Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c8.2

c8.2

Alexander, Chandragupta, Chāṇakya, and Aśoka dominate the period. The overthrow of the Achaemenid empire of Persia by Alexander, his campaigns in the north-west of India, intended perhaps more to complete and round off his conquest of Persia than to further a scheme of world conquest, and his early death (323 B. C.) followed by the partition of his extensive empire into large territorial monarchies formed a chain of events that in one way and another prepared the ground for the extension of the Mauryan empire in the North-West, and fixed the political map of the regions with which that empire was to maintain a fairly lively intercourse for well over a century. The revolt of Bactria and Parthia from Syria (c. 250 B. C.) was the only notable change; but during our period their independence was far from assured, and the revolts had little historical significance as yet to India except perhaps by inducing the distracted Seleucid rulers of Syria to maintain friendly relations with their powerful neighbours on the east, the Maurya emperors. The importance of Alexander's Indian campaign has been both exaggerated and under-estimated. There was no Macedonian occupation of Indian territory worth the name, and what there was of it lasted only a few years. Yet there ensued two abiding results. The monarchies and tribal republics of the North-West were much exhausted by their sanguinary conflicts with the invader; this paved the way for the easy establishment of the Mauryan empire in these lands by weakening their power of military resistance to the advance of the empire, and possibly also by teaching them that submission to a strong state within the country was the best protection against the recurrence of danger from outside. Secondly, the Macedonian episode opened an era of some centuries during which Hellenism was to be the dominant factor of government and civilization on the western confines of the Indian world. The contact between India and the Mediterranean world became more direct and constant. And this is a fact of immense significance not only to the history of India, but to that of the world.