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Alexandria · 2026Begin anywhere; follow the threads.

Civilization · 1200 BCE – 78 CE · 11 entries

Vedic and Mauryan

Ancient

Magadha
event · 12th c. BCE
To the authors of the ancient Vedas, the eastern Ganges Plain was a wild, foreign frontier, and the people of Magadha were viewed as hostile, non-Vedic outsiders living well beyond the borders of orthodox Brahmanical…

Classical

The Buddha
person · 1k BCE
To understand the transformation of Siddhartha Gautama is to trace a path of deliberate renunciation.
Mahajanapadas
event · 600 BCE
When the second urbanization of ancient India took root between 600 BCE and 345 BCE, it shattered the old pastoral rhythms of the subcontinent, raising India’s first large cities since the fall of the Indus Valley…
Jainism
organization · 5th c. BCE
To conquer is not to subdue others, but to defeat the passions within.
Chandragupta Maurya

Without dates

Buddhismorganization
Hinduismorganization

Threads through

Gupta and Medieval India2 shared entries
Silk Roads2 shared entries
Southern Indian Empires1 shared entry
Steppe Empires1 shared entry

Vedic and Mauryan · Alexandria

person · 340 BCE

Before the dust of Alexander the Great’s aborted Indian campaign had even settled, a new empire began to coalesce in the fertile basin of the Ganges Valley.

Maurya empire

event · 322 BCE

The rise of a vast, interconnected power across the South Asian subcontinent began around 322 BCE with the overthrow of the Nanda dynasty by Chandragupta Maurya.

Ashoka

person · 304 BCE

The blood spilled during the conquest of Kalinga in approximately 260 BCE did not merely expand the borders of the Mauryan Empire; it fundamentally altered the course of its ruler's mind.

Kalinga War

event · 262 BCE

The banks of the Daya River, where the Dhauli hills overlook the eastern coast of India, became the setting for one of the deadliest conflicts in antiquity.

Kanishka

person · 78 CE

The Yuezhi emperor Kanishka I ruled an empire that stretched from the windswept tracks of Central Asia and Gandhara all the way to Pataliputra on the Gangetic plain, marking the absolute zenith of Kushan power.