Timeline

A timeline of Hinduism, 7000 BCE to the present

12 eras, each with its dated firsts. Dates are first datable attestations; each era links to the chapter with the evidence.

  1. c. 7000 – 3300 BCE Chapter 1 Majority view

    Before the Vedas

    The Neolithic and the substrate that Hinduism was built on

    Balochistan, Sindh, Kashmir, the Deccan, central India

    Key takeaways
    • Farming, zebu herding and burial with grave goods in South Asia long predate any Indo-Aryan speakers.
    • A 2025 study redates Mehrgarh's first farming to 5250–4650 BCE, about 1,750 years later than older accounts.
    • Deccan ashmounds record centuries of communal cattle-dung burning; what the rites meant is contested.
    • Village goddesses, serpent worship and sacred trees plausibly descend from this substrate, not from the Rigveda.

  2. c. 3300 – 1300 BCE Chapter 2 Contested

    The Indus Civilization

    A great religion we cannot read

    Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra basins — Sindh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Balochistan

    Key takeaways
    • The Indus script, found on about 4,000 objects, is undeciphered, so all claims about Harappan religion are inference.
    • The Pashupati seal shows a horned figure among animals; calling it 'proto-Shiva' is contested.
    • The cities emptied gradually after c. 1900 BCE amid aridification; there is no evidence of an invasion.
    • No horse, chariot, spoked wheel, iron, monumental temple or royal tomb has been found in mature Harappan levels.

  3. c. 1500 – 1200 BCE Chapter 3 Majority view

    The Oral Rigveda

    Early Vedic society, reconstructed from its own hymns

    Sapta Sindhavaḥ — Punjab, Haryana, eastern Afghanistan

    • c. 1400 BCE Ṛta — cosmic and moral order. The Vedic word for order. Not yet dharma, and not yet ethical in the later sense. Rigveda, Family Books (Maṇḍalas 2–7)
    • c. 1100 BCE Cosmic doubt stated in scripture. The creation hymn ends by doubting whether even God knows the answer. RV 10.129 (Nāsadīya Sūkta)
    • c. 1100 BCE The four varṇas. The only four-varṇa passage in 1,028 hymns, and it is in the latest layer. RV 10.90.12 (Puruṣa Sūkta)
    Key takeaways
    • The Rigveda's 1,028 hymns were memorized and recited without writing for about a thousand years, with remarkable accuracy.
    • Its world was the Punjab rivers: cattle, barley, bronze and horse chariots, with no cities, rice or iron.
    • Indra and Agni dominate; Vishnu has about five hymns and Rudra, later Shiva, about three.
    • Karma, rebirth, temples, image worship and caste by birth are all absent from the text.
    • The only four-varna hymn, the Purusha Sukta, sits in the latest layer, Mandala 10.

  4. c. 1200 – 900 BCE Chapter 4 Majority view

    Late Vedic

    Iron, rice, the Kuru state, and the age of ritual

    Kuru-Pañcāla — the Ganga–Yamuna doāb, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh

    • c. 1200 BCE Iron. The Rigveda has only undifferentiated ayas — copper and bronze. Atharvaveda (śyāma / kṛṣṇa ayas); finds at Malhar
    • c. 1100 BCE Rice. Absent from the Rigveda entirely. The surest marker separating early from late Vedic. Yajurveda saṃhitās (vrīhi)
    • c. 1000 BCE "Namaḥ Śivāya". First appears as flattery of a dangerous god — śiva is still an adjective, "auspicious". Taittirīya Saṃhitā 4.5.8 (Śatarudrīya)
    • c. 900 BCE Ritual compels the cosmos (bandhu). Power moves from the deity to the technician. The brahmin becomes indispensable. The Brāhmaṇas; Agnicayana
    Key takeaways
    • Between about 1200 and 900 BCE the Vedic centre moved east from the Punjab into the Ganga-Yamuna doab.
    • Iron and rice entered the language, and surplus farming supported the Kuru polity, the first state-like Vedic power.
    • The Brahmanas taught that correctly performed ritual compels the cosmos, making priests indispensable.
    • Rudra gained a whole liturgy, the Shatarudriya, where 'namah shivaya' first appears.
    • Texts begin describing hereditary subordination by varna; temples, karma and rebirth are still absent.

