Dharmic heritage · evidence kept visible
10 recorded eras, in the order the records place them.
Scroll to descend through the eras this archive covers. Each one keeps its published span, its dating basis and its sources — the instrument below opens any of them for inspection.
3 of 82 records citation-checked
Indus–Sarasvati
c. 3300–1300 BCE · 5 recorded
Vedic age
c. 1500–500 BCE · 7 recorded
Itihāsa (epics)
compiled c. 700 BCE–400 CE · 5 recorded
Mahājanapada
c. 600–300 BCE · 4 recorded
Maurya–Gupta
c. 322 BCE–550 CE · 10 recorded
Temple age
c. 550–1200 CE · 13 recorded · 2 checked
Bhakti & ācāryas
c. 600–1400 CE · 11 recorded
Medieval
c. 1300–1700 CE · 12 recorded
Colonial & reform
c. 1800–1947 CE · 8 recorded
Modern
1947 CE – today · 7 recorded · 1 checked
Dharmic heritage · evidence kept visible
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One of the world's earliest urban cultures, with planned cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, standardised weights, and ritual bathing structures. Its script is still undeciphered, and the identification of some sites with the Vedic Sarasvatī river remains debated.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · Archaeological Survey of India
One of the five largest Harappan sites, in Gujarat's Rann of Kutch, with an elaborate system of reservoirs and a unique signboard of undeciphered script. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Dholavira
In present-day Haryana, Rakhigarhi's excavated area surpasses even Mohenjo-daro's. Its burials, pottery and aDNA studies continue to reshape understanding of the civilisation's people and their genetic legacy.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A carefully waterproofed brick tank at the heart of Mohenjo-daro, widely interpreted as the earliest known public water structure built for ritual use. Whether its purpose was religious, civic or both remains debated given the undeciphered script.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · Archaeological Survey of India
A Harappan trading town in Gujarat whose brick-lined basin is identified by the Archaeological Survey of India as the world's earliest known tidal dock, linking the civilisation to maritime trade networks.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · Archaeological Survey of India: Lothal
The oldest of the four Vedas, preserved orally with extraordinary fidelity. Academic dating places its core hymns around 1500–1200 BCE; tradition regards the Vedas as apauruṣeya (authorless, eternal), so any single 'date' is a scholarly estimate, not a settled fact.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · Encyclopaedia Britannica: Veda
The Yajurveda contains the prose formulae for the fire sacrifice; the Sāmaveda sets hymns to melodic patterns for chanting. Together with the Ṛgveda and Atharvaveda they form the Caturveda, the four-fold canon that every later Hindu tradition takes as foundational.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
The Vedic fire sacrifice — from the daily agnihotra to the elaborate aśvamedha — was the defining religious act of the period. Its altar geometry motivated some of the earliest recorded geometry, preserved in the Śulbasūtras.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
The fourth Veda, distinct in character from the other three: a collection of charms, healing verses, philosophical hymns and speculative cosmology that reflects everyday Vedic life far more than the ritual Saṁhitās do.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The oldest layer of what became Makara Saṅkrānti is an agricultural and solar observance tied to the winter solstice and the grain harvest. The Vedic calendar's solar markers predate the later Puranic festival narratives; the date has drifted due to precession.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Explore in BookMyMandir →Prose exegeses attached to each Veda, explaining how and why each ritual act is performed. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, among the longest, preserves myths (the flood, Purūravas and Urvaśī) alongside detailed ritual instruction.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
