Why were indigenous Indian empires so weak after 1100 AD ?

[AmreekanDesi]

@Muloghonto What is your take on the Hindutva claims that famous Mughal and muslims structures such as Taj Mahal and Humayun's tomb were actually hindu temples? I remember reading an article where the same author claimed that even the muslim center of worship in makkah has hindu origins? whats your take/

[Muloghonto]

@Muloghonto What is your take on the Hindutva claims that famous Mughal and muslims structures such as Taj Mahal and Humayun's tomb were actually hindu temples? I remember reading an article where the same author claimed that even the muslim center of worship in makkah has hindu origins? whats your take/

That is a hot potato more to do with politics than history. Makah being hindu is laughable. Yes, the pre-muslim makkah people had many Gods but thats like saying the greeks and romans were hindus because they had war god and love god and this god and that god.

[rkt.india]

Who was Vikramaditya whose name we have Vikram Samvat?

[Muloghonto]

Who was Vikramaditya whose name we have Vikram Samvat?

A king of malwa/ujjain around 20bc who defeated the sakas and indo parthians who'd previously beat the indo-greeks around 80bc and took over entire western greater india up to mathura. Sent from my GT-S5830D using Tapatalk 2

[Muloghonto]

there have been several really influential and illustrious vikramadityas in indian history. There is vikramaditya of ujjain, the guy who stopped saka expansion. Tgen there is vikramaditya of the chalukyas who was a great king and involved in the chola wars. The most famous is chandragupta vikramaditya II, the gupta emperor who finally ended the shaka kingdom for good and in whos court kalidas resided. Sent from my GT-S5830D using Tapatalk 2

[rkt.india]

A king of malwa/ujjain around 20bc who defeated the sakas and indo parthians who'd previously beat the indo-greeks around 80bc and took over entire western greater india up to mathura. Sent from my GT-S5830D using Tapatalk 2

He is the one who is associated with story of Vikram-Vetal.

[Vilander]

Don't get me wrong. Very few kings in history have been recorded as being the 'tip of the spear'- being at the very frontline of the engagement. Most kings who fought, fought within a vanguard, which means they are in battle, just not the foremost position in his troops or anything. Only if you got old or crippled (like Timur), did you get to play the general at the back. In this aspect, the Romans & the Chinese were the most pragmatic. We know of julius ceasar the great general/conqueror. The big difference is, in all but one battle, Caesar never picked up a sword or a bow or anything. He sat back, told his men to go to positions x,y,z etc. and 'orchestrated' the battle. In the pre-feudal republic/early centralized empire days ( Magadh), this too was done. but this was not how feudal society worked. You didn't get to be Rana Pratap by sitting at the back and telling men to do what is best. Even if that was the most pragmatic choice, it was not 'man enough' of a choice. You had to fight. Or else you were a darpok. This is not just an indian anomaly, its a feudal anomaly seen in a lot of places in different times of history. Indians ofcourse, were easier to tool because of the nature of our armies. See, our entire battle-theories and battle-plans were drawn up by luminaries of great empires. They banked on the fact that we didn't just have one army, we'd have 3-4 armies, with divisions, etc etc. For eg, the two most powerful empires ironically, in the south, were the Chola and the Chalukya empires of 1100s. They both threw 15,000-25,000 elephants each with 400-500K troops in a giant campaign, with engagements having up to 150K troops and 5K elephants on EACH side. we adhered to ths theory too well. As in, we didn't adapt. When our kingdoms got smaller, particularly in the north, we didn't really adopt an army principle suited for smaller kingdoms. We adhered to the 'army structure' of the large empires, with much diminished numbers. Instead of banking more on horses and armored infantry, we adhered to the principle of 'heavy chariots, light infantry, light cavalry and elephants'. This was the composition, for example, of Anandapal of the Kabul Shahis (first of the many kingdoms to fall to the afghan-turkic onslaught). It totally ignored the fact that the structures dictated & enacted successfully by the Guptas, Mauryas, Sungas, Kushans, etc. was based on a treasury that was 100x bigger. When you have light infantry, the point is for them to not get killed, but to act as screens for the real killers. Who ? Elephant, cavalry and chariots. But mostly elephants: 2000-5000 of them on the battlefield armed with 2 archers and a mahout can kill probably at the rate of atleast few hundreds per minute. The thousands of light cavalry will run down all the injured/disorganized ranks while the chariots provide cover fire. The light infantry mostly melee all over the battlefield because they are there to add 'meat' to the sandwich really. However, this doctrine fails miserably when you have 10-15K horses, 40-50K light infantry , 1000 or so chariots and 100-200 or so elephants. . Now, you don't have enough elephants to 'pin' the opposition's cavalry ( who in the case of Iranians/Central Asians, ie, foreign threats, were armies composed of medium infantry, heavy cavalry and cavalry archers). Your infantry is mostly outclassed by the turki/afghan infantry and who really rely on their cavary to do all the killing. So in a way, it came down to a lot of things. Feudalism, fragmented polities, overwhelming military & political immigration from the invaders - they all played a part.

