1.
Rajgir
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Rajgir is a city and a notified area in Nalanda district in the Indian state of Bihar. The city of Rajgir was the first capital of the kingdom of Magadha and its date of origin is unknown, although ceramics dating to about 1000 BC have been found in the city. This area is notable in Jainism and Buddhism as one of the favorite places for Lord Mahavira and Gautama Buddha. Rajgir is connected to Patna via Bakhtiarpur by rail and road, Bakhtiarpur lies midway between Patna and Mokameh. Road access is by NH 30A to Bakhtiarpur and NH31 towards south to reach Bihar Sharif, from Mokameh NH31 to Bihar Sharif. From there, NH82 will leads to Rajgir, Rajgir is around 100 KM from both Patna and Mokameh. It is located in a valley surrounded by rocky hills. A daily Indian Railways train Shramjeevi Express connects Rajgir with the Indian capital New Delhi, the name Rajgir came from Rājagṛiha house of the king or royal house, or the word rajgir might have its origin in its plain literal meaning, royal mountain. It was the ancient capital city of the Magadha kings until the 5th century BC when Udayin, son of Ajatshatru, in those days, it was called Rajgrih, which translates as the home of Royalty. Shishunaga founded Shishunaga dynasty in 413 BCE with Rajgir as its initial capital before it was moved to Pataliputra, Rajgir is also famous for its association with Mauryan dynasty Kings Bimbisara and Ajatashatru. Ajatashatru kept his father Bimbsara in captivity here, the sources do not agree which of the Buddhas royal contemporaries, Bimbisara and Ajatashatru, was responsible for its construction. Ajatashatru is also credited with moving the capital to Pataliputra, the epic Mahabharata calls it Girivraja and recount the story of its king, Jarasandha, and his battle with the Pandava brothers and their allies Krishna. Jarasandha who hailed from this place, had defeated by Krishna 17 times. The 18th time Krishna left the battlefield without fighting, because of this Krishna is also called ranachorh. Mahabharata recounts a wrestling match between Bhima and Jarasandha, the king of Magadha. Jarasandha was invincible as his body could rejoin any dismembered limbs, according to the legend, Bhim split Jarasandha into two and threw the two halves facing opposite to each other so that they could not join. There is a famous Jarasandhas Akhara and it is also mentioned in Jain and Buddhist scriptures, which give a series of place-names, but without geographical context. The attempt to locate these places is based largely on reference to them and to locations in the works of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, particularly Faxian
2.
Pataliputra
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Pataliputra, adjacent to modern-day Patna, was a city in ancient India, originally built by Magadha ruler Ajatashatru in 490 BCE as a small fort near the Ganges river. Extensive archaeological excavations have been made in the vicinity of modern Patna, excavations early in the 20th century around Patna revealed clear evidence of large fortification walls, including reinforcing wooden trusses. The etymology of Pataliputra is unclear, putra means son, and pāţali is a species of rice or the plant Bignonia suaveolens. One traditional etymology holds that the city was named after the plant, another tradition says that Pāṭaliputra means the son of Pāṭali, who was the daughter of Raja Sudarshan. As it was known as Pāṭali-grāma originally, some believe that Pāṭaliputra is a transformation of Pāṭalipura. There is no mention of Pataliputra in written sources prior to the early Buddhist texts, in 303 BCE, Greek historian and ambassador Megasthenes mentioned Pataliputra as a city in his work Indika. The city of Pataliputra was formed by fortification of a village by Haryanka ruler Bimbisara and its central location in north eastern India led rulers of successive dynasties to base their administrative capital here, from the Nandas, Mauryans, Shungas and the Guptas down to the Palas. Situated at the confluence of the Ganges, Gandhaka and Son rivers, Pataliputra formed a water fort and its position helped it dominate the riverine trade of the Indo-Gangetic plains during Magadhas early imperial period. It was a centre of trade and commerce and attracted merchants and intellectuals, such as the famed Chanakya. Jain and Brahmanical sources identify Udayabhadra, son of Ajatashatru, as the king who first established Pataliputra as the capital of Magadha. During the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, it was one of the worlds largest cities, with a population of 150, 000–400,000. The city is estimated to have had a surface of 25.5 square kilometers, and a circumference of 33.8 kilometers, Pataliputra reached the pinnacle of prosperity when it was the capital of the great Mauryan Emperors, Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka. Arrian, The Indica Strabo in his Geographia adds that the city walls were made of wood and these are thought to be the wooden palisades identified during the excavation of Patna. At the confluence of the Ganges and of another river is situated Palibothra, in length 80 and it is in the shape of a parallelogram, surrounded by a wooden wall pierced with openings through which arrows may be discharged. In front is a ditch, which serves the purpose of defence, in the parks, tame peacocks and pheasants are kept. Aelian, Characteristics of animals Ashokas Palace in Pataliputra and the monument columns everywhere in India were built to imitate the Achaemenid palaces, the architecture of Pataliputras enclosures and the monumental columns of Ashoka had been affected by Persian Achaemenid architecture. The design of the Pataliputra palace capital has been described as Perso-Iionic, with a strong late-archaic Greek stylistic influence, including volute, bead and reel, the city also became a flourishing Buddhist centre boasting a number of important monasteries. It remained the capital of the Gupta dynasty and the Pala Dynasty, the city was largely in ruins when visited by Xuanzang, and suffered further damage at the hands of Muslim raiders in the 12th century
3.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
4.
