he chief state of northern India.

In 327 B.C. Alexander the Great after over-throwing the Persian Empire
invaded India, where he remained only nineteen months. He probably
intended to annex Sind and the Panjab permanently to his Empire but he
died in 323 and in the next year Candragupta, an exiled scion of the
royal house of Magadha, put an end to Macedonian authority in India and
then seized the throne of his ancestors. He founded the Maurya dynasty
under which Magadha expanded into an Empire comprising all India except
the extreme south. Seleucus Nicator, who had inherited the Asiatic
possessions of Alexander and wished to assert his authority, came into
collision with Candragupta but was completely worsted and about 303 B.C.
concluded a treaty by which he ceded the districts of Kabul, Herat and
Kandahar. Shortly afterwards he sent as his ambassador to the court of
Pataliputra a Greek named Megasthenes who resided there for a
considerable time and wrote an account of the country still extant in a
fragmentary form. The grandson of Candragupta was Asoka, the first ruler
of all India (c. 273-231 B.C.). His Empire extended from Afghanistan
almost to Madras and was governed with benevolent but somewhat
grandmotherly despotism. He was an ardent Buddhist and it is mainly
owing to his efforts, which are described in more detail below, that
Buddhism became during some centuries the dominant faith in India.
Asoka's Empire broke up soon after his death in circumstances which are
not clear, for we now enter upon one of those chaotic periods which
recur from time to time in Indian history and we have little certain
information until the fourth century A.D. Andhra, a region including
large parts of the districts now called the Northern Circars, Hyderabad
and Central Provinces, was the first to revolt from the Mauryas and a
dynasty of Andhra kings[115], who claimed to belong to the Satavahana
family, ruled until 236 A.D. over varying but often extensive
territories. What remained of the Maurya throne was usurped in 184 B.C.
by the Sungas who in their turn were overthrown by the Kanvas. These
latter could not withstand the Andhras and collapsed before them about
27 B.C.

Alexander's invasion produced little direct effect, and no allusion to
it has been found in Indian literature. But indirectly it had a great
influence on the political, artistic and religious development of the
Hindus by preparing the way for a series of later inva