The Maurya army was divided into four branches: infantry, elephants,
chariots and archers.
Each was represented by a seat in the staff of the army, together with two others, one for the navy and one for logistics.
Because of the caste system, all professional warriors were recruited from the ksatriya caste.
The pride of the Indian army was its core of war elephants.
They were highly prized and often wars were fought over territories that had many of them.
The elephants were armored and protected by a small screen of infantry.
On their backs they carried small castles with archers and spearmen.
The elephants themselves could attack as well.
Indian chariots were different from the light and swift vehicles used in the Middle East.
They were large, had four wheels, were pulled by four to six horses and the largest could hold seven men, not just two.
These giants were used both as missile platforms and to charge into enemy ranks.
But, like their lighter counterparts, by the time of the Maurya they were becoming obsolete and increasingly replaced by true cavalry,
armed with lances and swords.
Several successors of the Maurya came from the west and made good use of mounted archers,
but true Indian armies like those of the Maurya and later Gupta did not.
The glue that held the composite bows of the mounted archers together suffered from the hot humid Indian climate,
which also wreaked havoc on the horses.
Instead, the Maurya and Gupta used infantry archers.
These wielded longbows made of bamboo and in rare cases even of steel.
The archers were shielded from attack by infantry armed with spears, swords,
javelins and a variety of other weapons.
Generally they wore little armor, but used large shields.
Nobles did wear heavy armor and wielded khanda swords, made of the best Indian steel.
The Maurya emperors fielded very large armies, recruited from various peoples speaking different languages and having different customs.
Most were probably led by their own leaders, supervised by Mauryan high command.
The Indians are known to have used combined arms tactics, coordinating all the units together.
They had names for dozens of different types of formations to make the best use of all parts.
The Maurya empire reached its greatest extend under Ashoka the Great.
He conquered the rich kingdom of Kalinga but was so appalled by the bloodiness of the war that he converted to Buddhism and became a peaceful ruler.
Of course this may also have been a political move to consolidate his recent conquests.
After his death in 232 BCE the empire declined and finally dissolved in 185 BCE.
Conquerors from the west, like the Scythian Shaka and the Kushans, set up new empires and brought new ideas to India.
In the 4th century CE the Gupta dynasty once more established an all-Indian empire, but like the Maurya, after a century it peaked,
got damaged by invaders from the west (the White Huns) and broke apart in separate kingdoms.
War Matrix - Maurya army
Greek Era 330 BCE - 200 BCE, Armies and troops