Mahabalipuram, derived from Mamallapuram is the prior and colloquial name of a town in Kancheepuram district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, now officially called Mamallapuram. Mahabalipuram was a 7th century port city of the South Indian dynasty of the Pallavas near the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu. The name Mamallapuram is believed to have been given after the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I, who took on the epithet Maha-malla (great wrestler), as the favourite sport of the Pallavas was wrestling. It has various historic monuments built largely between the 7th and the 9th centuries, and has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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The date of Kanishka`s accession is disputed, ranging from 78 to 248. The generally accepted date of 78 is also the basis for an era presumably started by the Shakas and used in addition to the Gregorian calendar by the present-day Indian government.

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The Gandhara school of art is mainly related to Mahayana Buddhism which encouraged image worship. The Kushan kings, particularly Kanishka, encouraged the Gandhara artists. The Gandhara sculptures have been found in the ruins of Taxila and in various ancient sites in Afghanistan and in West Pakistan. They consist mostly of the images of the Buddha and relief sculptures presenting scenes from Buddhist texts. A number of Bodhisattva figures were carved out. A figure of Gandhara shows the first sermon in the deer park and the death of the Buddha. In all these figures there is a realistic treatment of the body although it is draped. In these sculptures there is a tendency to mould the human body in a realistic manner paying great attention to accuracy and physical details particularly in the presentation of muscles, moustaches, etc. Also the representation of the thick bold fold lines forms a distinct characteristic. Thus the Gandhara sculptures offer a striking contrast to what has been discovered elsewhere in India.

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The seals of the Indus Valley Civilization have been one of the major sources for information about the period. Apart from giving plethora of informations about the social and religious life of the period, they give insight into the economic activities. The economy of the Indus civilization was based on a highly organized agriculture, supplemented by an active commerce, probably connected to that of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. Trade amongst the civilizations is suggested by the finding of hundreds of small seals, supposedly produced by the Indus peoples, at the excavation sites of ancient Mesopotamian cities that were existent around the same time. Some of the seals mention the rulers of different countries

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Maitreya is foretold as a future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. In some Buddhist literature, such as the Amitabha Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, he or she is referred to as Ajita Bodhisattva. Maitreya is a bodhisattva who in the Buddhist tradition is to appear on Earth, achieve complete enlightenment, and teach the pure dharma. According to scriptures, Maitreya will be a successor of the historic Sakyamuni Buddha

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The eminent Buddhist writers Nagarjuna, Asvaghosha, Parsva and Vasumitra flourished at the court of Kanishka. Nagarjuna was the great exponent of Mahayana doctrine and Asvaghosha, a multifaceted personality, was known as a poet, musician, scholar and zealous Buddhist monk. Charaka, the most celebrated authority on Ayurveda was the court physician of Kanishka and Mathara, a politician of rare merit, was his minister. Vasumitra presided over the fourth Buddhist Council

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The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, made by the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty during his reign from 269 BCE to 231 BCE. These inscriptions are dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan and represent the first tangible evidence of Buddhism. In these inscriptions, Ashoka refers to himself as “Beloved of the Gods” and “King Priya-darshi.” The identification of King Priya-darshi with Ashoka was confirmed by an inscription discovered in 1915 by C. Beadon at Maski, the village in Raichur district of Karnataka. Another minor rock edict is found at the village Gujarra in Datia district of Madhya Pradesh. This also shows the Name “Asoka” in addition to usual “Devanam Piyadasi”.

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The Ajanta Caves are the treasure house of delicate paintings that portray scenes from Jataka tales and from the life of Lord Buddha. Celebrated for its archaic wonder and laced with the series of carved artistry, Ajanta Cave paintings echo the quality of Indian creativity in perhaps the subtlest way. In the Ajanta wall-paintings, there is a profound modification from the art of early Buddhism. The Ajanta paintings stresses on religious romanticism with lyric quality, a reflection of the view that every aspect of life has an equal value in the spiritual sense and as an aspect of the divine.

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Iron was a metal unknown to the Aryans during the early Vedic age. The advent of iron is generally associated with the late or post-Vedic ages. So blacksmith did not exist during this period.

