Indian Empires: Maurya and Gupta Empires

Hi there students! Today we're going to look at the development of the empires in India, and that would be the Mauryan and Gupta empires. So let's get started. In previous units we had discussed the decline of the Indus River Valley. So I have that image there of Mahendra Dharo. This is the Great Bath at Mahendra Dharo. And the Indus River Valley declines for mysterious reasons around anywhere between 1800 BCE and 1500 BCE. But they are, the Indus River Valley definitely does decline by the time you have the arrival and the movement of the Indo-Aryan people coming into India. So let's talk very briefly about the Aryan or the Indo-Aryan migration. Historians aren't exactly sure as a date for when that occurs. Some historians make it around 1700 BCE, others say it's a little bit later on. But what you need to know is there are a group of people who migrated, who moved from kind of from where the Caspian Sea is, and they migrate through the Hindu Kush mountains, through the Khyber Pass, into the subcontinent of India. And they brought the traditions of what will become Sanskrit, the language of India, and the Vedas, which are the holy texts of Hinduism, in an oral language. They weren't written down, but they brought the basic traditions of what becomes written down in the Vedas. The Mauryan Empire isn't established until 321 BCE, and it's really established to unite and defend India from Alexander the Great, who is a Macedonian who conquers Greece up here, and then he continues to move east and he conquers the Persian Empire, which we had discussed, and he keeps moving east until he gets to India, where he battles what will become the Mauryan Empire, and he loses, and so he turns around. But the Mauryan Empire is established to meet and defend India against Alexander the Great. The most important emperor that you do need to know is Ashoka, and Ashoka can be spelled with an H or without an H. You need to be aware of both. What you need to know about Ashoka is that he helps to greatly expand the Mauryan Empire. You can see the map down here at the bottom, in the lower right, and he ruled pretty much like a dictator until a moment of clarity. He fights a battle, and after seeing the destruction, according to legend, he vows to change his ways, and so he turns to Buddhist teachings, and he basically becomes a Buddhist king, and he sends out missionaries to help spread Buddhism to Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. He builds many pillars, which you can see here, and on the pillars are laws, and he also builds stupas, which are places of worship, and he starts to look after his own people better, and he builds safe roads, and hospitals, and even veterinary clinics. He starts out as a really harsh ruler, but then he adopts Buddhism, and he changes his ways, and he becomes a very kind and benevolent ruler. The Mauryan Empire, after Ashoka, will start to decline, and there's internal conflicts that will break out, and for about 300 years, the Mauryan Empire will be in a civil war, and it will be reunified under the Gupta Empire. The Gupta Empire only lasts for about 200 years, but it is considered the golden age of India. Chandragupta I, which you can see down there, unified northern India after many, many years of civil war. It is a smaller empire, however, there are numerous advancements that they will develop, which is why we call it a golden age, and so Chandragupta allowed farming and trade to flourish. He created a very strong organized central government that produced this flowering of civilization. So what is a golden age? It's kind of what historians use to call a period of great advancements in science, and math, and art, and literature, and in thought. Lots of different advancements, and so the most important ones that you need to know really center on the sciences. The Gupta Empire develops the concept of zero that had never been thought of before. They also discover pi, 3.1459 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the number that never ends, that's key to understanding the area of a circle. In astronomy, they make observations of the movement of the moon, and they discover that the earth was round, not flat, and in medicine they make several advancements. They did make advancements in surgeries, in setting and healing bones, and a preliminary smallpox vaccine. So historians consider it to be a height of the golden age. All right, that's all for the development of the Indian empires. Make sure that you can go back and review this video at any time, and have a good day.