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07/25/2011

Indian melting-pot: migrations since the origins...

The Tziganes research made me curious: someone told me that actually Tziganes had populated India!! It is quite not accurate, though India is a real melting pot, and this since prehistoric times! 

I made a small synthesis of all that… (and that was not easy!)

 

 

At the beginning there was nothing.

Then there was the Indus civilization – about which we apparently don’t know much.

And after that there was a big mess.

 

 

Here is how it goes (please tell me if I got it wrong!):

 

§          Indus civilization

§          Invasion of Indus valley by the Aryens of Bactria (around 1000 BC).

§          Invasion of Indus valley  by the Persians (end of the 6th century BC)

§          Invasion of Indus valley by the Greeks who kept coming and leaving (from 325 to 50 BC) during the local Maurya dynasty (325 to 187 BC).

§          Invasion by the Indo-European tribes coming from China (the Yue Tché and the white Huns) (from 45 to 550).

§          Muslim dominations alternately between the Turks and the Afghans (from 997 to 1526).

§          Turko-Mughal dominations (from 1526 to 1857, year when the last Mughal emperor died).

§          European invasions (first Portuguese (1535) then Danish, French and British).

 

An approximative map (by myself):

 

 

india,invasions,domination,migration,populating,history

 

 

To know more, download the full file: Migrations to India from the origns to 1860.pdf

Or read below:


1000 – 800 BC: Aryanization of the Ganga plain

These Aryans are said to have come from Bactria (a region spread between the actual States of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and also a bit of Turkmenistan).

 

End of 6th century BC: Cyrus, a Persian king conquered the Indus région where Darius then created an administrative division of the Persian Empire.

 

327-325 BC: Alexander, a Greek king from Macedonia, who brought down the Persian Empire, started to conquer its Indian possessions. He beat the king Poros (king of the Indo-European tribe of the Paurava established in Punjab), arrived at the mouth of the Indus river and turned back to Babylon via South-East Iran.

 

325 BC: Chandragupta Maurya, a local, started the Maurya dynasty (which lasted till 184 BC), after realizing that it was necessary to have an Indian centralized development to face the Macedonian threat. He started to throw out the Greek invaders. Victorious he then started to conquer the Ganga plain. Calling himself emperor, he started to conquer the whole of India though he could not do it entirely – the far south resisting hard.

 

305 BC: Seleucos, a Hellenistic king from Syria, crossed the Indus after conquering Bactrian, having in mind to re-establish the Greek administrative division previously existing in India. He finally made a deal with Chandragupta who did not recognize his authority but gave him some territories.

 

274-237 BC: 274-237 avant J.-C. : Reign of Ashoka, an emperor of the Maurya dynasty. Ashoka forbade the sacrifices of animals, including the famous Hindu rite of sacrifing a horse (??) and proned vegetarianism. The empire of Ashoka used to go from Bengale to Himalaya; it was the most spread of INdian empires until the Mughal one.

 

135 BC: Occupation of the Bactrian by the Scythes (nomadic populations of Indo-European origin which have lived between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC in the Eurasian steps). The Scythe king Manés settled down in the Gandhara, former kingdome located in the north-east of the actual Pakistan and the east of Afghanistan). In 50 BC, the last Indo-Greek king of Gandhara died and his kingdom was devastated by the Parthes (nomadic horse riders coming from the east of Iran).

 

J.-C. has come !! (But not in India, if we exclude the 2 following legends: 1. Jesus would actually be an avatar of Krishna and 2. He would have gone down his cross, crossed half the world to peacefully die in Cachemire.)

 

48: The Kushanas, a Yue Tché tribe (nomadic Indo-European population which used to be in the north-East of China), leave Bacrian to settle in Gandhara. Then they will create an empire including Punjab, Sindh, the north of Gujarat and a part of central India.

 

400: The White Huns settled down in Gandhara. We don’t know exactly where they came from (the Chinese first mentioned them in 125, somewhere in Mongolia) but they had an intresting custom: when a woman was getting married to a man, his brothers also became her spouses. Her children were considered as the kids of the eldest brother. She was placing “horns” on her hat, as many as she had spouses.

They managed to dominate the Radjpoutana, Punjab and Cachemire and they were only expelled around 550.

712: The Arabs invaded Sindh (one of the 4 provinces of Pakistan). There were a lot of bloodsheds and pillage but the Muslims, not numerous, let the Hindus be free of being Hindus as long as they paid a tax.

