One alternative hypothesis is explained by Encyclopædia Britannica as follows: Between about 20 BCE not an invasion but a continuing spread of Indo-Aryan speakers occurred, carrying them much farther into India, to the east and south, and coinciding with a growing cultural interaction between the native population and the new arrivals.From these processes a new cultural synthesis emerged, giving rise by the end of the 2nd millennium to the conscious expressions of Aryan ethnicity found in the Rigveda, particularly in the later hymns.[4] The 19th-century Aryan Invasion theory has generally been abandoned as inaccurate, but most scholars do not reject the notion of some outside influence on the Indus Valley civilization.The Indus Valley culture began to decline around 1800 BC, due possibly to flooding or drought.Until recently, it was held that the Aryans (an Indo-European culture whose name comes from the Sanskrit for "noble") [3] invaded India and Iran at this time.Others, however, believe that the case against the Aryan invasion theory is far from conclusive.Resources: - "History of Hinduism." Encyclopædia Britannica (Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service, 2004).Since the 1980s, this "Aryan Invasion" hypothesis has been strongly challenged as a myth propagated by colonial scholars who sought to reinforce the idea that anything valuable in India must have come from elsewhere.Critics of the hypothesis note that there is lack of evidence of any conquest, among other historical and archaeological problems.
An important seal features a horned figure surrounded by animals, which some conjecture is a prototype of Shiva, but it could be a bull parallel to that found on Mesopotamian seals.
In addition to these two congregational mosques, four other significant mosques of the city will be considered in this essay, albeit with varying degrees of emphasis: the early 16th-century Masjed-e ʿAli, the royal chapel-mosque Masjed-e Šayḵ Loṭf-Allāh of early 17th-century date, and the mid-17th-century Ḥakim Mosque. The mosque was enlarged with the expansion of the town, which in turn had followed the building of this mosque. The mosque was built anew and became in time the most venerated mosque of the city until the 17th century, when a rival congregational mosque was raised by the Safavid Shah ʿAbbās the Great.
It is worth noting, however, that even though this essay focuses on the more important and better-studied mosques, there are many other mosques that present perfectly worthy cases for research. It was equipped with a library () housing books that were chosen by scholars of the past, covering almost every discipline of knowledge and all registered in a three-volume catalogue. Round plastered columns supported the roof and the minaret on the side (Moqaddasi, pp. The mosque, which Ebn al-Aṯir describes as among the largest and most beautiful of its kind, burned down in 515/1121 in a fire set to it by the Ismaʿilis (Ebn al-Aṯir, Beirut, X, p. As the oldest mosque of the city, its aura of ritual sanctity inspired the denizens of Isfahan and its rulers alike to lavish funds and talents on the mosque to enhance its functionality and its prestige and to leave for posterity the imprint of individual and collective patronage (Grabar, pp. Nearly every significant architectural and decorative trend of medieval period in Persian history found its monumental representation in this mosque. The initial construction of Masjed-e Jāmeʿ was presumably funded by governors who controlled the city on behalf of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs to mark the full establishment of the Islamic community () in Isfahan since the city’s capture in the early years of Arab conquest (q.v.; According to Abu Noʿaym, I, p. 84, it was first built by the Arabs of the village Ṭehrān).
Because of its age, the early history of Hinduism is unclear.
The most ancient writings have yet to be deciphered, so for the earliest periods scholars must rely on educated guesses based on archaeology and contemporary texts.