Archaeology of the Mauryan Empire

The inscriptions of Asoka refer to at least four provinces in the empire: a northern one with headquarters at Taxila; a western one centered on Ujjayini; an eastern one with headquarters at Tosali; and a southern one at Suvarnagiri.

A settlement hierarchy is evident in North India by 400 bce, with the largest sites, surrounded by monumental earthen ramparts, dominating the major arteries of communication. At the bottom of the scale were nucleated village settlements, inhabited by agriculturalists and herders. In between were minor centers and towns, which have revealed evidence for the manufacture of ceramics and lithic blades, finished and unfinished beads, as well as metal smelting.

The archaeological search for the imperial city of the Mauryans started in the eighteenth century, when Major James Rennell, the English geographer ap­pointed surveyor-general of India, identified it with the city of Patna, the pre­sent capital of the state of Bihar in 1783. This identification was based on Greek accounts, such as that of Megasthenes, who mentioned it as Palibothra. The Archaeological Survey of India conducted excavations at the site of Kumrahar, located six kilometers east of Patna railway station, in the years 1912-1915 under the American archaeologist D. B. Spooner, with funds donated by the industri­alist Sir Ratan Tata. In this excavation, traces of 72 pillars were found. Further excavations in 1951-1955 exposed eight more pillars of the hall and four addi­tional ones belonging to the entrance or porch. Since then, it has been popularly referred to as the “Eighty Pillared Hall,” though its Mauryan connections need to be substantiated with further archaeological work. The site continued in use for several centuries afterward, as evident from brick structures of the early centuries of the Common Era identified as Arogya Vihara (i.e., a hospital-cum-monastery complex). In addition to Pataliputra, several other urban centers have also been discovered in the archaeological record.

Unlike developments in the north, there were no contemporary fortified centers in peninsular India and no evidence of Mauryan settlement, except scattered finds of NBPW and black-slipped wares, found in coastal centers.

Historians such as Romila Thapar have attempted to explain the lack of archaeo­logical evidence for Mauryan presence in peninsular India by suggesting that, since mines were under the control of the state, as mentioned in the Arthasastra, local elites may have been used as suppliers of mineral resources to the Mauryan centers.

These different archaeological correlates in the Ganga Plains, when compared to those in peninsular India, provide indications of the varied nature of settlement on the subcontinent, with different areas experiencing growing political hierarchy. It is on this diverse local and regional basis that the Mauryans attempted to es­tablish unified control, as is evident from inscriptions. Nevertheless, concessions were made to various language groups that constituted the diverse audiences of the inscriptions of Asoka.^[535] They also help place in context the edicts themselves, with their universal and pan-Indian appeal, while at the same time identifying the king as a major patron supporting a variety of religious activities.

As discussed elsewhere,^[536] the centralized model of Mauryan control needs to be re-examined, since it is based on an inadequate appraisal of the archaeological data. Much of the discussion concerning the centralized nature of the state continues to be based on the Arthasastra of Kautilya,^[537] though it is generally accepted that the text in its present form dates significantly later, to the early centuries of the Common Era.^[538] The emergence of the state has been linked to the expansion and control of agricultural activity and the development of urban centers, but there has been insufficient discussion of the state's capacity to control an equally important economic activity—trade.

Trade and exchange are by no means by-products of agricultural expansion, as is often accepted,^[539] but are instead activities integral to all societies. The archaeolog­ical evidence, discussed earlier, from Iron Age sites in peninsular India, provides evidence for a long pre-Mauryan history of exchange and trade in the region, both overland and coastal. Rulers certainly tapped revenues from trade, but they neither controlled nor initiated it.^[540] Trade involved a complex range of transactions, with gifts to those in authority, and prestige commodities required by powerful groups and residents of cities at one end of the scale, while barter and monetary exchanges were the norm at the local and regional level.^[541]

Trade activity was by its very nature mobile, cutting across political frontiers and, as a result, creating its own networks of communication and information transfer.

The distribution of inscriptions of Asoka is unique on the Indian subcontinent. Their extensive coverage, from Gandhara in the northwest (in what is now Pakistan) to Karnataka in South India, is replicated in no other period in the country's long history. It is significant that through his dhammalipi, or writings on dhamma (often translated as “religion”), in various versions—abridged, medium-length, and long—Asoka presented a unified vision for the Indian subcontinent, one that linked together the different parts of the country. The same (or a very similar) text was duplicated in widely disparate parts of the subcontinent. How do these edicts help us in understanding the nature of the Mauryan Empire?