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Emperors of India

India has had less of a tradition of political unity than China or Japan. Indeed, most of the names for India ("India," "Hindustân") are not even Indian. As Yule & Burnell say in their classic A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases ["Hobson-Jobson," Curzon Press, 1886, 1985, p. 433]:

It is not easy, if it be possible, to find a truly native (i.e. Hindu) name for the whole country which we call India; but the conception certainly existed from an early date. Bhâratavarsha is used apparently in the Purânas with something like this conception.

Bhâratavars.a meant the "division of the world" (vars.a) of the Bhâratas" -- the heroes of the great Mahâbhârata epic. An independent India in 1947 decided to officially become Bhârat (the short final "a" not being pronounced in Hindi).

When a unified state has occurred in Indian history, it has had varying religious, political, and even linguistic bases:   e.g. Hindu, Buddhist, Islâmic, and foreign. The rule of the Sult.âns of Delhi and the Moghul Emperors was at once Islâmic and foreign, since most of them were Turkish or Afghani, and the Moghul dynasty was founded directly by incursion from Afghanistan. The surpremely foreign unification of India, of course, was from the British, under whom India achieved its greatest unity, although lost upon independence to the religious division between India and Pakistan. The Moghuls and British, of course, called India by its name in their own languages (i.e. "Hindustân" and "India").

In addition to these complications, Indian history is also less well known and dated than that of China or Japan. Classical Indian literature displays little interest in history proper, which must be reconstructed from coins, monumental inscriptions, and foreign references. As Jan Nattier has said recently [A Few Good Men, The Bodhisattva Path According to the Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipr.cchâ), University of Hawai'i Press, 2003]:

...the writing of history in the strict sense does not begin in India until the 12th century, with the composition of Kalhan.a's Râjataran^.gin.î. [p.68]

Because of this, even the dating of the Mauryas and the Guptas, the best known pre-Islâmic periods, displays small uncertainties. The rulers and dates for them here are from Stanley Wolpert's A New History of India [Oxford University Press, 1989] and Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies -- Gordon had the only full lists I'd ever seen for the Mauryas, Kushans, and Guptas; but the Mauryas and Guptas can now be found in the Facts On File Encyclopedia of World History (George Philip Ltd., 2000, p.520). Besides Wolpert, another concise recent history of India is A History of India by Peter Robb [Palgrave, 2002].

The "Saka Era," as the Indian historical era, significantly starts rather late (79 AD) in relation to the antiquity of Indian civilization. Indeed, like Greece (c.1200-800 BC) and Britain (c.400-800 AD), India experienced a "Dark Ages" period, c.1500-800 BC, in which literacy was lost and the civilization vanished from history altogether. Such twilight periods may enhance the vividness of quasi-historical mythology like the Iliad, the Arthurian legends, and the Mahâbhârata. The earliest history of India is covered separately at "The Earliest Civilizations" and "The Spread of Indo-European and Turkish Peoples off the Steppe." The affinities of Indian languages are also covered at "Greek, Sanskrit, and Closely Related Languages."

Readers should treat with caution some scholarship and a great deal of the material on the internet about the Indus Valley Civilization and its relationship to Classical Indian civilization, or all of civilization. The claims have progressed to the point now where not only is all of Indian civilization and all of its languages regarded as autochthonous, but the civilization itself is said to extend back to the Pleistocene Epoch (before 10,000 BC), with any ruins or artifacts conveniently covered by rising sea levels. The urge towards inflated nationalistic claims is familiar. Particular claims about India are treated here in several places but especially in "Strange Claims about the Greeks, and about India."

THE MAURYAS, c.322-184 BC
Chandragupta (Gk. Sandrokotos)	c.322-301
Bindusara	301-269
Ashoka	269-232
Kunala	232-225
Dasaratha	232-225
Samprati	225-215
Salisuka	215-202
Devadharma/ Devavarman	202-195
Satamdhanu/ Satadhanvan	195-187
Brihadratha	187-185

 
The Mauryas are the beginning of historical India. This inception is particularly dramatic when we realize that Chandragupta seems to have actually met Alexander the Great in person. Perhaps realizing that there were no historians writing down his deeds, the greatest king of the Dynasty, Ashoka, commemorated himself with monumental inscriptions, especially on a series of pillars erected around India. The most famous of these is at Sarnath, where the Buddha began preaching. The lion capital of the pillar at Sarnath is now used as the official crest of modern India, with the Wheel of the Law (Dharmachakra) on it (as at right) on the flag of India. Indeed, Ashoka is the most famous for converting to Buddhism and sending missionaries abroad. Ashoka can be rather well dated because he sent letters to the contemporary Hellenistic monarchs, Antigonus II Gonatas (Antikini) of Macedonia , Antiochus II Theos (Anityoka) of the Seleucid Kingdom, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (Turamaya) of Egypt, Alexander II (Alikasudara) of Eprius, and Magas (Maga) of Cyrene, urging them to convert to Buddhism themselves. Greek history contains no record of these requests.

The decline of the Mauryas coincided with the rise of a neighboring Greek Kingdom in Bactria (256-c.55 BC). This was also important for the history of Buddhism, as the Kings became converts. A classic of Buddhist literature, the "Questions of Milinda," (Milindapañha) records the convertion of one King in particular, Menander Soter Dikaios (Milinda, 155-130).

THE SAKAS/PARTHIANS, c.130 BC
Maues
Vonones	c.30 BC
Azes I
Azes II
Gudnaphar (Gondophernes)	c.19-45 AD