Mulog do you have any idea what was Allaudin Kilji's elephant force numbers when Gengis's offsprings was going to cross over to India, i read somewhere he had a sizeable one and that prevented imminent attack from the mongols.

[Muloghonto]

Mulog do you have any idea what was Allaudin Kilji's elephant force numbers when Gengis's offsprings was going to cross over to India' date=' i read somewhere he had a sizeable one and that prevented imminent attack from the mongols.[/quote'] Gnghis's offsprings and some of their relatives (as in influential generals/sultans) crossed over multiple times and devastated the lands around Punjab. One time they even showed up straight into northern UP, completely shocking and catching Alauddin out of position ( IIRC, thats the first time ever someone has crossed the Tibetan plateau to fight us, that too, in the west. Tibet has attacked India before and vice versa, but always through the Nathula Pass and Chumbi valley route.) Alauddin let them loot & pillage northern UP and carve a line towards Punjab, as the Mongols were leaving with their booty. Alauddin then ambushed them, utterly defeated them and sold each and every captive to slavery, including the high ranking blood of Genghis. But having said that, i am not sure what Alauddin's elephant corps numbers were. If i were to speculate, i'd say about 1000-2000 max. One consequence of the centuries of Chola-Chalukya wars and the Gujar-Pal-Rashtrakuta wars was that our native elephant population nearly collapsed. There are Chola inscriptions from later Chola period, despairing about the lack of elephants ( probably because when you rely on catching elephants from the wild mostly to fuel your army and get 20-30 thousand killed off practically every 1-2 generation for 300 years, their numbers are bound to fall pretty fast). I do not know of any northern records of such but its likely. In anycase, Alauddin did incoporate the elephant into his army- nobody is foolish enough to ignore the power of the war elephant if they are in a position to acquire it. But he was no prescriber to Indian war theory and did not rely on the idea of 'huge elephant division raining death from above to all and trampling everything else' as the primary battle tool. His was the central Asian model, modified for a farming civilization: huge number of cavalry, supported by huge number of infantry. Against the Mongols though, he relied mostly on his cavalry- the Mongols were simply too fast to fight otherwise: they came in exclusively cavalry army, came with a horse that could run forever (thus, always on the move, much more so than anyone else) and were intent to plunder, not conquer. Thus they were not prone to fighting any engagements that they thought could hurt them, repeatedly withdrawing from any major forces and instead devastating small garrisons and populated land. Alauddin and his general Zafar Khan were able to conrner or ambush the mongols several times.

[AmreekanDesi]

One of my conclusions is that we as indians have always lacked the aggression and confidence to make a mark on the world stage and are always ready to see someone else take the lead and follow them. we have never been a nation of leaders which is why external forces have always been able to rule us

[Muloghonto]

One of my conclusions is that we as indians have always lacked the aggression and confidence to make a mark on the world stage and are always ready to see someone else take the lead and follow them. we have never been a nation of leaders which is why external forces have always been able to rule us

