India: history to 1526

The Indian subcontinent (comprising modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) was the site of one of the world's earliest urban civilizations. The Indus Valley civilization emerged in the northwest of the subcontinent around 2500 BC, and many cities were built along the Indus River, most notably Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. The urban architecture of these cities was highly developed. They were laid out in a regular grid-plan, and the baked-brick houses were on two or more levels surrounding paved courtyards, containing drains and rubbish disposal chutes.

The Aryan invasion The Indus Valley Civilization collapsed in around 1500 BC, probably owing to the incursion into the region of Aryan cattle-raising tribes from the Iranian steppes. The Aryans lived for an indefinite period on the plains of the Punjab before finally entering the Indo-Gangetic plain and forming settled communities, where they established a theocratic military kingship system. The Aryans compiled a polytheistic religious system in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, which shows evidence of philosophical and political dominance over the indigenous Dravidian peoples. The Rig-Veda describes the setting up of a social system of four ranks (Varnas) - the main castes, although there are thousands of subdivisions. The four Varnas were the Brahman (Brahmins), or priests; the Kshatriya, or warriors; the Vaisya, or merchant classes; and the Sudra, peasants comprising mixed Aryan and non-Aryan peoples (see also Varnashrama). The clearing of the forests and the existence of the new settlements led to the growth of trading communities, which produced the Vaisya, who were distinguished from the Sudra, the agriculturalists.

The beginnings of Hindu culture and thought The early religion of the Aryans was animistic, and animal sacrifice was all-important. The astronomical calculations for the most propitious time to sacrifice led to the growth of mathematical knowledge, in which India was in advance of the rest of the world for a long time. In the Rig-Veda there are hints of pantheistic monism (the theory that reality is made up of only one substance), in which the All is seen to be centred on the One, a concept more clearly defined in the Upanishads, the last of the Vedas. The theocratic traditions of Harappa probably influenced the Brahmins in asserting their supremacy, as did the doctrine of ahimsa, respect for life. Communities were governed by a raja, whose power was checked by a tribal council. With the Upanishads the Aryan nature gods were giving place to the search for the universal soul, and pre-Aryan practices, such as ahimsa, were reflected in the Mahābhārata , the great epic which was finally compiled about AD 200. A second epic, the Rāmāyana, was compiled about the same time.

Early republics and kingdoms With the establishment of republics and kingdoms in northern India by about 600 BC, the details of Indian history emerge more clearly. In the monarchies tribal loyalties gave way to caste loyalties, while the major strength of the republics lay in their corporate system of government. In the northeast the kingdom of Magadha came to prominence under Bimbisara (reigned 543-491 BC), and continued to flourish under the Nanda dynasty (362-321 BC). During the 6th century the Persians, under Cyrus the Great, had extended their Achaemenid Empire into northwest India as far as Gandhara, in whose capital Takshashila, Iranian and Vedic learning mixed.

The emergence of Buddhism and Jainism Disgust with elaborate ritual and sacrifices in religion led to the growth of reform movements, such as the Charvakas, who preached total materialism. The two most important sects that rebelled against orthodox Brahminism in the 6th century were the Buddhists (see Buddhism) and the Jains (see Jainism). Within orthodox Hinduism the concept of Bhakti (loving devotion to a personal god) took root, as can be seen from the Bhagavad-Gītā, the supreme religious work of Hinduism. Both the Buddha and Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, accepted the Hindu doctrines of reincarnation and karma, and neither intended to form a new religion. By their rejection of caste, however, they attracted the underprivileged. Both were atheistic, nirvana in the pure form of Buddhism (Hīnayāna) being merely liberation from the wheel of Samsara (rebirth) - in essence extinction. Jainism, concentrating on ahimsa, attracted the merchant classes. The Jains have survived in India in small numbers, but Buddhism almost died out in India, although flourishing elsewhere.

Alexander the Great in India The invasion led by Alexander the Great of Macedon in 326 BC brought to India the first contacts with Europe, but otherwise left little trace. Alexander's campaign was confined to the Punjab and Sind in the northwest. His most important contribution to Indian history lies in the records of India made by his Greek scribes, but Indian sources make no mention of him. None of his settlements survived as towns.

Chandragupta Maurya and the beginning of the Mauryan Empire In 321 BC Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, overthrew the Nandas. Aided by his adviser, Kautilya, he exploited the vacuum left by Alexander's death in 323 BC, and swept together the republics and kingdoms that Alexander had conquered. Chandragupta made an alliance with Seleucus I, who had succeeded to the eastern portion of Alexander's empire, and set up a strong, centralized government at Pataliputra in Bihar, supported by a large army, a civil service, and an elaborate espionage system. Chandragupta died in around 297 BC, and Tamil poets speak of the chariots of his successor, Bindusara, thundering across the Deccan. By the time of Bindusara's death almost the entire subcontinent appears to have been Mauryan. The Mauryan empire builders were well documented by Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus I to the Mauryan court, and in the Arthashashtra, the textbook for kings written by Kautilya.

