IGNOU HISTORY NOTES : India Earliest Times to the 8th Century A.D - Regions in Indian History:Formation and characteristics

IGNOU HISTORY Study Notes for IAS, UPSC Exams

India Earliest Times to the 8th Century A.D

Regions in Indian History:Formation and characteristics

Structure

2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The Dynamics of Regional Transformation
2.2.1 Uneven Patterns of the emergence of Historical Regions
2.2.2 The Ceramic Evidence
2.2.3 The Literary Evidence
2.3 Force of Regions in Indian History
2.3.1 The Chakravatia Conapt
2.4 The Hierarchy of Regions
2.4.1 Major Geographical Influences
2.4.2 Nuclear Regions
2.4.3 Settlement Structure in Time and Spce
2.5 Formation of Some Regions in Early India
2.5.1 The Gangetic Basin
2.5.2 The Tamil Country
2.5.3 The Deccan: Andhra and Maharashtra
2.5.4 Kalinga and Ancient Orissa
2.5.5 The North-West
2.6 Let Us Sum Up
2.7 Key Words
2.8 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

2.0 OBJECTIVES

After reading this Unit you should be able to explain :
Why it is necessary to know about regions if one has to understand different stages of Indian history,
How regions emerged, and In what way the nature of a region could differ from that of the other.

2.1 INTRODUCTION

In Unit I we have seen that the Indian subcontinent is constituted by a number of regions and
that each region has some special characieristics of its own. In the course of the historical
evolution of the country, the regions came to acquire special cultural features as well and in
many ways-in the sense of shared historical tradit~on, in language, in social organization, in art
fonns-it is possible to recognize differences between one region and another. In Indian
history, therefore, there have been dual processes of the evol~ltion of common social and
cultural norms and institutions as well as consolidation of the structures of recognizable
regions.
It has also to be remembered that in history the processes of the emergence of regions have
been uneven. Therefore, in the past, as induced even today, great dissimilarities in pattern of
historical change, existed between different regions, although no region has ever remained
completely isolated. This unit is concerned with elucidating the processes of the formtion of
regions in Indian history and with showing how they differed from one another. An
understanding of the nature of regions constituting the Indian sub-continent is necessary to
understand how the stages of the evolution of Indian society varied in space and time.