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Chandragupta Maurya 321-297 BC He was an adventurer rather than a king. Like Alexander, he began with almost no army whatsoever; with this army he seized the region of Magadha just south of the lower Ganges and then steadily conquered the whole of the Ganges basin. Chandragupta Maurya had started his empire. When Alexander the Great departed from Gandhara, a power vacuum was left in western India which Maurya took advantage of. Marching westward, he quickly conquered the whole of the Indus Valley, and eventually gained Gandhara and Arachosia (the mountainous region west of the Indus) after defeating the Greek rulers of Persia and Bactria, the Seleucids. All 2 posts...

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When the last of the Mauryan kings was assassinated in 184 BC, India once again became a collection of unfederated kingdoms. During this period, the most powerful kingdoms were not in the north, but in the Deccan to the south, particularly in the west. The north, however, remained culturally the most active, where Buddhism was spreading and where Hinduism was being gradually remade by the Upanishadic movements, which are discussed in more detail in the section on religious history. The dream, however, of a universal empire had not disappeared. It would be realized by a northern kingdom and would usher in one of the most creative periods in Indian history. All 2 posts...

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The last powerful descendants of the Mongols in India. All - posts...

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They called themselves the "noble ones" or the "superior ones." Their names are lost; their tribal names are lost. But when they found themselves conquerors, they gave themselves the name "superior" or "noble." All 3 posts...

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The most striking element of Indian geography is the natural barrier formed by the mountain ranges in the north of India. For India is a continental plate that is crashing into the Asian continental plate. As it does, both continental plates push up the earth where they meet into a forbidding range of mountains. The central mountain range, passing across in the shape of a sword near the northern edge of the Indian subcontinent, is the Great Himalayas. These northern mountains, which are less of a barrier in the west, have naturally isolated India from its neighbors. All 1 posts...

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Although agriculture seems to have come late to India, arriving sometime around 5000 BC, India was one of the first regions to give birth to civilization. Only a few centuries after the first Mesopotamian cities sprang up, a people living along the northern reaches of the Indus River discovered urbanization, metalwork, and writing. It is a mysterious civilization and one with no discernible continuity, for it thrived for just several centuries and then disappeared. The Indo-European immigrants who settled the region did not adopt most of the aspects of this civilization, and what precisely they did adopt is difficult to ascertain. So while Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Yellow River civilizations lasted for millenia and left their mark on all subsequent cultures, the Indus River civilization seems to have been a false start. All 3 posts...

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In 331 BC, Alexander the Great of Macedon began one of the greatest conquests in human history. After conquering Egypt and defeating the Persian Empire Alexander had pushed his army to the very limits of the world as the Greeks knew it. But he wanted more; he saw that the world extended further. By conquering the ancient lands of the Mesopotamians, he came into contact with cultures to the east, such as Pakistan and India. After almost a millenium and a half, from the period of Harappa (2500-1750 BC), to the end of the Brahmanic period, the peoples of India entered into no commerce or trade with the Mesopotamians. But starting around 700 BC, the Indians began to trade again with the Mesopotamian cities, and by the time of Alexander, that trade was dyanmic. Partly out of curiosity, and partly out of a desire to conquer the enitre world within the boundaries of the river Ocean (the Greeks believed that a great river, called Ocean, encircled all the land of the world), Alexander and his army pushed east, through northern Iran and all the way to Pakistan and India. He had conquered Bactria at the foot of the western Himalayas, gained a huge Bactrian army, and married a Bactrian princess, Roxane. But when he tried to push on past Pakistan, his army grew tired, and he abandoned the eastward conquest in 327 BC All 2 posts...