Prakrit
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A Prakrit is any of several Middle Indo-Aryan languages. The Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, which was used extensively to write the scriptures of Jainism, is considered to be the definitive form of Prakrit. Prakrit grammarians would give the full grammar of Ardhamagadhi first, for this reason, courses teaching Prakrit are often regarded as teaching Ardhamagadhi. Other Prakrits are reported in old sources but are not attested. Alternatively, Prakrit can be taken to mean derived from an original, Prakrit is foremost a native term, designating vernaculars as opposed to Sanskrit. The Prakrits became literary languages, generally patronized by ancient Indian kings identified with the Kshatriya Varna of Hinduism, the earliest extant usage of Prakrit is the corpus of inscriptions of Emperor Aśoka. Besides this, Prakrit appears in literature in the form of Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhists, Prakrit canon of the Jains, Prakrit grammars and in lyrics, plays and epics of the times. The various Prakrit languages are associated with different patron dynasties, with different religions and different literary traditions, each Prakrit represents a distinct tradition of literature within the history of Pakistan, India and Nepal. In linguistic terms, this is used in contrast with saṃskṛta, Dramatic Prakrits were those that were devised specifically for use in dramas and other literature. Whenever dialogue was written in a Prakrit, the reader would also be provided with a Sanskrit translation, none of these Prakrits came into being as vernaculars, but some ended up being used as such when Sanskrit fell out of favor. The phrase Dramatic Prakrits often refers to three most prominent of them, Shauraseni, Magadhi Prakrit, and Maharashtri Prakrit, however, there were a slew of other less commonly used Prakrits that also fall into this category. These include Pracya, Bahliki, Daksinatya, Sakari, Candali, Sabari, Abhiri, Dramili, there was an astoundingly strict structure to the use of these different Prakrits in dramas. Maharashtri Prakrit, the ancestor of modern Marathi, is an interesting case. Maharashtri was often used for poetry and as such, diverged from proper Sanskrit grammar mainly to fit the language to the meter of different styles of poetry, the new grammar stuck, which led to the unique flexibility of vowels lengths – amongst other anomalies – in Marathi. Ardhamagadhi Dramili Elu Gandhari Magadhi Maharashtri Paisaci Shauraseni Jain Maharashtri Jain Shauraseni Apabransh National Institute of Prakrit Study, shravanabelagola, Karnataka, India Banerjee, Satya Ranjan. The Eastern School of Prakrit Grammarians, a linguistic study, deshpande, Madhav, Sanskrit & Prakrit, sociolinguistic issues. Pischel, R. Grammar of the Prakrit Languages
5.