I disagree. Indian empires have been a world stage player for a very long time. We slowly declined from the 1500s onwards, as europe caught up to historic powerhouses (India and China) and surpassed them in terms of knowledge, wealth and power. The simple fact is, India has not been as autocratic as China or as lucky as Europe. Our political class spent so little time ruling India as a whole that usually getting to India as a whole was a much, much bigger focus than expanding outside of India. India in the historic sense starts at Qandahar and Kabul, stetches all the way to arakan range boundary with burma. Everything outside this region was not really lucrative to go conquer. places like Balochistan, Afghanistan, Tibet ? whats there to conquer ? Plus, it was hard to conquer those lands for us- we were an elephant-chariot-light cavalry-light infantry based army. elephants dont like mountains very much, they also need a lot of water. how is Chandragupta supposed to take his elephants across the hindu kush-thousands of them- to conquer barren lands ? This was not a priority, atleast not till almost all of india was under one banner. it happened under the mauryas and we controlled well beyond modern day india. it also happened under the guptas but details are sketchy and those times coincide with the sassanids, a very powerful persian empire that controlled kabul-peshawar and were really friendly with the guptas. so why fight your friends ? Under the Delhi empire, some dynasties ruled kabul-peshawar-qandahar region to bengal, the mughals held on to this area very well too. I dont think its a matter of lack of leadership, its a question of opportunity and incentive. The incentive to hold barren lands in the periphery, purely out of a geopolitical necessity only arises when the bulk of your landmass is unified and pacified. like the chinese dynasties who from 200 bc onwards,almost always united all of historic china into one empire pretty much instantly. we were just never unified enough for any length of time to look outwards.

[jalebi_bhai]

It wasnt buddhism that made India fall to the invaders. One must remember that one of the richest and most successful (if shortlived, relatively speaking) Empire of alltime was the Kushan Empire- they were outsiders (though not Turki/Mongol/Afghan, they were the Tocharians- the Indo-Iranians who used to live in Tarim Basin) and they were mostly buddhists (with a few hindus). Its not like Buddhist empires havn't waged wars- just look at Burma vs Thailand vs Cambodia for like the last 1000 years. India's fall to the Islamic forces in 1193 is easily explained : India, from 500s BC to 1200s CE showed a clear pattern: The south were always small kingdoms (though very prosperous) and the North, from Kabul to Assam were either a collection of small kingdoms or one giant empire ( Magadh, Guptas, Gurjars, Palas, Harsha, Kushans, etc etc). When India was a giant empire in the north, we were usually the richest, most powerful and most populous empire right up to 1000 CE ( No empire surpassed Indian empires in the demographics, total wealth and sheer agricultural productivity in a 1300-1400 year span. Tang were the first to surpass Indian empires in these benchmarks). And nobody messed with us. Or when they tried, they got annihilated ( we were the first to not just stop, but utterly annihilate the undefeated forces of the Caliphate). But when we were a collection of small kingdoms, we were easy meat for the outsiders. Reason ? horses. The Afghans & Central Asians- first our distant ancestors, the Indo-European nomads, such as the White Huns, Tocharians, etc, then the Turks, Mongols, etc. had tons upon tons of horses. India, not so much. Yes, the western parts of India (and what would be Pakistan) had horses, particularly in the pastures up north but we never had the sheer volume of horses to match these extremely mobile horse-based armies. What we did have, were the hard-counter to horses: elephants. Elephants tool horses. Yes, they are slower, but they are better in battle in every other regard: more trainable, stronger, more intelligent, granting greater range & stability to mounted archery and above all- a beast of a killer in its own right. To top it all off, horses are afraid of elephants, so it totally hamstrings cavalry. You run around your elephants and the horses keep scattering. So its easy to see why when Chandragupta was running around with 10,000 elephants, Alexander was busy inventing excuses to GTFO India with some grace. But the elephant also has its problems: they are harder to control (no ****- they are way way smarter than horses! ofcourse an elephant is gonna tell you to F-off if you try to get it totally killed unlike the moron horse!) but above all, they are a bazillion times more expensive. Which means, whenever India had a big empire, we had the resources to maintain formidable elephant armies. When we were a small collection of petty kingdoms, the elephant factor disappeared because petty kings like Prithviraj or Jaisingh, Anandapal, etc. had less than a 100 elephants to fight with- which makes them go from 'totally annihilating any cavalry' to 'useful but not decisive', due to the low numbers. So India has a pattern. This pattern of 'foreigners invading India when India is a collection of smaller kingdoms, staying away when we were a big empire' culminated itself in the 12th century.

Hmmmm.......very interesting.......