The philosophical culmination of the Vedic corpus — the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya among the oldest — turning from ritual to questions of ātman and brahman. Composition dates are estimated ranges, not fixed points.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The itihāsa of Rāma. Tradition sets its events in the Tretā Yuga, an age mythically far earlier; the Sanskrit text itself was composed and layered over many centuries (roughly 7th century BCE onward). Its position here reflects the text, not a claimed historical event date.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Explore in BookMyMandir →The earliest prose treatises on dharma — by Gautama, Baudhāyana, Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha — that codified rules of conduct, ritual purity and social obligation. They precede the better-known verse Dharmaśāstras and gave the temple priesthood its procedural foundations.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The vast itihāsa of the Kuru war, containing the Bhagavad Gītā. Tradition places Kurukṣetra at the cusp of the Dvāpara and Kali Yugas; the text grew over roughly eight centuries. We show it by its compilation window and mark the yuga setting as traditional.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A treatise on statecraft, economics and military strategy attributed to Cāṇakya (Kauṭilya). Its composition date is debated: the core may belong to the Mauryan era, with later layers added through the early centuries CE.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The foundational text of classical Yoga, systematising the eight limbs (aṣṭāṅga) of practice. Its dating spans several centuries of scholarly estimates, and the author may or may not be the same Patañjali who wrote the Mahābhāṣya on grammar.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The political landscape before imperial unification: sixteen kingdoms and republics — Magadha, Kosala, Kāśī, Vatsa, Avanti among them — whose rivalries and urban centres shaped the religions, trade routes and temple cultures that followed.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
An ancient city in present-day Pakistan that served as a centre of learning drawing students from across the subcontinent. Its remains, spanning from the Achaemenid through the Kushan period, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Taxila
The lifetimes of Gautama Buddha and Mahāvīra reshaped the religious landscape the temple traditions grew alongside. Their exact dates are debated — the Buddha's death is variously placed c. 483 or nearer 400 BCE.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
A grammar of Sanskrit of such rigour it is still studied as a formal system. Pāṇini is usually placed in the 5th–4th century BCE, though the precise dating is uncertain.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
India's first great pan-Indian empire. Aśoka (r. c. 268–232 BCE) left dated rock and pillar edicts — among the earliest firmly historical records of Indian religious and moral policy.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
Originally commissioned by Aśoka, enlarged and ornamented under the Śuṅgas and Sātavāhanas. Its carved toraṇas (gateways) are among the finest surviving early Indian narrative art. A UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Buddhist Monuments at Sanchi
Thirty rock-cut caves along a horseshoe bend of the Waghora river, carved in two phases spanning six centuries. Their paintings — especially the Gupta-era masterworks in caves 1 and 2 — are among the greatest surviving ancient wall paintings anywhere. A UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Ajanta Caves
The Purāṇas — encyclopaedic works of myth, cosmology, genealogy and temple lore — were compiled and revised across many centuries, so their dating is a broad range rather than a single year.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A period of consolidation in art, mathematics and Sanskrit letters. Under the Guptas the first free-standing stone Hindu temples appear, setting the template later dynasties would elaborate.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The supreme poet of classical Sanskrit, whose Śākuntala, Meghadūta and Kumārasambhava set lasting literary standards. His exact dates are debated; most scholars place him in the Gupta era, making his work a mirror of that period's temple-building, courtly religion and artistic confidence.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · Encyclopaedia Britannica: Kalidasa
