In my last post I had listed out the various Indian Kingdoms and the duration of their reigns through our recorded history. That timeline gives a great look at the march of time through the ages. But it does not give a good idea of a comparison of how long each kingdom existed.
So, today's post ( a bit short though) is on the absolute length of each kingdom. We do not worry about where it was in the relative timescale here.
We know that India is a young country. But how young ?? See the below chart.
There ! India is right at the bottom. I had left out some very small and short lived states in the historical list earlier - and well, India is just a bit longer than them. Most of these empires are based on the reign of a single ruler/king. India at 70, just is beginning to feature in the list.
Hope to see it grow up upwards as the years march onwards !
But then, this huge list does not give a very good idea of a relative size. How much longer did the British rule ? How long did the longest living kingdom exist ?
So, here is another chart - but based on only a few that I found interesting.
Alright ! Lets take the 70 years of the Republic of India as a single unit of time.
The top 4 empires were 20 times longer at the least. In fact, the Pandayan Dynasty lived on for a cool 2350 years till the mid 16th Century. Obviously this begets the question whether the timeline in Wikipedia for this empire is correct ? Wikipedia lists this as having 3 different stretches - maybe it had its ups and downs ? I do not know - needs more study.
But as with the other top 4, these start in sometime in BC - and we know that these dates are best guesses, so would have an element of error in them. However, the end dates are pretty well known - so there is credence to these long lived dynasties. I would love it if people can point me towards details of these empires.
The Cholas is an interesting empire. It spread from south India all the way to the Indonesian islands. How could they have managed this huge an empire over the seas in that time - without the means of instant communications ? Amazing !
We hear that the Mughals and the British ruled for a very long time. Well, the data is not that much in favor of them.
The entire mughal sultanates, from their times of conquests in India till their ultimate decimation by the British existed only 5 units of time.
And the British ? Even less. So less in fact that I have include the Company Company and the British Raj - as just by themselves they were for a very short duration. The British Raj was actually just a bit longer than the Indipendent India. Just 89 years in fact. However, most of the infrastructure had been built in that time. This begets the question - what have we really done in the last 70 years ?
So, today's post ( a bit short though) is on the absolute length of each kingdom. We do not worry about where it was in the relative timescale here.
We know that India is a young country. But how young ?? See the below chart.
There ! India is right at the bottom. I had left out some very small and short lived states in the historical list earlier - and well, India is just a bit longer than them. Most of these empires are based on the reign of a single ruler/king. India at 70, just is beginning to feature in the list.
Hope to see it grow up upwards as the years march onwards !
But then, this huge list does not give a very good idea of a relative size. How much longer did the British rule ? How long did the longest living kingdom exist ?
So, here is another chart - but based on only a few that I found interesting.
Alright ! Lets take the 70 years of the Republic of India as a single unit of time.
The top 4 empires were 20 times longer at the least. In fact, the Pandayan Dynasty lived on for a cool 2350 years till the mid 16th Century. Obviously this begets the question whether the timeline in Wikipedia for this empire is correct ? Wikipedia lists this as having 3 different stretches - maybe it had its ups and downs ? I do not know - needs more study.
But as with the other top 4, these start in sometime in BC - and we know that these dates are best guesses, so would have an element of error in them. However, the end dates are pretty well known - so there is credence to these long lived dynasties. I would love it if people can point me towards details of these empires.
The Cholas is an interesting empire. It spread from south India all the way to the Indonesian islands. How could they have managed this huge an empire over the seas in that time - without the means of instant communications ? Amazing !
We hear that the Mughals and the British ruled for a very long time. Well, the data is not that much in favor of them.
The entire mughal sultanates, from their times of conquests in India till their ultimate decimation by the British existed only 5 units of time.
And the British ? Even less. So less in fact that I have include the Company Company and the British Raj - as just by themselves they were for a very short duration. The British Raj was actually just a bit longer than the Indipendent India. Just 89 years in fact. However, most of the infrastructure had been built in that time. This begets the question - what have we really done in the last 70 years ?
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