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Medieval India
| History of South Asia |
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Medieval India refers to a long period of post-classical history of the Indian subcontinent between the "ancient period" and "modern period". It is usually regarded as running approximately from the break-up of the Gupta Empire in the 6th century CE to the start of the early modern period in 1526 with the start of the Mughal Empire, although some historians regard it as both starting and finishing later than these points. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the early medieval and late medieval eras.
In the early medieval period, there were more than 40 different states on the Indian subcontinent, which hosted a variety of cultures, languages, writing systems, and religions.[1] At the beginning of the time period, Buddhism was predominant throughout the area, with the Pala Empire on the Indo Gangetic Plain sponsoring the Buddhist faith's institutions. One such institution was the Buddhist Nalanda mahavihara in modern-day Bihar, India, a centre of scholarship and brought a divided South Asia onto the global intellectual stage. Another accomplishment was the invention of the Chaturanga game which later was exported to Europe and became Chess.[2] In Southern India, the Tamil Hindu Kingdom of Chola gained prominence with an overseas empire that controlled parts of modern-day Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia as overseas territories, and helped spread Hinduism and Buddhism into the historic cultural area of Southeast Asia.[3] In this time period, neighbouring regions such as Afghanistan, Tibet, and Southeast Asia were under South Asian influence.[4]
During the late medieval period, a series of Islamic invasions by the Arabs, the Ghaznavids and the Ghurids conquered large portions of Northern India. Turkic general Qutb ud-Din Aibak declared his independence from the Ghurid Empire and founded the Delhi Sultanate which ruled until the 16th century.[5] As a consequence, Buddhism declined in South Asia, but Hinduism survived and reinforced itself in areas conquered by Muslim empires. In the far South, the Vijayanagara Empire resisted Muslim conquests, sparking a long rivalry with the Bahmani Sultanate. The turn of the 16th century would see introduction of gunpowder and the rise of a new Muslim empire—the Mughals, as well as the establishment of European trade posts by the Portuguese colonists.[6] Mughal Empire was one of the three Islamic gunpowder empires, along with the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia.[7][8][9] The subsequent cultural and technological developments transformed Indian society, concluding the late medieval period and beginning the early modern period.
- ^ Keay, John (2000). India: A History. Grove Press. pp. xx–xxi.
- ^ Murray, H.J.R. (1913). A History of Chess. Benjamin Press (originally published by Oxford University Press). ISBN 978-0-936317-01-4. OCLC 13472872.
- ^ History of Asia by B.V. Rao p.211
- ^ "The spread of Hinduism in Southeast Asia and the Pacific". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 16 January 2020. Retrieved 20 December 2016.
- ^ Berger et al. 2016, p. 107.
- ^ "mughal_index". www.columbia.edu. Archived from the original on 15 July 2019. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
- ^ Dodgson, Marshall G.S. (2009). The Venture of Islam. Vol. 3. University of Chicago Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-226-34688-5.
- ^ Streusand, Douglas E. (2011). Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Philadelphia: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-1359-7.
- ^ Charles T. Evans. "The Gunpowder Empires". Northern Virginia Community College. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011. Retrieved 28 December 2010.
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