Kings, Farmers and Towns — Early States and Economies (c. 600 BCE-600 CE) — Class 12 History

This chapter traces political and economic change across roughly 1,200 years, drawing on inscriptions, coins, texts and visual material. After the Harappan cities, the Rigveda was composed along the Indus and its tributaries, and from the sixth century BCE early states, the sixteen mahajanapadas, emerged. Magadha rose to dominance, helped by fertile land, iron, elephants and ambitious rulers. The Mauryan empire under Chandragupta and Ashoka was the first major imperial state; Ashoka used inscriptions to spread dhamma, his message of moral order, recorded on pillars and rocks. James Prinsep's decipherment of Brahmi and Kharosthi in the 1830s allowed historians to read these inscriptions and identify the king "Piyadassi" as Ashoka. Later, new kingdoms appeared — the Kushanas, who issued fine gold coins and promoted ideas of divine kingship, the Satavahanas and the Guptas, known through prashastis composed by court poets such as Harishena's account of Samudragupta. Underlying these political changes were shifts in agriculture: use of the plough, irrigation, transplantation of paddy and land grants recorded on copper plates that transferred revenue rights. Trade flourished through towns, ports and guilds, and coins of many metals circulated. The chapter ends by stressing the limits of inscriptional evidence — what was left unrecorded — and how epigraphists work.