The Indosphere — an encyclopedia of Indian civilization
- HinduThe Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva and Śākta currents, their deities, texts and philosophies.
- VedicThe Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas and Upaniṣads, the śrauta rites and the gods of the hymns.
- BuddhistThe Buddha, the saṅgha, the schools, and the spread of the Dharma across Asia.
- JainThe tīrthaṅkaras, the Digambara and Śvetāmbara traditions, ahiṃsā and anekāntavāda.
- SikhThe ten Gurus, the Guru Granth Sāhib, the Khālsā and the Panth.
- IslamicIslam in the subcontinent — the Sultanates, the Mughals, and the Sufi orders.
- HeterodoxThe Ājīvikas, Cārvāka materialism and the other śramaṇa currents outside the Vedas.
- Folk & RegionalVillage and mountain deities, clan cults and the local traditions beneath the great ones.
- Other FaithsZoroastrian, Jewish, Christian and Bahá’í communities of the subcontinent.
- Political & SecularStates, wars, economies and institutions — the history that is not a history of belief.
The Mahābhārata, mapped
The eighteen books across the land: the flight from the house of lac, the exile, Kṛṣṇa’s journeys, the kingdoms taking sides, and the war at Kurukṣetra day by day.
Open the map →
The Rāmāyaṇa, mapped
The road of the exile from Ayodhyā to Laṅkā and home: Bharata’s journey, Rāvaṇa’s flight, the search, Hanumān’s leap, the bridge and the war on the island.
Open the map →
The Indian Independence Movement
From the 1857 revolt to Partition — every satyagraha, revolutionary and Congress leader, in one place.
Read the collection →
European Colonial Rule in India
From Vasco da Gama's landfall to the last Viceroy — the Company's conquest and every Governor-General who ruled after it.
Read the collection →
The Maurya Empire
From Chandragupta to Ashoka — the first pan-Indian empire, and the emperor who renounced conquest after seeing what it cost.
Read the collection →
The Gupta Golden Age
Classical India at its height — the age of Aryabhata, Kalidasa, and a revival of Sanskrit literature and science.
Read the collection →
The Chola Empire
South India's great maritime power — temple-building, a navy that reached Southeast Asia, and the longest-lived dynasty in Indian history.
Read the collection →
The Vijayanagara Empire
The last great Hindu empire of the south, built in the fourteenth century as a bulwark against the Sultanates — and sacked in 1565.
Read the collection →
The Islamic Conquest of North India
Ghaznavid raids to the Delhi Sultanate, 1000–1526 — the temples destroyed, Nalanda burned, Delhi sacked twice, told without euphemism and without inventing what the sources don’t say.
Read the collection →
The Mughal Empire
From Babur to Aurangzeb — the empire that built the Taj Mahal, ran the Mansabdari system, and reached its widest extent just before it began to break apart.
Read the collection →
The Maratha Empire
Shivaji’s hill forts to a confederacy that broke Mughal power across the Deccan and north India.
Read the collection →
The Bhakti Movement
Devotion over ritual and caste — the poet-saints who reshaped Hindu religious life from the seventh century onward.
Read the collection →
- British BurmaBritish Burma was the territory of Burma under British rule, annexed in stages between 1826 and 1886, governed as a province of British India until 1937 and then as a separate colony until independence in January 1948.
- British MalayaBritish Malaya was the set of territories on the Malay peninsula and Singapore that came under British rule or protection between 1786 and 1914, comprising the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States and the Unfederated Malay States.
- Dutch East IndiesThe Dutch East Indies was the Dutch colonial state in the Indonesian archipelago, formed from the possessions of the Dutch East India Company after its dissolution in 1799 and ruled from Batavia until the transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia in 1949.
- Emirate of AfghanistanThe Emirate of Afghanistan was the Afghan state ruled by the Barakzai dynasty from the 1820s, which fought two wars with British India in the nineteenth century, had its eastern border fixed by the Durand Line in 1893, won full independence in 1919 and became a kingdom in 1926.
- French IndochinaFrench Indochina was the federation of French colonial territories in mainland Southeast Asia, formed in 1887 from Cochinchina, Annam, Tonkin and Cambodia, with Laos added in 1893, which lasted until the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva accords of 1954.
- Jammu and Kashmir (princely state)Jammu and Kashmir was the princely state ruled by the Dogra dynasty from 1846, when the British transferred the Kashmir valley to Gulab Singh by the treaty of Amritsar, until its accession to India in October 1947 and the war that divided it.
- Khanate of KalatThe Khanate of Kalat was a Baloch and Brahui state in Balochistan ruled by the Ahmadzai khans from the later seventeenth century, a British protectorate from 1876, and a princely state that acceded to Pakistan in 1948.
- Lao kingdomsThe Lao kingdoms of Luang Prabang, Vientiane and Champasak were the three states into which Lan Xang divided between 1707 and 1713, which fell under Siamese overlordship from 1779 and passed to French rule after 1893.
- The Hindu PantheonEvery deity of the tradition, Vedic to folk, each with an entry.
- Kingdoms of IndiaDynasties, empires, republics, sultanates and princely states.
- The MahābhārataAn atlas of the poem — books, figures, kingdoms, the war.
- The RāmāyaṇaAn atlas of the first poem — the exile, the search, the island.