section_path: History by region/South Asia
section_name: South Asia
paragraph_text: South Asia
  
  There has been difficulty applying the word "medieval" or "post-classical" to the history of South Asia. This section follows historian Stein Burton's definition that corresponds from the 8th century to the 16th century, more or less following the same time frame of the post-classical period and the European Middle Ages.
  
  Until the 13th century, there was no less than 20 to 40 different states on the Indian subcontinent which hosted a variety of cultures, languages, writing systems and religions. At the beginning of the time period Buddhism was predominant throughout the area with the short-lived Pala Empire on the Indo-Gangetic Plain sponsoring the faith's institutions. One such institution was the Buddhist Nalanda mahavihara in modern-day Bihar, a centre of scholarship that brought the divided South Asia onto the global intellectual stage. Another accomplishment was the invention of the Chaturanga game which later was exported to Europe and became chess.
  
  In South India, the Hindu kingdom of Chola gained prominence with an overseas empire that controlled parts of modern-day Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia as oversees territories and accelerated the spread of Hinduism into the historic culture of these places. In this time period, neighboring areas such as Afghanistan, Tibet, and Myanmar were under South Asian influence.
  
  From 1206 onward, a series of Turkic invasions from modern-day Afghanistan and Iran conquered massive portions of North India, founding the Delhi Sultanate which remained supreme until the 16th century. Buddhism declined in South Asia vanishing in many areas but Hinduism survived and reinforced itself in areas conquered by Muslims. In the far south, the Vijayanagara Empire was not conquered by any Muslim state in the period. The turn of the 16th century would see the rise of a new Islamic empire – the Mughals and the establishment of European trade posts by the Portuguese.