A group of rock-cut shrines near Vidiśā in Madhya Pradesh, carved under Chandragupta II and bearing dated inscriptions. The monumental Varāha relief — Viṣṇu as the boar rescuing the earth — is among the oldest known Hindu rock-cut images.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · Archaeological Survey of India
One of the world's earliest residential universities, active for nearly eight centuries. At its height it housed thousands of scholars and influenced learning across Buddhist and Hindu Asia. Destroyed in the late 12th century; its archaeological remains are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara at Nalanda
The astronomer-mathematician whose Āryabhaṭīya (499 CE) proposed that the earth rotates on its axis and gave a remarkably accurate value of pi. He worked at Kusumapura (modern Patna), in the intellectual milieu the late Gupta court sustained.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
One of the earliest surviving stone Hindu temples, its carved panels of Viṣṇu marking the transition from rock-cut shrines to built structural temples in the Gupta era.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · Archaeological Survey of India
Four rock-cut caves — three Hindu (dedicated to Śiva, Viṣṇu and the Vaiṣṇava incarnations) and one Jain — carved into red sandstone cliffs at the Early Chālukya capital. They mark the transition from Gupta-era rock-cut forms to the architectural experiments the Chālukyas went on to build at Aihole and Pattadakal.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
One of the seven sacred cities of Hinduism, Kanchipuram was a capital of both the Pallavas and the Cholas. Its Kailāsanātha temple (c. 700 CE) is among the earliest structural stone temples in South India; the city remains a living pilgrimage centre.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
Five monolithic temples carved from single granite boulders under Narasiṃhavarman I ('Māmalla'), each in a different architectural style. They served as experimental models for the structural Dravidian temples the Pallavas and Cholas built afterward.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram
Śaṅkara's surviving works made him the defining early systematiser of Advaita Vedānta. His chronology remains unsettled: published scholarly estimates include the late seventh to early eighth centuries, 700–750 CE, and 788–820 CE. Later Advaita traditions attribute a monastic order and four or five principal maṭhas to him; that attribution is not presented here as a dated historical act.
Checked citations: Śaṅkara · The Date of Śaṅkarācārya
Pallava rock-cut and structural monuments by the sea, built under Narasiṃhavarman II. A UNESCO World Heritage group and an early masterpiece of Dravidian architecture.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram
A group of ten temples where the Chālukyas tested both northern Nāgara and southern Drāviḍa idioms side by side. The Virūpākṣa temple, modelled after Pallava Kanchipuram, is the group's masterpiece. A UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Group of Monuments at Pattadakal
A single temple carved top-down from one basalt cliff under the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Kṛṣṇa I — one of the largest monolithic excavations on earth. Part of the UNESCO Ellora Caves.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Ellora Caves
The Chola workshops perfected the lost-wax process to produce bronze mūrtis — the Naṭarāja in particular — that are both objects of worship and artistic achievements. These processional icons remain in temple use today, a continuous tradition spanning a millennium.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
The largest Hindu temple compound in Indonesia, built in the 9th century and dedicated to the Trimūrti. Its central spire rises 47 metres and its relief panels narrate the Rāmāyaṇa — evidence of how deeply Indian religious culture shaped the Javanese kingdoms.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Prambanan Temple Compounds
The Chandela dynasty's Nāgara-style temples in Madhya Pradesh, renowned for their sculpture. A UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Khajuraho Group of Monuments
UNESCO records that Rājarāja I inaugurated construction around 1003–1004 and consecrated the temple around 1009–1010. Bṛhadīśvara at Thanjavur is one of the Great Living Chola Temples, illustrating high Chola architecture while continuing as a place of worship.
