India after the Mauryas

Pushyamitra Shunga held Magadha against Greek inroads and patronised Brahmanism — the Bharhut stupa railings date from his age. From Bactria came the Indo-Greeks; the most famous, Menander (Milinda), ruled from Sakala and debated Buddhist philosophy with the monk Nagasena in the Milindapanho — 'the Questions of King Milinda'. The Greeks brought coin portraiture and the Hellenistic art idiom that would change Indian sculpture.

The Shakas (Scythians) followed, ruling from Taxila to Ujjain, where the Western Kshatraps endured for centuries. Behind them came the Kushanas, whose greatest king Kanishka (c. 78–101 CE, by the traditional dating of the Saka era) ruled from Purushapura (Peshawar) an empire stretching from Central Asia to Banaras. Kanishka patronised the Fourth Buddhist Council, and under his rule the Gandhara school fused Greek technique with Buddhist subject to create the first images of the Buddha, while the Mathura school worked in bold red sandstone.

Kushana power straddled the Silk Road. Indian goods — cotton, spices, gems, steel — moved west, and Roman gold poured back: the hoards of Roman coins found across the peninsula are the material signature of what Pliny called the drain of gold to India.

In the Deccan the Satavahanas rose from Pratishthana (Paithan) to dominate the peninsula between the second century BCE and the third CE. Gautamiputra Satakarni destroyed the Shakas and styled himself destroyer of the proud; his mother Gautami Balashri's Nashik inscription is a key source. The Satavahanas pioneered land grants to Brahmanas and Buddhist monks, and their ports fed the booming Roman trade in pepper and pearls.

Far south, beyond the Venkata hills, the Tamil country was ruled by the three crowned kings — the Cheras of the west coast, the Cholas of the Kaveri and the Pandyas of Madurai — alongside dozens of chieftains. Their courts produced the Sangam literature, anthologies composed in three legendary academies at Madurai. The epic Silappadikaram of Ilango Adigal, the Manimekalai of Sattanar, and the ethical classic Tirukkural of Tiruvalluvar are its imperishable monuments. Sangam poems paint a society of warriors and poets, of Puhar's crowded harbours 'where large ships come laden with gold', and of war, love and gift-giving that predates northern influence.