The complexity of vedic Sanskrit literature suggests a large and highly organized civilization.
Areas of Hindu influence such as Angkor and Prambanan has magnificent structures, with similar designs suggesting there was once large structures in India from which they were modeled from.
How likely is it that the turbulent history of India including the Islamic invasion has erased traces of a grand civilization and temples?
>>399085
>The complexity of vedic Sanskrit literature suggests a large and highly organized civilization.
Well there's rarely an Indian Empire. Most of India's default existence in history consists of Culturally Similar yet Disimilar states fighting each other.
>>399103
I'm not talking about Medival India. I'm referring to the Vedic era.
Most pooinloos I meet online are nationalistic as shit, and defend that Vedic India was the greatest and most advanced place in the world, and had technology not found anywhere else.
Is this true to an extent, or are they just WE WUZ VEDAS?
>>399840
Could you please translate this out of /pol/ talk?
In my opinion they had the best architecture on Earth between about 750-1150 AD, though that's talking about Indian civilization as a whole (including Southeast Asia). Also they were pretty important in the development of mathematics, including our numeral system. And their metallurgy was some of the best in the world.
Vedic India basically means before the Mahajanapada kingdoms arose, or basically before Indian civilization actually arose. They had a rich oral tradition but they weren't anywhere close to 'advanced'.
You can basically split up Indian history into a few periods:
>Vedic India (1800 BC - 600 BC) - tribal Aryans with crazy mythology
>Classic India (600 BC - 550 AD) - Major empires arise in Northern India and the Deccan
>'Feudal' India (550 AD - 1200 AD) - regional Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms flourish across India and Southeast Asia, with south India eclipsing the north in many ways
>Early Islamic India (1200 AD - 1500 AD) - domination by Islamic empires, especially the Delhi Sultanate
>Mughal India (1500-1700 AD) - domination by the Mughals
After that everything kind of goes to shit. These periods can be further subdivided as well, but there's no use over-complicating things right now.
>>400128
I just love how intricately decorated their architecture always is, especially the medieval stuff. Usually the entire surface is completely covered in sculptures and carvings.
>>400148
>>400154
>>399853
This is pretty easy, it's like translating Australian.
>Most pooinloos I meet online are nationalistic as shit, and defend that Vedic India was the greatest and most advanced place in the world, and had technology not found anywhere else.
Is this true to an extent, or are they just WE WUZ VEDAS?
Most Southern Indians I meet on online are very nationalistic, and believe that the Indian sub-continent during the Vedic era was the greatest and most advanced place in the world, and had technology not found anywhere else. Is this true, or do 200 million Indians still defecate in public areas while screaming about Aryans?
>>400260
>Southern Indians
>pooinloos
It's the North (specifically Gangetic) Indians who can't poo in loos.
>>400273
huh
you learn something new every day.
>>400273
I thought it was those in the west.
That map that sparked all this darkens to black along the western border.
>>400414
that has less to do with geography and more to do with faggots moving to cities that cannot support them.
Mumbai and the coasts of gujrat are the high performing economical powerhouses of India, hence loads of migrants move there.
Since the places are not exactly expanding, these migrants end up crapping on the streets
>>399085
well you have kebabs boasting about the scores of grand temples they looted.
The konarak temple had some kind of weird gem that some turk stole, for example.
>>400414
It's a problem throughout India, but the west and south are generally better than the northeast. The northeast (esp. the Gangetic region), extending into Bangladesh, is generally the most overpopulated, impoverished, and all around shitty part of India. You must remember the map wrong or something.
>>399085
The interesting thing about India is that it was vastly more powerful during the Vedic times, and ever since then it has been in decline, with only minor recoveries.
It reminds me a lot of the Egyptians that went into internal decline, to the point that older kingdoms 1000s of years ago were arguably more advanced.
>>400531
U wot? Vedic India was just a bunch of horsefucking tribes. They weren't powerful until the Mauryans, and they were still powerful until about 1200 AD when the Delhi sultanate was set up.
>>400550
they were pretty settled for horsefuckers though.
except those in afghanistan.
>>400460
Kebabs boast about all the cultures and civilizations they pillaged and looted, ironically including their own.
The more I study Islam the more I realize how effective it is at promoting zealotry, but utterly fails to allow progression beyond a certain point due to all the inane laws and religious practices.
>>400556
They weren't though. Vedic India was completely rural, they didn't urbanize until the rise of the Mahajanapadas around 600 BC.
>>400568
but what about the ironworking and settling of the ganga delta?
not to mention horsefuckery is hard when your horses are all dead from disease.
>>400579
>ironworking and settling of the ganga delta
These don't really mean Vedic Indians were powerful or civilized though. It was the rise of cities around 600 BC that India grew into a real civilization, and then in the Mauryan period when they were able to project power outside of India.
>>400550
A unified empire like the Mauryans was only possible due to the decline created by the endless wars between the kings.
Chandragupta (who also a manipulative tyrant who killed all his brothers and slaughtered large sums of people), seized power in their collective decline.
India has always gone through periods of fracture and decline evidenced by all the lingual groups, every step of 'unity' only came after centuries of decline.