Asoka Bindusara's successor Asoka, considered to have been India's greatest ruler, was almost unknown in history until the deciphering of an inscription in the 19th century. Evidence that he was a Buddhist and enforced respect for all human and animal life is found carved on rocks and pillars throughout India, which he had erected following his despair at the slaughter he wreaked at the Battle of Kalinga. Buddhism flourished under his benevolent rule, but his stern ahimsa impoverished the pastoralists among his subjects, and led to the disintegration of the empire. He renounced the tradition of conquest and a new ideal, dharma-vijaya, ‘righteous victory’, inspired the ethical teachings based on Buddhism that were inscribed on the rock and pillar edicts. On the death of Asoka the empire extended throughout the subcontinent, except in the extreme south. Little physical evidence has remained from this period, as Mauryan architecture was mainly executed in wood.

Further Greek incursions In the 3rd century BC Bactria and Parthia, the Hellenized areas to the west and northwest of India, broke away from the Seleucid Empire, and in the following century the Bactrian Greeks entered northwest India, establishing Indo-Greek rule there. One of the most famous of these rulers, Menander (or Milinda; ruled 155-130 BC), converted to Buddhism, and from this point a Hellenistic influence can be seen in Buddhist statuary. In the 1st century BC Scythians (see Scythia) entered northwest India under pressure from the Kushans (see below). In India the Scythians were known as Shakas, and were displaced in turn by Parthian Greeks, who established a brief period of rule in northwest India around the end of the 1st century BC. One of the Parthian Greek rulers was Gondophernes, who by tradition was visited by the disciple St Thomas, who is thought to have gone on to introduce Christianity into southern India, where he was martyred.

The Kusana period The next great empire, though smaller than that of Asoka, was that of the Kusana dynasty (1st-2nd centuries AD). This dynasty originated with the nomadic Yueh-chih, or Kushans, who migrated from China and, encountering another tribe, the Scythians (see above), pushed the latter into the borderlands of India. When the Kushans were defeated by a third horde they moved to the valley of the River Oxus (Amu Darya), where they settled. One group of Kushans settled in northwest India, based in Peshawar, and extended the rule of the Kusana dynasty over central and eastern India. They erected Buddhist buildings and helped to establish Mahāyāna Buddhism, in which the original life-negating Hīnayāna form was transformed into a popular and positive religion in which the dead teacher became a bodhisattva, a living saviour.

The Guptas The period of the Gupta dynasty and its later offshoots, from 320 to 647, is considered the classical period of the arts, in which Sanskrit, previously restricted to religious contexts, became more widely used. The greatest playwright of the period, Kālidāsa, is famed for his play Sakuntalā. Mathematics and astronomy flourished. The dynasty was founded by Chandragupta I, a raja of Magadha, who, by marrying an influential Lichchavi princess, extended his rule over Oudh and along the Ganges as far as present-day Allahabad. His successor, Samudragupta, carved out an empire in the Ganges plain, advancing across the Deccan as far as Madras, although he contented himself with tribute from rulers south of the River Narmada. Chandragupta II extended the empire and took the title of Vikramaditya (‘Sun of Valour’). A sketch of Gupta history was made by the Chinese pilgrim Faxian (Fa-hsien) in the early 5th century. Government was free from cruelty, not debased by espionage, and, although the Guptas were devoted to Vishnu, Buddhists and Jains practised freely. In 480 the White Huns - known as the Hunas in India - from central Asia broke up the empire and a multitude of small kingdoms formed. The Gupta dynasty itself appears to have died out some time in the 6th century. Further warrior tribes from central Asia - including the ancestors of the Rajputs - entered India during the 5th-7th centuries and were absorbed into the mainstream of Hindu culture. In the 6th century an offshoot of the Guptas settled at Kannauj in the upper Ganges valley. This dynasty's greatest and best-documented king, Harsha-Vardhana (c. 590-c. 647), subdued upper India apart from the Punjab, but failed to defeat the Chalukya king of the Deccan. Harsha has been brought to life in history by the account of him given by a Chinese pilgrim, Huien Tsang. Harsha left no heir, and disorder, aggravated by famine, followed his death.

