Mauryan Army

The army of the Maurya Empire was built by Chandragupta Maurya beginning around 322 BC, when he raised a force from the previously kingless peoples of the Punjab and annexed established local military republics such as the Yaudheyas in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's withdrawal from India, going on to conquer the Nanda Empire and then to confront the Greek general Seleucus I Nicator in a conflict resolved by treaty around 303 BC that reportedly saw Chandragupta hand over 500 war elephants. Under Chandragupta's grandson Ashoka the empire's military reached its greatest and most consequential test in the Kalinga War of 262 to 261 BC, an extraordinarily bloody campaign in which an estimated 100,000 soldiers and civilians were killed, including more than 10,000 of Ashoka's own Mauryan troops. The scale of the killing at Kalinga is described as the catalyst for Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism and his subsequent renunciation of further wars of conquest, though he continued to maintain a large standing army for defense and internal order rather than disbanding Mauryan military power outright. The Mauryan army's five-fold organization of infantry, cavalry, chariots, elephants and a supporting administrative apparatus allowed the empire to control nearly the entire Indian subcontinent short of its southernmost tip, the largest political and military unification South Asia had yet seen.