INDIAN KINGDOMS AROUND THE TIME OF PORUS

 

INDIAN  KINGDOMS AROUND THE TIME OF PORUS

Professor D. S.Sarma calls the period between 560 B.C. and 200 B.C. “The Age of the Kalpa-sutras”.  Born in 1883, Professor Sarma was a most learned and brilliant scholar and educationist.  He took his M.A. degree in English Language and Literature from Madras University in 1909 and started life in government service in the Kumbakonam College and later went over to the Presidency College, Madras, in 1913

            Professor D.S.Sarma authored several books on Hinduism , such as The Tales and  Teachings of Hinduism, A Primer of Hinduism, What Is Hinduism?’ The Hindu Standpoint, and the Upanishads – An Anthology.

            It is in his another book Hinduism Through the Ages that he writes about the birth of Buddha and the fall of the Mauryan empire. According to him out of the sixteen kingdoms that are said to have existed in Northern India before the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, Magadha rose into prominence in the sixth century B.C. And Bimbisara, its first king known to history, probably reigned from 540 B.C. to 490 B.C. The Shaishunaga dynasty to which he belonged was followed by the Nanda dynasty.

Ambitious monarchs of these two dynasties, like Bimbisara, Ajatasharu, Nandivardhana and Mahapadma Nanda, maintained the supremacy of Magadha, so that when Chandragupta, the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, seized the scepter  in 325 B.C. “the history of Magdha became the history of India.” For Chandragupta was able to extend the empire till it covered almost the whole of India including portions of what we know as Afghanitan and Baluchistan.

 

Meanwhile Alexander had invaded India in the North-west, crossed to the Indus and fought the battle of Jhelum in 326 B.C. but had to leave the country as his soldiers refused to proceed further.

But the effects of Alexander’s invasion were soon wiped out by Chandragupta when he subjugated the Indus valley.

Chandragupta was followed by his son Bindusara, who added to the Mauryan empire a large part of South India, and Bindusara’s son Asoka added the south-eastern kingdom of Kalinga.

Asoka’s famous inscriptions show the extent as well as the nature of his vast  empire. He ruled over the whole of India except the extreme southern Kingdoms of the Cholas and the Pandavas.  His reign of forty years from 273 B.C. to 232 B.C. is one of the most glorious periods in the history of the world.