Maurya Empire
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50 free Maurya Empire trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Mauryan Empire was the first power to bring most of the Indian subcontinent under one throne, more than two thousand years ago. It began with a young adventurer who seized a kingdom and ended with a murder in front of the army. In between came one of history's most unusual rulers, an emperor who publicly regretted his own conquests and had his change of heart carved into rock. These questions collect the best fun facts about the Mauryan Empire: the legends told about its founder Chandragupta and his cunning adviser, the edicts of Ashoka, the foreign envoys who wrote down what they saw, and the symbols modern India borrowed for its flag and emblem. The quiz suits students of ancient India, teachers looking for a ready-made review, and anyone who enjoys a strange true story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the set for a class.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to Jain tradition, how did Chandragupta Maurya die after giving up his throne to live as a monk?
Fasted to death
Fasted to death is the Jain account: the old emperor is said to have starved himself in the rite of sallekhana at Shravanabelagola. The hill where he lived as an ascetic is called Chandragiri after him.
Q 02India's national emblem copies a Mauryan sculpture from Ashoka's reign showing four of which animals set back to back?
Lions
Lions, four of them, crown the pillar top carved for Ashoka. On the emblem only three can be seen, because the fourth is hidden at the back.
Q 03Legend says Chandragupta Maurya's minister secretly laced the emperor's food with small doses of what to protect him?
Poison
Poison in tiny doses was meant to make the emperor immune to assassins. In the tale his pregnant queen shared a meal by mistake, and the drop that touched her unborn son gave Bindusara his name.
Q 04Chandragupta Maurya sealed a peace treaty with a Macedonian rival by handing over 500 of which prized military assets?
War elephants
War elephants were the price of peace, and they changed history far to the west. The herd played a key role in the Battle of Ipsus, fought in Anatolia a few years later.
Q 05Remorse over the bloodshed of conquering which east-coast kingdom led Ashoka to renounce war and turn toward Buddhism?
Kalinga
Kalinga, in modern Odisha, fell in the eighth year of Ashoka's reign. His own edict counts 100,000 killed and 150,000 carried off, and says the victor was filled with remorse.
Q 06Bindusara, father of Ashoka, asked a Greek king for sweet wine, dried figs and which third item, which was refused?
A sophist
A sophist, a professional teacher of wisdom, was the one request Antiochus I turned down. He sent the wine and the figs but replied that Greek law forbade selling a scholar.
Q 07Buddhist tradition links the dynasty name Maurya to which bird, said to be abundant in the family's homeland?
Peacock
Peacock is 'mora' in Pali, and the clan was known as the Moriyas, the people from the place of peacocks. A Jain account instead ties Chandragupta's family to keepers of the royal peacocks.
Q 08Max Weber said an Indian statecraft manual linked to the Mauryan court made which Italian writer's book look harmless?
Machiavelli
Machiavelli's The Prince was harmless next to it, Weber said in 1919. The Indian text calmly covers spy networks, coded messages and the assassination of enemy leaders.
Q 09Which Bollywood superstar played the Mauryan emperor in the 2001 epic film Asoka, opposite Kareena Kapoor?
Shah Rukh Khan
Shah Rukh Khan took the title role for director and co-writer Santosh Sivan. Tamil star Ajith Kumar made his Hindi film debut in a special appearance.
Q 10The Greek envoy's book Indica, written about Mauryan India, repeated a tall tale that which creatures dug up gold?
Ants
Ants as big as dogs or foxes were said to dig gold out of sandy ground. Herodotus had told the same story about India more than a century earlier.
Q 11Which symbol taken from Ashoka's Mauryan pillars sits in navy blue at the centre of India's national flag?
A spoked wheel
A spoked wheel, the Ashoka Chakra, sits on the flag's white band with 24 spokes. In 1947 it replaced the spinning wheel shown on pre-independence versions of the flag.
Q 12Which Mauryan capital, described by a Greek envoy as ringed by 570 towers and 64 gates, lies beneath modern Patna?
Pataliputra
Pataliputra became one of the largest cities in the world during the Maurya period. The envoy also described a defensive ditch 600 feet across.
Q 13Which Brahmin strategist is credited in legend with guiding Chandragupta Maurya's rise to power from obscurity?
Chanakya
Q 21Which Macedonian general, founder of a Syrian-based empire, gave up Indus lands in a treaty with Chandragupta Maurya?
Seleucus I
Seleucus I crossed the Indus between 305 and 303 BCE and came away with a treaty instead of a conquest. Ancient writers add that the two rulers sealed it with a marriage alliance.
