He got hopelessly lost in the mountains of the Hindu Kush (modern-day northern Afghanistan) where many of his soldiers died of frostbite and starvation. The old established world order was abruptly destroyed and new power equations suddenly emerged.Īfter beating the Persians and consolidating his hold over the Persian heartland of Iran, Alexander decided to pacify the troublesome Central Asian Scythian tribes to the north and east of Iran. To give you a modern day comparison of the changes this brought about in the ancient world, imagine if the United States went to war with say, Venezuela tomorrow - and lost. Alexander inherited a stable, rich, enormous world empire that stretched from Northern India to Greece. Because of his cowardice, he lost to Alexander when he should have won. Unfortunately, their last king Darius III (not to be confused with Darius I who is also called Darius the Great) was a coward and fled the battlefield at both Issus and Gaugamela. The Persian Achaemenid dynasty had established the first world empire more than two hundred years earlier, under Cyrus the Great in 560 B.C. he beat them again at Gaugamela in what is modern-day Northern Iraq. He beat the Persians at Issus in what is modern-day Turkey. Alexander the Macedonian invaded Asia and took on the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
What seismic geo-political shift, you may ask, and why is he using such big words? I am using big words because major world events justify their use. Chandragupta Maurya lived in very interesting times – circa 340 to 298 B.C., when the Western world was undergoing a seismic geo-political shift.
His empire also lasted two hundred years, while Alexander’s broke up within a few years of his death. Chandragupta also was a hero, a great administrator and only twenty years old when he created this empire. This empire was quite as large as Alexander’s empire, as culturally diverse and as rich. Why Chandragupta Maurya? Because he was the founder of the first Indian Empire – a huge empire that stretched from Burma to eastern Iran, from Central Asia to South India. But even more interesting (and easier to write about from my point of view, since more documentation exists) is Chandragupta Maurya. The Magadhan kings Bimbisara and Ajatashatru circa 500 B.C. So apart from the ancient Indian epics the Mahabharata and Ramayana, what is a good starting point to begin understanding ancient Indian history? A difficult question. So I will try and recreate the splendor and glory of what was ancient India in this blog. But that does not mean these empires did not exist. Alas, no such detailed accounts exist of the Indian empires of old. In addition, western historians (propagandists actually) such as Strabo, Plutarch and later Livy and Virgil painstakingly documented (and greatly exaggerated) the achievements of their own Greek and Roman monarchs. Sadly, no magnificent ruins of Pataliputra remain to remind us of the Mauryan Empire’s greatness, like Persepolis or Pasargadae in Iran or the Parthenon in Greece. The Mauryan Empire ruled by Ashoka was also far larger and richer than the Athens of two hundred years earlier. The difference is that Ashoka ruled over many more people, and his reign was compassionate and benign. The Mauryan Empire that he ruled has been compared to the Athenian Golden Age under Pericles (circa 440 B.C). Ashoka was an enlightened ruler, especially after he embraced Buddhism. Wells in his book “A Short History of the World” observed that Ashoka’s rule circa 250 B.C. After all, we have produced such great spiritual leaders and philosophers such as the Buddha, Mahavira and Shankaracharya as well as great emperors such as Bimbisara, Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka the Great and Vikramaditya. India’s ancient history is at least as glorious and noteworthy as that of the Persians, Greeks or Romans. What about Indian kings, someone asked me? What about our own glorious history and heritage? Why are you not writing about that? All very valid questions – and they are right. In my last few ancient history posts, I have written about Hannibal (the great Carthaginian general), Cyrus the Great, Darius I and Xerxes (the great Persian emperors of the Achaemenid Empire) and briefly about Alexander and Julius Caesar.
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