South Asia

South Asia

South Asia includes the countries of Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and the Maldives.

It is the home to one of the earliest civilizations in the world: the Indus Valley Civilization from 3300 BCE to 1500 BCE. This civilization created some of the earliest planned structure cities, and because it was so involved in trading with the early civilizations, there was an influx of new ideas brought into the culture, including the evolution of the Indo-European languages due to the entry of the Aryan people. South Asia has seen the rise and fall of many empires and one of the first great ones was the Mauryan Empire from 322 BCE to 185 BCE. This empire established the religion of Buddhism in the region and expanded and greatly improved the region’s security, trade, and overall military power over the rest of the world.

The next empires were seen mostly in the Indian subcontinent and some of these kingdoms such as the Vijayanagara Empire promoted the spread of Hinduism, but other kingdoms known as the Delhi Sultanate spread Islam in the region from 12th century to the 16th century. The Delhi Sultanate then became a greater part of the Mughal Empire until the beginning of the 18th century, and the region was becoming largely Muslim and many great monuments such as the Taj Mahal were built during this time.

The last worldly power to rule over much of South Asia were the British who ruled from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. One of the greatest effects of British colonialism was that most of the modern political borders that we see now were established. The British could no longer hold onto its colonies after World War II and they relinquished control, but realized that there were major conflicts between the Muslims and Hindus, so they created the political boundaries of the two pieces of Pakistan and India. This division, however, would cause more problems in the future.

Language-wise, South Asia is very diverse. There are mostly two branches of language in the region, one being the Indo-Iranian branch, which is part of the Indo-European language family. Some of the languages that this branch includes are Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and Gujarati. This particular branch encompasses most of the South Asian region. The other language family is the Dravidian languages, which can be seen in southern India and in parts of Sri Lanka, and include Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telegu. There are still hints of the Tibeto-Burman language family in South Asia, with the Tibetan language still spoken in some areas.

Religion-wise, as discussed above, South Asia houses many religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism, with Hinduism and Islam being the first and second most common, respectively. However, there have been many conflicts between these religions, such as the ongoing unease between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India over reasons such as the Kashmir region.