Kosala
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Kosala was an ancient Indian kingdom, corresponding roughly in area with the region of Awadh in present-day Uttar Pradesh. It emerged as a state during the late Vedic period. However, it was weakened by a series of wars with the neighbouring kingdom of Magadha and. The Kosala region had three cities, Ayodhya, Saket and Shravasti, and a number of minor towns as Setavya, Ukattha, Dandakappa, Nalakapana. According to the Puranas and the Ramayana epic, Ayodhya was the capital of Kosala during the reign of Ikshvaku, Shravasti is recorded as the capital of Kosala during the Mahajanapada period, but post-Maurya kings issued their coins from Ayodhya. The mention of Kosala is not found in the early Vedic literature and it is mentioned as a region in the later Vedic texts of the Satapatha Brahmana and the Kalpasutras. In the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Puranas the ruling family of the Kosala kingdom was descended from king Ikshvaku, the Puranas give lists of kings of the Aikhsvaka dynasty from Ikshvaku to Presenajit Dhaka. According to the Ramayana, Rama ruled the Kosala kingdom from his capital, a Buddhist text, the Majjhima Nikaya mentions Buddha as a Kosalan and Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism taught in Kosala. In the time of king Mahakosala, the neighboring kingdom of Kashi had become an integral part of the Kosala kingdom. Mahakosala was succeeded by his son Pasenadi and he was a follower of Buddha. During his absence from the capital, his minister Digha Charayana raised his son Vidudabha Virudhaka to the throne, not much later, the Kosala kingdom was absorbed into its expanding neighbor, the Magadha kingdom. The Ikshvakus were the clan of Kosala. They were defeated by Ajatashatru of the Haryanka dynasty and it is assumed that during the Mauryan reign, Kosala was administratively under the viceroy at Kaushambi. The Sohgaura copper plate inscription, probably issued during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya deals with a famine in Shravasti, the Yuga Purana section of the Garga Samhita mentions about the Yavana invasion and subsequent occupation of Saket during the reign of the last Maurya ruler Brihadratha. The names of a number of rulers of Kosala of the period are known from the square copper coins issued by them. The rulers are, Muladeva, Vayudeva, Vishakhadeva, Dhanadeva, there is no way to know whether king Muladeva of the coins is identifiable with Muladeva, murderer of the Shunga ruler Vasumitra or not. King Dhanadeva of the coins is identified with king Dhanadeva of Ayodhya inscription, in this Sanskrit inscription, King Kaushikiputra Dhanadeva mentions about setting a ketana in memory of his father, Phalgudeva. In this inscription he claimed himself as the sixth in descent from Pushyamitra Shunga, Dhanadeva issued both cast and die-struck coins and both the types have a bull on obverse
6.
Vedic period
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The Vedic period was the period in Indian history during which the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, were composed. During the early part of the Vedic period, the Indo-Aryans settled into northern India, scholars consider Vedic civilisation to have been a composite of the Indo-Aryan and Harappan cultures. The end of the Vedic period witnessed the rise of large, around the beginning of the Common Era, the Vedic tradition formed one of the main constituents of the so-called Hindu synthesis. The commonly proposed period of earlier Vedic age is dated back to 2nd millennium BCE, after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, which ended c.1900 BCE, groups of Indo-Aryan peoples migrated into north-western India and started to inhabit the northern Indus Valley. The knowledge about the Aryans comes mostly from the Rigveda-samhita, which was composed between c and they brought with them their distinctive religious traditions and practices. The Vedic beliefs and practices of the era were closely related to the hypothesised Proto-Indo-European religion. According to Anthony, the Old Indic religion probably emerged among Indo-European immigrants in the zone between the Zeravshan River and Iran. It was a mixture of old Central Asian and new Indo-European elements. At least 383 non-Indo-European words were borrowed from this culture, including the god Indra, Indra was the subject of 250 hymns, a quarter of the Rig Veda. He was associated more than any other deity with Soma, a stimulant drug probably borrowed from the BMAC religion and his rise to prominence was a peculiar trait of the Old Indic speakers. These migrations may have been accompanied with violent clashes with the people who inhabited this region. The Rig Veda contains accounts of conflicts between the Aryas and the Dasas and Dasyus, the Rig Veda describes Dasas and Dasyus as people who do not perform sacrifices or obey the commandments of gods. Their speech is described as mridhra which could variously mean soft, uncouth, hostile, other adjectives which describe their physical appearance are subject to many interpretations. Internecine military conflicts between the tribes of Vedic Aryans are also described in the Rig Veda. Most notable of such conflicts was the Battle of Ten Kings, which took place on the banks of the river Parushni. The battle was fought between the tribe Bharatas, led by their chief Sudas, against a confederation of ten tribes— Puru, Yadu, Turvasha, Anu, Druhyu, Alina, Bhalanas, Paktha, Siva, Vishanin. Bharatas lived around the regions of the river Saraswati, while Purus, their western neighbours. The other tribes dwelt north-west of the Bharatas in the region of Punjab, division of the waters of Ravi could have been a reason for the war
7.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
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