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India's Golden Age
The Gupta Empire was an ancient Indian empire which existed from the early 4th century CE to late 6th century CE. At its zenith, from approximately 319 to 467 CE, it covered much of the Indian subcontinent. This period is considered as the Golden Age of India by historians. The ruling dynasty of the empire was founded by the king Sri Gupta; the most notable rulers of the dynasty were Chandragupta I, Samudragupta, Chandragupta II and Skandagupta. The 5th-century CE Sanskrit poet Kalidasa credits the Guptas with having conquered about twenty-one kingdoms, both in and outside India, including the kingdoms of Parasikas, the Hunas, the Kambojas, tribes located in the west and east Oxus valleys, the Kinnaras, Kiratas, and others.Raghu Vamsa v 4.60–75 The high points of this period are the great cultural developments which took place primarily during the reigns of Samudragupta, Chandragupta II and Kumaragupta I. Many Hindu epics and literary sources, such as Mahabharata and Ramayan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago., "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by modern humans originating in Africa. ... Coalescence dates for most non-European populations average to between 73–55 ka.", "Modern human beings—''Homo sapiens''—originated in Africa. Then, int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samudragupta
Samudragupta (Gupta script: ''Sa-mu-dra-gu-pta'', (c. 335–375 CE) was the second emperor of the Gupta Empire of ancient India, and is regarded among the greatest rulers of the dynasty. As a son of the Gupta emperor Chandragupta I and the Licchavi (tribe), Licchavi princess Kumaradevi, he greatly expanded his dynasty's political and military power. The Allahabad Pillar#Samudragupta inscription, Allahabad Pillar inscription, a ''prashasti'' (eulogy) composed by his courtier Harisena, Harishena, credits him with extensive military conquests. It suggests that he defeated several kings of northern India, and annexed their territories into his empire. He also marched along the south-eastern coast of India, advancing as far south as Kanchipuram in the Pallava dynasty, Pallava kingdom. In addition, he subjugated several frontier kingdoms and tribal oligarchies. At the height of his power, his empire extended from Ravi River in the west (present-day Punjab) to the Brahmaputra River i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aryabhata
Aryabhata (ISO: ) or Aryabhata I (476–550 CE) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer of the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. He flourished in the Gupta Era and produced works such as the ''Aryabhatiya'' (which mentions that in 3600 ''Kali Yuga'', 499 CE, he was 23 years old) and the ''Arya-siddhanta.'' Aryabhata created a system of phonemic number notation in which numbers were represented by consonant-vowel monosyllables. Later commentators such as Brahmagupta divide his work into ''Ganita ("Mathematics"), Kalakriya ("Calculations on Time") and Golapada ("Spherical Astronomy")''. His pure mathematics discusses topics such as determination of square and cube roots, geometrical figures with their properties and mensuration, arithmetric progression problems on the shadow of the gnomon, quadratic equations, linear and indeterminate equations. Aryabhata calculated the value of pi (''π)'' to the fourth decimal digit and was likely aware that p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages extending up to the 3rd century CE. ''Ramayana'' is one of the two important epics of Hinduism, the other being the ''Mahabharata, Mahābhārata''. The epic, traditionally ascribed to the Maharishi Valmiki, narrates the life of Sita, the Princess of Janakpur, and Rama, a legendary prince of Ayodhya city in the kingdom of Kosala. The epic follows his fourteen-year exile to the forest urged by his father King Dasharatha, on the request of Rama's stepmother Kaikeyi; his travels across forests in the South Asia, Indian subcontinent with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, the kidnapping of Sita by Ravana – the king of Lanka, that resulted in war; and Rama's eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned kin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their successors. It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or ''puruṣārtha'' (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the ''Mahābhārata'' are the '' Bhagavad Gita'', the story of Damayanti, the story of Shakuntala, the story of Pururava and Urvashi, the story of Savitri and Satyavan, the story of Kacha and Devayani, the story of Rishyasringa and an abbreviated version of the ''Rāmāyaṇa'', often considered as works in their own right. Traditionally, the authorship of the ''Mahābhārata'' is attributed to Vyāsa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiratas
