An Inquiry on India

Well, what you need is a good POD.

What about this one? (See the map below)

From the first sight it looks like ASB, but if you think about it - it is quite plausible.
Some insignificant Macedonian ruler was lucky to conquer Persian Empire.
Why can't the Great Maurya Empire take it away from his successors?

Why not? You know how strong India was at this time. Think about lots and lots of war elephants:D:)
And from this on you have a lot of variants. I guess Buddhism would definitely spread till Greece...

The Maurya are going to have their plates full keeping ahold of India. To try and extend into Anatolia and Egypt would be suicide for their Empire.
 
The Maurya are going to have their plates full keeping ahold of India. To try and extend into Anatolia and Egypt would be suicide for their Empire.
Good point.
Then let Chandragupta become more western oriented in his quest for glory and booty. The smaller his conquests in India - the more free he is in the west.

I mean the needed POD is to make the civilizations meet so the Indians could influence the West and the world more.

Maurya less2.jpg
 
Good point.
Then let Chandragupta become more western oriented in his quest for glory and booty. The smaller his conquests in India - the more free he is in the west.

I mean the needed POD is to make the civilizations meet so the Indians could influence the West and the world more.

The Maurya will not expand beyond India, and the PoD will be post-Chandragupta. That is final. Speculation as to the alternative is good enough, but it will not be part of my TL.
 
Way to put your foot down, Moonstruck! In any case, Ruddian, your idea is implausible because even roads can't hold together an empire that wide in that time period.
 
I was referring specifically to width. Your proposed empire is approximately 8000 miles wide. The Maurya Empire IOTL was about 4000 miles at most. Secondly, the Maurya empire was governed as a loose federation.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
Aye, and good luck beating the Seleucids that badly. They might've been weakened and overextended, but they'd hardly go for what seems to be something resembling full-on annexation.

While I acknowledge that further discussion of this might very well be quite interesting, I must nevertheless once again kindly ask you to please take it to another thread. Being the newbie that I am, currently in the process of structuring my first timeline, it will do me far more harm than good to have the thread in which I attempt to get answers to my inquiries cluttered by discussion of AH-possibilities about a hundred years before my PoD.
 
Oh, yes, indeed. Plenty of possibilities. I was planning on continuing along with my previously-stated intent of creating a Buddhist-Jainist culture in northern India, as a counterbalance to the primarily Brahmanic Dravidian south, hopefully eventually ending up with some sort of cultural/scientific renaissance.

Brahmanic South?

The South wasn't (and isn't) particularly Brahminical. In fact Buddhism and Jainism hung on the longest there. It's actually relatively unclear what South Indian Hinduism was like before Buddhism- even the modern forms of South Indian Hinduism tend to be quite different to those in North India.
 
Brahmanic South?

The South wasn't (and isn't) particularly Brahminical. In fact Buddhism and Jainism hung on the longest there. It's actually relatively unclear what South Indian Hinduism was like before Buddhism- even the modern forms of South Indian Hinduism tend to be quite different to those in North India.

Really? Hm. Shows what I know. My apologies for the assumption, I was merely basing it on the fact that, from what I know, historically, it ended up being the center of Hinduism. That, of course, would be because Islam displaced it in the north, which seems obvious now that I think about it, and which is rather redundant in this TL.

I'll have to give that some more thought. Oh, well. Better to have the mistakes spotted now than later.
 
Really? Hm. Shows what I know. My apologies for the assumption, I was merely basing it on the fact that, from what I know, historically, it ended up being the center of Hinduism. That, of course, would be because Islam displaced it in the north, which seems obvious now that I think about it, and which is rather redundant in this TL.

I'll have to give that some more thought. Oh, well. Better to have the mistakes spotted now than later.

that's a bit of a flawed understanding. I don't think too many North Indian Hindus would agree that South India is the centre of Hinduism (if Hinduism can even be said to have a centre). Hinduism isn't so much a religion as a shared mythos for a set of regional religious, philosophical and cultural practices.

