ABSTRACT
The first universal empires of West, South, and East Asia-the Achaemenid, the Mauryan, and the Han-achieved brilliantly the task of pacifying and organizing their respective societies. Internally, the expanding agricultural and commercial economies of the civilized societies presented opportunities for the creation of aristocratic estates and these, in turn, lent themselves to the formation of independent centers of regional political and military power. Unquestionably, the Mauryan tradition of universal empire continued to be influential, a tradition already shaped, at least in part, by Achaemenid and Seleucid example, but there were also the contemporary models of the Parthian and Sasanid empires. Comparison of the first empires with their successor states thus raises challenging questions about the definition and measurement of centrifugal and centripetal political forces, bureaucratic and feudal institutions, and the persistence, adaption, and interaction of established and newly emerging traditions and ideologies.