[Vilander]

Gnghis's offsprings and some of their relatives (as in influential generals/sultans) crossed over multiple times and devastated the lands around Punjab. One time they even showed up straight into northern UP' date=' completely shocking and catching Alauddin out of position ( IIRC, thats the first time ever someone has crossed the Tibetan plateau to fight us, that too, in the west. [b']Tibet has attacked India before and vice versa, but always through the Nathula Pass and Chumbi valley route.) Alauddin let them loot & pillage northern UP and carve a line towards Punjab, as the Mongols were leaving with their booty. Alauddin then ambushed them, utterly defeated them and sold each and every captive to slavery, including the high ranking blood of Genghis. But having said that, i am not sure what Alauddin's elephant corps numbers were. If i were to speculate, i'd say about 1000-2000 max. One consequence of the centuries of Chola-Chalukya wars and the Gujar-Pal-Rashtrakuta wars was that our native elephant population nearly collapsed. There are Chola inscriptions from later Chola period, despairing about the lack of elephants ( probably because when you rely on catching elephants from the wild mostly to fuel your army and get 20-30 thousand killed off practically every 1-2 generation for 300 years, their numbers are bound to fall pretty fast). I do not know of any northern records of such but its likely. In anycase, Alauddin did incoporate the elephant into his army- nobody is foolish enough to ignore the power of the war elephant if they are in a position to acquire it. But he was no prescriber to Indian war theory and did not rely on the idea of 'huge elephant division raining death from above to all and trampling everything else' as the primary battle tool. His was the central Asian model, modified for a farming civilization: huge number of cavalry, supported by huge number of infantry. Against the Mongols though, he relied mostly on his cavalry- the Mongols were simply too fast to fight otherwise: they came in exclusively cavalry army, came with a horse that could run forever (thus, always on the move, much more so than anyone else) and were intent to plunder, not conquer. Thus they were not prone to fighting any engagements that they thought could hurt them, repeatedly withdrawing from any major forces and instead devastating small garrisons and populated land. Alauddin and his general Zafar Khan were able to conrner or ambush the mongols several times.

Rich info man very good. You mean Tibet vs Nepal or Indian kingdoms..where there Tibet vs Indian kingdoms proper engagements.. Selling as slaves how would that work would those guys escape and return they would be warriors right.. Basically Turk right Kilji's were amazing, probably the scale of Indian plain cities just made their cavalry forces too big to rout, and when mongols got ambushed by these they fell makes sense.

[Vilander]

[maniac]

@mulo

[AmreekanDesi]

I disagree. Indian empires have been a world stage player for a very long time. We slowly declined from the 1500s onwards' date= as europe caught up to historic powerhouses (India and China) and surpassed them in terms of knowledge, wealth and power. The simple fact is, India has not been as autocratic as China or as lucky as Europe. Our political class spent so little time ruling India as a whole that usually getting to India as a whole was a much, much bigger focus than expanding outside of India. India in the historic sense starts at Qandahar and Kabul, stetches all the way to arakan range boundary with burma. Everything outside this region was not really lucrative to go conquer. places like Balochistan, Afghanistan, Tibet ? whats there to conquer ? Plus, it was hard to conquer those lands for us- we were an elephant-chariot-light cavalry-light infantry based army. elephants dont like mountains very much, they also need a lot of water. how is Chandragupta supposed to take his elephants across the hindu kush-thousands of them- to conquer barren lands ? This was not a priority, atleast not till almost all of india was under one banner. it happened under the mauryas and we controlled well beyond modern day india. it also happened under the guptas but details are sketchy and those times coincide with the sassanids, a very powerful persian empire that controlled kabul-peshawar and were really friendly with the guptas. so why fight your friends ? Under the Delhi empire, some dynasties ruled kabul-peshawar-qandahar region to bengal, the mughals held on to this area very well too. I dont think its a matter of lack of leadership, its a question of opportunity and incentive. The incentive to hold barren lands in the periphery, purely out of a geopolitical necessity only arises when the bulk of your landmass is unified and pacified. like the chinese dynasties who from 200 bc onwards,almost always united all of historic china into one empire pretty much instantly. we were just never unified enough for any length of time to look outwards.

I disagree. India had wealth before but it was never a world power. It never reallly looked outwards like the Europeans did and Indian empires were content with being in indian territory? Our empires nevver had global aims which is shown bu the fact that none of our great empires had quality navies. Can you believe that at their peak the mighals (not indigenous but still) did not have a proper navy. Also in the post are you suggesting that India is historically not a single country/nation like the Chinese or other regions?

[AmreekanDesi]

That is a hot potato more to do with politics than history

. Makah being hindu is laughable. Yes' date= the pre-muslim makkah people had many Gods but thats like saying the greeks and romans were hindus because they had war god and love god and this god and that god.

