South Asia in the classical world (800 BC – AD 500). Greece, Rome, Persia, the Qin and Han, the Maya: the age of the great classical states and the written histories that describe them. These articles cover their rise, their wars and the everyday lives their ruins preserve.
After the Kalinga war of about 261 BC, Ashoka had edicts cut on rocks and pillars from Kandahar to Karnataka. No one could read them again until 1837.
· 260 BCOne panel of Sanchi's south gateway names its makers, ivory-carvers from Vidisha. Some 800 other inscriptions name the monks, nuns and bankers who paid.
· 50 BCWheeler dug Arikamedu, near Pondicherry, in 1945, found Italian Arretine ware and dated it AD 20-50; later digs argued it began near the 2nd century BC.
· AD 50
