History
The region is known for the Indus Valley Civilization, centered in Pakistan, which was responsible for the birth of ancient South Asian culture. The flat and fertile terrain has facilitated the repeated rise and expansion of various empires, including the Gupta empire, Kanauj, Magadha, the Maurya Empire, the Mughal Empire and the Sultanate of Delhi – all of which had their demographic and political centers in the Indo-Gangetic plain. During the Vedic and Epic eras of Indian history, this region was referred to as "Aryavarta" (Land of the Aryans) which was bordered on the west by the Indus river and on the south by the Vindhya Mountain range. During the Islamic period, the Turkish, Afghan and Iranian rulers referred to this region as "Hindustan" (Land of the Hindus), deriving from the Persian term for the Indus River. This term was later used to refer to the whole of India but even into the modern era, the dialect of Hindi-Urdu spoken in this region is called Hindustani, a term which is also used for the local music and culture.
Both British and independent India also had their demographic and political centers here (first in Calcutta and then Delhi).many of the pillars,surveys of maurya dynasty are present there in these plains
Read more about this topic: Indo-Gangetic Plain
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)