What Was the Golden Age of India?

Okay, but what exactly was the Golden Age of India? This period of history truly proves the passage, one man's trash is another man's treasure, since as the Western Roman Empire was starting to fade into history, the Gupta Empire had established its rule over Northern India, and set forth numerous advancements that the modern world as we know it could not have been built without. And yet not many in the West really know about this era of Indian history, so what exactly happened during this period that made it India's Golden Age? By the way, if you were wondering why the intro was different, that's because this video is part of the YouTube History Group's collaboration on the history of India. We have a massive collab going on between these 13 channels, hence why I'm uploading on a Friday, all in chronological order. If you just so happen to be watching the whole playlist, you'll have just come off from And now it's my turn to go on to the Golden Age of India. The Golden Age of India is generally said to have lasted from the 4th to 6th centuries AD, largely during the reign of the Gupta Empire over Northern India, unfortunately South India wouldn't really have their historical Golden Age until the 10th century with the Cholas. The Gupta Empire started sometime around the mid-3rd century, having originated somewhere in the north of India along the Ganges, though records of their origins are pretty murky. The empire first started to grow under the reign of Chandragupta, the first one, not to be confused with the one who came before him. Chandragupta was not the first king of the Gupta dynasty, but he did rapidly expand the kingdom and conquered enough of the smaller states in the area to call himself the Maharaja Dheeraja, or the King of Great Kings, with his son Samudragupta and his later descendants expanding his realm even further. Wow, it's almost as if this was some sort of empire. But what exactly made this era in particular the Golden Age of India? To put it simply, this era of Indian history was an era of general prosperity and that saw a huge expanse in all fields from science to literature. Just as an example, by looking at lunar eclipses, mathematician Aryabhata theorized that the Earth was indeed round and spun on its axis, something Eratosthenes had already worked out half a millennium prior, but give him a break, news was very slow back then. It was also worked out that the planets don't shine from their own light, but rather by reflecting the light of the sun. Of course, had they wanted to measure the circumference of the spherical Earth, they did also come up with an invention that could help them do so, something as revolutionary even to this day as it was… obvious in hindsight. For that, we will need to count down from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. It was around this time that the base 10 positional numeral system that we still use to this day was invented in India, having spread to the west via Arabia, hence as to why we call them Arabic numerals, and proving as useful there and in Europe as in India. Beforehand, Roman numerals were the norm, but if you're not used to using them they can be a bit clunky, since you have to look very closely at the order of the letters to determine their meaning, and they can get very long. For instance, around what year did the Gupta Empire fall? Well in Roman numerals, D-X-L-I-I-I, okay so that's a 500 plus a 10, no, plus a 50 minus a 10, plus 3 ones. In these new numerals however, it's trivial, just set up the number of orders of magnitude that you need, with the help of that very useful number to represent 0, then add 5 one That's not even to mention how the old Roman system stopped adding new characters at 1000, whereas Indian numerals can make numbers not only so much more compact, but also so much bigger. For example, if you look below this video to the subscribe button, you'll see a number that looks like this, but put it in Roman numerals and it looks like someone left the microwave on. Now enough about numbers, at least before I start losing my audience, this period also saw an explosion in important literature, perhaps most notably a text called the Mahabharata, which narrates the struggles of the Kurukshetra War and philosophical discussion about the four goals of life, or Purushartha. At around 200,000 lines, the Mahabharata comprises roughly 1.8 million words, described as the longest poem ever written, and described by many as having as much importance on world history as the Bible or the works of Homer. All this isn't even to mention the works of Kalidasa, described as the greatest playwright of Indian history, and also other works including the Ramayana, the Panchatantra, and many others. Okay, fine, and the Kama Sutra. Between the scientific advancements, the explosion in influential literature, advancements in mathematics, and all of that happening under a period of relative peace and stability under one unified empire, goes to show why many historians, although not undisputedly, call this period India's Golden Age. Thank you as always for watching, I kept this video a bit shorter than normal for the sake of the collab, so I hope you enjoy this sort of mini-sode, I guess. If you aren't already watching the playlist, I've linked it up here, the previous video was from Sam Aronow, and the next is from Voices of the Past. And if you are on the playlist and I'm new to you, be sure to subscribe if you like this to learn something new every Sunday.