 

9th to 12th centuries: In south India, the tamil kingdom of Chola emerged as a dynamic maritime power and temporarily controlled Ceylan in the 11th century. The rising of the Chola kingdom, which started with the conquest of Tanjore around 850 led it to its apogee in the years 985-1044 – in 1022, the Chola armies reached the Ganges.

At the end of the naval campaign, the Tamouls were dominating the Indian ocean from the Maldives to Sumatra and were sending ambassadors to China. During this time, it was in Dekkan (vast plateau spreading in the major part of central and southern India) that the Hindu culture thrived since the Southern regions were out of reach of the Muslims.

 

11th century: Muslims became invasive again, 3 centuries after conquering Sindh. The conquest of India by the Muslims spreads over a long period of time and was initially characterized by a lot of pillages, not by the Arabs or the Persians but by the Turks and the Afghans, barbaric populations coming from the steppes of High Northern Asia or the mountains surrounding Himalaya. The extreme political division of India at that time made the conquest of the invaders easier.  

 

997: 1st raid against India of Mahmoud de Ghazni (the Ghaznéides were a Muslim dynasty of Turkish origin)  who kept organizing pillages all through his reign which ended in 1030.

 

1175: It is an Afghan, Mohammed de Ghur, who started again pillages. But he had to face a hard resistance from Gujarat and the Rajput nobility led by Prithi Raj, who is still an emblematic figure of the “national” resistance against the invaders. In 1192 Mohammed won a big victory: the afghan cavalry dominates and Raj is killed.

 

1194: The Muslims invade the Ganges plain and reach Bengale. They destroy most of the old Indian culture.

 

1210-1235: Reign of Iltutmish, a Turk, who established the sultanate of Delhi, the 1st true Muslim state of India. The former slave gathers states going from Sindh to Punjab and Bengale and has his authority recognized by the Caliph of Bagdad.

 

1221: The Mughal hords of Gengis Khan reach the Indus River but don’t go further.

 

1290-1320: The Khalji, of Afghan origin, take the place of the Turks.

 

1307: From this date, the Muslims keep organizing expeditions against the Dekkan where no kingdom seems able to resist for long. They bring to heel the Mahratte and the Telugu countries and push further their kingdom to the Tamil state.

 

1320: A leader of Turkish origin, Ghazi Malik Tughluk, is brought to power by the army and start a dynasty that will last till 1412. He re-establishes the state and focuses his efforts on the Sultanate of Delhi. But he will only reign for 5 years.

 

1498: Vasco de Gama arrives in Calicut, on the Western coast of India.

1509: The Portuguese beat the Muslims in the naval battle of Diu. In 1535, the Muslims will again attack Diu, where the Portuguese have settled but will fail.

 

1526-1530: The Turko-Mughals coming from Afghanistan and obeying Babûr (who funded the Mughal dynasty is a descendant of Gengis Khan on his mother’s side and was born in the actual Ouzbékistan) they bring to heel the Rajputs and conquer the rest of North India.

 

1600: Creation of the East India Company.

 

1622: C’est le commencement de la fin pour la domination portugaise sur l’océan Indien. Elle est progressivement remplacée par celle des Hollandais et des Anglais.

 

1658-1707: Reign of the Great Mughal Aureng Zeb, at the apogée of the Mughal Empire.

 

1659-1665: First campaigns against the Mughals led by Shivaji, who started the Mahratte empire and remained their main opponent all along this period (he died in 1680). The Mughals kept fighting the Mahrattes in the Dekkan till 1707 but never succeeded completely.

 

1765: By the treaty of Allahabad signed with the emperor Shah Alam II, the British impose their sovereignity on Bengale, Orissa and Bihar. From 1766 the nabab is deprived from military forces.

 

1857: Cipayes’ revolt. The revolt starts in Meerut, near Delhi, on May 10. It all started because the ammunitions were said to the Hindus to have been coated with cow fat and to the Muslims with pork fat. Delhi was occupied, the last descendant of the previously great Mughals, Bahadur Shah, is called emperor. In June the garnison of Kanpur is slaugthered (400 men and more than 200 women and children).

 

Sources : http://www.clio.fr/CHRONOLOGIE/chronologie_inde_l_inde_des_britanniques_et_des_maharadjahs.asp and Wikipédia

 

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