NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 5 Features of an empire (Fig. 5.4.1) — LET'S EXPLORE

Mostly by not interfering — and by giving people reasons to be loyal rather than resentful.

Points your group can build the discussion around, each one supported by something in this chapter:

• Let local rulers stay. “In return for tribute and loyalty, emperors generally allowed regional kings or chiefs to continue to govern their areas.” People kept their own king, their own language and their own customs.
• Let communities govern themselves. Guilds had “the autonomy to create their own internal rules, and the king was not to interfere with them”. Villages had their own committees and councils. An enlightened ruler let local institutions work.
• Treat all sects equally. Aśhoka “encouraged all sects to accept each other's best teachings and study them”, and appointed officers of Dhamma who worked among Buddhists, brahmans, Ājīvikas, Jains and others.
• Speak to people in their own language. The edicts were written in Prakrit — the popular language — not in a courtly language, and in the Brahmi script that ordinary readers knew.
• Deliver welfare, not just orders. Rest houses and wells along the main roads, fruit and shade trees, medical care for people and animals, granaries against famine. A ruler who feeds you is harder to rebel against.
• Keep officials fair. Aśhoka told his city magistrates, “All men are my children”, and sent an inspecting officer on tour every five years to check that no one was imprisoned or tortured without good reason.
• Keep the roads and trade open. Trade mixed people, goods and ideas from distant regions, and shared prosperity is the cheapest kind of harmony.

The book gives three reasons — fame, resources and wealth. Here are several more that the chapter itself supports:

1. Security. A neighbour who troubles you today will invade you tomorrow. Ira's uncle marches out “against a neighbouring kingdom that has been troubling us”. Conquering a hostile neighbour turns a dangerous border into a safe interior.
2. Control of trade routes. Fig. 5.4.4 says rulers tried to control rivers and trade networks, because that gave them both precious resources and tax revenue from trade.
3. Control of strategic resources. Iron ore, elephants, timber, mines — the things an army is actually made of.
4. Survival in a crowded field. Fig. 5.4.5: with many small kingdoms warring for control, the one with stronger military power and surplus resources becomes the overlord. If you do not expand, someone else absorbs you.
5. Ending constant warfare. A well-managed empire can stop small kingdoms from fighting each other and bring greater prosperity than many warring states.
6. Prestige and titles. To be called samrāj or rājādhirāja was itself a prize — and tributaries brought gifts, elephants and loyalty.
7. Spreading an idea. Aśhoka used the reach of his empire to send emissaries with the Buddha's message to Sri Lanka, Thailand and Central Asia.