The real history of India begins with the life of the Buddha who lived in the sixth century B.C.[113] At that time the small states of northern India, which were apparently oligarchies or monarchies restricted by the powers of a tribal council, were in process of being absorbed by larger states which were absolute monarchies and this remained the normal form of government in both Hindu and Moslim times.  Thus Kosala (or Oudh) absorbed the kingdom of Benares but was itself conquered by Magadha or Bihar, the chief city of which was Pataliputra or Patna, destined to become the capital of India.  We also know that at this period and for about two centuries later the Persian Empire had two satrapies within the limits of modern India, one called “India,” including the country east of the Indus and possibly part of the Panjab, and the other called Gandhara (Peshawar) containing Takshasila[114], a celebrated university.  The situation of this seat of learning is important, for it was frequented by students from other districts and they must have felt there in early times Persian and afterwards Hellenistic influence.  There are clear signs of Persian influence in India in the reign of Asoka.  Of Magadha there is little to be said for the next century and a half, but it appears to have remained the 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