Key figures of ancient India

What ancient India means, and why the dates are uncertain

“Ancient India” in most textbooks covers the whole subcontinent, including today's Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, from the first cities to about the 6th century CE. The main stages are the Harappan or Indus Valley civilisation (its cities flourished about 2600 to 1900 BCE), the Vedic period (about 1500 to 500 BCE, when the Vedas were composed and passed down orally), the age of the sixteen great states (mahajanapadas) and of the Buddha and Mahavira, the Maurya empire (about 321 to 185 BCE), and the Gupta period (about 320 to 550 CE), often called classical because so much Sanskrit literature, science and art comes from it.

Dates are a real problem for this period, and a good student says so. Indian traditions kept history in long religious and literary texts that were added to over centuries, rather than in dated chronicles. Many key dates come from outsiders (Greek writers who met Chandragupta, Chinese pilgrims such as Faxian around 400 CE) or from inscriptions. Some figures in this guide have firm dates from their own words, such as Aryabhata; others, such as Sushruta, may be several people or a tradition rather than one individual.

Three things defined the era: large states that taxed farmers and controlled trade routes; religious and philosophical ferment, from the Upanishads to Buddhism and Jainism; and remarkable achievement in mathematics, grammar (Panini's Sanskrit grammar, around the 4th century BCE), medicine and literature. It was also a society ordered by varna and jati, the system later called caste, which shaped who could study, rule or work at what.

The Maurya empire: Chandragupta, Chanakya and Ashoka

Chandragupta Maurya (about 350 to 295 BCE) overthrew the Nanda kings of Magadha, in modern Bihar, around 321 BCE and built the first empire to cover most of northern India, ruled from Pataliputra (modern Patna). Greek writers called him Sandrokottos. Around 303 BCE he fought and then made a treaty with Seleucus I, one of Alexander the Great's successors, gaining territory in the north-west in exchange for 500 war elephants. Seleucus sent an ambassador, Megasthenes, whose book Indica survives only in quotations by later Greek writers; it describes boards of officials running the capital. His family origins are disputed in the sources. Jain tradition says he gave up the throne, became a monk and died at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka, but that account was written down centuries later.

Chanakya, also called Kautilya or Vishnugupta, is remembered as the Brahmin adviser who helped Chandragupta overthrow the Nandas. Almost everything about his life comes from later legends, plays and Buddhist and Jain texts, and his dates are not known. Tradition credits him with the Arthashastra, a Sanskrit manual of government in fifteen books covering taxes, law, spies, diplomacy and war. The text was lost to modern scholars until a manuscript reached the Mysore Oriental Library in 1905; R. Shamasastry published it and translated it into English in 1915. Many scholars, including Patrick Olivelle, now date its main form to between about 50 BCE and 300 CE, so whether Chanakya wrote it is debated. The popular “Chanakya Niti” sayings shared online are a later collection and should not be quoted as his. Compare him with an Italian political thinker in Chanakya vs Machiavelli.

Ashoka (about 304 to 232 BCE), Chandragupta's grandson, ruled from about 268 BCE. About eight years into his reign he conquered Kalinga, in modern Odisha. In his own Major Rock Edict XIII he records that 150,000 people were deported, 100,000 killed and many times that number died, and he says he felt deep remorse. For the rest of his reign he promoted dhamma, a code of moral conduct, through edicts carved on rocks and pillars across the subcontinent, in Prakrit (in Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts) and, near Kandahar, in Greek and Aramaic. They call for respect between religious groups, medical care for people and animals, and wells and shade trees along roads. He also kept the death penalty and warned forest peoples that he still had the power to punish. The edicts call him Devanampiya Piyadasi, “Beloved of the Gods”; James Prinsep deciphered the Brahmi script in 1837, and an edict found at Maski in 1915 confirmed the name Ashoka. The lion capital of his pillar at Sarnath became the national emblem of India in 1950.

Medicine and literature: Sushruta and Kalidasa

Sushruta is the surgeon-teacher named as the source of the Sushruta Samhita, one of the founding texts of Ayurveda. His dates are highly uncertain: the text was built up in layers over many centuries, with a later section, the Uttaratantra, added on, and it reached roughly its present form by about 500 CE. It is notable for surgery. It describes over a hundred instruments, tells students to practise incisions on gourds and melons and sutures on cloth and leather before touching patients, explains how to couch a cataract, and sets out a way to rebuild a cut-off nose using a flap of skin from the cheek. A similar operation, seen near Pune, was described in a London magazine in 1794 and helped revive nose reconstruction in Europe. Calling him the “father of plastic surgery” is common, but be careful with firm early dates. For other early doctors, see pioneers of medicine.

