Classical Civilizations in India

541 Words3 Pages
The Classical Civilization: India generated impulses that are still felt in India today and that continue to differentiate India from other major civilizations in the world. China and India produced important cities and engendered significant trade, which added to social and economics complexity and also created the basis for most formal intellectual life, including schools an academies. When Alexander the Great invaded India in 327 B.C.E., he allowed important Indian contacts with Hellenistic culture. Aryan; also called the Vedic and Epic ages; migrants came in terms with agriculture. Hinduism was sponsored shrines for its worshipers. Hinduism changed from Aryan to Gupta from the collapse of the Kushan state and by 200 B.C.E. ushered in another hundred years of political unsteadiness. Unlike the other entire world religions, Hinduism had no particular founder, no central holy figure from whom the basic religious beliefs stemmed. This helps explain why the religion unfolded so steadily sometimes in reaction so competing religions such as Buddhism or Islam. Hinduism pursued numerous religious approaches, from the strictly ritualistic and ceremonial approach many Brahmins preferred, to the high-soaring mysticism that sought to unite individual humans with an all-embracing divine principle. Hinduism also provided a basic, if complex, ethic that helped supply some unity amid the various forms of worship. The illustrated a central emphasis on the moral law of dharma as a guide to living in this world simultaneously pursuing higher, spiritual goals. The concept of dharma directed attention to the moral consequences of action and at the same time the need to act. The Mauryan Dynasty had a considerable influence on other parts of the world. The Indian Ocean dominated at this point by Indian merchants and missionaries, was the most active linkage point among cultures,

More about Classical Civilizations in India

Open Document