Explore a year-by-year model of daily Vedic recitation from Afghanistan to Malaysia, with historical events and the evidence behind its assumptions.
Model estimates, not measurements. Shading shows assumed uncertainty, not a confidence interval; shortfall allocations are not measured causal effects. Read the method.
Estimated Vedic recitation from 3000 BCE to 2026 CE: the model starts at 27,515.40 and ends at 1,795,208.76 sessions per day.
Full timeline overview from 3000 BCE to 2026 CE: the model starts at 27,515.40 and ends at 1,795,208.76 sessions per day.
Scroll normally over the chart. Turn on “Interact with chart” to wheel or pinch to zoom (decades → years), drag to pan, drag the minimap brush or double-click to reset. Ctrl/Cmd + wheel also zooms. Zoom, pan and reset buttons work with the keyboard; Escape turns interaction off.
Population from 3000 BCE to 2026 CE: the model starts at 12.00 and ends at 2,295.00 million people.
Dharmic fold from 3000 BCE to 2026 CE: the model starts at 88.58 and ends at 47.49 % of population.
Active reciters from 3000 BCE to 2026 CE: the model starts at 0.01 and ends at 1.04 million people.
Assumed sessions per reciter from 3000 BCE to 2026 CE: the model starts at 850.00 and ends at 620.00 sessions per reciter per year before regional multipliers.
Click a flag ⚑ in interaction mode to read its event card, or browse all events. ▼ red flags are reductions, green are revivals, gray are context.
How many Vedic recitation sessions happen each day, from the Kubhā (Kabul) to Yavadvīpa (Java–Malaya) — estimated bottom-up for every year of the last 5,000. Zoom from decades into single years; the flags are the events that bent the curve.
Every flag on the chart is one of these. Reduction events bend the curve down, revivals bend it back, context events explain the era. Click a flag on the chart to jump here.
The Ghaggar-Hakra (identified by many with the Vedic Sarasvati, RV 7.95's 'giribhya a samudrat') loses its perennial flow; Harappan de-urbanisation. Population and ritual economy shift eastward toward the Yamuna-Ganga.
Peak of the srauta ritual economy in the Sapta-Sindhu and Kuru lands — the model's highest per-capita chanting intensity. RV 10.75 sings the rivers from the Kubha (Kabul) to the Ganga.
The Kuru state fixes the Rigveda samhita's received text; the sakha system becomes the tradition's error-correcting transmission code.
The Aranyaka-Upanishad movement internalises the sacrifice. Recitation continues, but the srauta apparatus begins its long simplification.
The sramana revolt rejects Vedic sacrifice outright ('na hi tena jata-brahmano hoti'). Over the next five centuries a large minority of the fold steps out of the srauta-svadhyaya duty — the model's first great wedge.
Imperial patronage pivots to the sangha; Ashoka's edicts discourage animal sacrifice. Rock Edict I bans the festival slaughter; brahmin ritualists lose the great royal yajnas for a century.
The Shunga founder revives the horse sacrifice (attested by Patanjali, who says 'iha pushyamitram yajayamah'). Vedic ritual returns to court.
Gandhara becomes the Buddhist workshop of Asia; the north-west's reciter share falls even as trade wealth funds all religions.
Samudragupta's asvamedha coins; land-grant (agrahara) economy endows srotriya settlements across the north. Faxian (c. 400) sees a prosperous dharmic order. The model's classical maximum.
Sanskrit yupa inscriptions of Kutai (E. Borneo) record Vedic sacrificial posts and a 'bahusuvarnaka' rite — the hard eastern edge of the chanting map, 4,000 km from Kashi. Funan, Champa and Java courts keep purohitas.
Mihirakula's wars wreck the north-west's monastic and agrahara economy alike; Gandhara never fully recovers.
The pilgrim counts monasteries and 'deva temples' kingdom by kingdom — and describes the four Vedas and brahmin recitation discipline in detail. His census-like account anchors the mid-classical estimates.
Muhammad bin Qasim takes Sindh and Multan. The Chachnama records the terms: temples spared as 'like the churches of the Christians', jizya imposed. The first durable detachment of a subcontinental region from the fold.
Adi Sankara (trad. 788-820) re-organises the smarta order, founds the cardinal mathas, debates the sramana schools — the within-fold counter-reformation that keeps the Veda at the centre of doctrine.
Chola, Pallava and Pandya copper plates endow hundreds of brahmadeya villages with ghatikas teaching the Vedas; the south becomes the tradition's deep reservoir — visible in the model's southern reciter density peak.
Seventeen campaigns (1000-1027): Somnath, Mathura, Kanauj. Al-Biruni, who travelled with the armies, writes: 'Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country... Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us.' The north-west's reciter economy collapses.
