India's Ancient Past by R.S. Sharma

     This was a really great undergraduate survey-level book on the history of India from pre-history to about the sixth century AD. Sharma's book is weak only when it gets dry going into some more arcane details that aren't super interesting, but I think that's absolutely necessary to cover everything fully. The book is strongest through that scrutiny applied to so much research and knowledge. A great thing about this book in my opinion is all the awesome trivia that comes from it. Sharma includes a lot of fun facts in here.

    The information about the Harappans was very interesting, a people who built centrally planned cities on the Indus River four thousand years ago, from 2500 to 1900 BC. They independently invented the art of writing like the Phoenicians did, but Harrappan script has not been deciphered despite being completely discovered by 1923. Through 4,000 specimens of Harappan writing, scholars have determined that Harrappan script is not alphabetical but largely pictographic, so more like hieroglyphics. Harappan culture is also weirdly interested in uniformity, as archaeologists find the same terracotta works, long blades, seals, and town planning. 

    Sharma also describes a process of "Aryanization," by which India was profoundly changed by the arrival of horse-riding Aryan peoples originally from the region north of the Black Sea. The Aryans may have been the first to introduce the varnas of the caste system: brahmana (priests), kshatriya (warrior-lords), vaishya (peasant), and shudra (laborer). Each varna was subdivided into jati, which specified things like specific jobs, regions, or tribes. Critical to upholding the caste system was the alliance of the brahmana and the kshatriya. The brahmana prayed for success of their patron in war, and the kshatriya rewarded them. Despite conflicts between them, they were consistent in uniting to oppress the other two classes. However, kshatriya reaction against brahmanas is the basis of Jainism and Buddhism, both founded by kshatriya men who disputed the authority of the brahamana.. The top three varnas (all but the shudras) were considered dvija, or "twice-born," meaning that they had been human in their past life. This permitted them to wear the sacred thread (no, I don't know what he means by this) and to study the Vedas (ancient texts). 

    India also had significant trading links with the rest of the world. Because of the Himalayas, interaction with China was limited, and I garner that most trading went over land or sea to the west through the Indian Ocean/Arbian Peninsula or Iran, and that there was also a sea-based trade with southeast Asia that was significant. India exploited a significant trade surplus with the Romans, such that Rome ended up restricting it, lest they lose all their silver to India. India was successful in exporting pearls, ivory, precious stones, and animals, as well as kitchenware. From Rome, India received, wine, amphorae, and glass. But the most significant import India received from Rome was gold and silver. 6,000 Roman coins have been found in India. With the decline of the Roman and Sassanid Empires, India also declined, as a reduction in trade led Indians to move into the countryside and begin farming more in the fifth and sixth centuries, beginning the medieval era in India. There was also a decline around this time because India was no longer able to export as much silk after the mid-sixth century because the Eastern Romans learned how to make it themselves from the Chinese.

Thinkers in ancient India advocated achieving four goals: dharma (the regulation of social order), artha (economic resources), kama (physical pleasures), and moksha (salvation). Around the year 0, six schools of philosophy were in development: Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. 

• Samkhya: there is no divine being and all things are created by nature. A person can attain salvation through acquisition of real knowledge through perception, inference, and hearing. It is a very scientific school of thought.
• Yoga: A person attains salvation through meditation and physical application in controlling pleasure, the senses, and bodily organs. Practitioners use physical exercises and breathing exercises to divert the mind away from worldly matters to concentrate on the spiritual, following a major theme in ancient Indian thinking that sees the material world as an illusion that obscures the true, ideal, spiritual world.
• Nyaya: A school of analysis and logic that promises salvation through acquisition of knowledge and pure logic.
• Vaisheshika: A school that focuses on material elements, which are earth, water, fire, air, and sky/ether. This school developed the theory that all things are made of atoms, marking some of the earliest development of Indian physics. 
• Mimamsa: A school dedicated to reasoning out the justifications for various Vedic rituals and attaining salvation through their proper performance. This school uplifted the brahmana and was closely tied to them.
• Vedanta: means the end of the Veda. In Vedanta, there is sort of a Platonic ideal that is indestructible of the soul and the world. Karma is linked to Vedanta, and people bear the consequences of their actions in previous lives.

Miscellaneous Facts: 

• The term "Hindu" originally comes from the Sanskrit term "Sindhu," referring to what is now a region of southern Pakistan. The term made its way west through Iran, where the S became an H, and formed Hindu.
• Carbon dating can establish the date of ancient objects up to 70,000 years old.
• Today, marriages in India are still frequently performed in the rainy season, which is when most other activities had to come to a stop due to torrential downpour.
• Gautama Buddha was the first person to condemn cow slaughter because they help to grow plants and provide people with food through milk. Brahmans adopted this idea and promised punishments in the next world for those who killed cows. Elephants came to be worshipped after cows.
• Modern Indians speak 180 languages and 550 dialects. India contains four language groups: Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian, and Indo-Aryan.
• Buddhism was completely extinct in India by the 12th century AD. Sharma blames it on Buddhist embracing the evils of brahmanism that they originally sought to fight, cutting themselves off from the mainstream of peoples' lives. Buddhists also rejected Pali, the language of everyday people, for Sanskrit, the language of intellectuals.
• Sharma writes that when the Chinese built the Great Wall, it directed barbarians away from China to people in Central Asia, who then pushed other people and so on until India faced an influx of "barbarians" in the first and second centuries BC.
• Indians got the curtain through Greek theater's influence, and the term yavana, a Sanskritized form of "Ionian" was used to refer to all foreigners after originally only referring to Greeks.
• Ancient India was extremely important in developing mathematics. Indians invented 0, and the numerals we call "Arabic" in English are actually Indian by way of the Arab world. Indians were the first to use the decimal system, in the beginning of the fifth century AD.