Checked citations: Great Living Chola Temples
The largest and most refined of Bhubaneswar's cluster of Odishan temples, dedicated to Śiva as Harihara. Its towering deul (sanctum spire) set the structural template that the Jagannātha temple at Puri and the Konārk Sun Temple would follow.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Built by Sūryavarman II as a Viṣṇu temple in the Khmer Empire (present-day Cambodia), Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument on earth. It is a marker of how far Indian temple architecture, iconography and Sanskrit learning travelled across Southeast Asia.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Angkor
Tamil poet-saints devoted to Viṣṇu (Āḻvārs) and Śiva (Nāyanārs) whose hymns turned devotion (bhakti) into a mass movement centred on temple worship. Individual dates are approximate.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
The only woman among the twelve Āḻvārs. Her Tiruppāvai — thirty verses sung during the month of Mārgaḻi — is recited in Viṣṇu temples across South India to this day. Tradition holds she merged with the deity at Śrīraṅgam; her dates are devotional, not historical.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Explore in BookMyMandir →A Tamil Śaiva poet-saint whose Tiruvācakam is counted among the most intensely personal devotional poetry in any language. He is placed by tradition in the 3rd century and by modern scholarship in the 9th; his dates remain unsettled.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The ācārya of Viśiṣṭādvaita ('qualified non-dualism') and reformer of Śrīvaiṣṇava temple practice. The traditional 120-year lifespan (1017–1137) is a devotional account; he is a firmly historical figure whose exact dates are held by tradition.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A Kannada mystic poet associated with the Vīraśaiva movement, known for her vachanas (prose-verse sayings) addressed to 'Chenna Mallikārjuna'. Her radical renunciation and unflinching devotional voice made her one of the earliest and most celebrated women poet-saints.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A 12th-century Kannada poet-philosopher and prime minister of the Kalachuri court who founded the Liṅgāyat (Vīraśaiva) tradition, rejecting caste hierarchy and insisting on direct individual worship of Śiva through the iṣṭaliṅga worn on the body.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The great Kaliṅga-style temple of Jagannātha, largely built under the Eastern Ganga king Anantavarman Chodaganga in the 12th century — home of the annual Ratha Yātrā.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Explore in BookMyMandir →The annual chariot procession in Puri, in which Jagannātha, Subhadrā and Balabhadra ride massive wooden chariots through the grand road, dates to the period of the current temple's completion. It is one of the oldest continuously observed temple festivals in India.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Explore in BookMyMandir →Founder of the Dvaita (dualist) school, which upholds an eternal distinction between the soul and God, and a major influence on Vaiṣṇava temple theology in Karnataka.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Narasiṃhadeva I's temple to Sūrya, conceived as the sun-god's chariot with carved stone wheels. A UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Sun Temple, Konârak
A Marathi sant-poet whose devotional verses (abhaṅgas) addressed to Viṭṭhala of Paṇḍharpūr crossed linguistic boundaries: some of his compositions appear in the Sikh Guru Granth Sāhib. He bridged the Bhakti traditions of Maharashtra and the Punjab.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A southern empire that became a great patron of temples; its capital Hampi, with the living Virūpākṣa temple, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of ruins and shrines.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO World Heritage List: Group of Monuments at Hampi
A weaver-poet of Varanasi whose couplets (sākhīs and dohās) attacked both Hindu ritualism and Islamic orthodoxy in equal measure. Claimed as a predecessor by the Kabīr Panth, Sikhism and many Bhakti lineages, his life dates remain contested.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The founder of Sikhism, born in Talwandi (modern Nankana Sahib, Pakistan). His teachings — monotheism, equality, honest livelihood — drew from both the Bhakti and Sūfī streams and established a tradition whose subsequent Gurus built Harmandir Sāhib and the Sikh scripture.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A blind poet of Braj Bhasha whose Sūr Sāgar describes the childhood and youth of Kṛṣṇa with an intimacy that shaped how North India imagines the deity. He was associated with Vallabhācārya's Puṣṭimārga and the temple of Śrīnāthji.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The Bengali saint who spread ecstatic saṅkīrtana (congregational chanting of the divine names) and inspired the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A Rajput princess who renounced court life for devotion to Kṛṣṇa, singing poems that remain among the most widely known in North Indian devotional music. Her life dates and biographical details are mostly traditional; the songs attributed to her number in the hundreds.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A Marathi saint of the Vārkarī tradition who composed the Eknāthī Bhāgavata — a Marathi rendering of the eleventh Skandha of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa — and wrote devotional verses (bharūḍs) in the voices of everyday people, popularising bhakti beyond the literate élite.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The Awadhi retelling of Rāma's story that became the most beloved devotional text of North India, begun (by its own colophon) in 1574 CE.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
