Ancient India

A Land of Rivers and Mountains

Imagine a vast land shaped like a giant triangle, with snowy mountains across the top, warm seas around the bottom two sides, and mighty rivers flowing through the middle. This is the Indian subcontinent, and it has been home to one of the longest, richest and most fascinating stories in all of human history.

To the north stand the Himalayas, the tallest mountains on Earth. Their melting snow feeds great rivers like the Indus and the Ganges, which carry water and rich soil across the plains. Where there is water and good soil, people can grow food, and where people can grow plenty of food, they can build villages, towns and eventually great cities. That is exactly what happened in Ancient India, beginning thousands of years ago.

The history of Ancient India is not the story of one short period but of many ages stacked one on top of another, like layers in a cliff. In this book we will travel through the most important of them: the mysterious cities of the Indus Valley, the age of the Vedas, and the two great empires of the Mauryas and the Guptas. Along the way we will meet remarkable rulers, thinkers and inventors whose ideas still shape the world today.

The Indus Valley: Cities of Brick

Our story begins around 2500 BCE — about 4,500 years ago — along the banks of the Indus River, in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. Here grew up one of the very first great civilisations on Earth, at the same time as Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. We call it the Indus Valley civilisation, or sometimes the Harappan civilisation, after one of its cities.

What makes the Indus Valley so amazing is how carefully its cities were planned. The two largest, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, were not muddles of crooked lanes. Their streets were laid out in a neat grid, crossing at right angles like a modern city. Houses were built from millions of baked mud bricks, all made to the same standard size. Many homes had their own bathrooms and wells, and waste water flowed away through covered brick drains running under the streets — one of the world's first sewer systems, thousands of years before most other places had anything like it.

These were busy, clever places. The people of the Indus Valley grew wheat and barley, kept cattle, and made fine pottery, jewellery and toys. They traded goods over huge distances, even reaching Mesopotamia by sea. They used small carved stone seals, often showing animals like bulls and elephants, probably to mark who owned goods.

There is one great mystery, though. The Indus people had a kind of writing, but no one today can read it. Despite many attempts, the Indus script has never been decoded, so much about their daily lives, their leaders and their beliefs remains a puzzle. Around 1900 BCE, after many centuries, their great cities were slowly abandoned, perhaps because rivers changed course or the climate grew drier. Their secrets are still buried in the ruins.

The Vedic Age and the Ganges

After the Indus cities faded, a new chapter opened. Over the following centuries, a group of people who spoke an early form of Sanskrit became important across northern India, and the heart of Indian life shifted east towards the great Ganges river plain.

This is called the Vedic age, named after the Vedas — a huge collection of hymns, prayers and verses. At first these were not written down at all but memorised and recited out loud, passed carefully from teacher to pupil for generations. The Vedas are among the oldest religious texts in the world and are still important in Hinduism today.

During this long age, small kingdoms rose across the Ganges plain, iron tools helped farmers clear thick forests, and towns grew along trading routes. It was also a time of great thinking about life, the universe and how people should live. Around the 6th century BCE, two teachers were born who would change history. Mahavira helped shape the religion of Jainism, which teaches deep respect for all living things. And a prince named Siddhartha Gautama, who became known as the Buddha, or "the awakened one," began teaching a path to end suffering. His ideas grew into Buddhism, which would one day spread across much of Asia.

The Mauryan Empire and Ashoka

For a long time, India was divided into many separate kingdoms. Then, around 321 BCE, a brilliant ruler named Chandragupta Maurya united much of the subcontinent for the first time under a single, powerful government. This was the Mauryan Empire, one of the largest empires the ancient world had ever seen.

The Mauryans ruled from their grand capital at Pataliputra, with a large army, busy roads, tax collectors and officials to run their vast lands. Chandragupta was helped by a clever adviser named Chanakya, who is said to have written a famous book on how to govern wisely.

But the most famous Mauryan ruler of all was Chandragupta's grandson, Ashoka the Great. At first, Ashoka expanded the empire through war. Then came a terrible battle to conquer a land called Kalinga, in which tens of thousands of people were killed or driven from their homes. Ashoka was so horrified by the suffering he had caused that he was changed forever. He turned to Buddhism and the idea of dhamma — living with kindness, honesty and respect for all living things.

Ashoka had his new beliefs carved onto great stone pillars and rocks all across his empire, telling people to be merciful, to care for the poor and the sick, to plant trees and dig wells, and to live in peace. Some of these pillars still stand today, and one of their carvings — four proud lions — became the national emblem of modern India. Ashoka is remembered as one of history's rare rulers who gave up war to seek peace.

The Gupta Golden Age

After the Mauryan Empire ended, India once again split into many kingdoms for several centuries. Then, around 320 CE, a new family of rulers — also, confusingly, beginning with a king named Chandragupta — built another great empire across northern India. This was the Gupta Empire, and the time of its rule is often called a golden age, because so much knowledge and beautiful art flowered during it.

Under emperors such as Chandragupta II, India enjoyed peace, wealth and a burst of learning. Scholars made discoveries that still amaze us. In mathematics, Indian thinkers developed the idea of zero as a number and the place-value number system — the very same system, with its ten digits, that the whole world uses today. The astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata worked out that the Earth spins on its own axis, calculated the length of the year with stunning accuracy, and produced a remarkably good value for the number we call pi.

It was a great age for the arts, too. Poets such as Kalidasa wrote plays and poems that are still loved. Magnificent temples were built, and artists painted glowing pictures in the rock-cut caves of Ajanta. Indian doctors wrote about medicine and surgery, and Indian ideas, stories and inventions travelled along trade routes far beyond India's borders.

Ideas That Travelled the World

One of the most remarkable things about Ancient India is how far its ideas spread. Indian numbers, including the zero, travelled westward to the Arab world and from there to Europe, where they became the digits we write today. Without them, modern science, computing and everyday counting would be far harder.

Buddhism spread from India along trade routes to Sri Lanka, China, Tibet, Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan, becoming one of the world's great religions. Indian stories, fables and games journeyed far and wide — the game we now call chess has roots in Ancient India, and so do many tales found in books across the world. Indian crops, spices and cloth such as fine cotton were prized by traders from distant lands.

Ancient India reminds us that good ideas do not stay still. A discovery made in one place can light up minds on the other side of the world, centuries later.

What We Learned

We have travelled across thousands of years of Indian history.

We began in the carefully planned brick cities of the Indus Valley, with their grid streets and clever drains, and puzzled over a writing system no one can yet read. We followed the move east to the Ganges during the Vedic age, when the Vedas were composed and great teachers like the Buddha and Mahavira began to teach. We met the mighty Mauryan Empire and the remarkable Emperor Ashoka, who turned from war to peace. Finally, we explored the Gupta golden age, when Indian thinkers gave the world zero, brilliant astronomy, soaring temples and unforgettable poetry.

Ancient India was a land of great cities, deep thinkers and ideas that travelled the globe. Its story is one of the longest and richest of all — and much of it still shapes our world today.

Want to keep exploring the ancient world? Visit another great river civilisation in The Ancient Chinese, or discover the rulers and pyramids of The Ancient Egyptians.