Central India in the context of "Eastern Hindi languages"

This is a list of ancient Indo-Aryan peoples and tribes that are mentioned in the literature of Indian religions.

From the second or first millennium BCE, ancient Indo-Aryan peoples and tribes turned into most of the population in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent – Indus Valley (roughly today's Pakistani Punjab and Sindh), Western India, Northern India, Central India, Eastern India and also in areas of the southern part like Sri Lanka and the Maldives through and after a complex process of migration, assimilation of other peoples and language shift.

Uttarapatha (Hindi: उत्तरापथ) is the name used by ancient Buddhist and Hindu texts to describe the Northern part of Jambudvipa (equivalent of present-day Afro - Eurasia), one of the "continents" in Vedic belief. In modern times, the Sanskrit word uttarapatha is sometimes used to denote the geographical regions of North India, Western India, Central India, Eastern India, Northeast India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal in just one term. The pronunciation of the word varies depending on the regional language of the speaker.

North India is a geographical region, loosely defined as a cultural region comprising the northern part of India (or historically, the Indian subcontinent) wherein Indo-Aryans (speaking Indo-Aryan languages) form the prominent majority population, while Tibeto-Burmans (speaking Tibeto-Burman languages) form the significant minority population. It extends from the Himalayan mountain range in the north to the Indo-Gangetic plains, the Thar Desert, till Central Highlands. It occupies nearly two-quarters of the area and population of India and includes one of the three mega cities of India: Delhi. In a more specific and administrative sense, North India can also be used to denote the northern Indo-Gangetic Plain within this broader expanse, to the Thar Desert.

Several major rivers flow through the region including the Indus, the Ganges, the Yamuna and the Narmada rivers. North India includes the states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and union territories of Chandigarh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Occasionally, states of Western, Central and Eastern India are referred as "North Indian" in a broader term.

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a military threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859.

The name of the revolt is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and the First War of Independence.

Western India is a loosely defined region of India consisting of western states of Republic of India. The Ministry of Home Affairs in its Western Zonal Council Administrative division includes the states of Goa, Gujarat, and Maharashtra along with the Union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, while the Ministry of Culture and some historians also include the state of Rajasthan. The Geological Survey of India includes Maharashtra but excludes Rajasthan whereas Ministry of Minority Affairs includes Karnataka but excludes Rajasthan.

Madhya Pradesh is also often included and Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and southern Punjab are sometimes included. Western India may also refer to the western half of India, i.e. all the states west of Delhi and Chennai, thus also including Punjab, Kerala and surrounding states. The region is highly industrialised, with a large urban population. Roughly, Western India is bounded by the Thar Desert in the north, the Vindhya Range in the east and north and the Arabian Sea in the west. A major portion of Western India shares the Thar Desert with North India and Pakistan and the Deccan Plateau with South and Central India.

Ujjain (/uːˈdʒeɪn/ , Hindi: [ʊd͡ːʒɛːn̪], Hindi: [əʋən̪t̪ɪkaː]), also known as Ujjayini, is a city in Ujjain district of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It is the fifth-largest city in Madhya Pradesh by population and is the administrative as well as religious centre of Ujjain district and Ujjain division. It is one of the Hindu pilgrimage centres of Sapta Puri famous for the Kumbh Mela (Simhastha) held there every 12 years. The ancient and world famous temple of Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga is located in the center of the city. The city has been one of the most prominent trade and political centres of the Indian subcontinent from the time of the ancient Mahājanapadas until the British colonisation of India.

An ancient city situated on the eastern bank of the Shipra River, then known as Avantika,, it was the most prominent city on the Malwa plateau of central India for much of its history. It emerged as the political centre of central India around 600 BCE. It was the capital of the ancient Avanti kingdom, one of the sixteen Mahājanapadas. During the 18th century, the city briefly became the capital of the Scindia state of the Maratha Confederacy, when Ranoji Scindia established his capital at Ujjain in 1731. It remained an important political, commercial, and cultural centre of Central India until the early 19th century, when the British administrators decided to develop Indore as an alternative to it. Ujjain continues to be an important place of pilgrimage for Shaivites, Vaishnavites and Shaktas. Bathing in the holy Shipra river of Ujjain liberates one from sins. Therefore, Ujjain is also called the 'Mokshadayini city'. The name of this river is taken among the holy rivers like Kaveri, Narmada, Godavari and Krishna.

