Ashoka and the Maurya Dynasty

Flawless and wide-ranging, Sen has done something extraordinary . . . A must-read for history professionals and general book lovers. * Borderless Journal * A combination history and biography based on both historical records and historical writing produced on the man and the period since the 19th century. * Asian Review of Books * This new book is a good read and caters well for Sen’s intended audience, the general reader, and her bibliography is wide-ranging and up-to-date. There is an excellently paced summary of pre-Mauryan history and the treatment of early Mauryans is also good; but the book has to be judged on the basis of Ashoka. Here, Sen sensibly gives the legends from later Buddhist narratives a separate chapter, allowing her to create a coherent story using contemporary records. -- Robert Harding * Minerva * Hats off to Colleen Taylor Sen, whose Ashoka and the Maurya Dynasty is a readable and comprehensive history of the greatest empire of ancient India. Drawing on a range of sources written over a span of over 2,000 years, Sen introduces us to the rise, apogee, and fall of the dynasty, with particular attention to its most famous monarch, Ashoka. Alongside a factual narrative, she discusses Ashoka in Buddhist legend, and the legacy of the Mauryas in the Buddhist world, colonial South Asia, and modern India. A fascinating appendix tells the story of the “rediscovery” of the long-forgotten historical Mauryas in the 19th and 20th centuries. * John E. McLeod, Professor of History, University of Louisville * In Ashoka and the Maurya Dynasty, Colleen Taylor Sen has given us a highly readable and engaging encounter with ancient India’s greatest dynasty, the Mauryas. Her account is rooted in the most recent scholarship, but her attention to the complexities of Mauryan historiography does not detract from her storytelling. The result is a vivid chronicle of one of the world’s most remarkable political formations. The reader is taken from remotest South Asian antiquity, through the founding of the Mauryan dynasty, to its apogee under the famous Aśoka and his policy of rule by righteousness (dhamma), and then through the decline of the empire and the ongoing legacy of Mauryas in Asia and beyond. * Mark McClish, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Northwestern University *