India Articles

Articles

• The Two Orients for Greek Writers

  India was subdued by Darius I and incorporated into the vast Persian Empire at the end of the sixth century. This conquest stimulated the interest of Greeks living in Persian Asia Minor, such as Scylax, Hecataeus, Herodotus and Ctesias, whose accounts of India are known to us. The aim of this paper...

• Greek Knowledge of India Before the 4th Century BC

  When Alexander the Great marched over to India towards the end of the 4th century B.C. and incorporated a section of this country in his Empire, it was not the first time that the ancient Greeks were learning about this part of the world, for they had known quite a lot about it already from centuries...

• The History of Ancient India

  The earliest imprints of human activities in India go back to the Paleolithic Age, roughly between 400,000 and 200,000 B.C. Stone implements and cave paintings from this period have been discovered in many parts of the South Asia. Evidence of domestication of animals, the adoption of agriculture, permanent...

• Initiation of religions in India

  The religious practices of the early Indo-Aryans, known as the Vedic religion (1500 BC to 500 BC) were written down and later redacted into the Samhitas, four canonical collections of hymns or mantras, called the Veda, in archaic Sanskrit. The Late Vedic age (9th to 6th centuries BC) marked the beginning...

• Religious Developments in Ancient India

  For well over 1,000 years, sacred stories and heroic epics have made up the mythology of Hinduism. Nothing in these complex yet colourful legends is fixed and firm. Pulsing with creation, destruction, love, and war, it shifts and changes. Most myths occur in several different versions, and many characters...

• Cultural links between India and the Greco-Roman world

  Cyrus the Great (558-530 BC) built the first universal empire, stretching from Greece to the Indus River. This was the famous Achaemenid Dynasty of Persia. An inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam, the tomb of his able successor Darius I (521-486 BC), near Persepolis, records Gadara (Gandhara) along with Hindush...

• Etymology of the Name India

  The name of India is a corruption of the word Sindhu. Neighbouring Arabs, Iranians uttered‘s’ as ‘h’ and called this land Hindu. Greeks pronounced this name as Indus. Sindhu is the name of the Indus River, mentioned in the Rig-Veda, one of the oldest extant Indo-European texts...

• Opening the Way to India

  Possibly being overjoyed by the tales of mythical exploits of Heracles, Semiramis, the fabled queen of Assyria, Cyrus, King of Persia and so on, Alexander the Great set out from the tiny kingdom of Macedon for a daring adventure, unheard of in the entire civilized world. His theatre of war was vast, extending...

• Depictions of India in Ancient Literature

  Herodotus (484 BC – c. 425 BC) has been called the Father of History since he was the first historian known to collect his materials in detail, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative. The Histories — his masterpiece and the...

• Ancient Geography of India

  The first text in Greek devoted entirely to India was written by Ctesias in the fourth century BC. Only fragments of it survive. Yet he was probably the most widely quoted author on India, although Aristotle treated him with contempt. However, soon after Aristotle drew upon Ctesias’ writings...