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Indian History Ancient History Muslim Invasion British Rule & Modern History |
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Some India related sites: Gateway for India -Ancient History (www.gatewayforindia.com) Information on Indian religion, history, culture, entertainment, sports, tourism, cooking. Itihaas- Indian History site Indian Army- Bharat-rakshak - Learn about Indian defense forces Indian portal- Rediff - Complete Indian portal India times - One of the best Indian portals Health related sites: Cancerinfo - Cancer information Religion- Hindu-Unity - Forum on Hinduism Hindu Religion - Read about Hindu religion and Philosophy |
Ancient Indian History India's
extraordinary history is intimately tied to its geography. A meeting ground
between the East and the West, it has always been an invader's paradise, while
at the same time its natural isolation and magnetic religions allowed it to
adapt to and absorb many of the peoples who penetrated its mountain passes. No
matter how many Persians, Greeks, Chinese nomads, Arabs, Portuguese, British and
other rai True to the haphazard ambiance of the country, the discovery of India's most ancient civilization literally happened by accident. British engineers in the mid-1800's, busy constructing a railway line between Karachi and Punjab, found ancient, kiln-baked bricks along the path of the track. This discovery was treated at the time as little more than a curiosity, but archaeologists later revisited the site in the 1920's and determined that the bricks were over 5000 years old. Soon afterward, two important cities were discovered: Harappa on the Ravi river, and Mohenjodaro on the Indus. The civilization that laid the bricks, one of the world's oldest, was known as the Indus. They had a written language and were highly sophisticated. Dating back to 3000 BC, they originated in the south and moved north, building complex, mathematically-planned cities. Some of these towns were almost three miles in diameter and contained as many as 30,000 residents. These ancient municipalities had granaries, citadels, and even household toilets. In Mohenjodaro, a mile-long canal connected the city to the sea, and trading ships sailed as far as Mesopotamia. At its height, the Indus civilization extended over half a million square miles across the Indus river valley, and though it existed at the same time as the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumer, it far outlasted them. Aryan invasion of India during post Harrapan period is now no longer considered valid. and many other scholars have now proposed a new model of ancient Indian history. The following 'New Model of Ancient India' has been proposed by David Frawley - 'The New Model of ancient India that has emerged from the collapse of the Aryan invasion theory is that of an indigenous development of civilization in ancient India from the Mehrgarh site of 6500 BC. The people in this tradition are the same basic ethnic groups as in India today, with their same basic types of languages Indo-European and Dravidian. There is a progressive process of the domestication of animals, particularly cattle, the development of agriculture, beginning with barley and then later wheat and rice, and the use of metal, beginning with copper and culminating in iron, along with the development villages and towns. Later Harappan (Sarasvati) civilization 3100-1900 BC shows massive cities, complex agriculture and metallurgy, sophistication of arts and crafts, and precision in weights and measures. This Sarasvati
civilization was a center of trading and for the diffusion of civilization
throughout south and west Asia, which often dominated the Mesopotamian region. 1. 6500-3100 BC, Pre-Harappan,
early Rig Vedic Around 500 BC, when the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius, pushing their empire eastward, conquered the ever-prized Indus Valley. The Persians were in turn conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, who swept through the country as far as the Beas River, where he defeated king Porus and an army of 200 elephants in 326 BC. The tireless, charismatic conqueror wanted to extend his empire even further eastward, but his own troops (undoubtedly exhausted) refused to continue. Alexander returned home, leaving behind garrisons to keep the trade routes open. While the Persians and Greeks subdued the Indus Valley and the northwest, Aryan-based kingdoms continued developing in the East. In the 5th century BC, Siddhartha Gautama founded the religion of Buddhism, a profoundly influential work of human thought still espoused by much of the world. As the overextended Hellenistic sphere declined, a king known as Chandragupta swept back through the country from Magadha (Bihar) and conquered his way well into Afghanistan. This was the beginning of one India's greatest dynasties, the Maurya. Under the great king Ashoka (268-31 BC), the Mauryan empire conquered nearly the entire subcontinent, extending itself as far south as Mysore. When Ashoka conquered Orissa, however, his army shed so much blood that the repentant king gave up warfare forever and converted to Buddhism. Proving to be as tireless a missionary as he had been as conqueror, Asoka brought Buddhism to much of central Asia. His rule marked the height of the Maurya empire, and it collapsed only 100 years after his death.
In AD 319, Chandragupta II founded the Imperial Guptas dynasty, which conquered and consolidated the entire north and extended as far south as the Vindya mountains. When the Guptas diminished, a golden age of six thriving and separate kingdoms ensued, and at this time some of the most incredible temples in India were constructed in Bhubaneshwar, Konarak, and Khahurajo. It was time of relative stability, and cultural developments progressed on all fronts for hundreds of years, until the dawn of the Muslim era. Arab traders had visited the western coast since 712, but it wasn't until 1001 that the Muslim world began to make itself keenly felt. In that year, Arab armies swept down the Khyber pass and hit like a storm. Led by Mahmud of Ghazi, they raided just about every other year for 26 years straight. They returned home each time, leaving behind them ruined cities, decimated armies, and probably a very edgy native population. Then they more or less vanished behind the mountains again for nearly 150 years, and India once again went on its way. |
ders
had their way with the land, local Hindu kingdoms invariably survived their depredations, living out their own sagas of conquest and collapse. All the
while, these local dynasties built upon the roots of a culture well established
. In short, India has always
been simply too big, too complicated, and too culturally subtle to let any one
empire dominate it for long.