Ghurid victory at Tarain; Delhi Sultanate follows (1206). Nalanda and Vikramashila burned (~1193-1203, Tabaqat-i-Nasiri). Temple-and-agrahara patronage collapses across Aryavarta; reciter lineages migrate south. The model's steepest per-capita fall.
Malik Kafur (1311) and the Tughluq conquests carry the patronage collapse briefly into the far south; the Madurai Sultanate (1335-78) interrupts Tamilakam's temple economy.
Harihara and Bukka (guided, tradition says, by Vidyaranya) found the empire 'for the protection of dharma'. At its court Sayana compiles the complete Veda-bhashya (c. 1360-87) — the greatest recitation-preservation project of the medieval world.
Kashmir — Sarada-desa, a Veda and sastra powerhouse — loses its temples and most of its pandit economy; Jonaraja's chronicle records the exodus.
The entrepot's sultanate tips maritime SE Asia: Sumatra, Java's coasts, then the interior. Majapahit fades (c. 1527); the rsi-clergy retreat to Bali. Suvarnabhumi's brahminical thread narrows to one island.
Kabir, Nanak (b. 1469), Chaitanya (b. 1486), Mirabai, Tulsidas: the bhakti wave. Dharma is saved and deepened — but nama-japa and kirtana, open to all, displace Vedic recitation as the centre of religious energy. The model books this as within-fold intensity loss, not exit.
Vijayanagara's army destroyed; Hampi sacked for months. Sewell: 'never perhaps in the history of the world has such havoc been wrought so suddenly.' The south's shield breaks; Nayaka successors carry a reduced patronage forward.
Kashi Vishvanath (1669) and Keshava Deva Mathura (1670) demolished; jizya reimposed 1679. Maasir-i-Alamgiri records the orders 'to demolish the schools and temples of the infidels and put down their teaching'.
Maratha protection re-endows Kashi, Nashik, and the pilgrimage economy; Ahilyabai Holkar rebuilds Vishvanath (1780). Banaras pandit lineages thicken again — the 18th-century plateau in the model.
Revenue farming and famine (1770: a third of Bengal dies) begin dissolving the endowment economy that fed hereditary reciters.
'A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.' English becomes the ladder of livelihood; within two generations the brightest brahmin boys read law, not the Veda. The modern-secular wedge opens here.
Dayananda's movement puts havan and Veda-patha into lay Hindu life across Punjab and the Hindi belt; the DAV network prints and teaches the samhitas. A genuine counter-trend inside the modern era.
Vedanta goes global; prestige returns to Sanskrit learning even as daily ritual keeps declining — bhakti and jnana rise, karma-kanda falls.
The Indus basin and East Bengal — a third of the subcontinent's people — pass to states where the fold is a small minority. Reciter lineages of Sindh, West Punjab and East Bengal scatter as refugees.
Zamindari abolition and temple-endowment acts end the agrahara/inam economy that had fed hereditary reciters for 1,500 years. Vaidika households urbanise; sons take salaried work. The quiet, biggest modern reducer.
Mass neo-Buddhist conversion in Maharashtra — a moral indictment of caste from within the civilisation; a small wedge in the model, a large one in conscience.
Kerala Nambudiris perform the 12-day atiratra-agnicayana; Frits Staal's 'AGNI' documents the oldest surviving ritual on earth — proof of unbroken transmission and of how few can still do it.
Proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity (inscribed 2008). State and matha pathashala funding grows; TTD, Kanchi and Sringeri networks expand — the late-model uptick in the south.
Veda-pathashala scholarships, temple corpus funds, and digital archives (recordings of every sakha) expand. Absolute chantations rise on sheer population; per-capita fidelity stays near its historic low.
The model's anchors are not conjured. These are the granthas, inscriptions and eyewitness accounts behind the extent of Bhāratavarṣa (Afghanistan to Malaysia), the vitality of recitation era by era, the forces of reduction, and the counter-currents.
What the granthas, inscriptions and foreign geographers say the land IS — from the Kubhā (Kabul) to Yavadvīpa (Java).
The land north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhārata; there dwell the descendants of Bharata.
Bearing on the model: The verse recurs almost verbatim in the Vāyu, Mārkaṇḍeya and Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇas — a shared, memorised definition of the land itself.
O Sindhu, joined first with the Tṛṣṭāmā to flow, with the Susartu, the Rasā, the Śvetyā — thou with the Kubhā (Kabul), the Gomatī (Gomal), the Krumu (Kurram), the Mehatnu, on one chariot with them thou speedest.
Bearing on the model: The hymn's western rivers are the Kabul, Kurram, Gomal and Swat (Suvāstu, RV 8.19.37) — the Rigvedic horizon runs deep into today's Afghanistan.