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The Arab conquest of Sindh by Muhammad Bin Qasim in 712 AD gave the Muslims a firm foothold on the sub-continent. Qasim`s conquest of Sindh and Punjab laid the foundations of Islamic rule in the Indian subcontinent. The description of Hiuen Tsang, a Chinese historian, leaves no doubt that the social and economic restrictions inherent in the caste differentiations of Hindu society had however, gradually sapped the inner vitality of the social system and Sindh fell without much resistance before the Muslim armies.

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“Satyameva Jayate” (Truth Alone Triumphs) is a mantra from the ancient Indian scripture Mundaka Upanishad. Upon independence of India, it was adopted as the national motto of India. It is inscribed in Devanagari script at the base of the national emblem. The emblem and words Satyameva Jayate are inscribed on one side of all Indian currency. The emblem is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Asoka which was erected around 250 BC at Sarnath, near Varanasi in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

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The ruins of Harrappa were first described in 1842 by Charles Masson in his Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab, where locals talked of an ancient city extending “thirteen cosses” (about 25 miles), but no archaeological interest would attach to this for nearly a century. In 1856, General Alexander Cunningham, later director general of the archeological survey of northern India, visited Harappa where the British engineers John and William Brunton were laying the East Indian Railway Company line connecting the cities of Karachi and Lahore. In 1872–75 Alexander Cunningham published the first Harappan seal (with an erroneous identification as Brahmi letters). It was half a century later, in 1912, that more Harappan seals were discovered by J. Fleet, prompting an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall in 1921–22 and resulting in the discovery of the civilization at Harappa by Sir John Marshall, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats, and at Mohenjo-daro by Rakhal Das Banerjee, E. J. H. MacKay, and Sir John Marshall

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Epigraphy is the study of inscriptions on rocks, pillars, temple walls, copper plates and other writing material. It is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the writing and the writers. It serves as primary documentary evidence to establish legal, socio-cultural, literary, archaeological, and historical antiquity on the basis of engravings.

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Sikhara, a Sanskrit word translating literally to “mountain peak”, refers to the rising tower in the Hindu temple architecture of North India. Sikhara over the sanctum sanctorum where the presiding deity is enshrined is the most prominent and visible part of a Hindu temple of North India. Sikhara was a major feature of the medieval times.

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A chaitya is a Buddhist or Jain shrine including a stupa. In modern texts on Indian architecture, the term chaitya-griha is often used to denote assembly or prayer hall that houses a stupa. Chaityas were probably constructed to hold large numbers of devotees and to provide shelter for them.

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two 6th century monumental statues of standing buddha carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan. They were dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were idols. On 8 September 2008 archeologists searching for a legendary 300-metre statue at the site of the already dynamited Buddhas announced the discovery of an unknown 19-metre (62-foot) reclining Buddha, a pose representing Buddha`s passage into nirvana

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In 1872–75 Alexander Cunningham published the first Harappan seal (with an erroneous identification as Brahmi letters). It was half a century later, in 1912, that more Harappan seals were discovered by J. Fleet, prompting an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall in 1921–22 and resulting in the discovery of the civilization at Harappa by Sir John Marshall, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats, and at Mohenjo-daro by Rakhal Das Banerjee, E. J. H. MacKay, and Sir John Marshall.

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Samudragupta (335-375 AD) of the Gupta dynasty is known as the Napoleon of India. Historian A V Smith called him so because of his great military conquests known from the Prayag Prashati written by his courtier and poet Harisena, who also describes him as the hero of a hundred battles. But some leading Indian historians criticise Smith and feel that Samudragupta was a far greater warrior than Napoleon, as the former never lost any battle.

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Ajivika (“living” in Sanskrit) was a system of ancient Indian philosophy and an ascetic movement of the Mahajanapada period in the Indian subcontinent. Ajivika was primarily a heterodox Hindu (Nastika) or atheistic system. The Ajivikas may simply have been a more loosely-organized group of wandering ascetics (shramanas or sannyasins). One of their prominent leaders was Makkhali Gosal. Ajivikas are is thought to be contemporaneous to other early Hindu nastika philosophical schools of thought, such as Charvaka, Jainism and Buddhism, and may have preceded the latter two systems.

