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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Evaluate the significant political features of the Post Mauryan Northern India. What are the main sources of it?

  • UPSC 2020
  • Post-Mauryan Period

The collapse of the Mauryan empire c. 187 BCE did not produce another pan-Indian empire but a mosaic of regional kingdoms and foreign-ruled principalities. Political power in the north fragmented along two tracks — indigenous successor dynasties in the Gangetic heartland, and a succession of Central Asian invaders (Indo-Greeks, Sakas, Parthians, Kushanas) who carved out…

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What the full answer covers

  • Fragmentation in the Gangetic Heartland
  • The Indo-Greek Irruption in the Northwest
  • Saka Satrapies and the Kshatrapa System
  • Kushana Unification and its Limits
  • A Composite, Decentralized Political Idiom
  • Sources: Numismatics as the Primary Evidence
  • …and 1 more sections, with a conclusion

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