ANCIENT INDIA:GUPTA DYNASTYStandard 6-3.3

MAURYAN EMPIRE UNIFIES INDIA

• Founder: Chandragupta Maurya (250 BC)

• Complex government with spies & a huge army

• His army had thousands of war elephants and chariots

• Farmer paid heavy taxes to be protected by the army

• 301 BC, Chandragupta decided to become a Jainist monk; giving up his throne to his son who expanded the empire

ASOKA• 270 BC- Chandragupta’s grandson Asoka becomes king

• He is the strongest of all Mauryan rulers; conquering other kingdoms and expanding to include most of India

• He watched many bloody battles until he converted to Buddhism• After this he vowed to never launch any more wars for

conquest

• He then devoted his time and money to improving the lives of his people through public works: wells, rest houses, roads, planted shade trees, ect

• He encouraged the spread of Buddhism through India and Asia by sending missionaries

• He died in 233 BC- his sons fought each other leaving India divided into smaller states

GUPTA DYNASTY• For 500 years Buddhism prospered

and spread throughout India as it was divided into separate states

• The Gupta Dynasty took over India around 320 AD, uniting India once again

• They were Hindu rulers, building many Hindu temples throughout India

• Chandra Gupta I (picture)

• They promoted the revival of Hindu writing and worship rituals, supported religious ideas of the Buddhism and Jainism, built Buddhist temples, and built a university in Nalanda that focused on Buddhist studies

• The Guptas remained in control until the late 400s when the Huns conquered India

Hindu

Temples

influence

architecture

throughout

India society.

YOUR TURN•Create a graphic organizer of The Four Varnas

•Give an example of two occupations for each of the castes

•Explain why a person would be considered “untouchable” or without a caste?

ACHIEVEMENTSSculptures:

• Hinduism & Buddhism influences artist in creating statues of Buddha and the many gods associated with Hinduism

• They made statues of kings

• Impressive carvings were made in the walls of temples and important homes and buildings

ACHIEVEMENTSSanskrit Literature:

• Religious epics- long poems about struggles and triumphs of heroes and Gods

• Plays and poetry

• Panchatantra: a book of stories meant to teach lessons; each story ends with a moral

“The good and the bad of given schemes

Wise thought must first reveal:

The stupid heron saw his chicks

Provide a mongoose meal” –Panchatantra story

ACHIEVEMENTSMedicine:

• Cure people with medicines

• They also protected people against disease with inoculation: injecting a person with a small dose of a virus to help him or her build up defenses to a disease.

• They also wrote textbooks on medical procedures

ACHIEVEMENTSMetallurgy:

• The science of working with metal

• They made high quality tools with these metals

• They knew the process of mixing metals to create alloys• They are stronger and sometimes

easier to work with than pure metals

• During the Gupta dynasty, metal workers built the iron pillar near Delhi that still stands today with no rust-showing the ancient Indian’s advance techniques

ACHIEVEMENTSMath

• Indian mathematicians were some of the most talented in their day

• The very numbers we use today are called Hindu-Arabic numerals –created by these mathematicians

• Created the concept of zero-modern math is not possible without it

ACHIEVEMENTSAstrology:

• Astrologers knew of 7 of the 9 planets in our solar system

• They knew the sun was a star & the planets revolved around it

• They knew the earth was round and rotated on its axis

• They could predidct eclipses of the sun and moon