List of Hindu empires and dynasties

The history of India up to (and including) the times of the Buddha, with his life generally placed into the 6th or 5th century BCE, is a subject of a major scholarly debate. The vast majority of historians in the Western world accept the theory of Aryan Migration with c. 1500-1200 BCE dates for the displacement of Indus civilization by Aryans and the earliest texts of the Rigveda. The Indian scholars, on the other hand, are mostly supporters of the Indigenous Aryanism that declares the indigenous nature of the Indian civilization and the c. 4000 BCE date for the earliest Rigvedas.

Early Indian history does not have an equivalent of chronicles like the ones established in the West by Herodotus in the 5th century BC or Kojiki / Nihongi in Japan. "With the single exception of Rajatarangini (History of Kashmir), there is no historical text in Sanskrit dealing with the whole or even parts of India" (R. C. Majumdar). While there are texts in Sanskrit, the Puranas, that profess to include the early Indian history, the Western scholars assume them to be compiled by brahmins in the 1st millennium CE, thus only being contemporary with the described facts from the time of the Guptas (3rd century CE). These texts are considered by Western scholars to be legendary, corresponding kingdoms are listed separately in the Puranic kings section.

|- |Mauryan Empire^{[verification needed]} |325 BCE^{[citation needed]} |180 BCE |Pataliputra |Sanskrit | India
Pakistan
Afghanistan |}

Note: Kingdoms that acted as princely states to the British Empire are not mentioned except for the time period when they exercised sovereign control.

Five Puranas (Vayu, Matsya, Brahmanda, Vishnu, Bhagavata) contain dynastic Puranic lists. Approach of researchers to these lists varies from outright skepticism, especially prevalent in the 19th century ("extravagant romances, ... works of imagination", "particular year is never mentioned") to cautious partial acceptance along the lines traced by F. E. Pargiter: "false genealogies ... imitate genuine genealogies", accepting limitations does not require to declare the absence of "any trust whatever". Ludo Rocher in his book "The Puranas" (1986) provides a long list of chronological calculations based on Puranic lists with a warning that they are "often highly imaginative".

• History of India
  • Greater India & Indosphere
  • Indianization of Southeast Asia
  • Kuru kingdom & Gandhara Kingdom
  • Puru and Yadu Dynasties
  • Indus Valley Civilisation
  • Janapadas & Mahajanapadas
  • Middle kingdoms of India
  • List of Indian monarchs
  • List of Jain states and dynasties
  • Muslim conquests of Afghanistan
• Hinduism
  • Solar dynasty & Lunar dynasty
  • History of Hinduism
  • Hindu cosmology
  • Bhagavad Gita
  • Vedas & Vedic Literature
  • Sanskrit literature
  • Yuga & Hindu units of time
  • Vedic period & Vedic science
  • Sangam period & Sangam literature
  • Hinduism in Southeast Asia

• Chaulagain, Nawaraj (2019). "Kingship (Hinduism)". Hinduism and Tribal Religions. Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. pp. 1–7. doi:10.1007/978-94-024-1036-5_83-1. ISBN 978-94-024-1036-5.
• Klostermaier, K.K. (2014). Hinduism: A Short History. Oneworld Publications. ISBN 978-1-78074-680-7. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
• Witzel, Michael (1990). "On Indian historical writing: The case of the Vaṃśāvalīs". Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies. 1: 1–57.
• Rocher, Ludo (1986). "The Purāṇas as Historical Documents". The Purāṇas. History of Indian literature. O. Harrassowitz. pp. 115–132. ISBN 978-3-447-02522-5. Retrieved 2024-09-23.