South Asia in the Early Middle Ages

INDIA, THE INDIAN OCEAN BASIN, and EAST ASIA HIST 1301 | History South Asia in the Early Middle Ages India, sometimes known as South Asia, is a modern-day nation that shares the Asian subcontinent, its culture, and its history with a number of other nations, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan. There, two influential pre-medieval religious and philosophical traditions arose: Buddhism and Hinduism. Buddhism was promoted by itinerant merchants along the Silk Roads, both domestically and internationally. Alexander the Great, his army, and his subjects arrived in what is now Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush area in the fourth century BCE. Even though they left, this Hellenistic Seleucid monarchy carried on Greek ideals and commerce with India for the following three centuries. An important milestone in the effort of uniting the Afro-Eurasian continent was the landing of Alexander's army in the area. During this time, long-distance travel remained difficult and was mostly done by merchants, but significant cultural changes were starting. Even though Alexander died soon after his campaigns in India, meaning that neither he nor his successors were able to rule over this region of the world, diverse and previously independent cultures and peoples started exchanging goods, ideas, and technologies in ways that persisted for centuries. The establishment of the Mauryan Empire, the first significant state to rule the Asian subcontinent, sped up this transformation. Chandragupta Maurya established the Mauryan Empire in 322 BCE, and it lasted until around 185 BCE. Great intellectual advancements occurred in the area at that period, including the addition of zero to the numbering system and the application of place value in numbers, and long-distance trade helped to spread these novel notions throughout. India went through a period of immense prosperity and unity during the Mauryan era, but after White Hun invasions that severely damaged the empire, the subcontinent once more split apart into independent kingdoms. The northern kingdom of Thanesar, ruled by the Buddhist Harsha Vardhana from 606 to 647 CE, was home to one of the most stable governments to arise during this time. Thanks to contemporaneous reports by the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuan Zang and the Indian poet Bana, we know a great deal about Harsha. Both said that although the Guptas had formerly favoured Hinduism, Buddhism had spread far across the area around Thanesar. But the dilapidated state of Buddhism's monasteries across India was another indication that it had suffered from Gupta neglect. Nevertheless, Xuan Zang discovered that Harsha's kingdom was prosperous, justly ruled, and well-run. From the monk's perspective, Thanesar was an ideal condition. But it did not live much longer than its ruler. The Arab march that started early in Harsha's reign had quickly grown into a tsunami that swept throughout northern India in the early eighth century. The new religion of Islam had started to take hold in Arabia at the beginning of the seventh century and was quickly expanding even further. The kings of Sindh, in present-day Pakistan, were battling Muslim forces in 659 as they advanced eastward; by the early eighth century, the area had been subjugated by the Umayyad Islamic state's soldiers. India broke apart into rival states headed by separate rajas, or rulers, as a result of growing pressure from foreign invaders. These kingdoms thrived for a while, spanning from the northeastern Ganges River to the northwest valley of the Indus River in India. But decades of battling against Turkic warriors from central Asia who had converted to Islam had taken a toll. A notable illustration of these changes is the life and career of Mahmud of Ghazna. Mahmud, who reigned from 998 to 1030, was the son of a Turkic mamluk, or military slave. He was determined to establish his territory as a significant Islamic kingdom and, from his base in Afghanistan, mounted many operations against the rulers of northern India. The attack proved to be extremely effective, since the Muslim Ghaznavid dynasty controlled over a vast region spanning from the Aral Sea in the north to Lahore in the east, including Khurasan, a crucial route for the Silk Roads, in the southwest. This was by the twelfth century. But the creation of the Ghaznavid empire was not the end of the Muslim march. Northern India was ravaged by war, and by the end of the twelfth century, the autonomous Indian monarchs that remained had become irreversibly weak. Because they were open to invasion, the rajas' kingdoms fell. In the twelfth century, Muhammad of Ghur—a strategically significant town in the area—led a fresh wave of Turkic invaders into modern-day Afghanistan. Muhammad, a Persian king under the Ghaznavids, broke away from Ghazna and took over the majority of his former lords' domains. In 1192, his troops triumphed against an army of over 100,000 Rajput warriors, who were regarded as the fiercest fighters in Hindu India, during one of the bloodiest battles of his increasingly brutal career. Muhammad's campaigns' greatest triumph was the creation of a Muslim kingdom in Delhi, deep in northern India. For about three centuries (1206–1526), it existed as the Delhi Sultanate and served as the hub of Islamic India. Thus, over the period of around five centuries, a succession of Arab and then Turkic invasions brought Islam to northern India and subsequently sparked political integration. In addition, the invasions reinforced the cultural variety that was already a defining feature of Indian social order, as the minority Muslim rulers did not impose cultural uniformity. For instance, the sultanate's Islamic rulers granted Hindu people the status of dhimmis, protecting their non-Muslim privileges, even though they were still required to pay the jizya, a specific tax levied on unbelievers. Muslims used elements of Hindu symbolism and motifs, such as trees and vegetation, into the construction of mosques, because the sultans of Delhi frequently hired Hindu labourers for these kinds of undertakings. During the 14th century, Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq permitted Hindu pilgrimages to the Ganges River, the holiest place in Hinduism, and even increased and promoted religious freedom for Hindus. He also took part in Holi, the annual festival of spring. Hinduism dominated the subcontinent of South Asia before to the introduction of Islam. As a reaction to Buddhism's commercial and urban influence, as well as a synthesis of ideas that took place following the Vedic period of Ancient India (c. 1500–500 BCE), Hinduism evolved a philosophy and belief system that was more universally understandable to the country's rural and agrarian populace. Widening the appeal and accessibility of Hinduism, a complex universe of Hindu deities was also constructed, including deities from various religions. Hinduism placed a strong emphasis on individual devotion to a certain god in order to have a completely customised religious experience. This is perhaps most significant. The Hindus were granted protection as a nation by the Muslim Turks who came to India in the twelfth century. This allowed them to continue their own religious customs and rule over certain areas as long as they paid taxes and tribute. It is unclear, nevertheless, why Buddhists were not accorded the same levels of religious freedom. Many of them fled to parts of Southeast Asia, Nepal, or Tibet, where Buddhism is still a significant faith, or were put to death. Islam eventually replaced Hinduism as the predominant religion in the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent, which include present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. On the other hand, many fewer people converted in the Vijanagar Empire in southern India; this might be because of the empire's remote location from the centres of Islam. In 1221, Chinggis Khan, also known as "Genghis Khan" in the West, led the Mongol invasion of China, which began in the province of Khurasan, which had previously conquered the Punjab in the ninth century. After that, the Mongols focused on the Delhi Sultanate, which had resisted an attempted Mongol invasion in 1222. Renewed Mongol expansion was accompanied over the following few decades by a series of incursions into northern India. Numerous Muslims were uprooted and relocated on sultanate territory farther into the subcontinent's interior, despite the fact that the majority were repulsed.