Agni Vaiśvānara went burning along this earth from the Sarasvatī eastward; Māthava the Videgha followed; the Sadānīrā (Gandak) was its boundary — brahmins now dwell east of it too.
Bearing on the model: The tradition's own memory of Vedicisation as a moving frontier: the model's region-by-region onset of reciter density follows exactly this shape.
From the eastern to the western ocean, between the two mountain ranges — that the wise know as Āryāvarta.
Bearing on the model: Manu grades the land by where the ritual order runs — the text itself models chanting density by geography, as this page does.
Sañjaya recites the janapadas of Bhāratavarṣa to Dhṛtarāṣṭra: Kuru, Pañcāla, Sindhu-Sauvīra, Gandhāra, Kāmboja, Kāśmīra, Aṅga, Vaṅga, Kaliṅga, the Draviḍas, Keralas… — the full sweep from the Hindu Kush to the southern sea.
Bearing on the model: The epic's own gazetteer: the six model regions are a compression of this list.
Khāravela's Prakrit inscription speaks of his campaigns across Bharadhavasa (Bhāratavarṣa) — among the earliest epigraphic uses of the name for the subcontinent as a whole.
Bearing on the model: The name of the land is not a modern construction; kings carved it.
Sugrīva directs the search for Sītā: '…having passed Yavadvīpa (Java), the mountain named Śiśira…' — and merchants of the Jātakas sail again and again to Suvarṇabhūmi, the Land of Gold.
Bearing on the model: SE Asia sits inside the epic-Puranic horizon of Bhāratavarṣa's ninefold extent (the Purāṇas' navadvīpa scheme names Indradvīpa etc. as its parts).
Seven Sanskrit yūpa (sacrificial-post) inscriptions record king Mūlavarman's gifts at the 'most sacred field of Vaprakeśvara' — including a bahusuvarṇaka rite — 'this yūpa was made by the brahmins who came hither'.
Bearing on the model: The oldest Sanskrit inscriptions of Indonesia are RECORDS OF VEDIC SACRIFICE. The model's Suvarnabhumi reciter series is anchored on them.
Chinese annals record the brahmin Kauṇḍinya ruling Funan 'changing its institutions to those of India'; Champa's Sanskrit steles invoke Śiva; Kedah's Bujang valley preserves dozens of temple bases on the Malaysian coast.
Bearing on the model: The 'Afghanistan to Malaysia' definition the user gives is the historically attested Sanskrit cosmopolis, not a modern invention.
Al-Bīrūnī maps the land from Kabul (whose Shahi kings, he records, were Hindu, once Turk, claiming Kanauj descent) to the peninsula, and describes the four Vedas, their śākhās, and the rule that the Veda is preserved by recitation, 'not committed to writing' — lately written down by Vasukra of Kashmir, he notes, against custom.
Bearing on the model: An outside auditor confirms both the extent of the fold and the primacy of oral chanting at 1030 CE.
Eyewitness attestations of the chanting economy at work — these anchor the model's reciter-density estimates.
The Greek ambassador to Pāṭaliputra lists the 'philosophoi' first among the seven classes: Brachmanes who 'from conception onward' live under mantra — hymns sung over the unborn child, decades of disciplined study.
Bearing on the model: Earliest foreign attestation that reciters were a recognised, countable stratum — the model's v (reciter density) is a real demographic object.
Patañjali discusses reciters mastering pada, krama and the vikṛti-pāṭhas, and names the fourteen-fold learning; grammar exists, he says, to guard the Veda ('rakṣā') — a whole profession of error-correction.
Bearing on the model: By 150 BCE the redundancy-coded recitation system (later jaṭā, ghana) is mature — the transmission technology the dashboard's continuity rests on.
Sangam kings are praised for protecting 'the antaṇar (brahmins) of the four Vedas' and for kindling the three fires; Karikāla and the Cēra kings perform Vedic sacrifices with them.
Bearing on the model: Anchors the southern reciter series' early rise — Vedic recitation is attested in Tamilakam by the turn of the era.
Faxian records a Madhyadeśa of charitable houses, festivals and flourishing brahmin and Buddhist establishments side by side under the Guptas.
Bearing on the model: The model's classical plateau: both the sangha wedge and a strong reciter economy at once.
Xuanzang describes the brahmins' education: 'the four Veda treatises… they teach them orally from master to master, not writing them down', with study beginning at seven and mastery near thirty; he counts deva-temples beside monasteries in over a hundred kingdoms from Kāpiśī (Afghanistan) to Kāñcī.
Bearing on the model: A near-census at 630 CE: recitation universal, but Gandhāra's viharas already in ruins — both curves of the dashboard visible to one traveller.
Royal grants endow whole villages on named brahmins 'versed in the Vedas and Vedāṅgas' — the Karandai plates alone transfer a village to over a thousand śrotriyas, each listed with his gotra and śākhā.