Chhattisgarh (/ˈtʃætɪsɡɑːr/; Hindi: [ˈtʃʰət̪ːiːsgəɽʱ]) is a landlocked state in Central India. It is the ninth largest state by area, and with a population of roughly 30 million, the seventeenth most populous. It borders seven states – Uttar Pradesh to the north, Madhya Pradesh to the northwest, Maharashtra to the southwest, Jharkhand to the northeast, Odisha to the east, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to the south. Formerly a part of Madhya Pradesh, it was granted statehood on 1 November 2000 with Raipur as the designated state capital.

The Sitabenga caves in Chhattisgarh, one of the earliest examples of theatre architecture in India, are dated to the Mauryan period of 3rd century BCE.The region was split between rivaling dynasties from the sixth to twelfth centuries, and parts of it were briefly under the Chola dynasty in the 11th century. Eventually, most of Chhattisgarh was consolidated under the Kingdom of Haihaiyavansi, whose rule lasted for 700 years until they were brought under Maratha suzerainty in 1740. The Bhonsles of Nagpur incorporated Chhattisgarh into the Kingdom of Nagpur in 1758 and ruled until 1845, when the region was annexed by the East India Company, and was later administered under the Raj until 1947 as the Chhattisgarh Division of the Central Provinces. Some areas constituting present-day Chhattisgarh were princely states that were later merged into Madhya Pradesh. The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 placed Chhattisgarh in Madhya Pradesh, and it remained a part of that state for 44 years.

Madhya Pradesh (/ˌmɑːdjə prəˈdɛʃ/; Hindi: [ˈmədʱjə pɾəˈðeːʃ] ; lit. 'Central Province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal. Other major cities includes Indore, Gwalior, Ujjain, Jabalpur and Sagar. Madhya Pradesh is the second largest Indian state by area and the fifth largest state by population with over 72 million residents. It borders the states of Rajasthan to the northwest, Uttar Pradesh to the northeast, Chhattisgarh to the east, Maharashtra to the south, Gujarat to the west.

The area covered by the present-day Madhya Pradesh includes the area of the ancient Avanti Mahajanapada, whose capital Ujjain (also known as Avantika) arose as a major city during the second wave of Indian urbanisation in the sixth century BCE. Subsequently, the region was ruled by the major dynasties of India. The Maratha Empire dominated the majority of the 18th century. After the Third Anglo-Maratha War in the 19th century, the region was divided into several princely states under the British and incorporated into Central Provinces and Berar and the Central India Agency. After India's independence, the Central Provinces and Berar was renamed as Madhya Pradesh with Nagpur as its capital, this state included the southern parts of the present-day Madhya Pradesh and northeastern portion of today's Maharashtra while Central India Agency was renamed as Madhya Bharat which includes parts of present day north western Madhya Pradesh became a separate state with Gwalior as its capital and Jiwajirao Scindia as Rajpramukh (Governor). In 1956, these states were reorganised and its parts were combined with the states of Vindhya Pradesh and Bhopal to form the new Madhya Pradesh state, the Marathi-speaking Vidarbha region was removed and merged with the Bombay State. This state was the largest in India by area until 2000, when its southeastern Chhattisgarh region was designated a separate state.

The Vindhya Range (IPA: [ʋɪnd̪ʱjə], also known as Vindhyachal) is a complex, discontinuous chain of mountain ridges, hill ranges, highlands and plateau escarpments in west-central India.

Technically, the Vindhyas are among the highest mountain ranges in India. The exact extent of the Vindhyas is loosely defined, and historically, the term covered a number of distinct hill systems in central India, including the one that is now known as the Satpura Range. Today, the term principally refers to the escarpment and its hilly extensions that runs north of and roughly parallel to the Narmada River in Madhya Pradesh. Depending on the definition, the range extends up to Gujarat in the west, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the north, and Chhattisgarh in the east. The average elevation of the Vindhyas is also dependent on different sources.

Lieutenant-Colonel William Lambton FRS (c. 1753 – 20 or 26 January 1823) was a British soldier, surveyor, and geographer who began a triangulation survey in 1800-1802 that was later called the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. His initial survey was to measure the length of a degree of an arc of the meridian so as to establish the shape of the Earth and support a larger scale trigonometrical survey across the width of the peninsula of India between Madras and Mangalore. After triangulating across the peninsula, he continued surveys northwards for more than twenty years. He died during the course of the surveys in central India and is buried at Hinganghat in Wardha district of Maharashtra. He was succeeded by his assistant George Everest.

