The first leader of the Mauryan Dynasty was Chandragupta Maurya, it was founded by capturing the lands under Alexander when his powers started to abate. When Alexander died in the year 323 B.C.E. Chandragupta took favour of the situation and dethroned the Nanda Power. This led to the foundation of the Mauryan Dynasty. Mauryan Dynasty is one of the most efficient and eminently organized with great army forces and civil services. After Ashoka, a lot of weak kings ruled for around 50 years, which led to the fall of the Mauryan Dynasty.

The Mauryan Dynasty

The Mauryan Dynasty was founded by Chandragupta Maurya by dethroning Alexander, a lot of territories were acquired by creating alliances and forcing kings to hand over their lands. A powerful centralized state was formed by Chandragupta and his administration was established in Pataliputra which was heavily guarded using wooden walls consisting of 64 entrances and 570 watchtowers. The city had a lot of similarities with the Persian Cities at that period. Chandragupta was followed by his son Bindusara, who helped in extending the empire towards South India. The Mauryan emperors used infantry who were from Karnataka. In Bindusara’s reign, Chanakya was still the prime minister of the Mauryan Dynasty and helped Bindusara to acquire around sixteen territories or kingdoms. At the time of his rule, the people of Taxila mutiny twice.

After Bindusara Ashoka was the successor who took charge of the Mauryan Dynasty he was the last successful emperor of Maurya. He was the commander who stopped the revolt which rose in Ujjain and Takshashila. Ashoka was a great king and a great leader who took the Mauryan Dynasty to great heights. After the war with Kalinga, he was devastated by seeing the deaths of people so he adopted the concept of Ahimsa. He still maintained a huge army in order to maintain the peace of the empire. After Ashoka, it was the fall of the Mauryan Dynasty.

The Fall of the Mauryan Dynasty

There were a lot of reasons for the fall of the Mauryan Dynasty, two important reasons were Brahmanical Reaction, Financial Crisis. Let’s talk about all the reasons in brief:

• Brahmanical Reaction: This started due to the policy of Ashoka. He asked the citizens of the empire to respect all the Brahmanas and even implemented a tolerant policy, but the issue was that it was issued in Prakrit and not Sanskrit. The policy of not-sacrificing which was a part of Buddhism was also implemented which damaged the earning capacity of the Brahmanas. He implemented the policy of the same law for all the varnas, but according to Dharmashastra, there should be varna discrimination which was not followed and hence they were furious about it also.
• Financial Crisis: The huge spending on the forces and the salary to the civil services made the Mauryan empire Financially weak which led to Financial Crisis. According to some studies, the Mauryan Dynasty had the biggest army and a huge number of officers. Even though a lot of taxes were imposed it was not easy to control this type of huge structure. Ashoka even made huge amounts of donations to Buddhist Monarchs which emptied the royal treasury. They even had to melt gold structures in order to meet the expenses.
• Oppressive Rule
• Neglecting the Great wall of China

Conclusion

The fall of the Mauryan Dynasty taught a lot of things to the world, there was a variety of King at the time of the Mauryan Dynasty, like Chandragupta, believing in expanding the territory whether it’s forcefully or with peace, whereas Ashoka who was a great warrior at first and then turned into a saint against war and made many changes to the Kingdom which a led to the negative impact and The Fall of the Mauryan Dynasty like Brahmanical Reaction, Financial Crisis. These were all somewhere because of the changes he made to the Dynasty.