved to be enduring. It is meant to be enjoyed as an eminently readable tale but also as a gently informative one that attempts to draw disparate threads of this dynasty together to weave a connected narrative between its inception and the factors that enabled its rise, to those who ultimately inherited its mantle and carried it forward. The Mauryan dynasty controlled almost the entire Indian subcontinent with efficiency and administrative finesse. Small wonder, then, that it attracted so much attention in history circles and several academic treatises flowed from this. There are too many to cite, in this regard, but mention should definitely be made of R.K. Mookerji’s works on Ashoka and Chandragupta, which were truly pioneering scholarly analyses, paving the way for a veritable flood of outpourings on the Mauryans.

Academic works apart, there is very little available about this remarkable dynasty in a sequential, narrative form to appeal to the non-historian or non-Mauryan specialist who does not seek to engage with the dry details alone. In addition, most purportedly non-academic works on the Mauryas tend to focus solely on Ashoka, and his reign and legacy, definitely engrossing topics to capture. However, to understand the breadth of his vision and the enormity of his endeavours during his reign, one needs to understand where he came from and also appreciate the fact that although pioneering, he began his reign by sitting on the shoulders of two giants, whose support he only later shrugged off when he came into his own. The Mauryas attempts to fill this gap.

The tale of the Mauryas actually starts with Magadha in present-day south Bihar and the establishment of its supremacy over the other states that arose in the sixth century BCE in north India across a wide axis stretching from Gandhara in the north-west to Anga in the east and southwards across the Vindhyas to the Godavari river in the Deccan. There were many factors that ensured Magadha’s success over the contemporary monarchies and oligarchies: its geographically strategic location, its natural resources, and the sheer charisma and leadership of Bimbisara and Ajatashatru, the father-and-son duo of the Haryanka dynasty who ruled it, in turn. This was also the time of what has been termed the ‘heterodox’ religions, mainly Buddhism and Jainism, that competed with Brahmanism, the resident heavyweight, for followers and patronage. The Haryankas were eventually replaced by the Shishunagas, a forgettable interregnum and, thereafter, by the Nandas, who further shored up Magadha’s might. The Nandas are considered the first ruling line to establish an empire and some semblance of central control, building upon Magadha’s resources to accumulate so much wealth and power that even Alexander the Great’s soldiers balked at the thought of invading them and few among the contemporary polities dared to challenge their formidable sway. Until, of course, they were replaced by the Mauryas.

The Mauryas have several ‘firsts’ to their credit, beginning with the dynasty’s founder, Chandragupta Maurya, who, in a sense, is the earliest emperor in Indian history whose historicity can be established on the grounds of fairly well-ascertainable chronology. This is not to say that there were no other well-known names in the narrative of the past but just that in Chandragupta’s case, there is a conjunction of chronological and spatial evidence—in terms of a wide variety of sources—that enables historians to locate him in a well-defined historical context. Furthermore, the empire that he managed to establish so far outstripped earlier dynastic entities in terms of geographical extent that it occupies a hallowed space of its own. He virtually brought all of north India and most of the south under his sway, a feat that might have been attempted before but without the astounding success he (and his successors) enjoyed.

The Nanda dynasty that Chandragupta replaced, with its base at Magadha and including, within it, the Ganga valley and its neighbourhood, did not have as extensive an empire as the Mauryas nor did it have so many peoples and cultures within its ambit. There were social and cultural tensions of other kinds as well. Brahmanism, as noted earlier, was jostling with several dissident groups, prominently, Buddhism—and Jainism, to a somewhat lesser extent—not just in the philosophical realm but also in competitions for patronage. There were economic changes, too, that were often reflected in these tussles. The semi-nomadic pastoral economy of previous times and the clearing of the forests had gradually given way to a settled agrarian village economy in the area, with a preponderance of cultivators. There was, in addition, an increase in trade and communication (for which the Ganga was greatly used), and urbanism with its guilds—and the inevitable rise of certain social classes connected with these. This, in turn, necessitated a well-oiled administration with some amount of authority and control (to be able to impose taxation, among other things), which Chandragupta was able to set in motion during his time, passing the baton to Bindusara, and Ashoka was later able to cement with his policy of dhamma and its focus on social responsibility.

Sir William Jones’s identification of Chandragupta as the Sandrocottus of contemporary Greek sources not only enabled the Mauryan dates to be worked out but also provided the first verifiable date in ancient Indian history, which provided the basis for subsequent datelines to be developed. Several dates and assertions mattered in this scheme of things—Alexander the Great’s Indian conquests in 327/326 BCE and his death in Babylon in 323 BCE; his general, Seleucus Nikator’s India campaign in 305 BCE and his subsequent clash with Chandragupta; the logical conclusion that Chandragupta must have won the Nanda throne in Magadha after Alexander’s death and before the latter’s generals withdrew from conquered Indian territories in 317 BCE; and the Puranic claim that Chandragupta had reigned for twenty-four years. Over years of discussions and recalculations, the general consensus is that Chandragupta Maurya ruled from around 324/321 to 297 BCE; his son, Bindusara, from 297 to 273 BCE and Bindusara’s son, Ashoka, from 269/268 to 232 BCE. The Mauryan dynasty itself ended in around 181 BCE.

