Which of the following was not a provincial political centre of the Mauryan Empire?

Mathura

The correct answer is Option (2) → Mathura

Mathura was not a provincial political centre of the Mauryan Empire.

There were five major political centres in the empire – the capital Pataliputra and the provincial centres of Taxila, Ujjayini, Tosali and Suvarnagiri, all mentioned in Asokan inscriptions. If we examine the content of these inscriptions, we find virtually the same message engraved everywhere– from the present-day North West Frontier Provinces of Pakistan, to Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Uttarakhand in India. Could this vast empire have had a uniform administrative system? Historians have increasingly come to realise that this is unlikely.