Ancient History

Upagupta was a Buddhist monk. According to some stories in the Sanskrit Avadana he was the spiritual teacher of Asoka the great Mauryan emperor. Upagupta’s teacher was Sanavasi who was a disciple of Ananda, the Buddha’s attendant. Due to the absence of his name in Theravada literature it is assumed that Upagupta was a Sarvadin monk.

Shakya was an ancient tribe (janapada) of the Indian Subcontinent in the 1st millennium BCE. In Buddhist texts the Shakyas, the inhabitants of Shakya janapada, are mentioned as a Kshatriya clan of Gotama gotra.

Ashoka built the Sarnath pillar to commemorate the site of the first preaching of Lord Buddha, where he taught the Dharma to five monks. The Lion Capital of Ashoka comprises four lions, standing back to back, mounted on a cylindrical abacus. The abacus features the sculptures of an elephant, a galloping horse, a bull, and a lion, separated by intervening 24-spoked Dharma wheels over a bell-shaped lotus. The four animals in the Sarnath capital are believed to symbolize different phases in Lord Buddha’s life.

Kadambari is a romantic novel in Sanskrit. It was substantially composed by Banabhatta in the first half of the 7th century, who did not survive to see it through completion.

The Indus Valley Civilization, marked by its remarkable level of urbanization despite being a Bronze Age culture, is noted for its cities built of brick, roadside drainage system, and multistoried houses. Houses were one or two stories high, made of baked brick, with flat roofs, and were just about identical. Each was built around a courtyard, with windows overlooking the courtyard.

Nalanda was an ancient center of higher learning in Bihar, India. It was a Buddhist center of learning from the fifth or sixth century CE to 1197 CE. Nalanda flourished between the reign of the Chakraditya (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

At the time of the Buddha, Kushinagar was the capital of the Mallas, and the scene of the Buddha’s death. The Buddha died of old age, when he was eighty years old. The death was triggered by his body reaction to a dish of wild mushroom.

Bodh Gaya is a religious site and place of pilgrimage associated with the Mahabodhi Temple Complex in Gaya district in the Indian state of Bihar. It is famous for being the place where Gautama Buddha is said to have obtained Enlightenment (Bodhimandala). According to Buddhist traditions, circa 500 BC Prince Gautama Siddhartha, wandering as an ascetic, reached the sylvan banks of Falgu River, near the city of Gaya.

In view of the large number of figurines found in the Indus valley, some scholars believe that the Harappan people worshipped a Mother goddess symbolizing fertility, a common practice among rural Hindus even today.

The most characteristic feature of the Harappan Civilization was its urbanization. The cities show evidence of an advanced sense of planning and organization. The town was extremely well planned. The street ran straight and at right angles to each other following the grid system.

The so-called "granary" of Harappa is found on Mound F. It is a brick structure that was built on a massive brick foundation over 45 meters north south and 45 meters east- west. It was near the river Ravi.

The developments and features of the early civilizations of Mesopotamia (Sumer), Egypt, India (Indus River Valley, Harappa), China (Shang dynasty), and Mesoamerica (Olmec), starting from the creation of villages to the formation of civilizations. These civilizations appear to have developed in response to their environment and in reaction to their human need for survival and security.

The Indus Valley Civilization has been assigned the period 2500-1800 BC on the basis of Radio carbon dating.

The unihorn bull is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. The unihorn bull was depicted in ancient seals of the Indus Valley Civilization and was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, and Aelian.

The Indus Valley Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation mainly in the northwestern regions of the South Asia, extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India.