The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c7.2

c7.2

IT is almost as difficult now as it was when Fergusson wrote to carry the starting-point of Indian architectural history much farther back than the reign of Asoka, 263-226 b.c., the famous emperor, missionary, and saint,`who, after his conversion to Buddhism, then only one of many contending schools of Hindu thought, made it the state religion, and began that zealous propaganda of its doctrines which spread over Asia to the farthest east, and as far westwards as Alexandria. His grandfather Chandragupta, nearly sixty years earlier, had founded the Mauryan dynasty by consolidating the numerous republican confederations and petty kingdoms of Northern India, whose quarrels had made Alexander's opportunity, into an empire strong enough to bar further invasions from the north-west for many generations. Seleukos, Alexander's general, who seized the eastern portion of the Macedonian conquests after the death of the latter, made a vain attempt to repeat the glorious campaign in which he had assisted. Chandragupta Maurya not only drove him back across the Indus, but extended the north-western boundary of his own dominions so far as to include Kabûl, Herât, and Kandahâr, which formerly belonged to the empire Alexander had wrested from Darius. This disaster made Seleukos anxious to come to terms with his Indian antagonist, and after sending one of his officers, Megasthenes, as an envoy to the Mauryan Court, he turned his arms westwards.