Han China Vs Mauryan India

The classical empires experienced periods of great power by centralization of power and establishing belief systems to maintain power over their empire. This is true for both Han China and Mauryan India. Both of these classical empires were very successful in the ancient world because they were able to expand and create strong political policies to keep their empires strong and stable. While both Han China and Mauryan/Gupta India built distinct political structure to ensure that their officials were implementing their policies, Han China and Mauryan India used belief systems as techniques to ensure that there was order in their empires. The political structure of both Han China and Mauryan/Gupta India were distinct because Han China focused
their government more on the bureaucracy, whereas in Mauryan/Gupta India the ruler focused more on the Military and spies to implement his policies. In Han China, Han Wudi, the "Martial Emperor", was facing serious problems of recruitment for his bureaucracy and so he decided to establish an imperial university that prepared young men to hold a place in the bureaucracy. In the imperial universities Confucianism was a major part of student learning because Confucianism was the only Chinese culture rigorous enough to discipline students. Han Wudi wanted to make sure that his empire stayed strong by having young bureaucrats with the same goals as he did. On the contrary, Mauryan/Gupta India Empire focused more on military and spies because he wanted to make sure that no one was going to rebel against him. Ashoka started to send out individuals to look after foreigners to observe their moves. He also built a huge army because he wanted to protect his whole empire from invasion and rebellion. As you can see, both focused on different parts of the government to enforce their rules on people. Even though both empires used different parts of their government to run their empire, they actually used belief systems on their empires as techniques to keep order in their empire. Both classical empires used belief systems to keep people under control. Han Wudi used Confucianism as a technique to keep control over his empire and Mauryan/Gupta India used Hinduism and Buddhism for their empire. One of the major characteristics of Confucianism is filial piety, an idea that shows different types of relationship between kids to parents, parents to ancestors, and the ruler to the ruled. This was used to make sure that no one was rebelling against the ruler since filial piety did not allowed individuals to do such actions. Due to Confucianism individuals in China had to engage in good conduct, show love, respect and support to one another. This helped the emperor keep control over his people. Similarly, in Mauryan/Gupta India, Hinduism's caste system was used to keep control over the empire. With the castes system the government didn't had to do a lot of work to maintain order in their empires because if anyone tried to break out of their caste they were severely punished. And so people in India did not bother to make any changes in the government of their caste status. That is how both of these empires maintained control over their empires. Both Han China and Mauryan/Gupta India used belief systems as a technique to keep order in their empires but on the other hand they developed different political systems to ensure that their government was enforcing their policies. Han Wudi developed a bureaucracy with intellectuals that were able to run his empire, while India built a strong military and spies to enforce his policies. Later on both empires started to use belief systems such as Confucianism and Hinduism as a technique to get control over their people. After they had control of their people they were able to maintain order in their empires. Although their developments in government didn't last long, those developments still influenced other civilizations around the world.