Bearing on the model: Hard numbers for reciter density at the southern medieval peak — the model's v ≈ 1.1% of the dharmic population there is read off this endowment economy.
The Ā'īn surveys 'the learning of the Hindus': the four Vedas with their subdivisions, the six darśanas, and the centres of study; Akbar's court translated the epics while Banaras and Nadia taught on.
Bearing on the model: Even at the Mughal zenith the recitation economy is intact enough to be systematically catalogued by the imperial secretariat.
'The town of Benares is the general school of the gentiles… as Athens was of Greece'; Bernier describes pandits teaching pupils gratis, supported by endowments and gifts, memorising their sciences.
Bearing on the model: The 17th-century plateau in the north's reciter series is an eyewitness datum, not a guess.
Nambudiri śrautins perform the 12-day rite complete — 'the oldest surviving ritual of mankind' — while Staal's team records every mantra; only a handful of families could still stage it.
Bearing on the model: Both facts at once: transmission UNBROKEN across ~3,000 years, and the practising base reduced to a remnant — the dashboard's two headline curves.
UNESCO's citation praises the ganita-like error-correcting recitations (jaṭā, ghana) and warns that only a small number of fully trained reciters remain.
Bearing on the model: The modern low-water attestation the 2026 endpoint is calibrated against.
Primary sources for each force that shrank the practice: conquest, conversion, patronage collapse, and the repointed ladder of livelihood.
The Persian chronicle of the Arab conquest of Sindh records the storming of Debal, the capitulations, the jizya, and the ruling that temples be treated 'like the churches of the Christians and the fire-temples of the Magians' — tolerated, taxed, and no longer endowed.
Bearing on the model: Onset of the Islam wedge: not instant conversion but a patronage regime-change whose slow demographic work the model spreads over nine centuries.
'Maḥmūd utterly ruined the prosperity of the country… the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions… their sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares and other places.'
Bearing on the model: A participant's own audit of the north-western collapse — the model's steep Gandhāra–Sindhu reciter fall at 1000–1200 quotes him almost literally.
Of Bakhtiyār Khaljī's raid on the great monastery (identified with Odantapurī/Nālandā): 'the greater number of the inhabitants were brahmins with shaven heads. They were put to death. Large numbers of books were found… but none could explain their contents.'
Bearing on the model: The beheading of institutional Buddhism books the śramaṇa wedge's collapse into the Islam wedge in the east — and warns what un-endowed knowledge systems do when their carriers are killed.
The Kashmiri court poet records Sikandar 'Butshikan' (idol-breaker): temples felled, the sciences dispersed, brahmins fleeing or converting; 'Kashmir became almost like the country of the mlecchas'.
Bearing on the model: Kashmir had been a Veda-śāstra powerhouse (Al-Bīrūnī's refuge!); its loss removes a disproportionate share of high-end reciters.
'With fire and sword, with crowbars and axes, they carried on day after day their work of destruction. Never perhaps in the history of the world has such havoc been wrought, and wrought so suddenly, on so splendid a city.'
Bearing on the model: Vijayanagara had been the recitation economy's shelter (Sāyaṇa's bhāṣya, temple endowment at scale). The model's southern series kinks here.
'The Emperor ordered the governors of all the provinces to demolish the schools and temples of the infidels and with the utmost urgency put down the teaching and the public practice of the religion of these misbelievers.' Kāśī Viśvanātha fell in 1669; jizya returned in 1679.
Bearing on the model: The explicit targeting of TEACHING — pāṭhaśālā, not just temple — is why the model docks reciter density, not merely fold share, in this era.
'A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia… We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern.'
Bearing on the model: The modern-secular wedge's founding document: within two generations the hereditary reciter's son sits the pleader's examination instead. Colonial stipends to tols and pāṭhaśālās were simultaneously wound down.
The 1770 Bengal famine (Hunter: 'a third of the population') and the century of revenue settlements dissolved lākherāj and devottara grants; Buchanan's surveys find tols surviving on shrinking rent-free tenures.
Bearing on the model: Reciters were fed by land, not fees. Resumption of rent-free tenures is a direct, documented mechanism of the 19th-century reciter decline.
Eaton's study of the agrarian frontier: charismatic pīrs organised forest clearance and rice settlement in the eastern delta, where the brahminical order had always been thinnest; by the 1872 census officials were stunned to find Bengal about half Muslim.
Bearing on the model: The model's largest single conversion wedge follows Eaton's mechanism — weak prior Vedicisation, not forced mass conversion, explains the east.
Partition scatters the Sindhi, West Punjabi and East Bengali lineages; zamindari-abolition and inam-abolition acts (1950s) resume the agrahāra tenures; temple-endowment boards salary a shrinking priesthood.