Could you expand on this. Dont worry if its sensitive its an anonymous forum and everyone is old enough to take your opinion. Thanks in advance man

[Muloghonto]

Rich info man very good. You mean Tibet vs Nepal or Indian kingdoms..where there Tibet vs Indian kingdoms proper engagements.. Selling as slaves how would that work would those guys escape and return they would be warriors right.. Basically Turk right Kilji's were amazing, probably the scale of Indian plain cities just made their cavalry forces too big to rout, and when mongols got ambushed by these they fell makes sense.

Tibet had a very poweful phase between AD 600 and AD 900 when they finally lost to the Tang Dynasty and became their vassal ( from 900s AD to 1900s, Tibet was technically a vassal subject of China. China posted an official in Tibet who took care of Tibetan foreign relations, particularly with its southern neighbors like the Gorkhas, Nepalis, Kashmiris, etc but the Dalai Llama ran the country unfrettered). It was known as the empire of Tufan and for a brief period before the rise of the Pal dynasty, somewhere around 650s-700s AD, Tibet empire broke through Nathu La and controlled most of bengal & Assam. When you sold war captives as slaves, they were usually sold to the household of important nobles or shipped very far away from where they came. Imagine you are the slave of Alauddin's cousin. he's got a retinue of 4000-5000 warriors, lives in a castle, has another 4000-5000 people supporting them as farmers, cooks, cobblers, etc. How are you going to escape this crowd when you are a slave ? Or if you are shipped off to Bengal to be a slave to a noble. Returning to Mongolia would involve escaping and making your way through the empire all the way to Kabul...not easy. In anycase, Mongols were very competetive at claiming rulership and ruthless for their quest of power. Thats why the Mongol empire fell apart. Unless you were a direct descendant of Genghis (which none of the generals who invaded India were. They were blood of Genghis but not the sons of sons of Genghis), getting captured in battle and sold to slavery is good enough to disqualify your claims.

[Muloghonto]

I disagree. India had wealth before but it was never a world power. It never reallly looked outwards like the Europeans did and Indian empires were content with being in indian territory? Our empires nevver had global aims which is shown bu the fact that none of our great empires had quality navies. Can you believe that at their peak the mighals (not indigenous but still) did not have a proper navy. Also in the post are you suggesting that India is historically not a single country/nation like the Chinese or other regions?

The Nandas, Mauryas, Shungas, Kushans, Guptas, Satavahanas, Gujjars, Palas, Rashtrakutas and Cholas were definitely in the group of 'world powers' from 500s BC to 1000 AD period. Except for the Chinese Empire, Roman Empire, the Selucids, Sassanids & Parthians, nobody else even begins to compare with these empires ability to project power. The satavahanas are actually the first ever discovered archeological evidence (through their coins) of the existence of double-masted ships. The Periplus of Erythrean Sea ( a Greek manuscript detailing the geography and peoples around the arabian sea) is clear that the Indian merchants dominated the Roman-Egyptian-Greek to India trade. I must also point out that the Chola naval accomplishments were highly impressive. When Rajendra Chola (Or maybe it was Rajaraja, my dates are fuzzy on this) conquered Indonesia, it was the greatest sea conquest of mankind to date- no navy had crossed such a large body of water as the bay of bengal before the Cholas to subjugate another nation. Its one thing to coast-hop around the mediterranean, which is long but not wide, its another thing entirely sailing into open ocean across the bay of bengal and sailing a distance thats more than half way to Europe and America in 1000 AD to conquer another empire (not a bunch of tribals!). So no, Indian navy was extremely accomplished up to the 1000 AD mark. But from that point onwards, we lost our naval dominance, predominantly because we were ruled by Central Asian peoples who had little interest in the seas and navy. The native kingdoms were too busy protecting and losing their land to bother with a navy. The Indian navies also existed predominantly to protect the merchant routes. If you look at our hydrography, we have very far to go from Indian coast to go anywhere. By the 1000 AD, India had lost the merchant dominance of the arabian sea. Infact, we were no longer even a major player, as the dominance was a fight between the arabs, ethiopians and persians. So our naval needs declined in proportion to our naval trade dominance. Once the Cholas stopped being a power around 1200AD or so, we lost that too. There was a brief resurgence of navy under the Vijaynagara empire but it was too little too late, as the Indonesians, arabs and persians filled the BoB void in the 200 years or so period between ijaynagaras dominance and Chola collapse.

