Resumo de History Of India

India is a very vast nation geographically; it forms the meeting ground between the East and the West and hence an important destination to conduct trade with the Western nations. This point in particular, attracted many a foreign invaders to lay hands over this nation - known for her rich culture, wealth as well as tradition. India has always seen a variety of religions taking birth in different parts of the country an as a result, a natural tolerance grew for different groups following different religion types. However, as evil follows good, rifts took birth too. And one has been seeing bloodshed over matters of religious bias time and again.
India has seen a variety of rulers including Persians, Greeks, Chinese nomads, Arabs, Portuguese, British and other raiders all of whom conquered over the local Hindu kingdoms who invariably survived their depradations, living out their own sagas of conquest and collapse.
All the while, these local dynasties built upon the roots of a culture well established since the time of the first invaders, the Aryans. The discovery of India's most ancient civilization literally happened by accident. In the mid-1800's, British engineers who were busy constructing a railway line between Karachi and Punjab, found ancient, kiln-baked bricks along the path of the track. This discovery was however treated as a little more than curiosity unless archaeologists later revisited the site in the 1920's and determined that the bricks were over 5000 years old.
Close on heels came the discovery of two important cities: Harappa on the Ravi river, and Mohenjodaro on the Indus. The civilization that laid the bricks, one of the world's oldest, was known as the Indus. People belonging to this creed were highly sophisticated and had a written language. Dating back to 3000 BC, they originated in the south and moved north, building complex, mathematically-planned cities. Some of these towns were almost three miles in diameter and contained as many as 30,000 residents. These ancient municipalities had granaries, citadels, and even household toilets. In Mohenjodaro, a mile-long canal connected the city to the sea, and trading ships sailed as far as Mesopotamia. At its height, the Indus civilization extended over half a million square miles across the Indus valley river, and though it existed at the same time as the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumer, it far outlasted them.
As far as the history of invaders is concerned, the first group to invade India were the Aryans, who came from the north in about 1500 BC. They were primarily warriors and conquerors. They brought along with them strong cultural traditions that still remain in force till date. They spoke and wrote in a language called Sanskrit, which was later used in the first documentation of the Vedas.
The Aryans lived along the Indus and introduced themselves to the caste system thus sowing the seeds of Indian religions. They inhabited the northern regions for about 700 years, then moved further south and east when they started developing iron tools and weapons. Eventually, they settled in the Ganges valley and built large kingdoms throughout a greater part of northern India.
It was in 500 B.C. that Persian kings Cyrus and Darius decided upon expanding their reign eastward and conquered the ever-prized Indus Valley. However, the Persian influence was marginal as compared to that of the Aryans. This happened because Persians could occupy the Indian land for only a period of 150 years. Compared to the Aryans, the Persian influence was marginal, perhaps because they were only able to occupy the region for a relatively brief period of about 150 years.
The Greeks in turn conquered the Persians under leadership of Emperor Alexander, who swept through the country as far as the Beas River, where he defeated king Porus backed by an army of 200 elephants in 326 BC. The tireless, charismatic conqueror wantedo extend his empire even further eastward, but his own troops (undoubtedly exhausted) refused to continue.
Alexander returned home, leaving behind garrisons to keep the trade routes open. While the Persians and Greeks subdued the Indus Valley and the northwest, Aryan-based kingdoms continued developing in the East. In the 5th century BC, Siddhartha Gautama founded the religion of Buddhism, a profoundly influential work of human thought still espoused by many worldwide.
Next in line came the king known as Chandragupta who swept back through the country from Magadha (Bihar) and conquered his way well into Afghanistan. This was the beginning of one of India's greatest dynasties, the Maurya dynasty. The leadership and foresight of the great king Ashoka (268-31 BC), hrlped the Mauryan empire conquer almost the entire subcontinent, extending as far as Mysore in the south. When Ashoka conquered Orissa, however, his army shed so much blood that the repentant king gave up warfare forever and converted to Buddhism. As dedicated a missionary as a king he was, Ashoka spread Buddhism to a greater part of central Asia. His rule marked the zenith of glory of the Maurya empire, that collapsed only a century afer the death of the mighty emperor.

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