14. Economy during Mauryan Period and their Fall

State Control

• That the royal orders were superior to other orders was asserted by Asoka in his inscriptions. He promulgated dharma and appointed officials to inculcate and enforce its essentials.
• Assertion of royal absolutism was a natural culmination of the policy of military conquest adopted by the princes of Magadha and they also possessed the requisite power of sword to enforce its overall control.
• The Maurya empire maintained a vast bureaucracy backed by a elaborate system of espionage. The functionaries were paid in cash but there was an enormous gap between highest and lowest govt. Servant.

 

Economic Regulations

• According to Arthasastra, the state appointed 27 superintendents (adhyakshas) mostly to regulate the economic activities of the state such as agriculture, trade and commerce, weights and measures, crafts etc.
• The state also provided irrigation facilities and regulated water supply for the benefit of agriculturists.
• A striking social development of this period was the employment of slaves in agricultural operations on a large scale mostly sudras. They were compelled to serve as slaves, artisans, labourers and domestic servants.
• The strategic position of Pataliputra made it easy for royal agents to sail or travel up or down throughout the empire to enforce state control.
• The Mauryan period constitutes a landmark in the system of taxation in ancient India. There were many taxes collected from peasants, artisans and traders assessed by samaharta and stored in samadhata.
• There were rural store-houses which shows that taxes were also collected in kind and these granaries were meant for helping in times of famine, drought etc.
• The punch marked silver coins bearing the symbols of peacock, and the hill and crescent formed the imperial currency of the Mauryas and because of its uniformity facilitated market exchange in a wider area.
• The Mauryas made a remarkable contribution to art and architecture and introduced masonry on a wide scale.
• It must have been a difficult task to carry huge blocks of stone from the quarries and to polish and embellish them when they were placed erect. Each pillar was made of a single piece of sandstone.
• The Mauryan artisans also started the practice of hewing out caves from rocks for monks to live in such as Barabar caves near Gaya. Later this kind of cave architecture spread to western and southern India.

 

Spread of Material Culture

• The Mauryan conquest opened doors for trading and missionary activities along with which the material culture spread to the Gangetic basin.
• It was based on an intensive use of iron, plenty of punch-marked coins, abundance of beautiful pottery called Northern Black Polished ware, introduction of burnt bricks and ringwells and above all on the rise of towns in north-eastern India.
• To this period belong a large number of iron implements such as axes, sickles, and ploughshare.
• The elements of the middle Gangetic material culture seems to have transferred with modification to northern Bengal, Kalinga, Andhra and Karnataka.
• The art of steel making may have spread through Mauryan contacts in some parts of the country and may have led to the use of better methods of cultivation in Kalinga and created conditions for the rise of the Cheti kingdom in that region.
• In some ways the Satavahana empire was a projection of the Mauryan empire in the Deccan.
• Asoka maintained intimate contacts with the tribal people who were exhorted to observe dharma which implies that tribal and other peoples would take to the habits of a settled, taxpaying peasant society.
• His policy succeeded Asoka claims that hunters and fishermen had given up killing and practiced dharma. This means that they had taken to a sedentary agricultural life.

Causes of the Fall of the Mauryan Empire

• There were several reasons why the Magadhan empire began to disintegrate after the exit of Asoka in 232 B.C.

1. Brahmanical Reaction
• Even though Asoka adopted a tolerant policy towards brahamanas, they developed some kind of antipathy to him as he prohibited killing of animals and birds and derided superfluous rituals affecting the income of the brahmanas.
• The anti-sacrificial attitude of Buddhism and of Asoka naturally brought much loss to the brahmanas who lived on the gifts made to them in various kinds of sacrifices.
• Some of the new kingdoms which arose on the ruins of Mauryan empire were brahmanas and performed Vedic rituals which were neglected by Asoka.
2. Financial Crisis
• The enormous expenditure on the army and payment to bureaucracy created a financial crisis for the Mauryan empire.
• It seems that Asoka made large grants to the Buddhist monks which left the royal treasury empty such that to meet the expenses in the last stage they had top melt the images made of gold.
3. Oppressive rule
• Even when Asoka became emperor, the complaints against the misrule of wicked bureaucrats was prevalent in the outlying provinces.
• After his retirement, Taxila took the earliest opportunity to throw off the imperial yoke.
4. Spread of the New Material Knowledge in the Outlying Areas
• With the spread of new Material knowledge to central India, the Deccan and Kalinga as a result of the expansion Magadhan empire, it lost its special advantage.
• The regular use of iron tools and weapons in the peripheral provinces coincided with the decline and fall of the Mauryan empire.
• This also explains the rise of Sungas and Kanvas in central India, of the Chetis in Kalinga and that of Satavahanas in the Deccan.
5. Neglect of the North-west Frontier and the Great Wall of China
• Since Asoka was mostly preoccupied with the missionary activities at home and abroad he could not pay much attention to safeguarding the passage on north-western frontier.
• The Scythians, a nomadic people mainly relying o the use of horse posed serious dangers to the settled empires in India and China.
• When the Scythians made a push towards India they forced the Parthians, the Sakas and the Greeks to move towards India. The Greeks set up a kingdom in north Afghanistan which was known as Bactria.
• The Greeks were the first to invade India in 206 B.C.

• The Maurya empire was finally destroyed by Pushyamitra Sunga in 185 B.C. When he killed Brihadratha the Mauryan king in public .
• The Sungas ruled in Pataliputra and central India and performed several Vedic sacrifices to mark the revival of the brahmanical way of life.
• They were succeeded by the Kanvas who were also brahmanas.