Northern South Asia

Dominated by the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the region is home to about half a billion people and is the poorest region of the subcontinent.

History

Ancient era

The sixteen "mahajanapada" dynasties flourished in Northern South Asia starting in the sixth century BC, and the region was known as Aryavarta. They were conquered by the Maurya Empire starting in the late fourth century BC. This was then replaced by a number of competing polities that fought over territory until the development of robust states starting in the fourth century AD. Throughout the first millennium AD, regional political dynasties emerged that formed alliances and controlled vast swathes of the region.

From the tenth century CE until about the eighteenth, it was invaded and ruled by Muslims from Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia. Persian became the language of the courts, and influenced vernacular languages; this is when Hindi and Urdu, two prominent modern-day standards in South Asia, first started to emerge from the Hindustani language.

Modern era

After the 1947 partition, religious nationalism led to a starker divide between Hindi and Urdu, which were respectively modified to have a greater share of their vocabularies come from Sanskrit and Perso-Arabic sources.