Greater Magadha

The spread of the Vedic culture in the late Vedic period. Aryavarta was limited to northwest India and the western Ganges plain, while Greater Magadha in the east was occupied by non-Vedic Indo-Aryans.[1][2] The location of shakhas is labeled in maroon.

Greater Magadha is a theory in the studies of the ancient history of India, introduced by Johannes Bronkhorst.[1] It refers to the non-Vedic political and cultural sphere that developed in the lower Gangetic plains (modern day Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh), east of the Vedic heartland and roughly corresponding to the region of the later Magadha empire.

According to Bronkhorst, out of the ideological opposition between these two cultural spheres – the Vedic realms of Kuru and Panchala in the west, and Śramaṇa of Greater Magadha in the east – developed the two main religious & spiritual ideologies of Ancient India.

  1. ^ a b Bronkhorst (2007).
  2. ^ Samuel 2010.