Kalidasa is the greatest poet and dramatist of classical Sanskrit, but nothing certain is known about his life. Most scholars place him in the Gupta period, around the 4th or 5th century CE; the earliest dated mention of him is in an inscription at Aihole in 634 CE. His play Abhijnanashakuntalam (The Recognition of Shakuntala) tells of a king who forgets the woman he married because of a curse, until a ring brings back his memory. His Meghaduta (The Cloud Messenger) has an exiled spirit send a message to his wife by a monsoon cloud, describing the landscape it will cross. William Jones translated Shakuntala into English in 1789, and Goethe praised it in a short poem in 1791. The stories that he began as a fool and was made wise by the goddess Kali, or that he was one of “nine gems” at a king's court, are legends.

Mathematics and astronomy: Aryabhata

Aryabhata (476 to about 550 CE) is the one figure in this guide with a firm date in his own words: in his Aryabhatiya, 121 Sanskrit verses on mathematics and astronomy, he says he was 23 when 3,600 years of the Kali age had passed, which works out to 499 CE. He wrote it at Kusumapura, usually identified with Pataliputra. The work uses decimal place value, gives pi as 62,832 divided by 20,000 (3.1416) and calls it approximate, tabulates sine differences, explains that the stars seem to move west because the Earth turns, and says eclipses happen when the Moon blocks the Sun or the Earth's shadow falls on the Moon. India named its first satellite after him in 1975.

What he did not do matters too. He did not invent zero: the Bakhshali manuscript uses a dot for zero, and the first full rules for calculating with zero as a number come from Brahmagupta in 628 CE. Nor did he propose that the Earth goes round the Sun. Precise claims are more impressive than inflated ones.

Ancient India timeline

Dates before about 500 BCE, and many after, are approximate. Where historians disagree, the table gives the most common range.

Big themes and debates

• Legend and history. Chanakya, Sushruta and Kalidasa are surrounded by stories written centuries after them. Separate what a text or inscription shows from what later tradition says.
• Who wrote it? The Arthashastra and the Sushruta Samhita were probably shaped by many hands over time. That does not make them less important; it changes how we date and cite them.
• Ashoka's dhamma. Was it Buddhism, a broader ethical policy, or a way of holding a vast empire together? The edicts support more than one reading, and they were written by a king about himself.
• Contact with the wider world. Greek kingdoms in the north-west, the Seleucid treaty, Roman trade on the south coast and Chinese pilgrims show India was connected, not isolated.
• Pride and accuracy. Ancient Indian mathematics and medicine were genuinely advanced, which is exactly why exaggerated claims online (that Aryabhata invented zero, or that ancient India had aeroplanes) do harm. See our guide to how to check if a quote is real; the same method works for claims.

Primary sources to read

• Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts XII (on respect between religions) and XIII (on Kalinga), in E. Hultzsch's Inscriptions of Asoka (1925) or a modern translation.
• Megasthenes' Indica, as quoted by Strabo and Arrian (English translation by J. W. McCrindle, 1877).
• The Arthashastra, Book 1, chapters 4 and 19 (on punishment and the king's duties), in Shamasastry's 1915 translation or Patrick Olivelle's of 2013.
• The Sushruta Samhita, Sutrasthana, chapter 9 (training on gourds and melons) and chapter 16 (the nose operation), translated by Kunja Lal Bhishagratna (1907 to 1916).
• Kalidasa, Shakuntala, Act 4 (Shakuntala leaves her father's forest home), translated by Arthur W. Ryder (1912).
• Aryabhata, Aryabhatiya, Ganitapada verse 10 (the value of pi) and Golapada verse 9 (the moving boat), translated by Walter Eugene Clark (1930).

How to study ancient India: projects

• Map the edicts. Mark where Ashoka's inscriptions have been found and which languages and scripts each uses, then ask what that tells you about the size of his empire and who he wanted to read them.
• Check Aryabhata's pi. Work out 62,832 divided by 20,000 and compare it with Archimedes' bounds from about 750 years earlier. Then read why Aryabhata called his value approximate.
• Legend or evidence. Take one story about Chanakya, Kalidasa or Chandragupta and trace it to its earliest written source and that source's date.
• Perform a scene. Stage Act 4 of Shakuntala in English, then discuss what it shows about family and duty in the period.
• Interview an emperor. Write questions for Ashoka about Kalinga and dhamma, then practise them by voice with Ashoka on Yuga. The recreation is built from the edicts and the record, but it is not the real emperor and can be wrong, so quote the edicts themselves in your work. Our historical figure interview project shows how to plan it.