Bearing on the model: The model's sharpest reciter-density fall is 1947–1975 — legislated, not conquered.
What preserved the tradition through each trough — and what is growing now.
Under Bukka I and Harihara II, Sāyaṇa (with Mādhava-Vidyāraṇya) produces commentaries across the four Vedas — the largest recitation-preservation project of the medieval world, executed while the north's endowments burned.
Bearing on the model: Why the southern series holds its plateau through the Sultanate centuries.
Maratha power re-endows Kāśī, Prayāga, Nāsik and the southern maṭhas; Ahilyābāī Holkar rebuilds Viśvanātha (1780). The Peshwa's dakṣiṇā to Banaras pandits becomes an institution.
Bearing on the model: The 18th-century plateau before the colonial descent.
The six-volume Ṛgveda with Sāyaṇa's commentary, funded by the East India Company, fixes the text in print; Indian reprints follow within decades.
Bearing on the model: Ambivalent for CHANTING: the text is now unlosable, but the economic case for the living reciter weakens — print is the modern wedge's other face.
Dayānanda's movement makes havan and Veda-pāṭha a lay practice across Punjab and the Hindi belt; gurukulas (Kāṅgṛī 1902) train non-hereditary reciters for the first time at scale.
Bearing on the model: A measurable within-fold counter-trend the model credits in the 1875–1925 north-western series.
Endowment boards, maṭhas and a national Veda-vidyā foundation fund hundreds of pāṭhaśālās and thousands of students; complete śākhā recordings and digital archives multiply.
Bearing on the model: Why the model lets the southern reciter series bend UP after ~1990 while the aggregate per-capita line stays near its historic floor.
Bali's Hindu community wins state recognition; pedanda lineages continue sūrya-sevana and Veda-stuti fragments; Indian–Balinese exchange resumes after five centuries.
Bearing on the model: The Suvarnabhumi series does not quite reach zero — a living remnant of the Kutai-to-Majapahit world.
chantations(year) = Σregions population × dharmic-fraction × reciters-per-dharmic × sessions-per-reciter. Every parameter below is an anchor table interpolated to yearly granularity (population log-linearly). The counterfactual 'potential' applies each region's own best-so-far fidelity to its actual population; the gap is attributed to five channels: the śramaṇa exit, conversion to Islam, other conversions, the bhakti–āgamic turn (dharma kept, Veda de-emphasised), and modern secular drift. Disagree with a number? Every cell names its rationale — attack the weakest one.
Honesty note. No census of Vedic recitation exists before the modern era. Every curve here is a reasoned estimate, not a measurement; the shaded band is the model's own uncertainty (up to ×3 in the ancient past), and the anchor tables are the complete list of assumptions.
Baseline fold share 95% · session-intensity ×0.95
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 3000 BCE | 0.3M | sparse pastoral valleys |
| 1500 BCE | 0.6M | Rigvedic-era settlement of the Kabul–Swat valleys |
| 600 BCE | 1.2M | Gandhara a mahajanapada; Taxila rising |
| 1 CE | 2.5M | Indo-Greek / early Kushan urbanism |
| 1000 CE | 2.5M | Kabul Shahi era |
| 1500 CE | 3M | post-Timur recovery |
| 1800 CE | 4M | Durrani realm |
| 1900 CE | 5M | colonial-era estimates for Afghanistan + frontier |
| 1950 CE | 9M | — |
| 2000 CE | 25M | — |
| 2026 CE | 45M | Afghanistan ~42M + frontier districts |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 400 BCE | 0.02 | early sramana presence |
| 250 BCE | 0.15 | Ashokan missions; Gandhara a Buddhist centre |
| 1 CE | 0.45 | Indo-Greek/Saka patronage (Milindapanha) |
| 200 CE | 0.6 | Kushan peak — Gandharan Buddhism at its height |
| 630 CE | 0.5 | Xuanzang already reports decline and ruined viharas |
| 900 CE | 0.28 | Hindu Shahi revival under Kabul's brahmin dynasty |
| 1000 CE | 0.2 | — |
| 1200 CE | 0.05 | — |
| 1400 CE | 0 | Buddhism extinct in the region |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 650 CE | 0 | — |
| 700 CE | 0.02 | first Arab raids on Kabul/Zabul |
| 900 CE | 0.15 | Saffarid conquests |
| 1030 CE | 0.35 | Ghaznavid century — Mahmud's 17 campaigns based here |
| 1100 CE | 0.55 | — |
| 1250 CE | 0.75 | — |
