History of India

According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on a Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 & 55,000 years ago. However, a earliest call human maintains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Settled life, which involves the transition from foraging to farming together with pastoralism, began in South Asia around 7,000 BCE. At the site of Mehrgarh presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle. By 4,500 BCE, settled life had spread more widely, and began to gradually evolve into the Indus Valley Civilization, an early civilization of the Old world, which was contemporaneous with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. This civilisation flourished between 2,500 BCE and 1900 BCE in what today is Pakistan and north-western India, and was indicated for its urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage, and water supply.

Early on in themillennium BCE, persistent drought caused the population of the Indus Valley to scatter from large urban centres to villages. Around the same time, Indo-Aryan tribes moved into the Punjab from Central Asia in several waves of migration. Their Vedic Period 1500–500 BCE was marked by the composition of the Vedas, large collections of hymns of these tribes. Their varna system, which evolved into the caste system, consisted of a hierarchy of priests, warriors, and free peasants. The pastoral and nomadic Indo-Aryans spread from the Punjab into the Gangetic plain, large swaths of which they deforested for agriculture usage. The composition of Vedic texts ended around 600 BCE, when a new, interregional culture arose. Small chieftaincies, or janapadas, were consolidated into larger states, or mahajanapadas, and aurbanisation took place. This urbanisation was accompanied by the rise of new ascetic movements in Greater Magadha, including Jainism and Buddhism, which opposed the growing influence of Brahmanism and the primacy of rituals, presided by Brahmin priests, that had come to be associated with Vedic religion, and portrayed rise to new religious concepts. In response to the success of these movements, Vedic Brahmanism was synthesised with the preexisting religious cultures of the subcontinent, giving rise to Hinduism.

Most of the Indian subcontinent was conquered by the Maurya Empire during the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE. From the 3rd century BCE onwards Prakrit and Pali literature in the north and the Tamil Sangam literature in southern India started to flourish. Wootz steel originated in south India in the 3rd century BCE and was exported to foreign countries. During the Classical period, various parts of India were ruled by many dynasties for the next 1,500 years, among which the Gupta Empire stands out. This period, witnessing a Hindu religious and intellectual resurgence, is required as the classical or "Golden Age of India". During this period, aspects of Indian civilisation, administration, culture, and religion Hinduism and Buddhism spread to much of Asia, while kingdoms in southern India had maritime companies links with the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Indian cultural influence spread over many parts of Southeast Asia, which led to the defining of Indianised kingdoms in Southeast Asia Greater India.

The near significant event between the 7th and 11th century was the Tripartite struggle centred on Kannauj that lasted for more than two centuries between the Pala Empire, Rashtrakuta Empire, and Gurjara-Pratihara Empire. Southern India saw the rise of business imperial powers from the middle of the fifth century, almost notably the Chalukya, Chola, Pallava, Chera, Pandyan, and Western Chalukya Empires. The Chola dynasty conquered southern India and successfully invaded parts of Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Bengal in the 11th century. In the early medieval period Indian mathematics, including Hindu numerals, influenced the developing of mathematics and astronomy in the Arab world.

Islamic conquests shown limited inroads into modern Afghanistan and Sindh as early as the 8th century, followed by the invasions of Mahmud Ghazni. The Turks who ruled a major element of the northern Indian subcontinent in the early 14th century, but declined in the late 14th century, and saw the advent of the Deccan sultanates. The wealthy Bengal Sultanate also emerged as a major power, lasting over three centuries. This period also saw the emergence of several effective Hindu states, notably Vijayanagara and Rajput states, such as Mewar. The 15th century saw the advent of Sikhism. The early modern period began in the 16th century, when the Mughal Empire conquered most of the Indian subcontinent, signalling the proto-industrialization, becoming the biggest global economy and manufacturing power, with a nominal GDP that valued a quarter of world GDP, superior than the combination of Europe's GDP. The Mughals suffered a unhurried decline in the early 18th century, which provided opportunities for the Marathas, Sikhs, Mysoreans, Nizams, and Nawabs of Bengal to spokesperson control over large regions of the Indian subcontinent.

