Mahājanapada
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Mahājanapada
The Mahājanapadas ( sa, great realm, from ''maha'', "great", and ''janapada'' "foothold of a people") were sixteen kingdoms or oligarchic republics that existed in ancient India from the sixth to fourth centuries BCE during the second urbanisation period. The 6th–5th centuries BCE is often regarded as a major turning point in early Indian history; during this period India's first large cities arose after the demise of the Indus Valley civilization. It was also the time of the rise of sramana movements (including Buddhism and Jainism), which challenged the religious orthodoxy of the Vedic period. Two of the Mahājanapadas were most probably s (oligarchic republics) and others had forms of monarchy. Ancient Buddhist texts like the '' Anguttara Nikaya'' make frequent reference to sixteen great kingdoms and republics which had developed and flourished in a belt stretching from Gandhara in the northwest to Anga in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. They included par ...
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Gandhara
Gandhāra is the name of an ancient region located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely in present-day north-west Pakistan and parts of south-east Afghanistan. The region centered around the Peshawar Valley and Swat river valley, though the cultural influence of "Greater Gandhara" extended across the Indus river to the Taxila region in Potohar Plateau and westwards into the Kabul Valley in Afghanistan, and northwards up to the Karakoram range. Gandhara has a deep rooted history of Hinduism mentioned in Indian scripts and epics including Rig Veda, Ramayana and Mahabharata. Famed for its unique Gandharan style of art which is influenced by the classical Hellenistic styles, Gandhara attained its height from the 1st century to the 5th century CE under the Kushan Empire, who had their capital at Peshawar (''Puruṣapura''). Gandhara "flourished at the crossroads of India, Central Asia, and the Middle East," connecting trade routes and absor ...
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Pāṇini
, era = ;;6th–5th century BCE , region = Indian philosophy , main_interests = Grammar, linguistics , notable_works = ' (Sanskrit#Classical Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit) , influenced= , notable_ideas=Descriptive linguistics (Devanagari: पाणिनि, ) was a Sanskrit Philology, philologist, grammarian, and revered scholar in ancient India, variously dated between the 6th and 4th century BCE. Since the discovery and publication of his work by European scholars in the nineteenth century, Pāṇini has been considered the "first Descriptive linguistics, descriptive linguist",#FPencyclo, François & Ponsonnet (2013: 184). and even labelled as “the father of linguistics”. Pāṇini's grammar was influential on such foundational linguists as Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield. Legacy Pāṇini is known for his text ''Pāṇini#Aṣṭādhyāyī, Aṣṭādhyāyī'', a sutra-style treatise on Sanskrit grammar, 3,996 verses or ...
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Iron Age India
In the prehistory of the Indian subcontinent, the Iron Age succeeded Bronze Age India and partly corresponds with the megalithic cultures of India. Other Iron Age archaeological cultures of India were the Painted Grey Ware culture (1300–300 BCE) and the Northern Black Polished Ware (700–200 BCE). This corresponds to the transition of the Janapadas or principalities of the Vedic period to the sixteen Mahajanapadas or region-states of the early historic period, culminating in the emergence of the Maurya Empire towards the end of the period. The earliest evidence of iron smelting predates the emergence of the Iron Age proper by several centuries. North India R. Tewari (2003) radiocarbon dated iron artefacts in Uttar Pradesh, including furnaces, tuyeres, and slag between c. 1800 and 1000 BCE. The use of iron and iron working was prevalent in the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas from the early second millennium BCE. The beginning of the use of iron has been traditi ...
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Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread. Its sites spanned an area from much of Pakistan, to northeast Afghanistan, and northwestern India. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The term ''Harappan'' is sometimes applied to the Indus civilisation after its type site Harappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province o ...
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Gautama Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic ( sa, śramaṇa). After leading a life of begging, asceticism, and meditation, he attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in what is now India. The Buddha thereafter wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order. He taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading to Nirvana, that is, freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His teachings are summarized in the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes meditation and instruction in Buddhist ethics such as right effort, mindfulness, and '' jhana''. He di ...