[Muloghonto]

Also, the charge of 'never looking beyond your region' against the Indians can be defended. Lets take three other world-dominant powers from the 500 BC to 1000 AD period: the Roman Empire, The Persian Empire and the Chinese Empire. Of these, its actually the Chinese Empires that were the least adventurous in the water and the Romans were the most expansive. But the Romans had no other power to contend with after they beat carthage in 200 bc and since then, their expansion in every direction bar east were unchecked coz they were basically fighting barbarian tribes, not empires or republics like themselves. The iranians did not expand much outside of greater iran either- they usually controlled things between indus and euphrates, the caucasus and the amu darya rivers usually formed its northern boundaries. But coming to indians, one must need a reason and opportunity to expand to foreign lands. As i noted before, Indians were far more concerned trying to rule entire india before going outside- which is quite logical. Now, only the Mauryas & Guptas have ever ruled what was effectively, most of India. That is about 300 years of 2300 years period. So opportunity was quite lacking. Also, the second part is important: need. What was the need to try and conquer Afghanistan or Central Asia or Tibet or Burma ? Burma was a giant jungle ( northern half of Burma still is), Tibet has literally nothng to offer except absurdly high alititude asphyxia, bitter cold and lack of water. Afghanistan has only one commodity to offer- gemstones. India on the other hand had everything it needed except horses,gemstones, silk and silver. We had oodles of gold, only makers of diamonds in the world, only makers of jute, cotton, black pepper and until 1300s AD, the largest exporter of cardammom, black pepper, cinnamon and many other valuable spices. We got gemstones & horses via trade with the the central Asians, we got silk from trading with China and we sucked Rome dry of its silver,selling it luxuries. So what is our incentive to conquer our fringe lands ? Look at it this way- what is the incentive for America to conquer Mexico ? What does mexico offer America ? Nothing economically or materially. Only conceivable reason to conquer mexico would be strategic goals. IE, that was the only reason why Indians would've ventured out of India- for geopolitical strategic concerns. This was the only reason why the Chinese conquered parts of Central Asia - to protect the silk route (strategy). But since a lot of Indian trade with the western and eastern partners happened via ships,our necessity to control lands through which our trade passed was much less. europeans had a lot of reasons to look to the outside- their lands were far less productive of cash crops and luxuries and they imported a lot of things. at the height of the roman empire, the average roman nobleman wore clothes made in india (cotton!), the sailors were extremely interested in jute ( very tough material good for sailing ropes and sails), copra (ropes), ate cardammom, rice(that they imported), black pepper, cinnamon and many other things. we also had a thriving herbal medicine industry too. in the same period, what did the kushans want from the romans ? except for tyrean purple (a unique dye made from crushed sea-shells) and silver, everything else was largely available in india. we produced some very good wine in the afghanistan region, we also had a lot of olive groves there. so you see, europeans had an inherent lack of luxury resources that motivated their rich and powrrful to go conquer or be interested in conquest. we had everything except silver. Which is nice to have, but 'our people needs silver, so lets go conquer the silver mine in iran' has never been a good enough reason to go to war.

[Muloghonto]

Oh and those who still think that India was not a world power, consider this: The Parthian empire and then the Sassanid Empire existed directly on our borders from about 100 BC to 650 AD. In those 700 years, the India-Persia border did not change much. Yes, sometimes we acquired Kabul-Peshawar and sometimes the Persians acquired Gandhara ( Islamabad region). But we didnt bother crossing the lower indus ( sindh balochistan border). Now, look on the other side. Persia and Rome were locked in a titanic war with the Romans for most of these 700 years. Atleast 1000 battles were fought, the Persian capital (Tifsun) was destroyed three times, seiged another three times. The persians captured or killed 2 Roman emperors and 2 Roman consuls( who were in power, similae to julius ceasar before he tried to become emperor). So tell me- why were the Persians so eager to try and conquer Roman lands but showed little interest in the far richer Indian lands ? The answer is simple: in the period of 100 bc to 650 ad, india was mostly an empire in the north. the Shungas (180 bc to 70 bc), the kanvas (70 bc to 0 bc), the kushans (50 ad to 200 ad) and the guptas ( 300 ad to 550s ad) were all quite capable of resisting the persians.