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That’s one of the big historiographical debates, so it’s hard to answer precisely! The British colonial historians probably overestimated the influence of the Achaemenids, but the Achaemenids certainly introduced some technological and societal innovations. None of it is particularly direct insofar as the Magadha Empire, since the Achaemenids never ruled so far east.
Magadhan/Mauryan art is likely influenced by Achaemenid styles and technology, including the Mauryan Polish technique I mentioned. Stylistically, the lion capitals reflect this. The Aramaic alphabet was adapted to some Indian languages, such as Kharoshthi, and may have influenced the Brahmi alphabet (big debate on that). There is probably some cross-cultural religious influence, too, with some Zoroastrian dualism making its way into some Brahmanical and Buddhist schools, but that’s beyond my area of study.
Taxila, in the northwest and once under Achaemenid rule, was home to many great scholars and influential to the development of thought throughout northern India. Taxila was an extremely cosmopolitan city. Chandragupta Maurya studied there, by which time Hellenistic influences began to creep in, and Ashoka governed it during his youth, and so they would have been exposed to ideas coming from the west. This trend continued for centuries after the Maurya.
Since it’s what I’m studying, I’ll also say that the currency system of the Magadha/Nanda Empire was probably derived from Achaemenid currency, albeit indirectly. Not everyone agrees with that; some historians favor an indigenous origin, but in my opinion (and the opinion of scholars such as Joe Cribb), the similarities are too great to overlook. Our evidence is pretty sketchy at this point, and begins to verge on speculation if we try to say much more.
Comment by lcnielsen at 07/04/2020 at 16:15 UTC
28 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Very interesting! I thought the Brahmi alphabet being derived from the Aramaic one was more or less settled except for some holdout nationalist arguments about it. With respect to Zoroastrian influence, I would think the Kushan Empire would potentially be a more likely source of that (since there's a lot of material showing syncretisms of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Hellenic religion, Near Eastern religion, and Vedic Religion/Proto-Hinduism around then).
The general question occured to me because one of the more popular ideas in the comparative study of empires is looking at the way empires tend to lead to powerful polities emerging in their peripheries influenced by the imperial economy and ideology, which sometimes go on to dominate or conquer the empire (Barbarian kingdoms and Western Rome, Arabs and Sasanians, China and the northern frontier...). Macedonia, itself once an Achaemenid vassal state, is the obvious example of this, but it does seem to me like something similar is going on with the emergence of powerful Indian polities and with the rise of steppe empires as well.