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In 322 BC, they march to Magadha, besieged the capital Pataliputra and captured it. They forced the Nandas to surrender. Dhanananda, the last Nanda king was killed in action during the siege. The war brought an end to the Nanda dynasty and established the Maurya Empire with Chandragupta Maurya as its emperor. -
Bindusara ascended the throne around 297 BCE. Bindusara, just 22 years old, inherited a large empire that consisted of what is now, Northern, Central and Eastern parts of India along with parts of Afghanistan and Baluchistan. He was later killed by his brother Ashoka for the throne
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Ashoka and a few of his brothers decided that they wanted to be the rulers of the Gupta Empire so they decided to start a civil war between all of them. This war lasted for a few years until Ashoka and his allies were the last standing. Ashoka then killed the last of his brothers so him and his brother who surrendered were the only ones left. -
Bindusara fell sick, Ashoka returned to Pataliputra from Ujjain and gained control of the capital. After his father's death, Ashoka had his eldest brother killed and ascended the throne. -
It was Asoka, the son of Vindusara who invaded Kalinga in 261 B.C. and succeeded in occupying Kalinga. The Kalinga War was of colossal nature in which as many as 1,00,000 were killed and 1,50,000 were taken captives while as many as that number died as an aftermath of the war. -
Ashoka promoted Buddhist expansion by sending monks to surrounding territories to share the teachings of the Buddha. A wave of conversion began, and Buddhism spread not only through India, but also internationally. Ashoka sent envoys to countries like Syria, Greece, Libya, and China. -
Chandra Gupta I, was the king of India (reigned 320 to c. 330 ce) and founder of the Gupta empire. He was the grandson of Sri Gupta, the first known ruler of the Gupta line. Chandra Gupta I, whose early life is unknown, became a local chief in the kingdom of Magadha (parts of modern Bihar state -
Ashoka's edicts were the first written inscriptions in India after the ancient city of Harrapa fell. The Rock Edicts were instructions from Ashoka to the public to practice the concept of Dhamma, and, thus, bring together the universal natural order. There are 14 edicts. -
The Silk Road is a comprehensive history of the world, written with an eye to the networks of trade that shaped it. The networks of trade first established in ancient Persia and later linked with Chinese trade routes created a great network between the East and the West. -
The Hephthalites, known as the Hunas in India kept on invading India until the Gupta ruler Skandagupta repulsed them. The Hunas, under the leadership of Toramana, suffered a crushing defeat by the Gupta emperor Skandagupta. The Huns were a nomadic people believed to have originated in Central Asia, possible in the riogion of moder-day Afghanistan. -
The epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata were instrumental in the transition from the Vedic era to the Puranic era. These epics established Rama and Krishna as more popular heroes of the masses. In these stories, God himself descends to the mortal world, to live with people and demonstrate what an ideal life is like -
Gupta mathe- aticians made further advances. For example, they used the ecimal system to write numbers. The decimal system uses 10 asic numerals that have different values depending on their place." In the number 105, for instance, I is in the "hundreds lace" and means 100. The system also works for fractions. -
Aryabhatta didn't calculate all the values of π. In his entire lifetime, Aryabhatta calculate only 15 digits of π. The calculations got more tricky and more microscopic and that was one the biggest feat of Aryabhatta. -
Aryabhatta had discovered that the earth is round and rotates on an axis much before Copernicus. He also discovered that the Earth rotates about its axis daily. Also, the apparent movement of the stars is a relative motion caused by the rotation of the Earth, contrary to the then-prevailing view, that the sky rotated. He also -
The Hunas were ultimately defeated by a coalition of Indian princes. This coalition included an Indian king Yasodharman and the Gupta emperor, Narasimhagupta. They defeated a Huna army and their ruler Mihirakula and drove them out of India. -
Sushruta is considered the "Father of Plastic Surgery." He is responsible for the advancement of medicine in ancient India. His teaching of anatomy, pathophysiology, and therapeutic strategies were of unparalleled luminosity, especially considering his time in the historical record -
While many used the couching technique, there are texts that document the use of a primitive extracapsular cataract extraction (ECCE) - meaning the lens is removed and the lens capsule is left in place - by an Indian surgeon named Sushruta. The procedure involved taking a hot, curved needle and pushing the lens into the rear of the eye and out of the field of vision. -
Brahmagupta first described gravity as an attractive force. He used the term "gurutvākarṣaṇam (गुरुत्वाकर्षणम्)" in Sanskrit to describe it. He is also credited with the first clear description of the quadratic formula (the solution of the quadratic equation) in his main work, the Brāhma-sphuṭa-siddhānta. -
The mathematician Brahmagupta and others used small dots under numbers to show a zero placeholder. They also viewed the zero as having a null value, called “sunya.” Brahmagupta was also the first to show that subtracting a number from itself results in zero. -
The Huna People, also known as Huns, invaded Gupta territory. This caused significant damage to the empire. The Gupta Empire ended when it disintegrated into regional kingdoms after a series of weak rulers and invasions from the east, west, and north.