Cultures for India

[herkles]

India is a land of many cultures, peoples and languages, but vanilla CK has mostly giant blobs, which IMO don't really work for the time period of the mod. So here are my suggestions for cultures.

First the cultures that we should keep from Vanilla: Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Rajaput, Nepali, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Gujarati, Kirati.

I would however rename Rajaput to Rajasthani since Rajasthani is both the language and the name of the people group.

Breaking up Hindustani

In vanilla there is a central culture group called Hindustani. The problem is that this is based on where Hindi is most focused and Hindi doesn't exist in 476, it also doesn't exist in either 867 or 1066. So it should be broken up into several cultures. My suggestion is that Hindustani should be broken up into Braj and Awadhi.

The language Braj Bhasha still has over a million native speakers today. While Awadhi has 3.85 million native speakers, which I think makes a good case for the split cultures.

Bihari / Magadhi Culture

This is a big one IMO. In vanilla, the region of Bihar is bengali, when that was never the case. More importantly for the Mod. This is the time period of the Gupta Empire who were Bihari, specifically they were Magadhi IIRC. There are several languages and several peoples besides the Magadhi in Bihar with the other two prominent peoples being the Maithils and the Bhojpuri.

Considering the Guptas, we could call this culture over all Magadhi or go with Bihari or we could split it into the three main peoples of the Magadhi, Maithils and the Bhojpuri. The easist solution is to just have the Bihari culture as one group weather we name it Magadhi or Bihari.

Gandharan Culture

Another one for this time period in particular, is Gandharan or Gandhari. The Gandharan culture thrived in Northwest of India, and are well known for their Buddhist culture. This culture was patronized by the Kushan Empire, and would thrive for most of the Mod Time Period. Moreover it was one of the official languages of the Hephthalite Empire. So they should be another culture.

Tribal Cultures

There are a number of cultures throughout India, which have millions of members to day that are still tribal. The Bhil, the Munda, and the various tribes of the Odisha, the various bodo-kachari peoples, the Gondi to name a few cultures. Now there are a number of these cultures groups throughout India so which cultures are added would have to be decided upon.

My suggestion of the groups we should add are:

1. the Odisha tribes though as a general culture to abstract things, so calling the group Gahjati(referencing the Gahjat hills or Sambalpuri in refence to one of the major languages within the regions.
2. Gondi
3. Bodo-Kachari - I would just call it Kachari

Meitei

The Meitiei people are the people that moved into Manipur around the first century IIRC and founded there kingdom there. They would also IIRC have some presence in Burma and Bengal.

The other Cultures

There are a number of other cultures that I think should be represented on the map. Those people and culture are the Malayali, Konkani, Nagpuri, Konkani, Malvi, and Saurashtra.

Malayali

The Malayali are the people of Karelia. They are closely related to the Tamils, and the rulers of Karelia are the Tamil Cheras. However they are their own people with their own language and culture.

Konkani

The Konkani are the people of Kanara, aka Coastal Karnataka.

Nagpuri

Nagpuri are the natives to the western Chota Nagpur plateau region in the western part of India.

Malvi

The Malvi culture reflects the culture of Malwa. The Malvi language is still spoken today by over 5, million people.

Saurashtra

The Saurashtra are the people of the Saurashtra region which bears their name. They and their language are related to the Gujarati people north of them. It was one of the more productive areas of the Gupta Empire and the region had their own kings not that long ago before the start date IIRC

So in addition to the vanilla cultures of:
Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Rajaput, Nepali, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Gujarati, Kirati.

There would be the cultures of Saurasthra, Malvi, Nagpuri, Konkani, Malayali, Meitei, Gondi, Sambalpuri, Gandharan, Bihari, Braj, and Awadhi.

This would mean a total of 26 cultures for India, which I think is good to represent the diversity of India. I would like to hear the rest of the team's thoughts on this cultural setup.

[loup99]

Thank you for this post. 👍 I would like to hear what you say about the current setup in the mod CK2 though, which is pretty different from that in vanilla CK3. That is after all the base which will be ported:

What about Indo-Parthian, Sanskrit and Maharashtri Prakrit? Should those be removed?

[herkles]

The biggest thing that is throwing me off about the map is that the CK2's part of India is smaller than CK3 India. I think there is also a different projection.

What about Indo-Parthian, Sanskrit and Maharashtri Prakrit? Should those be removed?

Indo-Parthian

Most of where the Indo-Parthians are in India would be where the Gandharan culture is. The Indo-Parthian Kingdom and the Kushan empire both supported Gandharan culture. I am not sure about the Indo-Parthians in what is now Balochistan. I would probably remove them.

Sanskrit

Now this is a tricky one. if culture == language then it should be there as Sanskrit was the official language of the Gupta Empire. From my understanding, Sanskrit functioned similar to latin did in the west. However culture in CK is more than just language. As mentioned the Guptas came from Bihar, and their capital of Pataliputra was in Bihar. So I would remove it, and replace it with other cultures, Bihar being one of them.

Maharashtri Prakrit

This is the ancestor to both Marathi and Konkani, so it is fine, though I probably would just have it as Mahrashtri. So we should keep it. However I do think that it is far to spread inwards and eastward.

Their are also two minor issues I see is that Tamil is too far north, in CK2 Tamil culture is in the Pallava Kingdom but it shouldn't be that far north as that area should be Telugu which the Pallava's did patronize as well as Tamil. The second issue is that Rajput should be renamed to Rajasthani.

[loup99]

I forgot to mention Indo-Scythian, but it is quite prominent in the existing setup, is that also a culture you would rather remove?

[herkles]

I forgot to mention Indo-Scythian, but it is quite prominent in the existing setup, is that also a culture you would rather remove?

No. The last Indo-Scythian kingdom IIRC came to an end in 395 CE when they were conquered by Chandragupta II, that was less than 100 years before the first start date in 476. So it makes sense that the Indo-Scythians are there. Moreover they are mentioned by a number of Indian Texts, though they are generally called Saka or Shaka. So I would keep them.

[loup99]

I forgot to mention Indo-Scythian, but it is quite prominent in the existing setup, is that also a culture you would rather remove?

No. The last Indo-Scythian kingdom IIRC came to an end in 395 CE when they were conquered by Chandragupta II, that was less than 100 years before the first start date in 476. So it makes sense that the Indo-Scythians are there. Moreover they are mentioned by a number of Indian Texts, though they are generally called Saka or Shaka. So I would keep them.

Ok, fair enough.