The Land of Five Rivers 

Indus River Valley Civilisation

The invasions of the White Huns signalled the end of this era of history, although the they were at first repelled by the Guptas. The Huns drove the Gandharas from the northwest region, close to Peshawar, into Kashmir Subsequently, North India broke up into a number of separate Hindu kingdoms and was not really unified again until the coming of the Mughals. Meanwhile in the South : In India history, events in one part of the country do not necessarily after those in another. The kindgoms that rose and fell in the north of the country generally had no influence or connection with those in the south. While Buddhism and, to a lesser the centre and north of India, Hinduism continued to flourish in the south. The south's prosperity was based upon its long-established trading links with other civilisations. The Egyptians and, later, the Romans both traded by sea with the south of India. Strong links were also formed with parts of South-East Asia. For a time, Buddhism and, later, Hinduism flourished in the Indonesian islands, and the people of the reigon looked towards India as their cultural mentor. The Ramayana, that most famous of Hindu epics, is today told and retold in variious forms in many South-East Asian countries. Bail is the only Hindu stronghold in South-East Asia today and, though it's clearly recognisable as such, its isolation from the heartland of Hinduism has resulted in considerable modification of the faith. Other outside influences which came to the south of India in this period included St Thomas the Apostle, who is said to have arrived in Kerala in 52 AD. To this day, there is a strong Christian influence in the region. Great empires that rose in the south included the Cholas, Pandyas, Cheras, Chalukya and Pallavas. The Chalukyas ruled mainly over the Deccan region of central India, although at times their power extended further north. With a capital at Badami in Karnataka, they ruled from 550 to 753 AD before falling to the Rashtrakutas. They rose again in 972 and continued their rule through to 1190. Further south, the Pallavas pioneered Dravidian architecture with its exuberant, almost baroque, style. They also carried Indian culture to Java in Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. In 850 AD, the Cholas rose to power and gradually superseded the Pallavas. They too were great builders, as their temple at Thanjavur indicates. They also carried their power overseas and, under the reign of Raja Raja (985-1014 AD), controlled almost the whole of southern India, the Deccan, Sri Lanka, and parts of the Malay peninsula and the Sumatran-based Srivijaya Kindgom.

First Muslim Invasions

While the Hindu kingdoms ruled in the south and Buddhism was fading in the north. Muslim power was creeping towards India from the Middle East. Less than a century after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, there were Arab raids into the Sind and Gujarat. Muslim power first made it self strongly felt on the subcontinent with the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni. Today, Ghazni is just a grubby little town between Kabul and Kandahar in Afghanistan, but from 1001 AD Mahmud conducted raids from here on an annual basis. His army descended upon India, destroying infidel temples and carrying off everything of value that could be moved. In 1033, after his death, one of his successors actually took Varanasi. The raids stopped in 1038 when the expansionist Seljuk Turks took Ghazni. These early visits, however, were no more than banditry, and it was not unitl 1192 that Muslim power arrived on a permanent basis. In that year, Mohammed of Ghori, who had been expanding his powers across the Punjab, broke into India and took Ajmer. The following year, his general, Qutb-ud-din, took Varanasi and then Delhi. After Mohammed of Ghori was killed in 1206, Qutb-ud-din became the first of the Sultans of Delhi. Within 20 years, the Muslims had brought the whole of the Ganges basin under their control, but the Sultans of Delhi were never consistent in their powers. With each new ruler, the kingdom grew or shrank depending on personal abilities. In 1297, Ala-ud-din Khiji pushed the borders south into Gujarat; his general subseqently moved further south, but could not maintain the extension. In 1338, Mohammed Tughlaq decided to move his capital south from Delhi to Daulatabad, near Aurangabad in Maharashtra, but having marched most of Delhi's population south, eventually had to return north. Soon after, the Bahmani Kingdom arose and the Delhi Sultanate began to retreat north. Soon after, the Bahmani Kingdom arose and the Delhi Sultanate began to retreat north, only to be further weakened when Timur (Tamerlane) made a devastating raid from Samarkand into India in 1938. From then on, the power of this Muslim kingdom steadily contracted, until it was supplanted by another Muslim kingdom, that of the Mughals. The Muslims were a somewhat different breed of invader. Unlike previous arrivals, they retained their own identity, and the contempt which they heaped on their infidel subjects prevented their absorption into the prevailing Hindu religious and social systems. Nevertheless, Hinduism survived and Islam found India relatively infertile ground for onversion. By the 20 century, after 800 years of Muslim domination, only 25 % of the population had converted to Islam. The Muslims could not rule without Hindu assistance, so many Hindus were inducted into the bureaucracy. This resulted in the development of a common language, Urdu, which is a combination of Persian vocabulary and Hindi grammar using Perso-Arabic script. It remains the language of large parts of northern India and of Pakistan. Meanwhile in the South (again) : Once again, events in the south of India took a different path to those in the north. Just as the Aryan invasions never reached the south, the early Muslim invasions failed too.. Between 1000 and 1300 AD, the Hoysala Empire, which had centres at Belur, Halebid and Somnathpur, was at its peak. It eventually fell to a predatory raid by Mohammed Tughlaq in 1328, and then to the combined opposition of other Hindu kingdoms. Two other great kingdoms developed in the orth of modern-day Karnataka - one Muslim and one Hindu. The Hindus kingdom of Vijayanagar was founded in 1336. Its capital was at Hampi, and it was probably the strongest Hindu kingdom in India during the period that the Muslim Sultans of Delhi were dominating the north. At the same time, the Bahmani Muslim kingdom developed, but in 1489 it split into five separate kingdoms at Berar, Ahmednagar, Bijapur, Golconda and Ahmedabad. In 1520, Vijayanagar took Bijapur, but in 1565 the kingdom's Muslim opponents combined to destroy Vijayanagar int he epic Battle of Talikota. Later, the Bahmani kingdoms were to fall to the Mughals.

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