Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s38.18

c11.s38.18

Pushyamitra was doubtless a Brahmin; the Chetas of Kalinga and the Sātavāhanas who succeeded the Mauryas in other portions of the empire are also held to have been Brahmins¹. The argument has been advanced that the fall of the Mauryan empire was largely the result of a Brahminical reaction against the pro-Buddhist policy of Aśoka, and possibly the pro-Jaina policy of some of his successors. Our account of Aśoka's reign has shown that far from being narrowly Buddhist in its character, that emperor's religious policy deliberately aimed at universal tolerance and amity among all the religious sects ; the Brāhmaṇas were, if anything, selected for being honoured equally with the Śramaṇas, and there is no reason to believe that Aśoka was animated by an anti-Brahmanical bias to any degree. In fact we have little definite knowledge of what actually happened after the close of Aśoka's rule, and Pushyamitra, the Chetas and the Sātavāhanas are too far removed from the reign of Aśoka for them to lend support to the idea of a Brahmin reaction against Aśoka's religious policy. The oppressive conduct of imperial officials in the provinces of the empire and Aśoka's pacificism have been adduced as other causes for the decline and fall of the Mauryan empire. The casual references to wicked officials (*duṣṭa amātyas*) in the legends of the *Divyāvadāna* can give no secure foundation for postulating the general prevalence of oppression throughout the empire ; and there is nothing in the separate Kalinga edicts that goes to prove, as has been urged, that such oppression was a reality. Aśoka's pacificism, his abandonment of war as an instrument of policy, and his exhortation to his successors to follow him in this respect, had nothing doctrinaire about it, and was kept within limits by a wise awareness of the complexity of human situations and motives. There is no evidence that he diminished the strength of the army or weakened the defences of the empire.