A quick refresher of ancient Indian history, in case you forgot what you learnt in school
The earliest evidence of human activity in India is 75,000 years old, in Tamil Nadu. Historians are divided on whether the homo sapiens skeletons discovered were Iyengar, Iyer, Hindi-speaking barbarians from northern India, or unemployed prehistoric historians who committed suicide due to career frustrations.
By 2600 BC, in Harappa, we see proof of the first urban civilization: multi-storied brick houses, a sewage system, standardized weights, trade and the ability to write software in an era where the years were counted backwards.
The highly advanced Harappan civilization soon collapsed because they forgot to invent a caste system. This flaw was corrected by the Vedic civilization which was founded by two college dropouts who invented a totally cool language called Sanskrit that was taught by invitation only. The Sanskrit language is perhaps best known for its most famous set of books, the Vedas – all of which start with the immortal phrase – “What happens in the Vedas, stays in the Vedas”.
Those not lucky enough to be invited to learn Sanskrit were desperate to not be left out of the only civilization around for thousands of miles. Hence, they signed a contract to sew clothes by hand for the Sanskrit-speakers. Or so they thought. In reality they had agreed to clean all sewers, by hand, for the next 2000 years – they hadn’t read the contract properly, because it was written in Sanskrit.
(Remnants of the Vedic civilization have been found in modern-day Mumbai, where incredibly, DNA evidence has shown that a local, firebrand, tiger-like politician has an unbroken lineage that can be traced back to the original founders of the Vedic civilization.)
By 500 BC, most of the Vedic civilization had coalesced into four kingdoms – Vatsa, Avanti, Magadha and Kosala – the home of Siddhartha Gautama, who founded Hinduism 2.0, which was later renamed to Buddhism after Gautama was sued for trademark violation by Adi Shankara. To avoid paying the fine, Buddha fled to China where he underwent plastic surgery to look more Chinese, and then proceeded to build a soy sauce empire.
In 326BC, Alexander the Great and his wife Mrs. Great decided to bring western-style democracy to Afghanistan and Pakistan by invading them. However, when they reached India, a visibly agitated and aged Atal Bihari Vajpayee delivered an eloquent speech to protest against the invasion, and then fainted.
Most of the Indian subcontinent was a part of the Mauryan empire by 4BC. The Mauryan empire flourished under the leadership of another illustrious member of the Great family, Ashoka the Great. This started the “Golden Age” of India, which coincided with India’s status as the world’s largest economy. This dominance lasted until 1800 AD, when a team of visiting British economists decided that one rupee was actually worth only 0.0001 pounds, leading to the economic collapse of India and the rise of Infosys.
Meanwhile, Southern India burst on the scene relatively late – in 2009 AD, when millions of Tamilians protested being totally ignored by everyone else on Twitter. To prevent mass unfollows, a team of nineteen historians was hurriedly assembled. They discovered that southern India had actually enjoyed its own golden age under the Pandyas, Cholas, Cheras, Kadambas, Western Gangas, Pallavas, Chalukyas and Jayalalithas. The existence of South India was independently confirmed by several Bollywood producers who had been plagiarizing South Indian films long before the discovery of South India.
Oh, and another thing – the Mughals ruled India from 1526 AD to 1710 AD. This era was known mostly for its stunning culinary improvements. We should have mentioned this fact earlier, but this paragraph was awaiting approval from our editors, who feared beheadings if it was worded incorrectly.
Inspired by Dave Barry.