Mahajanapadas and the rise of Magadha

By the sixth century BCE, northern India was divided into sixteen large states known as mahajanapadas. Some were monarchies ruled by kings, while others, such as the Vajji confederacy, were republics or oligarchies governed by assemblies of leading men. Their capitals, including Rajagriha, Shravasti, and Kashi, became centres of trade, craft, and political rivalry, and the use of iron tools, punch-marked coins, and fortified towns marks this as a period of rapid economic change known as the second urbanisation.

Magadha, in present-day Bihar, eventually outgrew its rivals. It had fertile land, iron ore in its southern hills, and a capital first at Rajagriha and later at Pataliputra, at the meeting point of major rivers. Its early kings included Bimbisara and his son Ajatashatru, who expanded Magadhan power against neighbouring states. The Nanda dynasty that followed is remembered in later tradition for a large army and a full treasury, and it was the Nandas who were ruling when Alexander of Macedon campaigned in the north-west in 326 BCE.

Alexander defeated the local ruler Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BCE, on the river Jhelum, but his army refused to advance further east, and he turned back, dying in Babylon in 323 BCE. His campaign left Greek-ruled kingdoms in the north-west and a lasting channel for contact between India and the Hellenistic world, but it did not create a lasting empire in India. Within a few years, Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the Nandas and founded the Mauryan Empire, the subject of a later note.

The mahajanapada period matters because it is the setting for both the new religions and the first empires. Buddha and Mahavira taught in these competing states, merchants and towns grew in importance, and rulers began to build standing armies and bureaucracies. The contrast between monarchies and republics also reminds us that kingship was not the only political form ancient India knew.