| 1400 CE | 0.9 | post-Timur; Kafiristan the last redoubt |
| 1600 CE | 0.97 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.995 | 1896 forced conversion of Kafiristan -> Nuristan |
| 2026 CE | 0.999 | Hindu/Sikh community effectively gone after 2021 |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 CE | 0 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 3000 BCE | 0.01 | proto-Vedic ritual specialists |
| 1500 BCE | 0.018 | Rigvedic heartland — highest reciter density anywhere |
| 800 BCE | 0.015 | centre of gravity shifts east to Kuru-Pancala |
| 1 CE | 0.008 | brahmin minority within a Buddhist-majority land |
| 1000 CE | 0.006 | Shahi court patronage |
| 1300 CE | 0.004 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.002 | small Hindu trading communities |
| 2026 CE | 0.0002 | practically no Vedic recitation left on this soil |
Baseline fold share 95% · session-intensity ×1.00
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 3000 BCE | 1.2M | Harappan ascent |
| 2600 BCE | 2M | mature Harappan cities |
| 1900 BCE | 2.2M | de-urbanisation as the Sarasvati system fails |
| 1500 BCE | 2M | — |
| 1000 BCE | 3M | — |
| 500 BCE | 5M | Achaemenid satrapies of Gandara/Hindush attest density |
| 1 CE | 8M | — |
| 1000 CE | 10M | — |
| 1500 CE | 14M | — |
| 1800 CE | 20M | — |
| 1900 CE | 30M | census era |
| 1950 CE | 55M | — |
| 2000 CE | 200M | — |
| 2026 CE | 300M | Pakistan ~245M + Indian Punjab/Haryana |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 250 BCE | 0.1 | Ashokan era |
| 1 CE | 0.25 | — |
| 500 CE | 0.35 | Sindh strongly Buddhist (later attested by Xuanzang) |
| 711 CE | 0.4 | on the eve of the Arab conquest |
| 900 CE | 0.28 | — |
| 1200 CE | 0.1 | — |
| 1500 CE | 0.02 | — |
| 1700 CE | 0 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 700 CE | 0 | — |
| 760 CE | 0.03 | Muhammad bin Qasim takes Sindh, 712 |
| 1000 CE | 0.1 | Ghaznavid raids begin from the west |
| 1200 CE | 0.2 | — |
| 1400 CE | 0.35 | Suhrawardi/Chishti khanqahs; agrarian conversion |
| 1600 CE | 0.5 | west Punjab & Sindh now Muslim-majority |
| 1750 CE | 0.55 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.58 | 1901 census: W. Punjab ~majority, E. Punjab Hindu/Sikh |
| 1941 CE | 0.6 | — |
| 1955 CE | 0.72 | Partition: the Pakistani side ~97% Muslim after 1947 |
| 2026 CE | 0.75 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 CE | 0.005 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.01 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 3000 BCE | 0.008 | if Harappan ritualists chanted proto-Vedic material — UNKNOWN; band is widest here |
| 1500 BCE | 0.016 | Sapta-Sindhu — core Rigvedic srauta country |
| 500 BCE | 0.012 | — |
| 1 CE | 0.01 | — |
| 1000 CE | 0.008 | — |
| 1500 CE | 0.006 | Sultanate-era patronage loss |
| 1900 CE | 0.004 | — |
| 1950 CE | 0.003 | Partition scatters the Sindhi/Punjabi reciter lineages |
| 2026 CE | 0.0008 | Indian Punjab/Haryana carry nearly all of it |
Baseline fold share 97% · session-intensity ×1.00
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 3000 BCE | 1.5M | — |
| 1500 BCE | 4M | painted-grey-ware horizon |
| 1000 BCE | 8M | Kuru-Pancala consolidation; iron and rice |
| 500 BCE | 14M | sixteen mahajanapadas era |
| 1 CE | 28M | Mauryan-to-Kushan urban peak |
| 500 CE | 26M | Gupta era |
| 1000 CE | 36M | — |
| 1500 CE | 52M | — |
| 1700 CE | 80M | Mughal peak (Moosvi-style estimates) |
| 1800 CE | 90M | — |
| 1900 CE | 140M | census era |
| 1950 CE | 200M | — |
| 2000 CE | 550M | — |
| 2026 CE | 750M | UP+Bihar W+MP+Rajasthan+Gujarat+Maharashtra N+Nepal |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 450 BCE | 0.02 | Buddha & Mahavira teaching in Magadha |
| 250 BCE | 0.12 | Ashokan patronage |
| 1 CE | 0.2 | — |
| 400 CE | 0.25 | Faxian's India: sangha flourishing alongside brahmins |
| 700 CE | 0.2 | Xuanzang sees both flourishing and decline |
| 1000 CE | 0.12 | — |
| 1200 CE | 0.06 | monastic network beheaded (Nalanda burned ~1193) |
| 1500 CE | 0.02 | Jains persist in the west |
| 1957 CE | 0.012 | Ambedkarite conversion adds neo-Buddhists |
| 2026 CE | 0.012 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1190 CE | 0 | — |
| 1250 CE | 0.02 | Delhi Sultanate established (1206) |
