1. Mauryan Empire and the
Gupta Empire
LEQ: How did Ashoka unify the Mauryan Empire and
spread Buddhism values? Why is the period during
the Gupta Empire known as a “golden age”?

2. Mauryan Empire
 The main achievement of the Maurya family is that
they unified India.
 Chandragupta Maurya began building an empire
by conquering neighboring kingdom.
 Chandragupta created a strong central
government, made sure farmers had water for
their crops, and built a royal road more than one
thousand miles long.
 Chandragupta was poor in later life because he
decided to live an ascetic life.
 Chandragupta was the first ruler of the Mauryan
Empire.

3.  King Ashoka was the grandson of Chandragupta.
 Ashoka expanded the Mauryan empire until he gave up
violence.
 Seeing a very bloody battle led to a deep change in Ashoka’s
reflection.
 Ashoka gave up hunting, and became a vegetation, which is
the Buddhist value of respect for all living things.
 Chandragupta’s rule differ from Ashoka because
Chandragupta used force to be sure no one threatened his
power.
 Ashoka often spoke of the people he ruled as his children.
 Treating all his servants well was one of the way Ashoka
expressed his Buddhist value.
 Ashoka kept the territories the Mauryas conquered as peaceful
parts of his empire.
 Ashoka spread Buddhist teaching by having edicts carved into
pillars and walls.

4.  One of Ashoka’s edicts announced that people would
only be jailed for Justice.
 Traditions says that King Ashoka sent his son Ceylon in
the Indian Ocean to covert the kingdom to Buddhism.
 Buddhist ideas spread across the ocean to Japan, Sumatra
and Java.
 Burma, and Siam later converted to Buddhism.
 The Himalayas was the biggest natural barrier to the
spread of ideas from India and Central Asia.
 The Indian subcontinent was filled with small kingdoms
in the period between the Mauryan and Gupta empire.
 The first Gupta ruler formed alliances with other rulers
by arranging marriages.

5. The Gupta Empire
 One way the Gupta empire differ from the Mauryan
empire because it gave local areas a lot of independence.
 Peace and stability most helped the Gupta empire grow
in learning.
 Fine sculptures found by archaeologist is evidence of a
golden age.
 The images of Gupta kings on coins show that the empire
had people who were skilled in working with metal.
 Individuals in the Gupta empire learned the following
skills by studying medicine in a university; Questions
patients, Make cures from bark and roots, and stitch up
wounds.
 Many of Hinduism legends were written down during
the Gupta empire.

6.  Puranas, Mahabharata, and Bhagavad Gita are all
Sanskrit Literature.
 The famous ancient painting in a Buddhist monastery at
Ajanta were painted on the walls of caves.
 In the Gupta empire stone, wood, bronze and terra-cotta
clay were important materials used in sculptured.
 One technological advance in the Gupta empire was that
they were skilled in iron work.
 The modern arithmetic feature of Zero came for Indian
by way of the Arabs.

7.  Well built roads allowed the Gupta Empire to
participate in long-distance trade.
 Walls were constructed along the trade routes so that
travelers could cook and drink.
 Mathematicians made it possible for the construction of
this building.