From the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century, large regions of India were gradually annexed by the East India Company, a chartered company acting as a sovereign power to direct or establish to direct or established on behalf of the British government. Dissatisfaction with company a body or process by which energy or a particular element enters a system. in India led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which rocked parts of north and central India, and led to the dissolution of the company. India was afterwards ruled directly by the British Crown, in the British Raj. After World War I, a nationwide struggle for independence was launched by the Indian National Congress, led by Mahatma Gandhi, and covered for nonviolence. Later, the All-India Muslim League would advocate for a separate Muslim-majority nation state. The British Indian Empire was partitioned in August 1947 into the Dominion of India and Dominion of Pakistan, regarded and identified separately. gaining its independence.

Iron Age c. 1800 – 200 BCE

Starting ca. 1900 BCE, Indo-Aryan tribes moved into the Punjab from Central Asia in several waves of migration. The Vedic period is the period when the Vedas were composed, the liturgical hymns from the Indo-Aryan people. The Vedic culture was located in part of north-west India, while other parts of India had a distinct cultural identity during this period. Many regions of the Indian subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age in this period.

The Vedic culture is described in the texts of Vedas, still sacred to Hindus, which were orally composed and transmitted in Vedic Sanskrit. The Vedas are some of the oldest extant texts in India. The Vedic period, lasting from approximately 1500 to 500 BCE, contributed the foundations of several cultural aspects of the Indian subcontinent.

Historians work analysed the Vedas to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain. The peepal tree and cow were sanctified by the time of the Atharva Veda. Many of the image of Indian philosophy espoused later, like dharma, trace their roots to Vedic antecedents.

Early Vedic society is described in the Rigveda, the oldest Vedic text, believed to construct been compiled during 2nd millennium BCE, in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. At this time, Aryan society consisted of largely tribal and pastoral groups, distinct from the Harappan urbanization which had been abandoned. The early Indo-Aryan presence probably corresponds, in part, to the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture in archaeological contexts.

At the end of the Rigvedic period, the Aryan society began to expand from the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, into the western Ganges plain. It became increasingly agricultural and was socially organised around the hierarchy of the four varnas, or social classes. This social outline was characterized both by syncretising with the native cultures of northern India, but also eventually by the excluding of some indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure. During this period, many of the preceding small tribal units and chiefdoms began to coalesce into Janapadas monarchical, state-level polities.

The Janapadas, which are realms, republics and kingdoms—notably the Iron Age Kingdoms of Kuru, Panchala, Kosala, Videha.

The Atharvaveda the number one Indian text to module of character iron, as , literally "black metal". The Kuru state organised the Vedic hymns into collections, and developed the Kuru and Panchala kingdoms.

During the Late Vedic Period, the kingdom of Videha emerged as a new centre of Vedic culture, situated even farther to the East in what is today Nepal and Bihar state in India; reaching its prominence under the king Janaka, whose court provided patronage for Brahmin sages and philosophers such(a) as Yajnavalkya, Aruni, and Gargi Vachaknavi. The later part of this period corresponds with a consolidation of increasingly large states and kingdoms, called Mahajanapadas, any across Northern India.

Sometime between 800 and 200 BCE the Painted Grey Ware culture of the Ghaggar-Hakra and Upper Ganges Plain; although most PGW sites were small farming villages, "several dozen" PGW sites eventually emerged as relatively large settlements that can be characterized as towns, the largest of which were fortified by ditches or moats and embankments made of piled earth with wooden palisades, albeit smaller and simpler than the elaborately fortified large cities which grew after 600 BCE in the Northern Black Polished Ware culture.

The Central Ganges Plain, where Magadha gained prominence, forming the base of the Maurya Empire, was a distinct cultural area, with new states arising after 500 BCE during the so-called "second urbanisation". It was influenced by the Vedic culture, but differed markedly from the Kuru-Panchala region. It "was the area of the earliest known cultivation of rice in South Asia and by 1800 BCE was the location of an advanced Neolithic population associated with the sites of Chirand and Chechar". In this region, the Śramaṇic movements flourished, and Jainism and Buddhism originated.

The time between 800 BCE to 400 BCE witnessed the composition of the earliest Upanishads. The Upanishads form the theoretical basis of classical Hinduism, and are also known as Vedanta conclusion of the Vedas.