| 1400 CE | 0.07 | garrison towns, qasbahs, artisan conversion |
| 1600 CE | 0.11 | Mughal era; Ain-i-Akbari's revenue society |
| 1800 CE | 0.13 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.14 | 1901 census United Provinces ~14% Muslim |
| 2026 CE | 0.15 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 CE | 0.002 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.005 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1500 BCE | 0.008 | — |
| 1000 BCE | 0.012 | Kuru-Pancala srauta consolidation — the samhitas fixed here |
| 500 BCE | 0.011 | srauta already yielding to grhya simplification |
| 1 CE | 0.01 | — |
| 500 CE | 0.01 | Gupta revival; agrahara grants attested in copper plates |
| 1000 CE | 0.009 | — |
| 1300 CE | 0.006 | Sultanate century: patronage collapse, migration south |
| 1600 CE | 0.006 | Mughal stability; Banaras revival under Todar Mal era |
| 1800 CE | 0.006 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.005 | census counts ~5% brahmin; minority still srotriya |
| 1950 CE | 0.003 | urbanisation; zamindari abolition ends mafi grants |
| 2000 CE | 0.0012 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.0009 | daily sandhya now a small minority practice |
Baseline fold share 95% · session-intensity ×0.95
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1000 BCE | 2M | — |
| 500 BCE | 5M | — |
| 1 CE | 10M | — |
| 500 CE | 9M | — |
| 1000 CE | 12M | Pala prosperity |
| 1500 CE | 18M | — |
| 1800 CE | 33M | Bengal the richest subah |
| 1900 CE | 55M | census era |
| 1950 CE | 90M | — |
| 2000 CE | 280M | — |
| 2026 CE | 380M | Bangladesh ~175M + WB + Assam + Odisha |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 250 BCE | 0.1 | — |
| 1 CE | 0.2 | — |
| 750 CE | 0.35 | Pala patronage: Nalanda, Vikramashila, Somapura |
| 1100 CE | 0.3 | — |
| 1250 CE | 0.1 | Turkic conquest beheads the monasteries (1200s) |
| 1500 CE | 0.02 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.01 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1200 CE | 0 | Bakhtiyar Khalji takes Bengal ~1204 |
| 1300 CE | 0.03 | — |
| 1450 CE | 0.1 | sufi-led agrarian frontier opens the delta |
| 1600 CE | 0.25 | Mughal Bengal: rice frontier conversion accelerates |
| 1800 CE | 0.3 | — |
| 1872 CE | 0.33 | first census stuns officials: Bengal ~half Muslim |
| 1950 CE | 0.36 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.46 | Bangladesh 91% + WB 27% + Assam 34% averaged |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 CE | 0.005 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.02 | NE hill conversions |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 800 BCE | 0.004 | Aitareya Brahmana still calls the east 'outside' |
| 1 CE | 0.006 | — |
| 500 CE | 0.007 | — |
| 1000 CE | 0.007 | Radhi/Varendra brahmin settlements (Adisura legend) |
| 1300 CE | 0.005 | — |
| 1600 CE | 0.005 | Navadvipa: a great smarta/nyaya centre — but bhakti-led |
| 1900 CE | 0.004 | — |
| 1950 CE | 0.002 | Partition scatters East Bengal lineages |
| 2026 CE | 0.0006 | — |
Baseline fold share 95% · session-intensity ×1.05
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1000 BCE | 3M | megalithic south |
| 500 BCE | 6M | — |
| 1 CE | 14M | Sangam-era polities; Roman trade |
| 500 CE | 14M | — |
| 1000 CE | 16M | Chola peak |
| 1500 CE | 24M | Vijayanagara peak |
| 1800 CE | 45M | — |
| 1900 CE | 70M | census era |
| 1950 CE | 110M | — |
| 2000 CE | 280M | — |
| 2026 CE | 340M | five southern states + Lanka |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 250 BCE | 0.05 | Ashokan missions; Lanka converts |
| 1 CE | 0.12 | — |
| 500 CE | 0.22 | Jain & Buddhist strength in Tamilakam/Karnataka |
| 800 CE | 0.16 | Nayanmar-Alvar bhakti counter-wave |
| 1100 CE | 0.08 | — |
| 1400 CE | 0.05 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.05 | Lanka's Buddhist majority folded into this region |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1300 CE | 0.01 | Malik Kafur's raids; Madurai Sultanate |
| 1500 CE | 0.05 | Deccan sultanates; Mappila & Marakkar coasts |
| 1700 CE | 0.08 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.09 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.1 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1560 CE | 0.005 | Goa Inquisition era conversions |
