The story of the Mauryan Empire starts far before it even began.
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Around 600 B.C., there started to form small kingdoms around the land mass that we now call India. However, there was one, very important land owned by the Nanda family. This was a very big, influential kingdom and everyone wanted it, including a man known as Chandragupta Maurya, most likely born in Magadha. He wanted it so direly that he formed a military force to take down a very unpopular Nanda king, in which Maurya succeeded. He had such an impact, he became the ruler, and created the Mauryan Empire.
However, after this overtaking and due to his embrace of the Jain faith, Maurya fasted to death. However, the new ruler was already chosen; Asoka. Unfortunately, not much is known about Asoka's reign. There are thinly spread accounts throughout Indian history but there isn't any abundance, and none provide crucial information about his rule or the events that took place at the time. Fortunately, Asoka had his own public edicts. These tell of his rule and of crucial events that took place during it.
Asoka's rule seemed rather ethically based. He honored elders, he was against harm to other living things, and so on. Some may have even called him a pacifist. He ran his empire as such, and this may have been a result of his Buddhist faith, and as such, was viewed as a paragon among Buddhist emperors. The degree to his devotion to the Buddhist faith, however, is an unanswered question.
The Mauryan Empire had quite average agriculture in the means of trading. However, what really stuck out about the Empire was its use of punch-pressed coins as currency and trading. This made them a center for trading in the entirety of India.
//Jacob Quaiatto