I'm not saying Viktamaditya came around this time. That was just a side track for Prince di Corsica's post.
And why wouldn't Devanampriya Priyadarshin work? All Buddhist sources use this to refer to the Mauryan emperors long after Ashoka. Chakravartin, 'the one whose wheel never stops turning' was an important title but it was actually more linked to the concepts of Brahmanical sacrifices and performing
yajnas, preferred by the the Shungas.
First off there's no such thing as an Aryan invasion, there was a mutli-generational migrationg of Proto-Indo-Aryans speakers into the subcontinent. And we don't know if the IVC people spoke Dravidian or were even a united or cohesive state, so no reason to suppose that the Aryans fo the 4th century BCE would identify with some long forgotten ruins around the Indus let alone percieve a 'second invasion by the aryans'.
2. Maybe in like 1100 BCE when the Dravidians still a selection of Chalcolithic tribes and the Indo-Aryan kingdoms were still assimilating and establishing themselves in the north. But given that by 800 BCE the first Indo-Aryan kingdoms south of the Narmada were established, by 600 BCE the Brahmanas are making mention of Tamil country, by 500-300 BCE we see the Sangam period start and by the end of their literature there is intense northern influence starting to pervade the Tamilakam (ie. Mauryan period c. 300 BCE) I don't think there was any 'Aryan v Dravidian' conflict happening. Especially given how major Mauryan feudatories like the Satavahanas and later Ikshvakus were likely Telugu chiefs that accepted Indo-Aryanization, yet a vast amount of their common populace continued to use local Dravidian dialects.
As for the second statement, the Newars practice a very late Vedic
varna societal organization, and historical links imply that they are descended from around three centuries of migrations from Mithila north towards the terai. The Malla dynasty bolstered this by asking later Maithili settlers to come and join the community c. 12th century. As for the Kiratas you're right they've got more Tibetan socio-cultural systems in place- due to Tibetan migration in the 8th century CE. The indigenous Kiratas mentioned in Indic texts were probably less complexly organised chiefdoms like those found among the Kusundas as you mention.
3. Nope. The Romans held full and direct control on Gaul. Unlike the British, who established altogether 50 hill stations around the India, the Romans would often send Latin settlers to inhabit newly established
colonias and
municipiums across the empire, gradually changing the ethnic and cultural composition of the empire via assimilation. Arguably the only truly autonomous client kingdom in the empire was the Bosporan Kingdom which was geographically a hassle to project power to directly.
Literates stratas of society were thoroughly established by the Mauryan age. Why else would Ashoka inscribe so many pillars if no one could read them? Panini mentions
lipi (scripts) in the Astadhyayi and the Arthashastra has various references to reading and writing for various purposes.
Gee I guess nearly every political actor since after Mohammad bin Tughluq must have been 'a radical, idiot and fantasy idiot with no place in the society'. Including Babar, Akbar, Sher Shah Suri, Hemu, Baji Rao I and II, Madhavrao etc.
Also what does all this mean? The Kurukshetra war hasn't been 'proven' there's just evidence to indicate that sometime around the 12th century BCE there was a conflict between two Iron age entities in the area. Everything else is still up in the air. There were no united Afghans during this period, only east Iranic tribes and the Indo-Aryan Iron Age kingdoms of Gandhara and
maybe Kamboja. The proto-Turks aren't even supposed to have been a thing till 500 BCE and even then at the Altai mountains rather than anywhere near this area. Also what's a Kirat Empire? I don't think there's evidence of any such state in the historical record. Especially not becuase we don't know if Krishna Vasudeva was a historical personage at all and neither Yalambar, who was likelya folk hero/deity historicised, often associated with Akash Bhairava. And Nepal wasn't a united state either till Prithvi Narayan Shah established the modern state. And of course 'Lanka' wouldn't have been able to participate in a historical Kurkshetra conflict given that it was thousands of miels away and around that time there would have been largely the furerunners of the Vedda people practicing hunter-gatherer lifestyles.
And all three of the places you list have been influenced by Indic thought and culture via Buddhist thought and ethnic migration. The Sri Lankans and Nepalese speak Indo-Aryan language to this day, staying in contact with the greater subcontinent through the milleniums. The Licchavis were engaged in politics with the eastern Indo-Aryan sphere routinely, playing important roles in the formation of the Haryanka and Gupta empires while the Mallas routinely invited Maithil settlers to join the administration of their state.