  5. c. 900 – 500 BCE Chapter 5 Majority view

    The Upanishadic Turn

    Karma, rebirth, and the discovery of the self

    Kosala, Videha, Kāśī, Pañcāla — the eastern Ganga plain

    • c. 700 BCE Karma as moral causation. Taught in private, away from the assembly — which is why we can tell it was new. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.2.13
    • c. 700 BCE Rebirth — saṃsāra. The Upaniṣads credit the doctrine to a kṣatriya king, not to brahmins. BU 3.2.13; Chāndogya 5.3–10 (Pañcāgni-vidyā)
    • c. 700 BCE Mokṣa — liberation as the goal. Replaces long life, sons and cattle as what religion is ultimately for. The older Upaniṣads
    • c. 700 BCE Ātman = Brahman. Relocates the sacred from the ritual arena into the person. Chāndogya 6.8.7 — tat tvam asi
    Key takeaways
    • Karma, rebirth, liberation and the self-absolute identity first appear c. 700–500 BCE, not in the Vedas.
    • The earliest karma passage, Brihadaranyaka 3.2.13, is taught in private, suggesting the idea was new.
    • The texts credit kings such as Pravahana Jaivali, not brahmins, with the doctrine of rebirth.
    • Cities, coins and a merchant class in the eastern Ganga plain are the likely setting.
    • The Upanishads hold several philosophies; later Vedanta schools read them in opposite ways.

  6. c. 600 – 200 BCE Chapter 6 Majority view

    The Shramana Challenge

    Buddha, Mahāvīra, and what Brahmanism had to become to survive them

    Magadha and the eastern Ganga plain; then the Mauryan empire

    • c. 500 BCE Ahiṃsā as a supreme value. Enters a tradition whose central rite had been animal sacrifice. Ācārāṅga Sūtra 1.4.1; Chāndogya 3.17.4 lists it earlier as one virtue
    • c. 500 BCE Renunciation as an institution. Absorbed by requiring everyone to renounce — last. Śramaṇa orders; the āśrama scheme in the Dharmasūtras
    • c. 250 BCE Writing. The Vedas had already been transmitted orally for roughly a thousand years. Ashokan edicts, Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī
    • c. 250 BCE Vegetarianism as prestige. A king publicly prohibits sacrificial slaughter in his own capital. Ashoka, Rock Edict 1
    Key takeaways
    • Buddhists, Jains and Ajivikas accepted karma and rebirth but rejected the Veda, sacrifice and brahmin authority.
    • Ashoka's edicts, c. 250 BCE, are India's first securely dated writing and ban sacrificial slaughter.
    • Ahimsa and vegetarianism entered Brahmanism under Shramana pressure; Vedic religion had sacrificed and eaten cattle.
    • The four ashramas began as alternative vocations and only later became life stages ending in renunciation.

  7. c. 200 BCE – 300 CE Chapter 7 Majority view

    Epic and Classical Synthesis

    The Gītā, the first images, and the birth of devotion

    Śuṅga, Indo-Greek, Śaka, Kuṣāṇa and Sātavāhana north; Tamil south

    • c. 110 BCE Bhakti — devotion, attested. A Greek ambassador calls himself a Bhāgavata and Vāsudeva the God of Gods. Heliodorus pillar, Besnagar
    • c. 200 BCE – 200 CE Avatāra — God takes birth. Nothing in the Vedas or Upaniṣads has a god descending into history. Bhagavad Gītā 4.7–8
    • c. 100 BCE – 200 CE Cult image — mūrti worship. The visual vocabulary comes largely from yakṣa and nāga cults, not the Veda. Gudimallam liṅga; Kuṣāṇa coins showing Śiva; Mathurā sculpture
    • c. 200 BCE – 200 CE Caste as a comprehensive legal order. Graded punishment, impurity rules, and the disabilities of the caṇḍāla. Manusmṛti
    • c. 200 BCE – 200 CE Women declared unfit for independence. Five centuries after Gārgī argued in open assembly. Manusmṛti 9.3
    Key takeaways
    • Image worship, temples, bhakti and the avatar doctrine all first appear between about 200 BCE and 300 CE.
    • The Heliodorus pillar, c. 110 BCE, shows a Greek ambassador worshipping Vasudeva as 'God of Gods.'
    • The Bhagavad Gita reconciles action, knowledge and devotion, and opens liberation beyond the priestly elite.
    • Rama is divine only in the Ramayana's later books; the core epic presents a heroic prince.
    • The Manusmriti hardened caste and women's subordination, though no premodern state enforced it.

  8. c. 300 – 650 CE Chapter 8 Majority view

    Puranic Hinduism

    The Goddess, the stone temple, and the religion's classical shape

    Gupta empire and successors; the Deccan; Southeast Asia

    • c. 400 CE The stone temple. A permanent residence for a god who can be seen. Darśana becomes central. Sanchi Temple 17; Udayagiri; Deogarh
    • c. 450–550 CE Tantra, attested in text. Supplies the ritual grammar of ordinary temple pūjā to this day. Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā
    • c. 550–600 CE The supreme Goddess. The first text making a female deity the source of the male gods' power. Devī Māhātmya, in the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa
    Key takeaways
    • Between 300 and 650 CE the stone temple, image worship, pilgrimage and festival calendar took their lasting shape.
    • The Devi Mahatmya, c. 550–600 CE, is the first text to make a goddess the supreme reality.
    • Sanchi Temple 17, c. 400 CE, is among the earliest surviving structural Hindu temples.
    • Vaishnava, Shaiva and Shakta communities crystallized, and the six philosophical darshanas were formalized.
    • The puja in most Hindu temples today is largely Tantric, not Vedic, in structure.