The Kirāta ( sa, किरात) is a generic term in Sanskrit literature for people who had territory in the mountains, particularly in the Himalayas and Northeast India and who are believed to have been Sino-Tibetan in origin. The meaning of 'Kirata' referred by scholars as people with the lion's character, or mountain dwellers. Historical mention and mythology The ''Kirata''s often mentioned along with Cinas (Chinese), and slightly different from the Nishadas, are first mentioned in the Yajurveda (''Shukla'' XXX.16; ''Krisha'' III.4,12,1), and in the Atharvaveda (X.4,14). According to Suniti Kumar Chatterji, the name ''Kirata'' seems to be used for any non-Aryan hill-folk, however Manu's Dharmashastra (X.44) calls them "degraded Kshatriyas", which Chatterji infers to be a term for people who were advanced in military or civilization to some degree and not complete barbarians. It is speculated that the term is a Sanskritization of a Tibeto-Burman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kinnara Kingdom
In the Mahabharata, Kinnara Kingdom is referred to the territory of a tribe called Kinnaras. The Kinnaras, along with other exotic tribes, were inhabitants of the Himalaya mountains. In the epic Mahabharata the Kinnaras are described as half-man and half-horse beings, living at Mount Mandara.Mahabharata,(1-18,66), (2-10), (3-82,84,104,108,139,200,223,273) (4-70), (5-12), (7-108,160), (8-11), (9-46) , (12- 168,227,231,302,327,334, (13-58,83,87,140), (14-43,44,88,92). See also *Kingdoms of Ancient India References {{Reflist Further reading *Mahabharata of Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa Krishna Dvaipayana ( sa, कृष्णद्वैपायन, Kṛṣṇadvaipāyana), better known as Vyasa (; sa, व्यासः, Vyāsaḥ, compiler) or Vedavyasa (वेदव्यासः, ''Veda-vyāsaḥ'', "the one who cl ..., translated to English by Kisari Mohan Ganguli Kingdoms in the Mahabharata Himalayan kingdoms (Puranas) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxus River
The Amu Darya, tk, Amyderýa/ uz, Amudaryo// tg, Амударё, Amudaryo ps, , tr, Ceyhun / Amu Derya grc, Ὦξος, Ôxos (also called the Amu, Amo River and historically known by its Latin name or Greek ) is a major river in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Rising in the Pamir Mountains, north of the Hindu Kush, the Amu Darya is formed by the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, in the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and flows from there north-westwards into the southern remnants of the Aral Sea. In its upper course, the river forms part of Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. In ancient history, the river was regarded as the boundary of Greater Iran with "Turan", which roughly corresponded to present-day Central Asia.B. SpulerĀmū Daryā in Encyclopædia Iranica, online ed., 2009 The Amu Darya has a flow of about 70 cubic kilometres per year on average. Names In classical anti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kambojas
Kamboja ( sa, कम्बोज) was a kingdom of Iron Age India that spanned parts of South and Central Asia, frequently mentioned in Sanskrit and Pali literature. Eponymous with the kingdom name, the Kambojas were an Indo-Iranian people of the Kshatriya caste inhabiting the Kamboja Mahajanapada region, forming one of the sixteen nations that made up ancient India from the sixth to fourth centuries BCE during the second urbanisation period. Earlier, during the late Vedic age, the Kambojas had emerged as an important part of the Indo Aryan Vedic people with a prominent place among the Kshatriya tribes of the Mahabharata. While historical boundaries of the Kambojas are varied, scholarly accounts altogether place the northern and western borders in present-day Tajikistan and eastern Uzbekistan, with eastern borders in present-day Jammu and Kashmir, and southern borders in present-day Iran and southern Afghanistan. Etymology The name ''Kamboja'' may derive from ''Kam' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Huna People
Hunas or Huna (Middle Brahmi script: ''Hūṇā'') was the name given by the ancient Indians to a group of Central Asian tribes who, via the Khyber Pass, entered the Indian subcontinent at the end of the 5th or early 6th century. The Huna Kingdom occupied areas as far south as Eran and Kausambi, greatly weakening the Gupta Empire. The Hunas were ultimately defeated by a coalition of Indian princes that included an Indian king Yasodharman and the Gupta emperor, Narasimhagupta. They defeated a Huna army and their ruler Mihirakula in 528 CE and drove them out of India. The Guptas are thought to have played only a minor role in this campaign. The Hunas are thought to have included the Xionite and/or Hephthalite, the Kidarites, the Alchon Huns (also known as the Alxon, Alakhana, Walxon etc.) and the Nezak Huns. Such names, along with that of the Harahunas (also known as the Halahunas or Harahuras) mentioned in Hindu texts, have sometimes been used for the Hunas in general; while ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Persians
The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian. The ancient Persians were originally an ancient Iranian people who had migrated to the region of Persis (corresponding to the modern-day Iranian province of Fars) by the 9th century BCE. Together with their compatriot allies, they established and ruled some of the world's most powerful empires that are well-recognized for their massive cultural, political, and social influence, which covered much of the territory and population of the ancient world.. Throughout history, the Persian people have contributed greatly to art and science. Persian literature is one of the world's most prominent literary traditions. In contemporary terminology, people from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan who natively speak the Persian language are know ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
