From janapadas to empires

Look at maps of the subcontinent: in the first millennium BCE, settlements multiply in the Ganga region. Archaeologists find there:

• iron tools;
• more kinds of grain, especially paddy (rice);
• a grey pottery called Painted Grey Ware (PGW);
• later, in the middle Ganga region, a smooth, glossy black 'deluxe ware' called NBPW (Northern Black Polished Ware).

All signs of a richer life. Texts of the time also talk of more farming and bigger harvests.

"Why did iron matter so much?" Imagine trying to clear a thick forest with stone axes, then ploughing heavy soil with wood. Iron axes and ploughs made it far easier. More land, more crops, more people: the base for bigger states.

From people to place. Early on, you belonged to a jana (your clan). Slowly, people also came to belong to a land. A janapada literally means 'where a jana set its foot'. This shift from kinship to territory happened between about 1000 and 600 BCE. Now controlling land, farming and trade routes mattered, so governments became more complex.

From about 600 BCE, bigger units arose: the mahājanapadas ('great janapadas'). Sources usually list sixteen (Fig. 5.4), from Kamboja and Gandhāra in the north-west to Aśhmaka in the Deccan, with Kuru, Pañchāla, Kosala, Kāśhī, Vatsa, Avanti, Magadha and others in between.

Magadha, in today's Bihar, became the most powerful. Three reasons:

• its strategic location;
• its fertile plains;
• its strong rulers.

Its growth led to the Mauryan Empire, one of the largest in early Indian history.

There were two kinds of state in the north:

• monarchies (rājyas), ruled by a king;
• republics (gaṇas or saṁghas), ruled by a group.

And Vedic culture's centre moved east, from the Indus–Sarasvatī region to the Ganga plains.

In the south. In the Deccan, the Mauryas were followed by the Satavāhanas, whose empire lasted nearly 500 years, from the 2nd century BCE to the 3rd century CE. Further south were the Cholas (lower Kaveri valley), the Pandyas (Tamraparni and Vaigai valleys), the Keralaputras (the Cheras of Kerala) and the Satiyaputras (northern Tamil Nadu). Aśhoka's inscriptions name them all.

Sangam literature (300 BCE–300 CE), the earliest Tamil literature, calls the Chera, Chola and Pandya rulers the three crowned kings, the 'Vendar' of Tamilakam. They ruled rich rice-growing lands. Their emblems:

• Chola: the tiger;
• Chera: the bow;
• Pandya: the fish.

One Chera ruler won the title adhirāja after defeating several crowned kings.

Watch out: these early Tamil kingdoms are not the same as the imperial Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas who rose many centuries later.