India is a country located in South Asia and is known as the seventh-Largest country in the world. We have seen numerous articles where we are boasting India’s rich culture and traditions, religions, and ethnicities, but know the real facts behind such claims as many cannot boast of ‘first’ as ancient Indians.

India was once an island known as Gondwanaland which collided with the Asian continent. The evidence of this ancient history is provided by fossilized seashells that can still be found high in the mountains. Ancient India was beyond yoga and Kama Sutra, it developed a numeric system and made a lot of innovation in everything from science and technology to board games that are still relevant today.

India is a most amazing country in the world, in each and every part of the country, you will find different culture, tradition, food, style which is respected and celebrated among each other as it is the basis of the diverse culture in India.

Let us dig into the top 20 Facts of India which will help you to understand the country better and give you a taste of ancient India’s rich legacy and achievements.

1. Humans first appeared on the Indian subcontinent over 250,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest inhabited places in the world. It contains deserts, polar-like conditions, rainforests, plains, hills, and temperate forests. The Himalayas in India has the tallest peak in the world. It grows an inch taller by every year. Most of the people in India live in the country’s northern regions along the fertile banks of the Ganges river and the southern coastal regions.

2. India invented the number system and Aryabhatta was the scientist who invented the digit zero. They invented algebra, calculus, and the decimal system, and they even worked out the value of pi.

3. Aryabhata also gave the first theories of gravity in 16th century AD and explained why things don’t fly off the surface of the Earth as it spins.

4. India was one of the richest countries on earth until the British invasion in the early 17th century. The Mughal Empire, which was founded in 1526 and extended over almost the entire Indian subcontinent was the richest empire.

5. India is the 6th largest country in the world, the largest democracy, and one of the oldest civilizations.

6. India has a diverse culture with many religions living in unity. Different people live and speak differently, there are 17 major languages and 844 dialects spoken in India

7. Before 1986, India was the only place in the world where Diamond could be found. The first Diamond was mined around 700 BC in India and no other country could beat India’s diamond production until the 18th century AD.

8. India has the largest number of vegetarians in the world. Be it because of religious reasons or personal choices or both, around 20-40% of Indians are vegetarians, making it the largest vegetarian-friendly country in the world. India is a vast producer of Spices about seventy percent of the spices in the world come from India.

9. Yoga was first started in India some 5,000 years back while the first use of the word yoga appeared almost 2,500 years ago.

10. Ancient Indians were first to cultivate cotton around 3,000 BC. By 1,000 BC, cotton fabric was used all over India and they also developed cotton-spinning methods that would remain in use until industries came.

11. The first ancient Indian coins were made about 2,500 years ago. The word ‘rupee’ comes from the Sanskrit word for a shaped coin, ‘rupya.’

12. Traditional Indian medicine, called Ayurveda, started to be practiced about 5,000 years ago. Ayurveda still survives today and about 80% population of India still uses it in some form.

13. Shampoo was invented in India, not the commercial liquid ones but the method by use of herbs. The word ‘shampoo’ itself has been derived from the Sanskrit word champu, which means to massage.

14. Chess was invented in India before the 16th Century AD. In ancient times, it was known as Chaturanga. Chaturanga features foot-soldiers, raja, horses, and elephants. Mokshapat was another game invented in India also known as ‘snakes and ladders’.

15. Cricket is a thriving sport in India, and many Indian children love to play the game with their families. The country won the Cricket World Cup in 2011.

16. The biggest and the largest employer in the world is Indian railways employing over a million people. India also has the largest postal service in the world and got the highest post office too. Having started off in 1774, this post office is located in the Hikkim village of Spiti Valley and is perched at 15,550 ft! World’s only floating post office can be found in Dal Lake, Srinagar.

17. India is one of the largest exporters of computer software products. This is due to the fact that India possesses the world’s second-largest pool of scientific manpower which is also English speaking.

18. India is the second-largest English-speaking nation in the world. The USA is the largest English-speaking nation in the world, followed by India as the second largest.

19. India is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim population and has the highest number of mosques with more than 300,000.

20. Kumbh Mela or Kumbha Mela is the world’s largest religious human gathering which is visible from space also. The festival is expected to attract 70 million people to a sacred location on the Ganges River, 15 km from Allahabad, for more than a month of bathing rituals.

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