CUET PG History Mauryan and Post-Mauryan Age and Early South India Handwritten Notes

CUET PG History Mauryan and Post-Mauryan Handwritten Notes, free to download as a 20-page PDF. HUQP09 asks 75 questions at four marks each, and this stretch of Unit 1 takes roughly two days to learn, so give the edicts a sitting of their own.

The notes are scans of a real notebook: short lines, boxed rules, and a margin note wherever something is easy to get wrong.

Where This Sits in HUQP09

The four NTA periods and their spans are below. The Mauryas, the Kushanas and the Sangam kingdoms all sit inside the first of them.

What the Notes Cover

• The sources: the Arthashastra, Megasthenes, the Puranas and the edicts themselves
• Chandragupta, Bindusara and Ashoka, and what each is asked about
• Mauryan administration, from the mantriparishad down to the district officers
• Ashoka's dhamma, and how it differs from Buddhism as a religion
• The edicts: major and minor rock edicts, pillar edicts, and the two in Kharoshthi
• Mauryan art, and the Sarnath capital that became the state emblem
• Shungas, Kanvas, Indo-Greeks, Sakas and Kushanas in sequence
• Gandhara against Mathura, and the Sangam age in the far south

How to Approach the Topic

Ashoka's inscriptions are the first Indian sources that can be dated and located, and the paper leans on them heavily. The most common question is not what an edict says but where a particular one is, so the geography matters as much as the content.

Dhamma is where candidates lose marks. It is a public ethic of tolerance, non-violence and respect for elders that Ashoka addressed to everyone in the empire, and it is not the Buddhist doctrine of the four truths. Ashoka was a Buddhist; his dhamma was not Buddhism.

The post-Mauryan centuries are easiest as a sequence rather than as a set of stories. Shunga, Kanva, Indo-Greek, Saka, Parthian, Kushana. Getting that order right answers more questions than knowing any single dynasty well.

Common Mistakes

• Reading dhamma as Buddhism. It is a public ethic, addressed to the whole empire
• Giving Chandragupta the Kalinga war. It is Ashoka's
• Placing the Kushanas before the Sakas
• Saying every edict is in Brahmi. Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra are in Kharoshthi
• Attributing the Arthashastra to Megasthenes rather than to Kautilya
• Putting the Sangam academies in the north
• Crediting the Gandhara Buddha to Mathura. The Greek-influenced style is Gandhara

Video Revision

Source: PW OnlyIAS Prarambh

How to Use These Notes

Page 6 lists the edicts by name and location, which is the single most examined page in the set. Page 13 puts Gandhara and Mathura side by side.

Page 19 is the recall grid, and page 17 collects the mistakes above with the correction next to each one.

The previous set covers the Vedic age and the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, and the next one takes the story on to the Guptas and Harsha.