Indian history

From the Indus Valley to independence — the periods, the people and the turning points.

India has one of the longest continuous records of any region on earth. This page gathers the periods, the dynasties and the events that shaped it, and links to the questions people ask about them most.

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• History of India

  Anatomically modern humans are estimated to have first arrived on the Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Sedentariness began in South Asia around 7000 BCE; by 4500 B…

• Maurya Empire Ancient Indian empire (c. 321–185 BCE)

  The Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in South Asia with its power base in Magadha. Founded by Chandragupta Maurya around c. 320 BCE, it existed in loose-knit fashion until 185 BCE. The primary sources for the written recor…

• Ashoka Mauryan emperor from 269 to 232 BCE

  Ashoka, also known as Asoka or Aśoka, most commonly known as Ashoka the Great, was Emperor of Magadha from c. 268 BCE until his death, and the third ruler of the Maurya Empire. His empire covered a large part of the Indian subcontinent, stretching from present…

• Mughal Empire 1526–1857 empire in South Asia

  The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam an…

• Indian independence movement Movement to end British rule in India

  The Indian independence movement was a series of political efforts from the mid-1880s to 1947 that took place in the Indian subcontinent with the aim of ending British colonial rule.

Questions in this topic

• Who was Ashoka?
• What was the Maurya Empire?
• When did India gain independence?

Related topics

• Geography of India — Rivers, mountains, states, climate and the land itself.
• Art and culture — Literature, music, architecture and the traditions behind them.

Where this comes from

Every page here is built from published text on en.wikipedia.org and from the open research services listed on the sources page. Nothing is written by a model, and every claim links to the page it came from.