>>400622
I'm not really sure what you're talking about. The Mauryans didn't emerge after a decline, they emerged soon after the rise of urbanism and statehood in the Gangetic region, in a period when philosophy and political development was flourishing. It was the exact opposite of a decline. The Mauryans weren't even anything especially new, they were just a development of the Nanda Empire.
>>400604
but they had several systems in place that led to the mauryan empire
>power projection
>mattering at all for civilization.
>>400664
>but they had several systems in place that led to the mauryan empire
Those were products of the Mahajanapada period (600 BC-300 BC), not the Vedic period.
>>power projection
>>mattering at all for civilization.
I never said it did, I was just responding the this >>400531 claim that the Vedic Indians were more 'powerful' than later Indians, which just isn't true.
>>400681
the metalworking alone is older than the mahajanapada periods.
City states began to develop around the janapadas themselves.
>>400697
I don't really see what metalworking has to do with this.
>>400707
It requires a high level of technological sophistication and diversification of craftsmen to produce high quality ironworks
>>400723
Not really. Once it was invented in Anatolia, ironworking spread pretty quickly all over Afro-Eurasia. It didn't really make a difference whether or not a culture was technologically sophisticated or socially complex. Even random tribes in Africa had pretty advanced ironworking once the technology reached them.
>>400744
http://archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/iron-ore.html
look at the dates, they spent an awful amount of time refining the process of ironworking, and the steady growth of pottery in sites and areas larger than before
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Grey_Ware_culture#cite_note-8
not to mention that the vedic cities/towns had several design cues based upon the older IVC cities
>>400774
I don't really see how any of that refutes what I said, but anyway I don't really believe that first article. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but these kinds of far-fetched claims are usually based more on wishful thinking than solid evidence, and Indian archaeology is especially notorious for that kind of thing. The same claim is being made in Africa at the moment as well. I won't pretend to be familiar with the subject, but I'm pretty skeptical and I doubt most archaeologists take these claims seriously.
>>400831
they did submit radiocarbon dating records for cross verification.
but yeah, its easier to say FAAAKE until someone verifies it.
>refutes
well they were independently looking for ways to smelt their iron ore and the finding of more homogeneous pottery in smaller clusters indicates urbanization happening earlier.
>>400844
I'll really have to look into the claims more before I believe anything, but for now I'm just going to be pretty skeptical. Indian archaeology is notorious for trying to claim that absolutely everything is indigenous. Just look at the whole 'Indigenous Aryans' thing.
>well they were independently looking for ways to smelt their iron ore and the finding of more homogeneous pottery in smaller clusters indicates urbanization happening earlier.
I don't think either of these things really imply urbanism. Increasing densities of pottery just mean that population was growing, which doesn't necessarily imply urbanism. The same can be said of metallurgical advancements. Of course these developments might be what lead to urbanism later on. Again, you can look at Africa for comparison, where there's a long history of iron working and impressive ceramics long before cities arose.
>>400883
>the whole
its a meme not backed by the ASI.
crackpot historians don't reduce the credibility of a body that has done excavations in several countries under the threat of insurgent attacks.
>>401090
I'm not just dismissing the idea outright, but I'd like to see more support from outside of India itself before I take it for fact. It's not an area I'm very familiar with so I can't really reach any conclusions myself, but I'm not going to believe such an extraordinary claim right off the bat. I'll try to look into it some more though.
>>400260
kekekekek
>>400273
Don't lie on the Internet subaramanium.
>>403997
well seeing as northern India is a cancer, he is not wrong
>>400107
>What isIndus valley civilization.
>inb4 muh pakistan.
It was in India too.
Janitors asleep again.
>>404924
what?
>>400273
It seems like its basically Northern Central India that shit the streets up
>>405138
Not surprising. It correlates almost exactly with the education level in india.
>>399840
top lel. I knew a funny Indian guy who claimed they had atomic bombs because something was being described that I guess could only be explained as being similar to an atomic bomb.
I didn't really follow but he was a cool guy nonetheless.
>>405242
a lot of indians are high because of cheap and easily available weed.
>>406664
because of high wealth
they have a lot of resources.
The prople need to be gassed/deported to pakistan though, especially the mooslimes
>>405242
He's probably talking about Mahabarata (ancient indian epic). That story can be described a scifi-religious story. Many of the conflicts involved features gods fighting with super weapons similar to bombs.
Ultimately its just a story, not truth. Some hindu nationalists do tend to get carried away and think "it really happened." kek
>>406703
>scifi
more like high fantasy.
Huge parts of that read like a Warhammer fantasy story but without grimderp characters.
>>406664
They weren't. Indian civilization was born in the Gangetic plain since it has the best land, eventually resulting in the Mauryans. Once the Mauryans fell, the next great Indian empire was the Satavahana in the Deccan, not the north. The next great northern empire, the Guptas, were contemporaries with the equally impressive Vakatakas in the Deccan. After the Guptas and Vakatakas fell Indian kingdoms flourished throughout the subcontinent, with the most impressive generally in the south. The north only became more important again when Islamic invaders conquered the region.
