ABSTRACT
Until about 500 the history of India was primarily north Indian history. The great empires of ancient India from the times of the Mauryas to the Guptas were based on the north of India. They rarely made much of a direct political impact on the south. These great empires were fascinating, but the millennium between the decline of the Gupta empire and the rise of the Mughal empire deserves attention too. Early modern historiography tended to depict the history of early medieval India as a period of political fragmentation and cultural decline and devoted to this period just as many pages as to Alexander’s India campaign and the Indo-Greek kings. Only in recent decades has more research been done on this neglected millennium during which important regional kingdoms vied with each other for supremacy. This period is interesting not only in terms of regional history but also because of the contribution which it has made to Indian history in general.
