Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago.^[26]^[27]^[28] Their long occupation, predominantly in isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse.^[29] Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE.^[30] By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest.^[31]^[32] Its hymns recorded the early dawnings of Hinduism in India.^[33] India's pre-existing Dravidian languages were supplanted in the northern regions.^[34] By 400 BCE, caste had emerged within Hinduism,^[35] and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.^[36] Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires.^[37] Widespread creativity suffused this era,^[38] but the status of women declined,^[39] and untouchability became an organised belief.^[l]^[40] In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.^[41]

In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts.^[42] Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains in the second millennium.^[43] The resulting Delhi Sultanate drew northern India into the cosmopolitan networks

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