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There has been evidence that the people of the Indus Valley Civilization believed in some form of animal and nature worship. The figure of deities on the seals indicates that they worshipped gods and goddesses in the human form. No major sculpture survives but for a bust thought to be of a major priest and the stunning bronze dancing girl. The Divine Mother appears to have been an important goddess, due to the countless terra-cotta statues of her that were found. It follows a school of thought that would become prevalent later as well, of the female energy being regarded as the source of all creation. What is most interesting is the existence of a male god which has been identified as a proto-type of an important God of the religion of Hinduism, lord Shiv. The fact that the same God is still worshipped today, and has been for the last five thousand years is one of the remarkable features of Indian culture. Even evidence of the Bhakti cult (loving devotion to a personal God) has been found at Indus Valley Civilization sites, and the Bhakti cult also has a large following even today. It can therefore be concluded that there is a close relationship between the beliefs of the Indus Valley Civilization and that of modern Hinduism.

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Suvarnabhumi is a Sanskrit term meaning the “Golden Land” or “Land of Gold”, coined by the ancient Indians which refers broadly to Southeast Asian region across Gulf of Bengal and Eastern Indian Ocean; Lower Burma, Lower Thailand, Lower Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra. Although it seems to cover vast region in Southeast Asia, it is generally accepted that the name Suvarnabhumi was first used to refer more specifically to Lower Burma. Another term which was used by the ancient Indians is Suvarnadvipa which means the “Golden Peninsula/Island”. Suvarnabhumi may have been used primarily as a vague general designation of an extensive region in Southeast Asia, but, over time, different parts of it came to be designated by the additional epithets of island, peninsula or city

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The Junagadh rock inscription, found in Junagadh, was carved under the orders of King Rudradaman, who had obtained the title of Mahakshatrapa. He was the grandson of the famous Mahakshatrapa Chastana and was a Saka ruler from the Western Kshatrapa dynasty. The inscription is a chronicle about the rebuilding of a dam named Urjayat around the lake Sudarshana. The dam lay in the region of Saurashtra and the closest town appears to have been a place called Girinagar. It was fed by the rivers Suvarnasikata and Palasini, along with other smaller streams. The dam was originally built by Vaishya Pushyagupta who was the governor of the region under Chandragupta Maurya. Conduits from the dam were later built under orders of his grandson; Emperor Asoka

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Nalanda was an ancient centre of higher learning in Bihar, India. It was a Buddhist centre of learning from the fifth or sixth century CE to 1197 CE. Nalanda flourished between the reign of the Sakraditya (whose identity is uncertain and who might have been either Kumara Gupta-I or Kumara Gupta-II) and 1197 CE, supported by patronage from the Hindu Gupta rulers as well as Buddhist emperors like Harsha and later emperors from the Pala Empire.

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The city of Mahabalipuram was largely developed by the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I in the 7th century AD. The mandapa or pavilions and the rathas or shrines shaped as temple chariots are hewn from the granite rock face, while the famed Shore Temple, erected half a century later, is built from dressed stone. The Pancha Rathas shrines were carved during the reign of King Mahendravarman I and his son Narasimhavarman I. The purpose of their construction is not known, structures are not completed.

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Dhanvantri is an Avatar of Vishnu from the Hindu tradition. He appears in the Vedas and Puranas as the physician of the gods (devas), and the god of Ayurvedic medicine. It is common practice in Hinduism for worshipers to pray to Dhanvantri seeking his blessings for sound health for themselves and/or others. Dhanvantri is depicted as Vishnu with four hands, holding medical herbs in one hand and a pot containing rejuvenating nectar called amrita in another. The Puranas state that Dhanvantri emerged from the Ocean of Milk and appeared with the pot of nectar during the story of the Samudra or Sagar manthan whilst the ocean was being churned by the devas and asuras, using the Mandara mountain and the serpent Vasuki.

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