Evaluate the political and socio-cultural changes occurred in North India after the decline of the Mauryan Empire under the Shunga and Kanva Dynasties.

Pushyamitra Shunga assassinated the last Mauryan, Brihadratha, around 185 BCE; the dynasty ruled until about 73 BCE, when its minister Vasudeva founded the short-lived Kanva line, displaced around 28 BCE.

Political changes.

• Contraction and fragmentation. The empire shrank to the Gangetic heartland with Vidisha as a second centre. Kalinga under Kharavela, the Deccan under the Satavahanas and the north-west under Indo-Greeks all went their own way.
• Foreign pressure. The Indo-Greek advance, associated with Menander, reached deep into the Ganga plain; Patanjali's reference to a Greek besieging Saketa and Madhyamika belongs to this period.
• Decentralisation. Feudatory chiefs and local rulers gained autonomy, a pattern that continued until the Guptas.

Socio-cultural changes.

• Brahmanical revival. Pushyamitra performed the ashvamedha, recorded in the Ayodhya inscription of Dhanadeva. Sanskrit regained ground as the language of learning; Patanjali's Mahabhashya was composed in this period, and the Manusmriti is generally placed here — a text codifying varna hierarchy and restricting women, which suggests an assertion of orthodoxy under strain.
• Art of the first rank. The Bharhut stupa railings and the railings and gateways of Sanchi belong to the Shunga period, along with rock-cut work at Bhaja. Their subject matter — jatakas, yakshas, yakshis, donative inscriptions by ordinary devotees — shows a vigorous popular religious art.

The persecution question. The Divyavadana alleges that Pushyamitra destroyed monasteries and set a price on Buddhist heads. The claim should be treated with caution: it is a later Buddhist source, hostile and undated, and the same reign saw major Buddhist construction at Bharhut and Sanchi funded by lay donors. Most historians therefore read the period as one of Brahmanical resurgence and royal patronage shifting, not of systematic persecution.