  9. c. 650 – 1200 CE Chapter 9 Majority view

    Bhakti and the Regional Turn

    Devotion in the mother tongue, and philosophy's classical age

    Tamil country, Kashmir, Karnataka, Bengal — regional kingdoms across the subcontinent

    • c. 700–750 CE Advaita as a system. One school among many at the time; its supremacy is a modern development. Śaṅkara, Brahmasūtrabhāṣya
    • c. 6th–9th c. CE Vernacular scripture (Tamil). Devotional poetry in a spoken language achieves liturgical status. Ālvārs and Nāyanārs; the "Tamil Veda"
    Key takeaways
    • Tamil poet-saints, the Alvars and Nayanars, made vernacular devotion a path to God open to women and outcastes.
    • Shankara taught that only Brahman is real; Ramanuja answered that God is personal and souls stay real.
    • Kashmir's Abhinavagupta and Karnataka's Basava produced the era's boldest philosophy and sharpest caste critique.
    • Chola temples such as Thanjavur's Brihadisvara (1010 CE) were landlords, employers and financial institutions.
    • Bhakti relativized caste for salvation but did not dismantle it in social life.

  10. c. 1200 – 1750 CE Chapter 10 Majority view

    Encounter with Islam

    Vernacular scripture, the Sants, and a religion that learns to name itself

    Delhi Sultanate, Vijayanagara, the Mughal empire — pan-India

    • c. 1200–1500 CE Hindu as a religious self-description. Identity forms in contrast to Islam — but there is still no "-ism". Sant poetry contrasting hindū and turk
    • 1574 CE Vernacular scripture (north). For hundreds of millions this, not Vālmīki, is the Rāmāyaṇa. Tulsīdās, Rāmcaritmānas (Awadhi)
    Key takeaways
    • From 1200 to 1750 bhakti went vernacular: Kabir, Tulsidas, Mirabai, Tukaram and Chaitanya sang in regional languages.
    • Tulsidas's Awadhi Ramcharitmanas, begun in 1574, became the Ramayana most Hindi speakers know.
    • Eaton documents about 80 temple desecrations over five centuries, mostly royal temples of defeated kings.
    • Guru Nanak's Sikhism emerged from the Sant milieu as a distinct religion, not a Hindu-Muslim blend.
    • Dara Shukoh's Persian Upanishads reached Schopenhauer and shaped Western views of Hindu thought.

  11. c. 1750 – 1947 CE Chapter 11 Majority view

    The Invention of "Hinduism"

    Orientalists, reformers, and the making of a world religion

    Bengal, Bombay, Madras, Punjab — and London, Chicago, Oxford

    • c. 1800 CE "Hinduism" as a world religion. One canon, one essence, one census box — the category, not the tradition. Orientalists, missionaries, census officials and reformers together
    • 1893 CE All paths lead to the same truth. Would have puzzled Rāmānuja and Madhva, who argued the others were wrong. Vivekananda; Neo-Vedānta
    • 1923 CE Hindutva. Defined territorially and ethnically, not theologically. Savarkar was an atheist. Savarkar, Essentials of Hindutva
    Key takeaways
    • In 1750 there were many sects and no single religion called Hinduism; by 1947 there was one.
    • Orientalists, missionaries, census officials and Indian reformers jointly gave it a canon, an essence and a census category.
    • Vivekananda's 1893 Neo-Vedanta, that all paths lead to one truth, is a modern teaching, not a Vedic one.
    • Colonial censuses hardened fluid caste identities into fixed all-India categories; they did not invent caste.
    • Ambedkar rejected reform, arguing caste is authorized by the scriptures themselves.

  12. c. 1947 – 2026 CE Chapter 12 Majority view

    Modern and Contemporary

    Constitution, diaspora, global yoga, and a religion in public argument with itself

    India and a worldwide diaspora

    • 1955–56 CE Codified Hindu law. A secular parliament imposes monogamy, divorce and daughters' inheritance. The Hindu Code Bills
    Key takeaways
    • After 1947 the Indian state became Hinduism's legislator: Article 17 abolished untouchability and 1955–56 Acts rewrote family law.
    • Ambedkar's 1956 conversion with hundreds of thousands of followers was modern Hinduism's largest secession.
    • Modern postural yoga is largely a twentieth-century lineage from Krishnamacharya, loosely linked to ancient yoga.
    • The 1987–90 TV epics turned India's many Ramayanas into one version for up to 100 million viewers.
    • Hindutva moved to the centre of politics, and Ayodhya shows this history is far from academic.