The History of India and the Development of Power

Historically, india tends to produce the same sort of patterns seen in other fertile regions like china and europe. There's a cycle where power centrs might be built up, then they're overthrown. You go into a period of fragmentation and localization, until a new power arises and unifies again. And so the cycle continues. What we're going to do now is trace how this cycle began and overtime led to a lasting civilization with its own distinct customs, traditions, shared identity. This consolidation happened partly through the development of hinduism,. A collection of beliefs, practices, teachings that you can put under the heading of religion, again in quotation marks.