Q 22Chandragupta Maurya won his throne by toppling which dynasty, whose huge army had helped drive Greek invaders to mutiny?
Nanda
Nanda power ended when its last king, Dhana Nanda, was overthrown. Greek writers put the kingdom's army at five times the size of the Macedonian force that turned back rather than face it.
Q 23Most of Ashoka's edicts are carved in which script, the ancestor of many writing systems used across Asia?
Brahmi
Chanakya is said to have served as chief adviser and prime minister to both the founder and his son. The diplomatic enclave of India's capital, Chanakyapuri, is named in his honour.
Q 14Ashoka's son Mahinda is credited with carrying Buddhism to which island nation as a missionary monk?
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka's tradition makes Mahinda the first-born son of Ashoka and Queen Devi. He was sent to the Anuradhapura Kingdom, where the island's Buddhist history begins.
Q 15Plutarch wrote that Chandragupta Maurya, as a young man, saw which famous conqueror who had invaded north-west India?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great left India and assigned his conquests in the Indus Valley to Greek governors. After the conqueror's early death, Chandragupta attacked those governors and took the region.
Q 16The pillar-top sculpture on India's state emblem was raised by Ashoka at which site of the Buddha's first sermon?
Sarnath
Sarnath, near Varanasi, is where the sculpture was unearthed in the winter of 1904–05. It had topped a column put up after Ashoka's conversion, about two centuries after the sermon.
Q 17Ashoka's pillar marking the Buddha's birthplace at Lumbini, rediscovered in 1896, stands in which modern country?
Nepal
Nepal's authorities dug around the pillar and found its inscription below ground, hidden from view. The text records that Ashoka visited the spot himself.
Q 18A 14th-century sultan of the Tughlaq dynasty had two of Ashoka's stone pillars moved to which city, his capital?
Delhi
Delhi received both pillars in 1356. One came from Topra Kalan in Haryana and stands in the sultan's fortress; the other came from Meerut.
Q 19The personal name Ashoka, borne by the third Mauryan emperor, grandson of Chandragupta, has which literal meaning?
Without sorrow
Without sorrow is the literal sense of 'A-shoka', yet most of the emperor's inscriptions never use the name. Only a few minor edicts, such as the one at Maski, call him Ashoka in person.
Q 20Which Greek ambassador lived at Chandragupta Maurya's court and wrote Indica, a now-lost account of the country?
Megasthenes
Megasthenes survives only in fragments quoted by later authors. One of them, the geographer Strabo, called him a liar in whose writing no faith whatever could be placed.
Brahmi was deciphered in the 1830s through a series of articles in a Calcutta society's journal. The edicts are its earliest securely dated and best-known inscriptions.
Q 24Ashoka's edicts usually call the Mauryan emperor Devanampriya, a royal title with which meaning?
Beloved of the Gods
Beloved of the Gods appears in the edicts far more often than any personal name. An inscription found at Maski in 1915 confirmed that the title belonged to Ashoka.
Q 25Ashoka's daughter, the nun Sanghamitta, sailed to Anuradhapura carrying which living gift from India?
A Bodhi tree sapling
A Bodhi tree sapling, taken from the tree of the Buddha's enlightenment, was planted in the city. It is described as the oldest living human-planted tree with a known planting date.
Q 26Which dynasty replaced the Mauryas after a general killed the last emperor, Brihadratha, during a military parade?
Shunga
Shunga rule began with the general Pushyamitra, who struck down his own emperor in front of the troops. Buddhist texts say a wave of persecution followed.
Q 27Ashoka commissioned the original Great Stupa at which hilltop site in central India, near his wife Devi's home town?
Sanchi
Sanchi's Great Stupa began as a simple brick dome built over relics of the Buddha. The four carved gateways it is famous for were added about two centuries later.
Q 28A royal artery built on Chandragupta Maurya's orders was the forerunner of which famous Asian thoroughfare?
Grand Trunk Road
Grand Trunk Road follows the ancient Uttarapatha, or Northern Road. The Mauryan version is said to have been inspired by the Royal Road of the Persian kings.
Q 29At its peak under Ashoka, which region of the subcontinent stayed outside the Maurya Empire's control?
The deep south
The deep south stayed with Tamil-country kingdoms such as the Cholas and the Pandyas. Ashoka's rock edicts list them as neighbours on his borders, not as subjects.
Q 30Which Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, traditionally tied to the Mauryan court, resurfaced in a Mysore library in 1905?
Arthashastra
Arthashastra disappeared around the 12th century and was considered lost until a palm-leaf copy reached the library. Its librarian, Rudrapatna Shamasastry, identified the text and published it in 1909.