Although the Kumbh Melā tradition is traced by oral and Puranic lore to much earlier periods, the first clearly dated historical references appear in late 16th-century sources including Abū al-Faḍl's Ain-i-Akbari (c. 1590). The modern four-city rotation (Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain, Nasik) took shape over subsequent centuries, and the event now draws the largest peaceful human gatherings on earth.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage: Kumbh Mela
An ancient site whose vast gopura-crowned complex was largely rebuilt and expanded under the Nāyaka rulers, notably Tirumala Nāyaka — a defining image of Dravidian temple towns.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Built under the fifth Sikh Guru, Gurū Arjan, who installed the first Ādi Granth here in 1604, on a site whose sacred tank was established by Gurū Rām Dās. Harmandir Sāhib became the holiest shrine of Sikhism; its golden dome, open-to-all langar and four entrances embody the Sikh principles of service and equality.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A Marathi sant-poet of the Vārkarī tradition whose thousands of abhaṅga verses to Viṭṭhala carry the accent of a shopkeeper wrestling with doubt, debt and devotion. The annual Paṇḍharpūr Vārī pilgrimage still carries his pālkhī from Dehu.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Explore in BookMyMandir →Sacked most famously by Maḥmūd of Ghaznī in 1024 and rebuilt repeatedly, Somnāth became a symbol of resilience; its modern reconstruction was completed in 1951.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A reform movement founded in Calcutta that argued for monotheism and social reform, opening the 'Bengal Renaissance' and a century of Hindu self-examination.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A priest of the Dakṣiṇeśvar Kālī temple near Calcutta whose ecstatic spiritual experiments across Hindu, Christian and Islamic paths led him to conclude that all religions reach the same goal. His influence flowed outward through Vivekānanda and the Ramakrishna Mission.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A Kerala social reformer who consecrated temples open to all castes and coined the maxim 'one caste, one religion, one God for humanity'. His movement broke the Travancore temple-entry barrier years before state legislation did.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A reform movement calling for a return to the Vedas and against ritual excess, with lasting influence on education and Hindu identity in North India.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
Swāmī Vivekānanda's Chicago address introduced Vedānta to a global audience; he founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897, reframing service as worship.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The Madras government placed the Tirumala Vēṅkaṭēśvara temple under a statutory board in 1933, creating the TTD — now the wealthiest and most-visited religious institution on earth, administering a pilgrimage that draws tens of millions annually.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The Mahārāja of Travancore issued a proclamation on 12 November 1936 opening all state temples to people of every caste. It was one of the earliest state-level acts of temple-entry reform in India, preceding Independence by over a decade.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The rebuilt Somnāth temple was consecrated in 1951, a landmark in newly-independent India's relationship with its temple heritage.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in New York in 1966, taking Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava temple worship, saṅkīrtana and prasādam distribution to a global audience. ISKCON now operates over 800 temples worldwide.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A large modern temple complex opened in 2005, showing that monumental temple-building in traditional idioms continues into the present.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The devastating June 2013 Uttarakhand floods destroyed the town of Kedārnāth around the ancient Śiva temple, which survived. The decade-long reconstruction — new ghāṭs, retaining walls, pilgrim infrastructure — restored one of the Chār Dhām to full operation.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
Launched in 2016, this ongoing all-weather road project connects the four Uttarakhand pilgrimage sites — Yamunotri, Gaṅgotrī, Kedārnāth and Badrīnāth — by widening roughly 900 km of mountain highway. It remakes the infrastructure of one of Hinduism's oldest pilgrimage circuits.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
A redevelopment project inaugurated in December 2021 that created a direct passage from the Gaṅgā ghāṭs to the Kāśī Viśvanāth temple, reorganising the temple precinct on a scale not seen since the original shrine's rebuilding in 1780.
Seed sources: en.wikipedia.org
The prāṇa pratiṣṭhā ceremony took place on 22 January 2024 at the newly built temple in Ayodhya. It is recorded here as a dated public event, without making a claim about contested archaeological or theological questions surrounding the site.
Checked citations: Prime Minister participates in Pran Pratishtha ceremony of Shri Ramlalla in Ayodhya
