Introduction to The History of India

                                         Introduction to The History of India

• The Geographical Base of India:

Ø  History is regarded as the history of mankind and environment. It is important to go back to the annals of history to understand the geography and environment of the regions that influenced Indian history.

Ø  Indian subcontinent is divided into three physiological divisions: the Himalayan uplands, the Indo-Gangetic Plains and the Peninsular region of India.

Ø  The Himalayas are a chain of mountains from which large amount of alluvium are continuously carried down into the plains due to weathering and erosion.

Ø  The snows of Himalayan mountain gave rise to three great perennial river systems like Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra.

Ø  The alluvial plains of northern India extended an arc form for about 3200km from the mouth of the Indus to the mouth of Ganga.

Ø  The Indus plains gave rise to the first Civilization, the Harappan to India and the Ganga plains have sustained and nurtured the city life from the 1^st millennium BC.

Ø  The northern plans and Peninsular India are separated by a large intermediate zone, called Central India, extending from Gujarat to western Odisha over a stretch of 1600 km.

Ø  Aravali Hills of Rajasthan separated the Indus plain from the Peninsula. The intermediate zone is characterized by the Vindhyan and Satapura Ranges and the Chhotanagpur plateau which covers the portions of Bihar, Bengal and Odisha.

Ø  The Chhotanagpur region can be subdivided into four: the land of the Rajputs between Udaipur and Jaipur, the Malwa plateau around Ujjain(known as Avanti in ancient India) or the subregion around Nagpur, and the Chhatisgarh plains in eastern Madhya Pradesh or Dakshina Kosala.

Ø  The rocky formation of southern edge of Central Peninsular India has gently slopes from west to east. The major four rivers, namely, Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri flow into the Bay of Bengal. These rivers produced alluvial plains which helped in creation of nuclear areas and cultural growth in the plains and deltas.

Ø   Narmada and Tapti are the only two west flowing rivers that fallen into the Arabian Sea.

Ø  The Deccan plateau extended from the Vindhyas in the north to the southern limits of Karnataka.

Ø  The black soil in Maharashtra and the adjoining parts of central India yields good crops of cotton, millets, peanuts and oil seeds. This is the reason why the early farming cultures(Chalcolithic) in western and central India emerged here.

Ø  In the west, the Deccan plateau terminates with the Western Ghats and in the east its contours are marked with the Eastern Ghats.

Ø  The Nilgiri and the Cardamom Hills are regarded as offshoots of the basic peninsular formation.

Ø  The ancient Indians knew their country as ‘Bharatavarsha’(the land of Bharata). However, the names, ’Hindustan’ or  ‘India’ are the foreign origin.

Ø  The ancient Persians(Iranians), while coming to India, had to cross the Sindhu(Indus) river which they pronounced as ‘Hind’. With the Muslim invasion the Persian name used in the form of ‘Hindustan’ and the inhabitants who followed the old religion came to known as ‘Hindus’.

Ø  The Persians  passed the name ‘Hindu’(Sindhu) to the Greeks who began to pronounce it as ‘Indus’ cultural growth and from the term ‘Indus, the name of India is developed. cultural growth cultural growth

Ø  India was originally considered to be a part of the land called ‘Jambu-dvipa’(the continent of Jambu tree).

Ø  Early Buddhist evidence mentions that Jamba dvipa was a territorial designation actually in use from the 3^rd century BC. At the latest, and was applied to that of Asia, outside China, throughout which the Mauryan empire had its influence.

Ø  Ancient literature refers India into five-fold divisions as;

The mid-Indo-Gangetic plain was the Madhya desa, stretching from River Saraswati to Rajmahal Hills

The western part was known as Brahmarshi desa,

The north of Madhya desa was Uttara patha or Udichya(north-west India),

The south of it was Dakshina patha or Deccan,

The east of it was Purva desa or Prachya.

Ø  The Ganga Yamuna doab, the middle Ganga Valley, Malwa, Northern Deccan, Andhra, Kalinga,Raichur doad(between Krishna and Tungabhadra river) and the Tamil plains were the major perennial nuclear regions that shaped the geographical features of India.

Ø  High agricultural and a rich population base have contributed to the dominance of the Gangetic basin in the Indian subcontinent.

Ø  The middle Ganga plains, corresponding to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, emerged more successful than the Upper and Lower Plains. By the time of the Mauryas, it had attained hegemony in the Indian subcontinent.

Ø  The Lower Plains corresponded to the provinces of Bengal. High rainfall in low lying plains created forests and marshy conditions which  made difficulty in each settlements of Bengal. Urban culture spread into this region from the Middle Plains relatively late.

Ø  Iron using Megalithic communities followed the Neolithic-Chalcolithic culture in Andhra and northern Deccan, provided the base for settled agriculture and brought transformation.

Ø  The transition period between 300BC to 4^th century AD, was partly autonomous and partly stimulated by the contacts with the Sanskritic culture of the Gangetic Plains, the beginning of which can be traced back to the time of Nandas and Mauryas.

Ø  During the Kushana period the areas of Sindhu and Baluchistan formed a part of a supra-regional political system which included a major part of northern India. The Gandhara region was an exception to it.

Ø  In the early 6^th century BC, Gandhara was one among the 16  Mahajanapadas .  The Magadhan king, Bimbisara, had contacts with the Gandhara king. Capital Taxila was a centre of learning and trade with wide economy, with business relationship with Mathura, central India and with the  Romans.

Ø  Sangam literature provides a vivid account of the transition of the Tamil country of Tamilakam from an earlier tribal pastoral stage.

Ø  In the fertile river valleys  of the Kaveri, Periyar and Vaigai, agricultural surplus were produced and they were the strongholds of the three ancient clan chiefs, Chola, Chera and Pandya.

·         Pioneers of Indology

Ø  In 1783, with the arrival of Williams Jones(1748-1794) in Culcutta, the pace of the search into India’s past widened.  With the assistance of Charles Wilkins(1749-1836), an official of the British East India Company and friendly Bengali Pandits, Jones began to learn Sanskrit. He founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784. In November 1784, the first direct translation of the ’Bhagvad Gita’ into English was done by Charles Wilkins. In 1789, Jones translated Kalidas’s  ‘Shakuntalam’ into English. In 1792, Jones translated ‘Gita Govinda’ into English and in 1794, he translated Law book of Manu’ under the title ‘Institutes of Hindu Law’. For these reasons, Jones and Wilkins could be called as the father of Indology.

Ø  Alexandar Cunningham(father of archaeology) came to India in 1831 and was appointed in 1862 as the first Archaeological Surveyor by the government.  After William Jones, Indology owes more to Cunningham than any other.

Ø  The first relics of the Indus Valley Civilization were noticed by Cunningham, who found strange unidentified seals in the neighborhood of Harappa.

Ø  In 1921, an Indian officer of Archaeological Survey, R.D.Banerjee, found seals at Mahenjo-daro in Sindh and took them as the remains of a Pre-Aryan civilization.