Indo-Aryan people in the context of "Gāndhāra"

Gandhara (IAST: Gandhāra) was an ancient Indo-Aryan civilisation in present-day northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar and Swat valleys, extending up to Kabul and Bagram in the west and the Pothohar Plateau in the east. However, the cultural influence of Greater Gandhara extended as far as the Bamyan valley in the west and the Karakoram range in the northeast. The region was a central location for the spread of Buddhism to Central and East Asia, with many Chinese Buddhist pilgrims visiting the region.

Between the third century BCE and third century CE, Gāndhārī, a Middle Indo-Aryan language written in the Kharosthi script and linked with the modern Dardic language family, acted as the lingua franca of the region, and through Buddhism, the language spread as far as China based on Gandhāran Buddhist texts. Famed for its unique Gandharan style of art, the region attained its height from the 1st century to the 5th century CE under the Kushan Empire, which had their twin capitals at Kapiśi and Puruṣapura, ushering the period known as Pax Kushana.

Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north, and India to the south, east, and west, while it is narrowly separated from Bangladesh by the Siliguri Corridor, and from Bhutan by the Indian state of Sikkim. Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forested hills, and eight of the world's ten highest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point above mean sea level on Earth. Kathmandu is the nation's capital and its largest city. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural state, with Nepali as the official language.

The name "Nepal" is first recorded in texts from the Vedic period of the Indian subcontinent, the era in ancient Nepal when Hinduism was founded, the predominant religion of the country. In the middle of the first millennium BC, Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born in Lumbini in southern Nepal. Parts of northern Nepal were intertwined with the culture of Tibet. The centrally located Kathmandu Valley is intertwined with the culture of Indo-Aryans, and was the seat of the prosperous Newar confederacy known as Nepal Mandala. The Himalayan branch of the ancient Silk Road was dominated by the valley's traders. The cosmopolitan region developed distinct traditional art and architecture. By the 18th century, the Gorkha Kingdom achieved the unification of Nepal. The Shah dynasty established the Kingdom of Nepal and later formed an alliance with the British Empire, under its Rana dynasty of premiers. The country was never colonised but served as a buffer state between Imperial China and British India. Parliamentary democracy was introduced in 1951 but was twice suspended by Nepalese monarchs, in 1960 and 2005. The Nepalese Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s resulted in the establishment of a secular republic in 2008, ending the world's last Hindu monarchy. The Constitution of Nepal, adopted in 2015, affirms the country as a federal parliamentary republic divided into seven provinces. In September 2025, protests against a social media ban and economic inequality caused riots, resulting in casualties and resignation of the prime minister.

Gandhara (IAST: Gandhāra) was an ancient Indo-Aryan civilization in present-day northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar and Swat valleys, extending up to Kabul and Bagram in the west and the Pothohar Plateau in the east. However, the cultural influence of Greater Gandhara extended as far as the Bamyan valley in the west and the Karakoram range in the northeast. The region was a central location for the spread of Buddhism to Central and East Asia, with many Chinese Buddhist pilgrims visiting the region.

Between the third century BCE and third century CE, Gāndhārī, a Middle Indo-Aryan language written in the Kharosthi script and linked with the modern Dardic language family, acted as the lingua franca of the region, and through Buddhism, the language spread as far as China based on Gandhāran Buddhist texts. Famed for its unique Gandharan style of art, the region attained its height from the 1st century to the 5th century CE under the Kushan Empire, which had their twin capitals at Kapiśi and Puruṣapura, ushering the period known as Pax Kushana.

The Assamese people are a socio-ethnic linguistic identity that has been described at various times as nationalistic or micro-nationalistic. This group is often associated with the Assamese language, the easternmost Indo-Aryan language, and Assamese people mostly live in the Brahmaputra Valley region of Assam, where they are native and constitute around 56% of the valley's population. The use of the term precedes the name of the language or the people. It has also been used retrospectively to the people of Assam before the term "Assamese" came into use. They are an ethnically diverse group formed after centuries of assimilation of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Tai populations, and constitute a tribal-caste continuum—though not all Assamese people are Hindus and ethnic Assamese Muslims numbering around 42 lakh (4,200,000) constitute a significant part of this identity. The total population of Assamese speakers in Assam is nearly 15.09 million which makes up 48.38% of the population of state according to the Language census of 2011.

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.

The Kalash (Kalasha: کالؕاشؕا, romanized: Kaḷaṣa), or Kalasha, are a small Indo-Aryan indigenous people residing in the Chitral District of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The term is also used to refer to several distinct Nuristani speaking people, including the Väi, the Čima-nišei, the Vântä, plus the Ashkun- and Tregami-speakers.

According to one Kalash tradition, their ancestors migrated "some centuries ago" to the Chitral Valley from the Waigal Valley, of Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, or from a location further south called "Tsiyam" in their folk songs and epics, possibly near Jalalabad or Laghman in Afghanistan. Another tradition claims descent from the armies of Alexander who were left behind from his armed campaign, though no evidence exists for him to have passed the area.

Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north, and India to the south, east, and west, while it is narrowly separated from Bangladesh by the Siliguri Corridor, and from Bhutan by the Indian state of Sikkim. Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forested hills, and eight of the world's ten highest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point above mean sea level on Earth. Kathmandu is the nation's capital and its largest city. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural state, with Nepali as the official language.

The name "Nepal" is first recorded in texts from the Vedic period of the Indian subcontinent, the era in ancient Nepal when Hinduism was founded, the predominant religion of the country. In the middle of the first millennium BC, Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born in Lumbini in southern Nepal. Parts of northern Nepal were intertwined with the culture of Tibet. The centrally located Kathmandu Valley is intertwined with the culture of Indo-Aryans, and was the seat of the prosperous Newar confederacy known as Nepal Mandala. The Himalayan branch of the ancient Silk Road was dominated by the valley's traders. The cosmopolitan region developed distinct traditional art and architecture. By the 18th century, the Gorkha Kingdom achieved the unification of Nepal. The Shah dynasty established the Kingdom of Nepal and later formed an alliance with the British Empire, under its Rana dynasty of premiers. The country was never colonised but served as a buffer state between Imperial China and British India. Parliamentary democracy was introduced in 1951 but was twice suspended by Nepalese monarchs, in 1960 and 2005. The Nepalese Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s resulted in the establishment of a secular republic in 2008, ending the world's last Hindu monarchy. The Constitution of Nepal, adopted in 2015, affirms the country as a federal parliamentary republic divided into seven provinces. In September 2025, protests against a social media ban and economic inequality caused riots, resulting in casualties and the resignation of the prime minister.