For example Tamils tend to have Murugan as one of their major deities- he's hardly heard of in much of the rest of India. Brahmins are far more central to North Indian Hinduism whereas in the South they're relatively rare, generally speaking. In Kerala Vishnu is the most prominent deity but Mahabali, an adversary of Vishnu is also revered as a just ruler and true King of Kerala. Holi is an important festival in North India but nonexistent in the South. I could go on and on but I think you get my picture.

The impetus for the Hindu renaissance actually came from the Indo-Gangetic plains of North India. It wasn't fully completed in South India until well into the second millennium AD.
 
Really? Hm. Shows what I know. My apologies for the assumption, I was merely basing it on the fact that, from what I know, historically, it ended up being the center of Hinduism. That, of course, would be because Islam displaced it in the north, which seems obvious now that I think about it, and which is rather redundant in this TL.

I'll have to give that some more thought. Oh, well. Better to have the mistakes spotted now than later.

I'm agreed with Flocc on this one. To give you another example, in Bengal, the goddess Durga is far more important than elsewhere, and her festival (Durga Puja) is more important than Diwali.

You could consider having South Indian maritime powers actively spread Hinduism to SE Asia, leading to a Hindu revival at home. On the other hand, Hinduism isn't evangelical, but not all Hindus know or care.
 
that's a bit of a flawed understanding. I don't think too many North Indian Hindus would agree that South India is the centre of Hinduism (if Hinduism can even be said to have a centre). Hinduism isn't so much a religion as a shared mythos for a set of regional religious, philosophical and cultural practices.
I'm agreed with Flocc on this one.

Huh. I guess I have quite a bit more to learn than I thought. Blame youthful enthusiasm. I also confess to still being somewhat stuck in the mindset of the Abrahamic religions, something I'll definitely have to work on before starting the TL, perhaps even more so than knowing the actual course of OTL events - After all, some time after the PoD, many of those events won't be relevant anymore, but knowing how society and religion functioned certainly will.

The impetus for the Hindu renaissance actually came from the Indo-Gangetic plains of North India. It wasn't fully completed in South India until well into the second millennium AD.

Hm, interesting. Well, if the eastern part of the Maurya Empire falls to some of the same forces as IOTL, Hinduism should definitely remain influential there. Perhaps they'll work to spread it southwards; I'll have to find out more about the subject before I decide that.

You could consider having South Indian maritime powers actively spread Hinduism to SE Asia, leading to a Hindu revival at home. On the other hand, Hinduism isn't evangelical, but not all Hindus know or care.

The early Sunga Empire certainly didn't care, from what I can tell. Still, it's a good idea, and one I'll definitely consider incorporating.

My apologies for making so many (in retrospect) silly mistakes - I am definitely not the most knowledgeable about the area and era, and it is, after all, my first TL.
 
My apologies for making so many (in retrospect) silly mistakes - I am definitely not the most knowledgeable about the area and era, and it is, after all, my first TL.

No worries- I'm not trying to be a buzzkill.

Evangelical Hinduism is possible- as Ganesha points out that's what happened with the South Indian maritime kingdoms. They spread a blend of Hindu-Buddhism to SE Asia.
 
My apologies for making so many (in retrospect) silly mistakes - I am definitely not the most knowledgeable about the area and era, and it is, after all, my first TL.

No problem, you're doing wonderfully. And you're starting your own timeline, which is something I haven't done in two years here. Above all, you're earnest, eager, interested, and you spell correctly. If you have any questions you want to PM me, PM Flocculencio instead. He's much more knowledgeable.
 
While I acknowledge that further discussion of this might very well be quite interesting, I must nevertheless once again kindly ask you to please take it to another thread.
OK, :)
No problem,
you asked everyone to advise you which POD you should choose. I proposed one. You didn't like it.

I can live with that:)
Enjoy yourself!
 
Well, what you need is a good POD.

What about this one? (See the map below)

From the first sight it looks like ASB, but if you think about it - it is quite plausible.
Some insignificant Macedonian ruler was lucky to conquer Persian Empire.
Why can't the Great Maurya Empire take it away from his successors?

Why not? You know how strong India was at this time. Think about lots and lots of war elephants:D:)
And from this on you have a lot of variants. I guess Buddhism would definitely spread till Greece...

