Prologue continues ......

But the uniqueness of India’s civilizational history is that from
the Indus Valley down to this day there is a thread of continuity running
through five thousand years. It is very interesting, for example, to find
that the design of bullock carts used by the Indus Valley people remains
more or less unchanged till today. The dancing girl of Mohenjo Daro
resembles any Bharatnatyam performer of today. The deity sitting in a
yogic posture shown in one of the seals is said to be Lord Shiva. The ‘homa’
that used to be performed by the Rigvedic rishis as a part of the daily
worship of the supernatural is being performed even today with the same
ritualistic perfection. The most sacred mantra Gayatri, which invokes the energy of the Sun, is chanted today with as much devotion as was done
during the Vedic period, about 3,500 years ago.

Even the outdated and
most regressive social system, namely the caste system, which must have
originated during the fusion of the indigenous people and the Indo-Aryans,
continues today. Although changes have taken place in everything during
the past 5,000 years, there is something unchangeable about the basic impulses of Indian culture.

In course of time, Indian society became settled and stable and there
arose empires and dynasties. The six centuries immediately before Christ
and the seven centuries after Christ were momentous periods in the history
of India. There was a great consolidation of political power with the rising
of empires and dynasties. The story of imperial India begins with the
Mauryan empire founded in 321 BC. It was vast, centralized and powerful. In fact, it extended up to Kabul.

This empire was established by Chandragupta Maurya, who can be
called the first emperor of India in the real sense of the term. Nehru writes
in The Discovery of India:

“Except for South India, Chandragupta’s empire covered the whole
of India, from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal and extended
in the north to Kabul. For the first time in recorded history a vast
centralized State had risen in India.”

To be continued...