| The
culture of India was moulded throughout
various eras of history, all the while
absorbing customs, traditions and ideas
from both invaders and immigrants. Many
cultural practices, languages, customs
and monuments are examples of this co-mingling
over centuries. In modern India there
is remarkable cultural and religious diversity
throughout the country. This has been
influenced by the various regions of India,
namely South, North, and North-East, have
their own distinct identities and almost
every state has carved out its own cultural
niche. In spite of this unique cultural
diversity, the whole country is bound
as a civilization due to its common history,
thereby preserving the national identity.
India was
the birth place of religious systems such
as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism,
which have a strong influence not only
over India, but also the whole world.
Following the Islamic invasions and the
subsequent foreign domination from the
tenth century onwards, the culture of
India was heavily influenced by Persian,
Arabic and Turkic cultures. In turn, the
various religions and the multihued traditions
of India have influenced South East Asia
and other parts of the world. Mark Twain
wrote, India is the cradle of the human
race, the birthplace of human speech,
the mother of history, the grandmother
of legend, and the great grand mother
of tradition. Our most valuable and most
astrictive materials in the history of
man are treasured up in India only!
There are a large number of languages
in India; 216 of them are spoken by a
group of 10,000 persons or more. There
are many other languages in India which
are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people.
If these languages are included then there
are 415 living languages in India. Indian
philosophy throughout the ages has had
a tremendous impact on world thought,
especially in the east. Various theistic
schools of philosophy, such as the many
schools of Buddhism and Hinduism, have
has huge influences, but also, India produced
some of the longest and most influential
secular traditions of logic, rationalism,
science, mathematics, materialism, atheism,
agnosticism, etc, which are often overlooked
due to popular conception that India is
a 'mystical' country.
Many of
the complex scientific and mathematical
concepts such as the idea of zero, found
their way to Europe via Arab intermediaries.
The most famous school of Indian atheism,
is Carvaka, considered by some to be the
oldest materialistic school of thought
in the world, composed around the same
time as the Hindu Upanishads, as well
as the philosophy of Buddhism and Jainism.
This period around 600-400 BCE marked
a huge leap in both Indian philosophy
and world philosophy in general, with
contemporary Greek schools emerging simultaneously.
Some philosophical concepts from India
were introduced to the Greeks, especially
during the campaigns of Alexander the
Great, and vis a vis, leading some schools
of classical Greek philosophy to be almost
identical to prior Indian schools. |