| 1800 CE | 0.02 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.04 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.06 | Kerala ~18% Christian; TN/AP coastal communities |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 600 BCE | 0.002 | first northern contact |
| 300 BCE | 0.005 | brahmin migrations southward begin |
| 1 CE | 0.007 | Sangam poems already honour 'antanar' of the four Vedas |
| 500 CE | 0.009 | Pallava grants: ghatika at Kanchi |
| 1000 CE | 0.011 | Chola ekabhoga/agrahara grants — peak density |
| 1350 CE | 0.011 | Vijayanagara shelter; Sayana's commentary project |
| 1600 CE | 0.01 | Nayaka patronage continues |
| 1800 CE | 0.009 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.007 | Madras census: Tanjore/Kerala thick with vaidikas |
| 1950 CE | 0.004 | land reforms end the agrahara economy |
| 2000 CE | 0.0016 | pathashala revival (TTD, mathas) slows the fall |
| 2026 CE | 0.0014 | the strongest surviving regional tradition |
Baseline fold share 75% · session-intensity ×0.80
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1 CE | 4M | Funan era |
| 500 CE | 6M | — |
| 1000 CE | 10M | Angkor & Srivijaya peak |
| 1300 CE | 13M | — |
| 1500 CE | 16M | — |
| 1800 CE | 30M | — |
| 1900 CE | 60M | colonial censuses |
| 1950 CE | 130M | — |
| 2000 CE | 380M | — |
| 2026 CE | 480M | Burma+Thailand+Cambodia+Champa coast+Malaysia+W. Indonesia |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 100 CE | 0.05 | Buddhism arrives with the same ships as the brahmins |
| 500 CE | 0.2 | — |
| 800 CE | 0.3 | — |
| 1100 CE | 0.45 | Pagan's Theravada reform radiates |
| 1300 CE | 0.6 | Sukhothai, post-Angkor Cambodia go Theravada |
| 1500 CE | 0.55 | — |
| 1800 CE | 0.52 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.48 | mainland SE Asia Theravada-majority |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1250 CE | 0.01 | Pasai, first sultanate on Sumatra |
| 1414 CE | 0.05 | Malacca converts — entrepot Islam |
| 1500 CE | 0.15 | — |
| 1600 CE | 0.35 | Java's interior converts; Mataram Islamic |
| 1700 CE | 0.42 | — |
| 1900 CE | 0.45 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.5 | Malaysia + western Indonesia |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1600 CE | 0.01 | Philippines excluded; Vietnam missions |
| 1900 CE | 0.02 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.02 | — |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 100 CE | 0.0005 | first court brahmins (Funan) |
| 400 CE | 0.0012 | Kutai yupa inscriptions — Vedic sacrifice in Borneo |
| 800 CE | 0.0015 | Angkor purohitas; Java's Sailendra-Sanjaya courts |
| 1200 CE | 0.0012 | — |
| 1400 CE | 0.0008 | Majapahit's rsi-saiva-sogata clergy |
| 1600 CE | 0.0003 | refuge in Bali after Majapahit falls |
| 1900 CE | 0.0002 | Balinese pedanda lineages |
| 2026 CE | 0.00015 | Bali ~4M Hindus; Veda parisada revival is young |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 3000 BCE | 850/yr | daily fire-rite + twilight recitation economy |
| 1200 BCE | 950/yr | peak srauta era: agnihotra + dual sandhya + svadhyaya |
| 500 BCE | 900/yr | grhya codification; srauta already contracting |
| 500 CE | 800/yr | smarta consolidation |
| 1000 CE | 780/yr | — |
| 1500 CE | 730/yr | bhakti era: japa and kirtana absorb the day |
| 1800 CE | 730/yr | — |
| 1900 CE | 700/yr | — |
| 1950 CE | 650/yr | — |
| 2026 CE | 620/yr | observant minority still near-daily; others occasional |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 600 CE | 1 | — |
| 1750 CE | 0.9 | — |
| 1800 CE | 0.7 | Company rule begins reshaping livelihoods |
| 1850 CE | 0.6 | Macaulayan education spreads |
| 1900 CE | 0.5 | — |
| 1950 CE | 0.35 | — |
| 2026 CE | 0.25 | secular drift now the main within-fold leak |
| Year | Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 3000 BCE | 3× | no texts, no censuses — pure reconstruction |
| 1000 BCE | 2.6× | textual geography only |
| 1 CE | 2.2× | foreign accounts begin (Megasthenes) |
| 1000 CE | 2× | inscriptions + Al-Biruni |
| 1500 CE | 1.9× | — |
| 1800 CE | 1.7× | early colonial surveys |
| 1900 CE | 1.5× | census era |
| 2026 CE | 1.35× | surveys of practice still thin |