| A | B |
|---|
| Mauryan Empire | the first empire in India, founded by Chandragupta Mauryan in 321 B.C. |
| Asoka | Chandragupta's grandson; brought the Mauryan Empire to it's greatest heights |
| religious toleration | acceptance of people who held different beliefs |
| Tamil | language spoken by people in India's southern tip |
| Gupta Empire | India's second empire; oversaw a great flowering of Indian civilization, especially Hindu culture |
| patriarchal | type of family headed by the eldest male |
| matriarchal | the mother, rather than the father, was head of the family |
| Mahayana | a sect of Buddhism that offers salvation to alland allows popular worship |
| Theravada | those who held to the Buddha's stricter, original teachings; also called Hinayana |
| Brahma | creator of the world |
| Shiva | destroyer of the world |
| Vishnu | preserver of the world |
| Kalidasa | one of India's greatest writers; possibly the court poet for Chandra Gupta II |
| Silk Roads | caravan routes that crisscrossed central Asia; traders used them to brings silk from China to Western Asia and on to Rome |
| Han Dynasty | ruled China for more than 400 years; formed by Liu Band in 202 B.C. |
| centralized government | a central authority controls the running of a state |
| civil service | government jobs that civilians obtained by taking examinations |
| monopoly | a group has exclusive control over the production and distribution of certain goods |
| assimilation | the process of making these conquered peoples of part of the culture |
