Gupta Empire in the context of "Samudragupta"

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ancient India:

Ancient India is the Indian subcontinent from prehistoric times to the start of Medieval India, which is typically dated (when the term is still used) to the end of the Gupta Empire around 500 CE.

Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the second-largest Muslim population as of 2023. Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east; Afghanistan to the west; Iran to the southwest; and China to the northeast. It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor.

Pakistan is the site of several ancient cultures, including the 8,500-year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan, the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Bronze Age, and the ancient Gandhara civilisation. The regions that compose the modern state of Pakistan were the realm of multiple empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenid, the Maurya, the Kushan, the Gupta; the Umayyad Caliphate in its southern regions, the Hindu Shahis, the Ghaznavids, the Delhi Sultanate, the Samma, the Shah Miris, the Mughals, and finally, the British Raj from 1858 to 1947.

Ancient warfare is war that was conducted from the beginning of recorded history to the end of the ancient period. The difference between prehistoric and ancient warfare is more organization oriented than technology oriented. The development of first city-states, and then empires, allowed warfare to change dramatically. Beginning in Mesopotamia, states produced sufficient agricultural surplus. This allowed full-time ruling elites and military commanders to emerge. While the bulk of military forces were still farmers, the society could portion off each year. Thus, organized armies developed for the first time. These new armies were able to help states grow in size and become increasingly centralized.

In Europe and the Near East, the end of antiquity is often equated with the Fall of Rome in 476 AD, the wars of the Eastern Roman Empire on its Southwestern Asian and North African borders, and the beginnings of the Muslim conquests in the 7th century. In China, it can also be seen as ending of the growing role of mounted warriors needed to counter the ever-growing threat from the north in the 5th century and the beginning of the Tang dynasty in 618 AD. In India, the ancient period ends with the decline of the Gupta Empire (6th century) and the beginning of the Muslim conquests there from the 8th century. In Japan, the ancient period is considered to end with the rise of feudalism in the Kamakura period in the 12–13th century.

India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country since 2023; and, since its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. Their long occupation, predominantly in isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest. Its hymns recorded the early dawnings of Hinduism in India. India's pre-existing Dravidian languages were supplanted in the northern regions. By 400 BCE, caste had emerged within Hinduism, and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity. Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires. Widespread creativity suffused this era, but the status of women declined, and untouchability became an organised belief. In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.

Medieval India was a long period of post-classical history in the Indian subcontinent between the ancient and modern periods. It is usually regarded as running approximately from the break-up of the Gupta Empire in the 6th century 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. 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, a centre of scholarship which brought a divided South Asia onto the global intellectual stage. Another accomplishment was the invention of Chaturanga, which later was exported to Europe and became chess.In Southern India, the Tamil Hindu Cholas 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. In this time period, neighbouring regions such as Afghanistan, Tibet, and Southeast Asia were under South Asian influence.

The Middle Kingdoms of India were the political entities that existed on the Indian subcontinent from 230 BCE to 1206 CE. The period began with the decline of the Maurya Empire and the corresponding rise of the Satavahana dynasty, initiated by Simuka in the 1st century BCE. The “middle” period lasted for over 1,200 years and concluded in 1206 CE with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate and the gradual decline of the Later Cholas, the last of whom, Rajendra Chola III, died in 1279 CE.

This period encompasses two eras: Classical India, from the Maurya Empire up until the end of the Gupta Empire in 500 CE, and early Medieval India from 500 CE onwards. It also encompasses the era of classical Hinduism, which is dated from 200 BCE to 1100 CE. From 1 CE until 1000 CE, India's economy is estimated to have been the largest in the world, having between one-third and one-quarter of the world's wealth. This period was followed by the late Medieval period in the 13th century.

The history of Hinduism covers a wide variety of related religious traditions native to the Indian subcontinent. It overlaps or coincides with the development of religion in the Indian subcontinent since the Iron Age, with some of its traditions tracing back to prehistoric religions such as those of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation. Hinduism has been called the "oldest religion" in the world, but scholars regard Hinduism as a relatively recent synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no single founder, which emerged around the beginning of the Common Era.

The history of Hinduism is often divided into periods of development. The first period is the pre-Vedic period, which includes the Indus Valley Civilization and local pre-historic religions. Northern India had the Vedic period with the introduction of the historical Vedic religion by the Indo-Aryan migrations, starting somewhere between 1900 BCE and 1400 BCE. The subsequent period of the second urbanisation (600–200 BCE) is a formative period for Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism followed by "a turning point between the Vedic religion and Hindu religions," during the Epic and Early Puranic period (c. 200 BCE to 500 CE), when the Epics and the first Purānas were composed. This was followed by the classical "Golden Age" of Hinduism (c. 320–650 CE), which coincides with the Gupta Empire. In this period the six branches of Hindu philosophy evolved, namely, Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta. Monotheistic sects like Shaivism and Vaishnavism developed during this same period through the Bhakti movement. It flourished in the medieval period from roughly 650 to 1100 CE, which forms the late Classical period or early Middle Ages, with the decline of Buddhism in India and the establishment of classical Puranic Hinduism is established.

Bihar (pronounced [bɪˈɦaːr] ), also spelled Behar in colonial documents, is a state in Eastern India. It is the second largest state by population, the 12th largest by area, and the 14th largest by GDP in 2024. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West Bengal to the east, and Jharkhand to the south. Bihar is split by the river Ganges, which flows from west to east. On 15 November 2000, a large chunk of southern Bihar was ceded to form the new state of Jharkhand. Around 11.27% of Bihar's population live in urban areas as per a 2020 report. Additionally, almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, giving Bihar the highest proportion of young people of any Indian state. The official language is Hindi, which shares official status alongside that of Urdu. The main native languages are Maithili, Magahi and Bhojpuri, but there are several other languages being spoken at smaller levels.

In Ancient and Classical India, the area that is now Bihar was considered the centre of political and cultural power and as a haven of learning. Parshvanatha, the 23rd Tirthankar led the shramana order in this region in 9th century BCE. Jainism was revived and re-organised by Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankar in 6th century BCE. From Magadha arose India's first empire, the Maurya empire, as well as one of the world's most widely adhered-to religions: Buddhism. Magadha empires, notably under the Maurya and Gupta dynasties, unified large parts of South Asia under a central rule. Another region of Bihar, Mithila, was an early centre of learning and the centre of the Videha kingdom.

Brahmi (/ˈbrɑːmi/ BRAH-mee; 𑀩𑁆𑀭𑀸𑀳𑁆𑀫𑀻; ISO: Brāhmī) is a writing system from ancient India that appeared as a fully developed script in the 3rd century BCE. Its descendants, the Brahmic scripts, continue to be used today across South and Southeastern Asia.

Brahmi is an abugida and uses a system of diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. The writing system only went through relatively minor evolutionary changes from the Mauryan period (3rd century BCE) down to the early Gupta period (4th century CE), and it is thought that as late as the 4th century CE, a literate person could still read and understand Mauryan inscriptions. Sometime thereafter, the ability to read the original Brahmi script was lost. The earliest (indisputably dated) and best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE. During the late 20th century CE, the notion that Brahmi originated before the 3rd century BCE gained strength when archaeologists working at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka retrieved Brahmi inscriptions on pottery belonging to the 450-350 BCE period.