History of Classic Civilization of India

Person 1 It started when Siddharta Gautama or commonly known as (Buddha) was a wandering ascetic
and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the
Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic (śramaṇa). After leading a life of
begging, asceticism, and meditation, he attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in what is now India.

Person 2 The Buddha thereafter wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building
a monastic order. He taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading
to Nirvana, that is, freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His teachings are
summarized in the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and
meditative practices such as sense restraint, kindness toward others, mindfulness, and jhana/dhyana
(meditation proper). He died in Kushinagar, attaining paranirvana.

Person 3 Ancient India at the time of the Buddha was the classical era in Indian history, in which literacy
and urban civilization again appeared in the Indian subcontinent, a thousand years after it had
disappeared. It roughly corresponds, in the chronology of world history, to the centuries in which
Ancient Greece flourished.

Person 4 Chandragupta Maurya (350-295 BCE) was the first emperor of the Mauryan Empire in Ancient
India who expanded a geographically-extensive kingdom based in Magadha and founded the Maurya
dynasty. He reigned from 320 BCE to 298 BCE. The Maurya kingdom expanded to become an empire
that reached its peak under the reign of his grandson, Ashoka, from 268 BCE to 231 BCE. The nature of
the political formation that existed in Chandragupta's time is not certain. The Mauryan empire was a
loose-knit empire.

Person 5 Chandragupta Maurya raised an army, with the assistance of Chanakya, the author of
Arthashastra and his teacher, and overthrew the Nanda Empire, in 322 BCE thus laying the foundation
for the Maurya Empire. Chandragupta rapidly expanded his power westwards across central and
western India by defeating the satraps left by Alexander the Great, and by 317 BCE the empire had fully
occupied northwestern India. The Mauryan Empire then defeated Seleucus I Nicator, a diadochus and
founder of the Seleucid Empire, during the Seleucid–Mauryan war, thus acquiring territory west of the
Indus River, Afghanistan and Balochistan.

Person 6 Ashoka the Great, was the third emperor of the Maurya Empire of the Indian subcontinent
during c. 268 to 232 BCE. His empire covered a large part of the Indian subcontinent, stretching from
present-day Afghanistan in the west to present-day Bangladesh in the east, with its capital at
Pataliputra. A patron of Buddhism, he is credited with playing an important role in the spread of
Buddhism across ancient Asia.

Person 7 Mauryan Empire began to decline after the death of Ashoka in 232 BC. The last king was
Brihadratha was assassinated in 185 BC-183 BC by his general Pushyamitra Shunga who was a Brahmin.
The decline of the Maurya Dynasty was rather rapid after the death of Ashoka/Asoka. One obvious
reason for it was the succession of weak kings. Person 5 The caste system is a way of dividing society
into hereditary classes. The caste system in India originated with the arrival of the Aryans in India
around 1,500 BC. Transformed by Indian history over the centuries, especially by the Mughal Empire and
the British Raj as a means of social control, India's caste system consists of two different concepts: varna
and jati. Indian Names and Castes: 150 Popular Names with Meanings.

Person 1 The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE with the help of
elaborate mnemonic techniques. The mantras, the oldest part of the Vedas, are recited in the modern
age for their phonology rather than the semantics, and are considered to be "primordial rhythms of
creation", preceding the forms to which they refer. By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated, "by
enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base.

Person 7 Hindu reincarnation is a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth called samsara. By going through this
cycle, souls learn life lessons and integrate those lessons into their true self. Through a series of
incarnations, humans continue to develop until they reach spiritual self-realization or enlightenment.