Chandragupta’s involvement with Chanakya/Kautilya, who had an axe to grind with the Nandas, who used the former as his tool to effect revenge, and who might or might not have written the Arthashastra, a brilliant treatise on statecraft that possibly reflected the Mauryan empire, is the subject of much speculation, as are some of the other aspects of the young king’s life, and which one can attempt to make sense of by using the Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jaina literary traditions, as also Graeco-Roman accounts composed in the wake of Alexander’s invasion. The same sources can also be used for Bindusara, an enigmatic character who has not received much scholarly or other attention but whose personality, such as can be discerned, was clearly strong, curious and stubborn.

The fact that he held his father’s enormous empire together argues for a considerable measure of strength, control and political sagacity. His was also an enquiring and eclectic mind, reaching out to foreign ruling entities and displaying his knowledge of worlds beyond his ken in his interactions with them. Unfortunately, though, he has been completely sidelined, considered somewhat irrelevant to Mauryan analyses and, consequently, invisible to the public eye wherein he is either confused for Bimbisara of the Haryanka dynasty due to their similar-sounding names or, quite simply, ignored altogether.

Bindusara’s troubled relationship with his son, Ashoka, is another aspect that comes to the fore from a perusal of the sources. The latter’s desire for the throne, prompting him to kill those that stood in his way and then unleash a reign of terror at the empire’s helm can be gleaned not just from the usual sources but also those specifically dedicated to him and pertaining to the Buddhist tradition. The question of whether he turned into a Buddhist in the aftermath of the bloody Kalinga war in c. 261 BCE and whether his political philosophy of dhamma was, in fact, the Buddha’s teachings repackaged or a radical new way of thinking are some of the issues that surround this highly mercurial yet remarkable ruler who, looking for a way to unite his huge realm while making amends for the violence he had earlier unleashed, found a wonderfully pioneering way to achieve both: inscribing and disseminating his messages on stone all through his land. Consequently, Ashoka’s rock and pillar edicts are great sources of information not just on him but the contemporary Mauryan context as a whole, used to understand elements of administration, religion, culture, art and architecture, to name a few.

Women have always been peripheral to narratives of the Mauryan empire; the men take centrestage. Admittedly, there isn’t much information on them to begin with, but they do appear as a palpably vibrant presence through this time span ranging from Chandragupta’s all-women bodyguard troop who obviously played a key role in protecting him from potential assassination bids and ensuring the dynasty’s longevity; to Bindusara’s intelligently ambitious queens who were anxious to promote their sons’ wellbeing; to the several women connected with Ashoka, most of whom had an emphatic impact on his life and policies. Wherever possible, they have been integrated into this delineation of the Mauryan dynasty—and parallels have also been provided with similar women from the Indian past with similar trajectories, culled from my doctoral and post-doctoral research on gender in early medieval north India and Orissa, respectively, to demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of the gender bias that exists in its writing.

If this narrative, however, reads more like a concatenation of stories, there is a reason: you cannot actually separate the Mauryan story from the many tales and legends that abound in religious literary traditions and other works—with regard to them as a whole and to the first three rulers, in turn. These, when seen in conjunction with archaeological evidence, help to reconstruct the dynasty’s tale to a considerable extent. Remove these stories and you are left with virtually nothing! And this is, in fact, true of any part of history that belongs to an ancient context anywhere in the world. The closer you get to present times, the more profuse the sources become. The earlier it is, there is a paucity of sources, resulting in huge gaps in our knowledge. And these can usually be filled with stories, often containing nuggets of historical truth, so they should never be discounted.

Writing this book has been a confounding and liberating exercise, in turn. Straddling two ostensibly similar but radically different professions of historian and children’s writer has contributed to this, in no small measure. Being an academic with years of rigorous training in writing profusely-footnoted pieces on history, the temptation to weigh each sentence down with an explanatory note or citation was extremely tough to resist. The prose, consequently, felt naked and vulnerable to me. However, once I withstood the urge and, simultaneously, shook off the image of serious academics glowering at me and asking, ‘But how do you know this or that fact? Where is the proof? Where are the cross-references?’ the story and its readability—crucial elements in any well-written children’s work—became paramount.

This is not to say that the historical research is inadequate or the treatment of the whole subject casual—just that the narrative is relatively uncluttered with notes that would deter from its flow or that could, quite conceivably, prompt the history-timid reader into drawing unflattering comparisons with the often-impenetrable prose of textbooks or academic works and setting the book aside forthwith. In this book, my first non-academic one for adults, the reader will find all that they need to know about the Mauryas in order to form a concrete picture of the period and the people who powered it in their minds. The narrative isn’t always linear; it often veers off at a tangent to provide this or that interesting glimpse into Indian history, something that has a bearing on the issue at hand. It is hoped thereby that readers, particularly those who cordially detest history, will discover that it is, in fact, endlessly fascinating and interconnected and just so alive despite dealing with the dead, as it were.

Also, this book is not meant to be a comprehensive and exhaustive compendium of the Mauryan dynasty, so there is no real point in saying, ‘Oh, but you didn’t mention this particular fact about them or that particular fact from the Arthashastra!’ For anyone looking to engage at depth with the subject matter of this book, there are several excellent and detailed works they can consult, a list of which is provided in the bibliography and, of course, in the endnotes that point to additional reading matter or something that will help to elucidate the point at hand. For the rest, it is hoped that they find this part of the Indian past fascinating enough to cultivate an eagerness to know more—or that they simply enjoyed themselves while reading this book. A writer (and historian) could hope for no less!