The Mauryans represented a high watermark of empire. The next five hundred years saw a succession of kingdoms, most of them strongly supportive of Buddhism. Stupas and monasteries sprang up everywhere, but the states that sponsored them grew weaker and weaker; centralized armies dissolved; soldiers, like officials, increasingly came to be paid by land grants rather than salaries. As a result, the number of coins in circulation steadily declined.3 Here too, the early Middle Ages witnessed a dramatic decline of cities: where the Greek ambassador Megasthenes described Aśoka’s capital of Patna as
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