Until the 16th century most of the peoples entering India came by way of passes in the northern mountain wall. After the voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1498, Europeans came by sea.
Typically, invaders coming through the northwest passes would subdue a
region, impose their power upon it, and introduce their own
institutions. Cultural blend was the result,
with the new dominating in some aspects of life and the old remaining
relatively little altered in others. Then new invaders would repeat the process.
The earliest known conquerors were the Aryans, or Indo-Europeans. They are generally considered to have entered India sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C., bringing with them their language, religion, and general culture, to all of which scholars today give the name "Vedic." In time their religion and way of life, modified by processes of absorption, developed into Hinduism.
Islamic
civilization first came to India when Arabs entered the subcontinent by
sea from the Persian Gulf at the beginning of the 8th century A.D.
This incursion was followed by the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni in the
11th century, and these in turn were succeeded by invasions by other
Islamic peoples, who occupied the northern part of India.
The most important of the conquests was by the Mughuls, who succeeded
in winning control of most of the country in the 16th century.
Islamic penetration of India, however, never resulted in a fusion of
Islam with Hinduism, and it was the irreconcilability of these two great
faiths that ultimately led to the formation of the separate nation of
Pakistan in 1947. Only the British, whose period of dominance began in the 18th century, were able to unite the country. They gave India the longest period of internal peace it had ever known.
India has one of the world's most ancient cultures. The earliest records of it are archaeological discoveries in the Indus Valley dating from the 3d millennium B.C.
Unlike the cultures of early Greece and Egypt, it has survived the
ravages of conquerors, although it is continually being modified.
India's size and its compartmentalization by mountains and deserts
prevented the political unification that would have led to cultural
uniformity. But Hinduism has been marked by an amazing tolerance of varying metaphysical ideas.
Over the ages it has not only permitted the penetration of many
revolutionary religious ideas but has actually accepted most of them,
even though in doing so it has harbored mutually contradictory dogmas. It is thus not a single creed but a vast assemblage of ideas and practices.
On
the other hand, Hinduism established rigid rules for most of the
practical aspects of life, perhaps even as early as in the time of the
Indus civilization. Some ancient Hindu institutions are today subjects of social reform.
0 comments:
Post a Comment