Indian Art History Book
Niklas Terki
Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the Nanda Empire and established the first great empire in ancient India, the Maurya Empire. India's Mauryan king Ashoka is widely recognised for his historical acceptance of Buddhism and his attempts to spread nonviolence and peace across his empire. The Maurya Empire would collapse in 185 BCE, on the assassination of the then-emperor Brihadratha by his general Pushyamitra Shunga. Shunga would form the Shunga Empire in the north and north-east of the subcontinent, while the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom would claim the north-west and found the Indo-Greek Kingdom. Various parts of India were ruled by numerous dynasties, including the Gupta Empire, in the 4th to 6th centuries CE. This period, witnessing a Hindu religious and intellectual resurgence is known as the Classical or Golden Age of India. Aspects of Indian civilisation, administration, culture, and religion spread to much of Asia, which led to the establishment of Indianised kingdoms in the region, forming Greater India.[4][5] The most significant event between the 7th and 11th centuries was the Tripartite struggle centred on Kannauj. Southern India saw the rise of multiple imperial powers from the middle of the fifth century. The Chola dynasty conquered southern India in the 11th century. In the early medieval period, Indian mathematics, including Hindu numerals, influenced the development of mathematics and astronomy in the Arab world, including the creation of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.[6]
Islamic conquests made limited inroads into modern Afghanistan and Sindh as early as the 8th century,[7] followed by the invasions of Mahmud Ghazni.[8]The Delhi Sultanate was founded in 1206 by Central Asian Turks who were Indianized.[9][10][11][12] They ruled a major part of the northern Indian subcontinent in the early 14th century. It was ruled by Multiple Turk, Afghan and Indian dynasties, Including the Turco-Mongol Indianized Tughlaq Dynasty[13] but declined in the late 14th century following the invasions of Timur[14] and saw the advent of the Malwa, Gujarat, and Bahmani Sultanates, the last of which split in 1518 into the five Deccan sultanates. The wealthy Bengal Sultanate also emerged as a major power, lasting over three centuries.[15] During this period, multiple strong Hindu kingdoms, notably the Vijayanagara Empire and the Rajput states, emerged and played significant roles in shaping the cultural and political landscape of India.
The early modern period began in the 16th century, when the Mughal Empire conquered most of the Indian subcontinent,[16] signaling the proto-industrialisation, becoming the biggest global economy and manufacturing power.[17][18][19] The Mughals suffered a gradual decline in the early 18th century, largely due to the rising power of the Marathas, who took control of extensive regions of the Indian subcontinent.[20][21] The East India Company, acting as a sovereign force on behalf of the British government, gradually acquired control of huge areas of India between the middle of the 18th and the middle of the 19th centuries. Policies of company rule in India led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857. 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. 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, each gaining its independence.
Hominin expansion from Africa is estimated to have reached the Indian subcontinent approximately two million years ago, and possibly as early as 2.2 million years ago.[25][26][27] This dating is based on the known presence of Homo erectus in Indonesia by 1.8 million years ago and in East Asia by 1.36 million years ago, as well as the discovery of stone tools at Riwat in Pakistan.[26][28] Although some older discoveries have been claimed, the suggested dates, based on the dating of fluvial sediments, have not been independently verified.[27][29]
The oldest hominin fossil remains in the Indian subcontinent are those of Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis, from the Narmada Valley in central India, and are dated to approximately half a million years ago.[26][29] Older fossil finds have been claimed, but are considered unreliable.[29] Reviews of archaeological evidence have suggested that occupation of the Indian subcontinent by hominins was sporadic until approximately 700,000 years ago, and was geographically widespread by approximately 250,000 years ago.[29][27]
Scholars estimate that the first successful expansion of the Homo sapiens range beyond Africa and across the Arabian Peninsula occurred from as early as 80,000 years ago to as late as 40,000 years ago, although there may have been prior unsuccessful emigrations. Some of their descendants extended the human range ever further in each generation, spreading into each habitable land they encountered. One human channel was along the warm and productive coastal lands of the Persian Gulf and northern Indian Ocean. Eventually, various bands entered India between 75,000 years ago and 35,000 years ago.[32]
Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus River alluvium approximately 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE.[2][37] According to Tim Dyson: "By 7,000 years ago agriculture was firmly established in Baluchistan... [and] slowly spread eastwards into the Indus valley." Michael Fisher adds:[38]
The earliest discovered instance ... of well-established, settled agricultural society is at Mehrgarh in the hills between the Bolan Pass and the Indus plain (today in Pakistan) (see Map 3.1). From as early as 7000 BCE, communities there started investing increased labor in preparing the land and selecting, planting, tending, and harvesting particular grain-producing plants. They also domesticated animals, including sheep, goats, pigs, and oxen (both humped zebu [Bos indicus] and unhumped [Bos taurus]). Castrating oxen, for instance, turned them from mainly meat sources into domesticated draft-animals as well.[38]
The Bronze Age in the Indian subcontinent began around 3300 BCE.[citation needed] The Indus Valley region was one of three early cradles of civilisation in the Old World; the Indus Valley civilisation was the most expansive,[39] and at its peak, may have had a population of over five million.[40]
The civilisation was primarily centred in modern-day Pakistan, in the Indus river basin, and secondarily in the Ghaggar-Hakra River basin. The mature Indus civilisation flourished from about 2600 to 1900 BCE, marking the beginning of urban civilisation on the Indian subcontinent. It included cities such as Harappa, Ganweriwal, and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, and Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, and Lothal in modern-day India.
Inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley, the Harappans, developed new techniques in metallurgy and handicraft, and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin.[42] The civilisation is noted for its cities built of brick, and its roadside drainage system, and is thought to have had some kind of municipal organisation. The civilisation also developed an Indus script, the earliest of the ancient Indian scripts, which is presently undeciphered.[43] This is the reason why Harappan language is not directly attested, and its affiliation uncertain.[44]
During 2nd millennium BCE, Ochre Coloured Pottery culture was in Ganga Yamuna Doab region. These were rural settlements with agriculture and hunting. They were using copper tools such as axes, spears, arrows, and swords, and had domesticated animals.[47]
Starting c. 1900 BCE, Indo-Aryan tribes moved into the Punjab from Central Asia in several waves of migration.[48][49] The Vedic period is when the Vedas were composed of 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. Many regions of the Indian subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age in this period.[50]
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.[51] The Vedic period, lasting from about 1500 to 500 BCE,[52][53] contributed the foundations of several cultural aspects of the Indian subcontinent.
Historians have analysed the Vedas to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region, and the upper Gangetic Plain.[50] The Peepal tree and cow were sanctified by the time of the Atharva Veda.[55] Many of the concepts of Indian philosophy espoused later, like dharma, trace their roots to Vedic antecedents.[56]
Early Vedic society is described in the Rigveda, the oldest Vedic text, believed to have been compiled during the 2nd millennium BCE,[57][58] in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent.[59] At this time, Aryan society consisted of predominantly tribal and pastoral groups, distinct from the Harappan urbanisation which had been abandoned.[60] The early Indo-Aryan presence probably corresponds, in part, to the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture in archaeological contexts.[61][62]
At the end of the Rigvedic period, the Aryan society expanded from the north-western 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 structure was characterised both by syncretising with the native cultures of northern India[63] but also eventually by the excluding of some indigenous peoples by labelling their occupations impure.[64] During this period, many of the previous small tribal units and chiefdoms began to coalesce into Janapadas (monarchical, state-level polities).[65]