Maurya dynasty

Capital from a palace of Ashoka, museum of Lahore, Pakistan. Photo Marco Prins.
Capital from a palace of Ashoka; Lahore museum
The Mauryas: Indian dynasty in the fourth-third centuries BCE, which unified the subcontinent for the first time and contributed to the spread of Buddhism .

In the last weeks of 327 BCE, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great invaded the valley of the river Kabul, and in the next months, he conquered Taxila, defeated the Indian king Porus at the river Hydaspes, and reached the eastern border of the Punjab. He wanted to continue to the kingdom of Magadha in the Lower Ganges valley, but his soldiers refused to go any further, and Alexander was forced to go south. Many Indians now resisted the invaders. By the end of 325, the Macedonian king had left the area of what is now Karachi, and his admiral Nearchus was forced out of Patala.

Alexander's conquests had been spectacular, but he had not conquered India. On the contrary. Not even the Punjab and the Indus valley were safe possessions of his kingdom. Before Alexander had died in 323, he had redeployed nearly all his troops west of the Indus. For the first time, he had lost part of his empire. On the other hand, his invasion changed the course of Indian history. In Taxila, a young man named Chandragupta Maurya had seen the Macedonian army, and -believing that anything a European could do an Indian could do better- decided to train an army on a similar footing. In 321, he seized the throne of Magadha. The Mauryan empire was born.