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Janapada
The Janapadas () (c. 1500–600 BCE) were the realms, republics (ganapada) and kingdoms (saamarajya) of the Vedic period on the Indian subcontinent. The Vedic period reaches from the late Bronze Age into the Iron Age: from about 1500 BCE to the 6th century BCE. With the rise of sixteen '' Mahajanapadas'' ("great janapadas"), most of the states were annexed by more powerful neighbours, although some remained independent. Etymology The Sanskrit term ''janapada'' is a tatpurusha compound term, composed of two words: ''janas'' and ''pada''. ''Jana'' means "people" or "subject" (cf. Latin cognate ''genus'', English cognate ''kin''). The word ''pada'' means "foot" (cf. Latin cognate ''pedis''); from its earliest attestation, the word has had a double meaning of "realm, territory" and "subject population" (cf. Hittite ''pedan'', "place"). Linguist George Dunkel compares the Greek ''andrapodon'' "slave", to PIE "fetters" (i.e. "what is attached to the feet"). Sanskrit ''padám'', u ...
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Fragment - Northern Black Polished Ware - 500-100 BCE - Sonkh - Showcase 6-15 - Prehistory And Terracotta Gallery - Government Museum - Mathura 2013-02-24 6458
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Northern Black Polished Ware
The Northern Black Polished Ware culture (abbreviated NBPW or NBP) is an urban Iron Age Indian culture of the Indian Subcontinent, lasting c. 700–200 BCE (proto NBPW between 1200 and 700 BCE), succeeding the Painted Grey Ware culture and Black and red ware culture. It developed beginning around 700 BCE, in the late Vedic period, and peaked from c. 500–300 BCE, coinciding with the emergence of 16 great states or mahajanapadas in Northern India, and the subsequent rise of the Mauryan Empire. Recent archaeological evidences have pushed back NBPW date to 1200 BCE at Nalanda district, in Bihar, where its earliest occurrences have been recorded and carbon dated from the site of Juafardih. Similarly sites at Akra and Ter Kala Dheri from Bannu have provided carbon dating of 900-790 BCE and 1000-400 BCE, and at Ayodhya around 13th century BC or 1000 BCE. Overview The diagnostic artifact and namesake of this culture is the Northern Black Polished Ware, a luxury style of burnished ...
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Vindhya Range
The Vindhya Range (also known as Vindhyachal) () is a complex, discontinuous chain of mountain ridges, hill ranges, highlands and plateau escarpments in west-central India. Technically, the Vindhyas do not form a single mountain range in the geological sense. The exact extent of the Vindhyas is loosely defined, and historically, the term covered a number of distinct hill systems in central India, including the one that is now known as the Satpura Range. Today, the term principally refers to the escarpment and its hilly extensions that runs north of and roughly parallel to the Narmada River in Madhya Pradesh. Depending on the definition, the range extends up to Gujarat in the west, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the north, and Chhattisgarh in the east. The Vindhyas have a great significance in Hindu mythology, Indian mythology and history. Several ancient texts mention the Vindhyas as the southern boundary of the ''Āryāvarta'', the territory of the ancient Indo-Aryan peoples. Al ...
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Indian Subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka."Indian subcontinent". ''Oxford Dictionary of English, New Oxford Dictionary of English'' () New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; p. 929: "the part of Asia south of the Himalayas which forms a peninsula extending into the Indian Ocean, between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Historically forming the whole territory of Greater India, the region is now divided into three countries named Bangladesh, India and Pakistan." The terms ''Indian subcontinent'' and ''South Asia'' are often used interchangeably to denote the region, although the geopolitical term of South Asia frequently includes Afghanist ...
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Anga
Anga (Sanskrit: ) was an ancient Indo-Aryan tribe of eastern South Asia whose existence is attested during the Iron Age. The members of the Aṅga tribe were called the Āṅgeyas. Counted among the "sixteen great nations" in Buddhist texts like the Anguttara Nikaya, Aṅga also finds mention in the Jain Vyakhyaprajnapti's list of ancient janapadas. Location Aṅga proper was located between the Chandan River, Champā river to the west and the Rajmahal hills to the east. However, at times, its territories did extend to the sea in the south, or included Magadha in the west. The capital of Aṅga, named Campā, was located at the confluence of the Campā and Ganges, Gaṅgā rivers, and corresponds to the modern-day villages of Champapuri, Campāpurī and Champanagar in the eastern part of the Indian state of Bihar, Bihār. According to the Jataka tales, s, Campā was also called Kāla-Campā, while Puranas, Puranic texts claim its ancient name was Mālinī. The other importa ...
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