History of India

¤ Introduction To Indian History

Anyone who has read romantic books written by British authors about India will be aware of the awe that they held India in. It was almost as if they were scared to step on the very road lest the stones turn out to be something Buddha sat on in the year dot.
Well, there's no anti-climax here – India is indeed very old. What is also remarkable is how well aware the common man on the street is about the history of India. The autowallah, of the rickety autorickshaw you take from Connaught Place to Vasant Vihar in Delhi, might turn out to be a surprising mine of information on the story of his country. He might have his dynasties a little haphazard and his dates slightly askew, because for majority of Indians history started with the Ramayana (see Ancient Scriptures and Folklore), but he will have his facts.
The reason behind this is perhaps as old as the country itself. The country has a tradition of verbal history; our ancients never did bother about putting things down on paper, having never had the privilege to be initiated to that fine old American business tradition. What's more, there's a logic for that too. Back then people believed in the power of the spoken word. They thought that words or syllables when pronounced just-so created magic. Remember that say-'be'-and-it-will-be thing? Well, that pretty much explains the awe that ancient Indians held the Word in.


¤ Indian History As A Romantic School of Thaught

The West discovered India through two distinct schools of thought. One was the romantic school which held everything Indian as mystical, wise, and very much a product of this land; F. Max Muller the German scholar was prominent among these. He conducted remarkably ingenious research into India, its antiquity, literature and languages. Through his work he made Indology almost as fashionable in the Western world as Egyptology had been.


¤ Indian History As A School of Classical Education

The other school of thought was of a more cautious, scholarly and literal bend of mind. These were European historians who had been brought up on classical education and had this unshakable belief in the civilization of the ancient Greeks. The idea that anything could possibly surpass or be anywhere near to that greatest of human achievements that was le miracle Grec was sacrilege to them.

So every newly discovered civilization, including Indian and Egyptian, was measured by the Greek yardstick and of course failed to come anywhere near. and everything remarkable or unique about the civilization was obviously inspired from the Greek example, as far as they were concerned.

Somewhere between these two was that body of diligent hardworking men comprising of British administrators in India who took up the task of discovering more about the country they spent most of their lives in. To these administrator-historians, including such men as J. Princep and Sir John Marshall (see Ancient Indian History), do we owe the actual finds that proved beyond a doubt India's claim to be up there with Egypt, Sumer, China and Mesopotamia as one of the most ancient civilizations that the world has produced.


¤ Today Indian History

Today Indian History, like the history of every ancient culture in the world, is broadly divided into four periods:

Pre-history
From the big bang, the primeval swamp to the Indus Valley Civilization (see Ancient Indian History). There is a tendency to sometimes include the Indus Valley Civilization in prehistory, since technically prehistory includes everything that happened before the Word happened. However, technically again the Indus Valley Civilization did have a script, although it has not been decoded yet. So, it's generally included in Ancient History nowadays.

Ancient History
For India, it begins from the Indus Valley Civilization (for which the date is a matter of hot debate, but historians have agreed to disagree on 3000BC) to just after the king Harsha Vardhana (see Ancient Indian History), which is around 700-800BC.

Medieval History
Starting from 800BC to mid-18^th century AD, that is, till the coming of the British. There is a slight hitch in this as the British were pretty much already there by this time, but again this is the accepted time when they suddenly woke up and said, "Hey we've got a kingdom going."

Modern History
From mid-18^th century to the independence of India, which is on August 15, 1947. Then the deluge. It is fashionable among historians to deplore the lack of historical sense among historical Indians, which has made their work very difficult.

What is heartening is that Indians still lack a sense of history and not much is being done to record contemporary history of India. So much so that a series on the Indian Independence movement was commissioned by the Indian government years ago to counter a British series on the subject. The series is still to come out, and don't hold your breath for it either.

Indian History might seem like a labyrinth, or one of those confusing Tower of Babel paintings. This is primarily because each region in India was pretty much doing its own thing and creating a history of its own. For the sake of everyone's sanity, we have tried in our sections of history of India to give you a brief background of what was happening in that period with special reference to the major dynasties of the era. of course, having known that much you’ll be hungry for more, for which keep watching this space as the saga unfolds!