Maurya Dynasty

The earliest of the great Indian empires.
At its zenith, the Maurya dynasty ruled
over most of the Indian subcontinent,
except in the deep south. The dynasty
was founded by Chandragupta Maurya
in the fourth century B.C.E., but reached
its peak under his grandson Ashoka,
who reigned from 269–232 B.C.E. The
kingdom was centered in the lower
Ganges basin, with its capital at
Pataliputra, near the modern city of
Patna in the state of Bihar. The Mauryan
empire is the first historically documented centralized Indian empire; it
was operated and maintained by a large
governmental bureaucracy. Despite its
size and organization, the empire was
short-lived. It began to disintegrate on
Ashoka’s death; fifty years later it had
virtually disappeared.