Download Ancient India - Lyons-Global

Homework Bell Ringer
The Indian Empire
called the Gupta
invented what type of
math which is
represented by this
image?
Classical India
“Age of Empires”
Mauryan
Gupta
Pre-Classical –
Harappan
India
 Mohenjo-Daro – urban
planning
 Active trade with
Mesopotamians
 Strong Central Authority
(seals, weights/meas.,
irrigation, theocracy)
 Social Structure –relatively
egalitarian
 Slow decline – natural?,
erosion?, salt in wells
 Aryans move in 1500 BC
(rajahs, Sanskrit, iron) –
some argue invaded.
Aryan (Vedic Age)

Hindu Text - Rigveda describes the
new dwellings as small hut
dwellings clustered inside wooden
palisades – suffers in comparison
with Mohenjo-Daro during peak

Rigveda suggests “Aryans” were
light-skinned favored over “darkskinned” natives (their varna in
caste) – prejudice in skin color
still exists in India

Hinduism and sanskrit introduced
– see constant upheavals in early
centuries, possibly because only
kshatriyas (warrior caste) could fight
On the Road to Empire
India
 Semi-nomadic Aryans – by
600 BC divide into 16 states,
enslaved Dravidians; some
civil wars between rajahs
(princes)

500 BC becomes part of a
Persian Empire,

330-321 Alexander the Great
of Greece conquers and
makes it part of his Hellenistic
Empire
Key Concept is
that it is politically
fragment. Think
why geography
would cause that
Mauryan Empire
321-185 BCE

Chandragupta
Maurya (321
BC) attacked
Hellenistic rule,
ended conflict
by marrying the
Hellenistic
ruler’s
daughter.
Chandragupta




Government – highly despotic
(tyrant) but substantial
bureaucracy - inspected with
spies
Huge armies w/1000s of
chariots and elephant-borne
troops
Taxed used for public works
but also luxury lifestyle, single
currency
Feared assassination - only 4
½ hours of sleep a day,
changed bedroom daily, had
food tasters, route of progress
marked off with ropes –
anyone who set foot inside
would be killed
Chandragupta’s
Religion

Converted from
hinduism to jainism
(extreme passiveness)
– would not kill
anything or possess
property – ended up
starving himself to
death in jainist
monastery in 297 BC
•Buddhist after Battle of Kalinga,
great stone builder (first since
Harappa)
• capital with 4 lions in used
as emblem of present
government of India
• sent missionaries as far as
Egypt and Burma and Sri
Lanka
•major change in Buddhism is that
he rejects caste system which will
make him popular with lower
castes.
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
Ashoka
(269-232 BC)
Unify empire - created
system of laws (Edicts
of Ashoka) to protect
sick, unarmed and
helpless. Provided
rest stops for
travelers. Built
hospitals, circuit
magistrates for
resolving disputes
throughout empire
Towards Collapse

New Religions are symptoms of collapse – Buddhism – he neglected army
but neighbors did not
Gupta
What defines a golden age?
•Political – Gupta (320 CE – 550 CE)

Smaller territory than Mauryan –
could not hold onto something that
big.

More decentralized power - Control
based on local lords – paid tribute to
keep autonomy

Advantageous alliances and military
conquests created political stability

Collapse - 450 CE northern invaders
brought empire to slow end (same
Hunas – White Huns as the Xiongnu
Huns from Mongolia to Caucasus
from NW)
political diversity and
regionalism
Economic - Gupta

Very vigorous trade – surpassing Mediterranean and
Chinese – major middle men between East and West.
Cotton was largest industry. In southern India there were
small colonies of Romans, Jews, Arabs, and Nestorian
Christians from Syria and Persia (gold, slaves, glass,
Egyptian cloth, Chinese silk, SE Asian spices)
merchants
relatively
high caste
status
04 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™
is a trademark used herein under license.

Religious - Gupta
Hinduism restored as central religion
 Helped keep social order in a time of
decentralized political power

Social - Gupta
Loyalty to caste superseded loyalty to
any one ruler.
 Because of Suddra and Outcastes slavery was avoided
 Rights of women became more limited
as agricultural technology developed
(one code of law requested women to
worship husbands as gods)

Key Idea: all classical societies (except perhaps Athenian)
played down role of individual and emphasized role of state,
group and family – few challenged this “natural order”
Intellectual/Technological - Gupta



Universities built (4000 students in Nalanda – one
of them Chinese Faxian) to teach religion, medicine
and architecture
Medicine (religious prohibition on dissection – but
still bone setting, plastic surgery, inoculation
against small pox, sterilization of wounds)
Mathematics - algebra, zero (may have come from
China), decimal system and “Arabic” numbers,
table of sines, square roots, negative numbers,
computed value of pi
some technology developed for its
own sake
Art/Literature - Gupta


Exquisite paintings (rock
cut caves at Ajanta –
famous for Buddhist art)
plays of Kalidasa
(comparable to
Shakespeare)