Outline of ancient India

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ancient India:

Ancient India – India as it existed from the pre-historic times (c. 7000 BCE or earlier) to the start of the Middle Ages (c. 500 CE).

Geography of ancient India

Government and politics in ancient India

General history of ancient India

Periodisation of Indian history

An elaborate periodisation may be as follows:

India

India, officially the Republic of India (Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; in addition, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.

Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—originated here, whereas Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE and also shaped the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by and brought under the administration of the British East India Company from the early 18th century and administered directly by the United Kingdom after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, India became an independent nation in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by non-violent resistance led by Mahatma Gandhi.

Ancient history

Ancient history is the aggregate of past events from the beginning of recorded human history and extending as far as the Early Middle Ages or the Postclassical Era. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with Sumerian Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC.

The term classical antiquity is often used to refer to history in the Old World from the beginning of recorded Greek history in 776 BC (First Olympiad). This roughly coincides with the traditional date of the founding of Rome in 753 BC, the beginning of the history of ancient Rome, and the beginning of the Archaic period in Ancient Greece. Although the ending date of ancient history is disputed, some Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD (the most used), the closure of the Platonic Academy in 529 AD, the death of the emperor Justinian I in 565 AD, the coming of Islam or the rise of Charlemagne as the end of ancient and Classical European history.

Pawan Kalyan

Pawan Kalyan is an Indian film actor, director, screenwriter, stunt coordinator, writer, and politician. His film works are predominantly in Telugu cinema. He is the younger brother of actor turned politician Chiranjeevi. Kalyan made his acting debut in 1996 Telugu film Akkada Ammayi Ikkada Abbayi. In 1998, he starred in Tholi Prema which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Telugu for that year. In 2015, he enacted Lord Krishna in the sleeper hit Gopala Gopala.

He is known for his works in films Gokulamlo Seetha, Suswagatham, Thammudu, Badri, Kushi, Jalsa, Gabbar Singh for which he received the Filmfare Award for Best Actor – Telugu, and Attarintiki Daredi which became the highest grossing Telugu film of all time. He was listed 26th in the Forbes India list of top 100 Celebrities of 2013. As of 2014, he holds a net worth of ₹185 million (US$2.7 million).

In March 2014, he ventured into politics, founding the Jana Sena Party. During that period, Pawan Kalyan was listed by google as the most searched Indian celebrity politician on Google search.

History

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the study of the past, particularly how it relates to humans. It is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians. Events occurring prior to written record are considered prehistory.

History can also refer to the academic discipline which uses a narrative to examine and analyse a sequence of past events, and objectively determine the patterns of cause and effect that determine them. Historians sometimes debate the nature of history and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present.

Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends, because they do not show the "disinterested investigation" required of the discipline of history.Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian is considered within the Western tradition to be the "father of history", and, along with his contemporary Thucydides, helped form the foundations for the modern study of human history. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a state chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd century BC texts survived.