A succession of kingdoms The struggle between the Gurjara-Pratiharas, the Pala dynasty, and the Rashtrakutas is the first major landmark in the confusion following the death of Harsha. The Pratiharas had by 836 established an empire extending from east Punjab to north Bengal. At its height the Pala Empire included Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and the Andhra country, with Kannauj as a tributary state. The Rashtrakuta kingdom was established around 753 and extended from south Gujarat, Malwa, and Baghelkhand to Tanjore. In the 7th century the Arabs penetrated Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and in the 8th century they conquered Sind, Kutch, and Saurashtra. When further progress was checked by Indian princes the Sind Arabs broke away from the Abbasid Empire in Baghdad in 827, and later split into the kingdoms of Multan and Mansura. Arab influence on India was minimal. The three major powers declined in the 10th century. The Palas lost the greater part of Bengal to the Pratiharas and local dynasts, and were attacked by the Tamil Cholas and the central Indian Kalachuris. After a short revival, they finally lost Bengal to the Senas by 1161. In 973 the Chalukyas of Kalyani overthrew the Rashtrakutas. Powers that paid tribute to the Pratiharas became independent: the Paramaras, Chandellas, and Chedis in central India, the Chalukyas in Gujarat. A Chola king, Rajaraja (985-1014), and his son conquered the bulk of the Tamil country in the south, eastern Deccan, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and parts of the Malaya Peninsula. Ceylon, involved in conflicts with the Pandyas, Cholas, and Rashtrakutas since the 9th century, finally expelled the Cholas in 1070. Early in the 11th century new dynasties ruling north and northwest India came into conflict with the Turkish rulers of Ghazni (in Afghanistan), former vassals of Bukhara, who had acquired an extensive empire in central Asia and Iran. Mahmud of Ghazni, who had come to the throne in 998, made repeated raids on India as far as the Dob and the Gujarat coast, annexing parts of the Punjab and Baluchistan. Despite the anarchic elements in these Hindu ‘middle ages’, Indian civilization flourished. Śankara propounded the monist doctrine of Ādvaita (non-dualism) in the 9th century. The Tamil alvars preached devotion to Vishnu, and the nainars preached the cult of Shiva. Tantric Buddhism (see Tantrism) spread from eastern India to Tibet. During this period the famous temples at Tanjore, Gangaikonda-cholapuram, Khajarae, and Bhubaneswar were built. The traditions of classical Sanskrit literature were kept alive by such writers as Bhavabhuti and Rajasekhara.

The sultanate of Delhi India's political and military weakness had been revealed by Mahmud of Ghazni's raids in the 11th century. The systematic conquest of India by Islamic Turks began with the annexation of the Punjab in 1186 by Muhammad of Ghur. Muhammad was a member of the Turkish Ghurid family of central Afghanistan who had overthrown their Ghaznavid overlords. In 1191 Muhammad defeated the Rajput confederation led by Prithiraja Chauhana, and created an empire covering north-central India, including Delhi. After his assassination in 1206 his general, Qutb al-Din Aibak, established the first Turko-Afghan dynasty in Delhi, and Islam began to spread across northern India. By 1235, under Iltutmish, the territories of the sultanate of Delhi extended from the Punjab and Sind to Bengal, and included parts of Malwa and Rajputana. It was during his reign that the Mongols under Genghis Khan invaded as far as the Indus. The sultanate's territorial extent varied with the abilities of its rulers. Ala al-Din Khilji annexed Gujarat, Chitral, Ranthambhor, Ujjain, Dhar, and Mandu, and built a powerful army on the basis of a centralized administration. Hindu kingdoms in the far south and in the Deccan were reduced to vassalage. Among the Muslim states formed in the Deccan were Golconda and Bijapur, provinces of the Bahmanis who ruled in the Deccan from 1347 to 1526. Repeated Mongol incursions, often well beyond Delhi, were beaten back, and defences in the northwest were strengthened on a long-term basis. Under Muhammad ibn Tughluq (1325-47) the sultanate reached its furthest point of expansion. His 23 provinces included the southern kingdoms, now fully absorbed into the empire, besides Orissa, East Bengal, Kathiawar, and Kutch. Muhammad's unsuccessful administrative experiments and the unmanageable size of the empire hastened its decline. Bengal broke away in 1341, the Deccan provinces in 1347 (to form the Bahmani kingdom), and Khandesh, Malwa, Jaunpur, and Gujarat went between 1382 and 1396. South of the Tungabhadra, the Hindu Vijayanagar Empire was firmly established by 1347. After the invasion of Genghis Khan's grandson Tamerlane (Timur) in 1398, the power of the Tughluq sultans scarcely extended beyond Delhi. For Indian history after 1526, see India: history 1526-1858, India: history 1858-1947, and India.