India a History

In about 2500BC the Indus River region was inhabited by a people who built cities and created a system of pictographs in that area. Their civilization was lost in about 1500BC when the Aryan-speaking tribes invaded northern India through the passes of the Hindu Kush Mountains. Wile the Indus River people's writing remains undecifered while the Aryan invader's language is the ancestor of both Sanskrit and that of the Indo-European family of languages.

The traditional religion of India, is Hinduism. Judging by the design of a horned figure surrounded by animals (supposedly representing the Hindu god Shiva) on a seal found in the Indus River region, it is assumed that the worshiping of Shiva is the oldest worship on earth. Gautama, a prince from a small Kingdom in India, began to tell of a doctrine where renouncing desires as the key to human salvation. Gautama came to be known as Buddha, the Enlightened One, and founded Buddhism.

The oldest literary works in Sanskrit are the collection of sacred literature known as the Veda meaning "Knowledge" or "lore", written between 2000 and 800 BC. The Veda is a result of a slow accumulation of oral religious poetry that took over a thousand years and contains the traditional hymns and prayers of the Aryan-speaking tribes. The Rig Veda is the oldest and most sacred of the Vedas. The Veic Period of Sanskrit literature ended around 500 BC. Though Indian literature still has a lot to offer. There came a period of great Indian epics which include the Mahabharata ("War of the Descendants of Barata") and Ramayana ("Story of Rama"). Mahabharata is the oldest of the two and was probably written between 500 and 300 BC and involves the struggle between two branches of a ruling family over the succession to the throne and the kingdom. This particular epic is of an enormous size, coming to over 100,00 couplets and is the world's longest piece of literature.

The writings of India found new life under Chandragupta II (375-415 AD). This king of the Gupta dynasty was a patron of the arts. The ancients classics like Mahabharata were revived. Kalidasa, a great Sanskrit poet, wrote the verse play Shakuntala. Tragedy was not permitted in Indian drama. Hindu classics were translated from Sanskrit to the regional languages of India. This vitality in literature continued under Babur, founder of the Mongul dynasty, left a thoughtful account of his life in a masterpiece of autobiographies, called the Babur-nama ("Book of Babur").