Mahabharata | Historical Context

Mahabharata Historical Context

Scholars locate the historical setting of the Mahabharata in a vast area of northern India sometime around 1000 BC. The poem features the classical Indo-Aryan civilization—a culture that represents a mix of two groups: the indigenous Indus valley peoples and the Aryans. The latter group invaded the Indus region and subsequently assimilated elements of the Indus society as part of their own.

Indus Valley Civilization

Archealogical evidence has uncovered a somewhat mysterious Bronze Age culture that existed along the Indus river in what is today Pakistan, a nation situated to the immediate west of modern India. Contemporary with the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, the Indus Valley culture thrived between about 2500 and 1500 BC. Largely agricultural, the Indus peoples seem to have had a relatively complex society and advanced material culture. They lived in mud-brick dwellings, produced art and pottery, lived under a loosely democratic form of government, and offered women...
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