Kannada (Kannada: [ˈkənːəɖa] ) is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a second or third language for 15 million speakers in Karnataka. It is the official and administrative language of Karnataka. It also has scheduled status in India and has been included among the country's designated classical languages.

Kannada was the court language of a number of dynasties and empires of South India, Central India and the Deccan Plateau, namely the Kadamba dynasty, Western Ganga dynasty, Nolamba dynasty, Chalukya dynasty, Rashtrakutas, Western Chalukya Empire, Seuna dynasty, Kingdom of Mysore, Nayakas of Keladi, Hoysala dynasty and the Vijayanagara Empire.

Menander I Soter (Ancient Greek: Μένανδρος Σωτήρ, romanized: Ménandros Sōtḗr, lit. 'Menander the Saviour'; Pali: Milinda), sometimes called Menander the Great, was an Indo-Greek king (reigned c. 165/155 –130 BC) who administered a large territory in the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia. Menander is noted for having become a patron of Greco-Buddhism and is regarded as the greatest and most well-known of the Indo-Greek kings.

Menander might have initially been a prince or king of Bactria. After conquering the Punjab, as far as Taxila and Sagala, he established an empire which stretched from the Kabul River in the west to the Ravi River in the east, and from the Swat River valley in the north to Arachosia (the Helmand Province). The Greek geographer Strabo wrote that he "conquered more tribes than Alexander the Great." Ancient Indian writers indicate that he possibly launched expeditions southward into Rajputana (Rajasthan, Gujarat and Sindh) and central India (Gujarat and Malwa) and as far east down the Ganges River Valley as Pataliputra (Patna).

The Painted Grey Ware culture (PGW) is an Iron Age Indo-Aryan culture of the western Gangetic plain and the Ghaggar-Hakra valley in the Indian subcontinent, conventionally dated c.1200 to 600–500 BCE, or from 1300 to 500–300 BCE. It is a successor of the Cemetery H culture and Black and red ware culture (BRW) within this region, and contemporary with the continuation of the BRW culture in the eastern Gangetic plain and Central India.

Characterized by a style of fine, grey pottery painted with geometric patterns in black, the PGW culture is associated with village and town settlements, domesticated horses, ivory-working, and the advent of iron metallurgy. As of 2018, 1,576 PGW sites have been discovered. Although most PGW sites were small farming villages, "several dozen" PGW sites emerged as relatively large settlements that can be characterized as towns; the largest of these were fortified by ditches or moats and embankments made of piled earth with wooden palisades, albeit smaller and simpler than the elaborate fortifications which emerged in large cities after 600 BCE.

Dhar district (Hindi pronunciation: [d̪ʱaːɾ]) is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. The historic town of Dhar is administrative headquarters of the district.

The district has a land area of 8,153 square kilometres (3,148 sq mi). It is bounded by the districts of Ratlam to the north, Ujjain to the northeast, Indore to the east, Khargone (West Nimar) to the southeast, Barwani to the south, Jhabua and Alirajpur to the west. It is part of the Indore Division of Madhya Pradesh. The population of the district is 2,185,793 (2011 census), an increase of 25.60% from its 2001 population of 1,740,329. Pithampur is a large industrial area comes under Dhar District. Kukshi is the largest tehsil of the district.

The Central Highlands of India is a large geological structure and biogeographic region located between the Deccan Plateau and the Indo-Gangetic plains consisting of number of mountain ranges, including Vindhya and Aravali ranges, and the Chota Nagpur and Malwa plateaus. It is the single most important feature of Central India. It extends over three linguistic sub-regions of the Indo-Aryan language family and the languages chiefly spoken here are, from west to east, Marwari, Malwi, Bundeli, Bagheli, Chhattisgarhi and Maithili. The population is primarily Indo-Aryan along with a large population of Aboriginal tribes.

This region is widely populated with dense woods and number of different aboriginal tribal groups live here, who practice different forms of Hinduism. Many empires and dynasties have failed to conquer or have had a hard time controlling it due to resistance from the aborigines, as early as the famed Mauryans of Magadha and even the modern-day Indian Republic. The region is a hotbed of the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency, especially the eastern part.