The Mauryan Empire
- The beginning of the Mauryan Empire was when Chandragupta Maurya gathered an army and killed the unpopular Nanda king in 321 B.C. and claimed the throne
- He seized the land in the northwest from Indus to Magadha
- By 303 B.C. the empire stretched for more than 2,000 miles, for the first time north India was united politically
- To win the wars Chandragupta created a vast army that had 600,000 soldiers on foot, 30,000 soldiers on horseback, and 9,000 elephants
- To fund for the army the government raised taxes
- Chandragupta relied on Kautilya, an advisor who was a member of the priestly caste and who wrote a book called the Arthasastra which proposed tough-minded policies to hold the empire together like spying and political assassination
- Chandragupta created a bureaucratic government, the empire was divided into four provinces, each province was headed by a royal prince and was then divided into local districts where officials enforced the law and assessed taxes
- In 301 B.C. Chandragupta's son assumed the throne and ruled for 32 years then Chandragupta's grandson, Asoka, claimed the throne and brought the empire to its greatest heights
- At first Asoka used war to expand the empire like his grandfather (Chandragupta) but during a bloody war against Kalinga, a neighboring state, 100,000 soldiers were killed and even more civilians
- Asoka felt sorrow over how many people died during the war, he then studied Buddhism and decided to rule by its teachings of "peace to all beings"
- Throughout the empire stone pillars were placed that were inscribed with the new policies that preached that the subjects of Asoka would be treated fairly and humanely and there would be no violence
- Still people urged religious toleration which is the acceptance of people who had different religious beliefs
- Asoka built roads so he could visit the far corners of India and improved the conditions along them to make travel easier and to improve communication, wells were dug every nine miles and rest stops were built so travelers could refresh themselves