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Ancient India
On the Indus and the Ganges grew one of the first urban civilisations, the sacred hymns of the Vedas, two new religions - Buddhism and Jainism - and the empire of Ashoka, who turned from conquest to preaching non-violence. Under the Guptas Indian scholars developed the decimal numerals that, with zero, the whole world uses today.
Cities of the Indus
THEME ONE
Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, in today's Pakistan, were laid out on a grid, with houses of baked brick, wells, bathrooms and covered drains - better sanitation than many cities had four thousand years later. Their merchants traded with Mesopotamia and stamped goods with small stone seals. The script on these seals has never been deciphered. After about 1900 BCE the cities shrank, probably as rivers shifted and the monsoon weakened.
The Vedas and new faiths
THEME TWO
From about 1500 BCE speakers of Indo-Aryan languages composed the Vedas, hymns in Sanskrit that were passed down by memory for centuries before they were written. Society came to be divided into four varnas, with priests, the Brahmins, at the top. In the 5th century BCE two teachers rejected the authority of the Vedic rituals: Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, and Mahavira, the great teacher of the Jains.
Ashoka's empire
THEME THREE
Around 322 BCE Chandragupta Maurya founded an empire that soon covered most of the subcontinent. His grandson Ashoka conquered Kalinga on the east coast around 261 BCE, and the slaughter so shocked him that he embraced Buddhism and a rule of dharma - righteousness and tolerance. He had his edicts carved on rocks and pillars across the empire. The lion capital of one of his pillars is now India's national emblem.
The classical age of the Guptas
THEME FOUR
From about 320 CE the Gupta kings ruled northern India from the Ganges valley. Their age is remembered for the Sanskrit poetry of Kalidasa, the paintings of the Ajanta caves and the astronomer Aryabhata, who in 499 CE described the rotation of the Earth and calculated with place-value numbers. Invasions by the Huns from Central Asia weakened the empire, and it broke up in the 6th century.
Periods
The Indus civilisation
C. 3300 – 1300 BCE
Farming villages grow into the planned cities of the mature Harappan phase (about 2600 – 1900 BCE), which then decline into smaller rural settlements.
Vedic age and the kingdoms of the Ganges
C. 1500 – 322 BCE
The Vedas are composed, cities return to the Ganges plain, and the kingdom of Magadha rises above its rivals. The Buddha and Mahavira teach.
Empires from the Mauryas to the Guptas
C. 322 BCE – 550 CE
The Maurya empire, a period of regional kingdoms such as the Kushans in the north and the Satavahanas in the Deccan, and the Gupta empire.
Key dates
- c. 2600 BCEHarappa and Mohenjo-daro become large planned cities.
- c. 1500 BCEThe oldest hymns of the Rigveda are composed.
- c. 322 BCEChandragupta Maurya founds the Maurya empire.
- c. 261 BCEAshoka conquers Kalinga and turns to Buddhism.
- c. 320 CEChandragupta I founds the Gupta empire.
- 499 CEAryabhata completes his work on astronomy and mathematics.
Questions and answers
Has the Indus script been deciphered?
No. More than four thousand short inscriptions are known, most of them on seals and only a few signs long. Without a bilingual text or longer inscriptions, none of the many proposed readings has been accepted, and even the language behind the script is unknown.
Did zero come from India?
The decimal place-value system with a sign for zero did. Aryabhata worked with place value in 499 CE, and in 628 Brahmagupta gave rules for calculating with zero. Arab scholars took the system over, and Europe learned it from them - which is why we call these numerals "Arabic".