See the main reason is this.

If I'm Chandragupta Maurya, why would I want to spend vast amounts of money and men forcing the passes through the Hindu Kush, fighting my way across Persoia and Mesopotamia and leaving a trail of dead bodies in my wake? The Persian Empire is infinitely poorer, less fertile and less desirable than India which is why no Indian polity has ever pushed to the West. The only parts of the Persian Empire which approach Indian levels of wealth at the time are Egypt and *perhaps* the Levant and to get there you need to cover all the worthless stuff in between. There's nothing they need and rulers don't just go conquering for the lulz. War is expensive and it had better just the costs.

Alexander of Macedonia was from an even poorer peninsula of a mostly barbarous continent- invading richer Persia made financial sense.
 
See the main reason is this.

If I'm Chandragupta Maurya, why would I want to spend vast amounts of money and men forcing the passes through the Hindu Kush, fighting my way across Persoia and Mesopotamia and leaving a trail of dead bodies in my wake? The Persian Empire is infinitely poorer, less fertile and less desirable than India which is why no Indian polity has ever pushed to the West. The only parts of the Persian Empire which approach Indian levels of wealth at the time are Egypt and *perhaps* the Levant and to get there you need to cover all the worthless stuff in between. There's nothing they need and rulers don't just go conquering for the lulz. War is expensive and it had better just the costs.

Alexander of Macedonia was from an even poorer peninsula of a mostly barbarous continent- invading richer Persia made financial sense.

There might be a reason for going into Persia. IOTL, Seleucus Nikator invaded Punjab in about 306BCE. He was defeated and forced to concede all of Afghanistan and Baluchistan to Chandragupta in 304BCE. However, ITTL, let us say that Seleucus and his son are killed in battle with Chandragupta and his (mostly) Bactrian-Iranian cavalry is integrated into the Mauryan army around 303BCE (a little more protracted war).

IOTL, around this time, Antigonus Monophthalmus was the de-facto ruler of Alexander's Asian possessions. He was involved in a full scale war with Ptolemaic Egypt, Cassandrine Macedonia and finally, Lysimachid Thrace-Hellespont. Both Cassander and Ptolemy had been defeated by Antigonus and Ptolemy had lost Cyprus and Cassander most of Greece to Antigonus (and his son Demetrius). All of Antigonus' enemies were uniting and it was to this ganging up that Seleucus was invited to after he had made a treaty with Chandragupta.

However, ITTL, there is no Seleucus for the others to invite, and when the Cassandrine ambassadors arrive in Afghanistan, they find out that Seleucus has already been killed. Instead of returning empty handed to their master, they make the same offer to Chandragupta they made to Seleucus - all of Alexander's possessions east of the Euphrates in return for his aid in defeating Antigonus (originally, Syria was not part of the Seleucid domain - it was promised to Ptolemy. But Ptolemy did not fight and Seleucus after the destruction of Antigonus grabbed it) . Chandragupta is not interested in Persia or Babylonia, but the return of the Greeks to India is a major fear for him. Chandragupta certainly did not want a victorious Antigonus to return to emulate Alexander. Better if he can be contained in Anatolia or Syria, so he joins the coalition. Now the battle of Ipsus goes as IOTL - Antigonus dies in battle, Demetrius flees to Greece, and Chandragupta grabs Alexander's possessions east of the Euphrates.

However, there is one major problem in my scenario. I cannot see Chandragupta's new huge empire lasting longer than a generation. Communications, as they exist, are simply too meagre to sustain such an empire. But do try to guess what the Maruyans could try to do to actually hold their new empire together.

Will it lead to a huge ship building effort in the Mauryan empire as it tries to connect the western Indian coast to the southern coast of Persia, as it struggles to hold itself together? Will the need for a strong cavalry or the riches of Babylonia be a sufficient incitement for the Mauryans to try and hold at least Persia and Babylonia with the Mauryan empire? But to hold Persia at its natural frontiers, it should be the Alborz mountains in the northeast, and for Babylonia it will be the Euphrates. And getting messages to these places, let alone troops and supplies, is a daunting prospect at the best of times. So how would the effort be organised?
 
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