an Indian/South Asian dark age?

[W.11]

period between bronze age collapse and emergence of maurya empire with lack of inscription and archaeological evidence can sometimes be declared as Indian dark age, but this notion can be easily challenged.

Maurya empire emerged with the ambitious chandragupta maurya and his vast empire expansion, a vast swathe of north india came under his empire including parts of afghanistan/kabul, bactria, eastern parts of iran and yet despite that no inscriptions have been dated to chandragupta period itself. even before that nanda empire emerged which has also been documented by foreign sources such as macedonian and the greek and yet there is complete lack of any and all inscription related to the nandas.

despite that there have been active contributions from indian scholars such as panini whose treatise on grammar has been declared as one of the most complicated works compiled due ancient periods which cannot be done without writing, this suggests that indians were churning out scholarship in the purported dark ages as well, even prior to panini we have examples of astrnomical treatises such as vedanga jyotisha and sulbasutras containing pythagoras theorum . Buddha, jain and other philosophical schools emerged during axial age, so there was clearly no lack of scholars during that period.

coinage of india can be dated to 885-850 BC based on kausami excavations as well which indicates economic strides made during that period.

a bronze brahmi writing from 2nd mil BC indicates that writing may well have been prevalent much earlier in south asia contrary to thinking that it only appeared during reign of ashoka.

regards

 

[Minho]

The "dark age" of South Asia was most certainly following the collapse of the Gupta Empire. That was the period when South Asia became fragmented and experienced a decay in economic, social, cultural, and scientific progress that made the bulk of the subcontinent susceptible to foreign invasion for the first time in history.

 

[W.11]

The "dark age" of South Asia was most certainly following the collapse of the Gupta Empire. That was the period when South Asia became fragmented and experienced a decay in economic, social, cultural, and scientific progress that made the bulk of the subcontinent susceptible to foreign invasion for the first time in history.

i dont think that the fall of gupta empire followed an indian dark age, it has been theorized that fall of gupta followed deurbanization and growth in rural india ad decline of indian literary traditions, this theory is contested as many new cities like sirpur have been discovered contrary to this notion. the muslim scholars also point to the lack of scholarship among the byzantines but they point no such thing among the indians who are credited being originators of many literary/scholarly works.

regards