How can you distinguish linguistics, religion, culture and tradition in antiquity? All these things are inhernetly linked, the myriad of states in what is now modern-day Nepal sharing these with whatever states existed on the Gangetic plains, forming a cultural continuum. And what do you mean 'old Nepalese' sounds like Chinese? What's Old Nepalese? The modern Nepali language in its various dialects is part of what is linguistically known as the Pahari continuum, an Indo-Aryan subgroup. It's attested as far back as 938 CE, before which we cannot know what languages they spoke but some texts indicate the Licchavis spoke a kind of Prakrit, most likely the predecessor for modern Nepalese.
You treat the modern states of Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Afghanistan as some sort of everlasting concepts, all four states mentioned (except maybe Bhutan) existed as a part of a subcontinental continuum for a very long time before modern borders were established. The concept of insurgencies in antiquity are improbable. Assymetric warfare can happen but ethno-national resistance is just modern bias being projected back in time. The only thing that comes close is the Jewish resistance to Roman rule and that is an exception rather than a rule given the fascinating history of the formation of ethno-religious Judaism, linked with the history of the fertile crescent and a very different situation to that of the subcontinent. Also martyrs? Instability? Greco-Bactrians conquered and ruled the northwest for over a century and there was none of this. Why would an 'Afghan' state coalesce an anachronistic identity to resist Mauryan rule ITTL if they didn't do it in OTL when Chandragupta Maurya won those territoires against the Seleucids?
What?! That's like saying an Avestan speaker would have an easier time understanding a Median or Old Persian speaker than someone who spoke Vedic Sanskrit! And mutual intelligibility among Chinese dialects still doesn't exist, let alone during the late Zhou dynasty when they were facing tribes of Hmong-Mienic speaker as well as thos of language isolates. Slavic was only mutually intelligible because our first written records are of Old Church Slavonic, dating to
900 CE. All linguistic evdience points to the small community of Slavic speakers spreading and bifurcating only after the 750s. Norse was in a similar case where dialectal change only intensified after the 11th century CE.
Also Manchu is not a Chinese language. It is one of the most unique of the Tungusic languages with features unique to itself, and given its imminent threat of extinction its certainly not a 'normal Chinese language' and I don't think those who hold it dear want it to be considered so.
Ethnic nationalism wasn't the same as political independence, especially not in antiquity. Even the Romans during the 5th century BCE cansidered their fellow Latins as equals but lesser, while the Etruscans to their north formed the basis of many of their institutions and were held in awe.
John it's a good argument but there's a glaring misquote. The Vedas, a collection of hymns dedicated to deities in various forms, never describe themselves as the Vedas. Except in the Purusha Myth Hymn which was a later interpolation, inserted after the texts had been codified. Second of all they were codified among various recenscions by 900 BCE. That quote you use 'Veda destroys agriculture and agriculture destroys Veda' is from the
Baudhayana Shrauta-Sutra, a 'Vedic' text but only because its composed in the latest variation of Vedic Sanskrit around 600 BCE. In reality the Second Urbanization was about to kick off and agriculture is being performed en-masse.
And the actual quote means something along the lings of "agriculture destroys the study of the Vedas [of a Brahman], the Vedas hinder the [Brahman's] practice of agriculture," arguing against the amount of Brahmans that had taken up agricultural practices around the Second Urbanization.
As for the rest of it, I'm getting tired of iterating the point but the same potential exists in India as it did in China. The north-west remains the only viable passage for invasion into the subcontinent and the southern kingdoms like Satavahanas and Vakatakas did not have the industrial or population base to project power into the Gangetic plain till 200 CE and the states of Tamilakam further south had even less of a reason to bother with the north, as the Cheras were busy profiting from the Arabian Sea Trade and would become even more so with the rise of Rome, the Pandyas were busy subjugating the Cholas, who were beginning to migrate onto Tamil Eelam (Northern Sri Lanka) all the while the Pallavas were on the rise, turning the ancient triarchy of kigns to a tetrarchy.
All these things were even more true during the Mauryan age. The old Mahajanapada system was spat on by the Magadha who
conquered land rather than demand suzerainity over their neighbours, taken to the next step with the Nandas who already held a realm from Pataliputra to the Doab, holding land in the Deccan as well.
The Mauryas were actally step
four in creating a dynastic cycle in India but Ashoka's inability to reconcile his increasingly powerful feudatories and the Buddhist temporal powers of the Sangha with the vital autocracatic administration and bureaucracy of the Mauryan state established by Chanakya, his father and grandfather resulted in the decline of this cycle.