Empire322 BCE – 185 BCE · 137 years
Maurya Empire
The first empire to unify almost the entire Indian subcontinent.
What it was
Founded by Chandragupta Maurya around 322 BCE, the Mauryan Empire reached its peak under his grandson Ashoka, who controlled all of India except the southern tip. After the bloody conquest of Kalinga, Ashoka famously converted to Buddhism and inscribed his ethical edicts on stone pillars across the empire.
Why it mattered
Ashoka's pillars are some of the earliest surviving examples of imperial public communication — and his patronage launched Buddhism on its career as a world religion.
From Wikipedia
The Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in South Asia with its power base in Magadha. Founded by Chandragupta Maurya around c. 320 BCE, it existed in loose-knit fashion until 185 BCE. The primary sources for the written records of the Mauryan times are partial records of the lost history of Megasthenes in Roman texts of several centuries later; and the Edicts of Ashoka. Archaeologically, the period of Mauryan rule in South Asia falls into the era of Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW).
Wikipedia: Maurya Empire·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Solid borders are reconstructed from canonical historical-basemap data or hand-crafted from scholarly atlases.
- SOURCEaourednik / historical-basemaps
- DETAILhistorical-basemaps
- SNAPSHOT200 BCE
- POLITY TYPEstate
Wars of this empire5
Conflicts whose belligerents name this polity, best-documented first.
- Maurya Empire Expansion322–185 BCEMajor conflict · 500K dead
- Chandragupta's Conquest of Magadha322–298 BCEMajor conflict
- Kalinga War262–261 BCESignificant · 100K dead
- Seleucid-Mauryan War305–303 BCESignificant
- Mauryan Conquest of Deccan298–275 BCESignificant
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 322 BCE and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: Maurya Empire (322 BCE – 185 BCE). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/asia-maurya · Sources & methodology