page_title: History of India
section_title: Sanskrit epics
hierarchical_section_title: History of India / Iron Age (1500 – 200 BCE) / Second urbanisation (800–200 BCE) / Buddhism and Jainism / Sanskrit epics
context_page_description: According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. However, the earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Settled life, which involves the transition from foraging to farming and pastoralism, began in South Asia around 7,000 BCE. At the site of Mehrgarh, Balochistan, Pakistan, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle. By 4,500 BCE, settled life had spread more widely, and began to gradually evolve into the Indus Valley Civilization, an early civilization of the Old world, which was contemporaneous with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. This civilization flourished between 2,500 BCE and 1900 BCE in what today is Pakistan and north-western India and was noted for its urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage, and water supply.
  In the early second millennium BCE, persistent drought caused the population of the Indus Valley to scatter from large urban centres to villages.
context_section_description: The Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were composed during this period. The Mahabharata remains, today, the longest single poem in the world. Historians formerly postulated an "epic age" as the milieu of these two epic poems, but now recognise that the texts (which are both familiar with each other) went through multiple stages of development over centuries. For instance, the Mahabharata may have been based on a small-scale conflict (possibly about 1000 BCE) which was eventually "transformed into a gigantic epic war by bards and poets". There is no conclusive proof from archaeology as to whether the specific events of the Mahabharata have any historical basis. The existing texts of these epics are believed to belong to the post-Vedic age, between c. 400 BCE and 400 CE.
  According to the Puranic chronology and recent research conducted by scientists and astronomers, the events of these epics are stated to have happened before 3000 BCE.
caption: Manuscript illustration of the Battle of Kurukshetra.
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