Fall of the Maurya Empire

Around 185 BCE the Maurya Empire, India's first great empire, came to a sudden end. According to later Sanskrit sources, the last emperor, Brihadratha, was reviewing his troops when his commander-in-chief, Pushyamitra Shunga, killed him and took the throne. Pushyamitra founded the Shunga dynasty, which ruled from Pataliputra and Vidisha in central India. The empire that had once covered most of the subcontinent had by then shrunk to a core in the Ganges plain.¹²³

The decline had begun long before. Chandragupta Maurya founded the empire around 322 BCE, and under Ashoka, who died around 232 BCE, it reached its greatest extent and its high point of centralized government. His successors were weak. Provinces broke away, the cost of a vast army and bureaucracy strained the treasury, and the Greek kingdom of Bactria began raiding in from the northwest. The assassination was less the cause of the collapse than its final act. The Shungas ruled about a century, supported Brahmanical rituals and also built the decorated railings at the Buddhist sites of Bharhut and Sanchi. Buddhist texts accuse Pushyamitra of persecution, but historians debate this, and the archaeology is mixed.¹³⁴