India and the Indian Subcontinent

Read about what we know from ancient historians about the ancient subcontinent of India.

A creative picture showing the encounter between Alexander the Great and King Porus of India.

About the earliest writers of ancient Indian history.

The Deccan plateau is an area of southern India.

Sirpur is an archaeological site in Chhattisgarh, India.

The Sindhu or Indus River is the eponymous river between India and Pakistan.

The Saraswati was an important river in ancient India running from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea.

Geography of the ancient Indus Valley, its mountain ranges, rivers, and the major areas of civilization.

The Punjab is a geographic area of India and Pakistan.

Ancient India, along with Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica, was one of the few places in the world to develop writing, including great literature, along with other major advances in civilization. The Indian subcontinent is a diverse and fertile region with monsoons, droughts, plains, mountains, deserts, and especially rivers, along...

Ashoka (Asoka), a Hindu convert to Buddhism, was the third king of the Mauryan Dynasty in India. He expanded the empire to Pakistan, Nepal, and Afghanistan.

Ctesius was a Greek physician and historian who wrote 23 books on the history of Babylonia, Assyria, and the Persian Empire to 398 B.C. His sources were Persian archives. Based on what he heard at the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes II Mnemon from 404 to 398/7, Ctesius wrote a history of India.

Harappan Culture refers to a period in the history of the Indian subcontinent when Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were major cities.

Susan Wise Bauer tells ancient (political) history as an entertainingly detailed story. Her approach to the civilizations of the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China is unusual, because instead of covering one civilization through time, she shows what each was doing during a given period. It is a great read for people who want...

The Classical Age in India refers to the period when most of North India was reunited under the Gupta Empire (ca. A.D. 320-550).

Kingdoms and Empires of India. Library of Congress study of the early kingdoms and empires of India.

A look at the assumptions made about the history of the ancient Indus Valley civilization that are based on the Aryan Invasion theory.

These are the languages the ancient people of India and Pakistan are thought to have spoken.

The names of the Mahajanapadas in the ancient Indian subcontinent.

List of the kings of the Mauryan dynasty in India.

Ashoka, third of the Mauryan Dynasty kings expanded the empire to its greatest extent.

Porus, king of the area between the Hydaspes and the Acesines rivers, in India, met Alexander the Great at the Battle of the Hydaspes River in June 326 B.C.

The origins of the caste system is a social stratification system in the Indian subcontinent.

Diodorus Siculus was a contemporary of Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, who wrote a 40-book world history, for which purpose he claims to have made frequent dangerous voyages, and spent 30 years researching and writing.

Arrian, considered the best ancient source on Alexander the Great, came from Nicomedia, the capital of Bithynia. Arrian wrote about India in an Indika, which was based on the work of Megasthenes and Nearchos men involved in the campaigns of Alexander the Great who actually visited India.

Justinus Frontinus wrote an epitome of an enormous work by the historian Pompeius Trogus. This contains details on the first historical Indian emperor, Chandragupta (Sandrakottos, Androkottos), who ruled 322-298 B.C., and founded of the Mauryan Dynasty.

Curtius Rufus' writing on India is taken from Ptolemy and Kleitarchos, among those who were contemporaries of Alexander, as well as the Augustan era writer Timagenes.

Plutarch describes his travels in India including a description of the battle between Alexander and Porus that Plutarch says he derived from Alexander's own letters.