The invasion army of Alexander the Great was deterred by the accounts of Gangaridai's power in 325 BCE, including a cavalry of war elephants.

The Greek ambassador Megasthenes chronicled its military strength and dominance of the Ganges delta. The region was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Gangaridai. The region was a centre of artistic, political, social, spiritual and scientific thinking, including the invention of chess, Indian numerals, and the concept of zero. The two most prominent pan-Indian empires of this period included the Mauryans and the Gupta Empire. A prince from Bengal named Vijaya founded the first kingdom in Sri Lanka. The namesake of Bengal is the ancient Vanga Kingdom which was reputed as a naval power with overseas colonies. Punch-marked coins found in the region indicate that coins were used as currency during the Iron Age. The inscription was an administrative order instructing relief for a distressed segment of the population. The Mahasthan Brahmi Inscription indicates that Bengal was ruled by the Mauryan Empire in the 3rd century BCE. These regions were often independent or under the rule of larger empires. The ancient geopolitical divisions of Bengal included Varendra, Suhma, Anga, Vanga, Samatata and Harikela. Estuaries on the Bay of Bengal allowed for maritime trade with distand lands in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers were natural arteries for communication and transportation. Cities in Mahasthangarh, Chandraketugarh and Wari-Bateshwar emerged. From 600 BCE, the second wave of urbanisation engulfed the north Indian subcontinent as part of the Northern Black Polished Ware culture. At the advent of the Iron Age, people in Bengal adopted iron-based weapons, tools and irrigation equipment. Remnants of Copper Age settlements are located in the region. By the eleventh century BCE, people in Bengal lived in systematically aligned homes, produced copper objects, and crafted black and red pottery. In the second millennium BCE, rice-cultivating communities dotted the region. Neolithic sites have been found in several parts of the region. Ancient Bengal was reputed for its war elephants Punch-marked coin of the Vanga Kingdom, 400–300 BCE Atisa of Bikrampur See also: Vanga Kingdom, Gauda Kingdom, Samatata, Pala Empire, and Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah Art of the Pala period from Dinajpur, 11th century. Once home to the city with the highest per capita income level in British India, the region is today a leader in South Asia in terms of gender parity, the gender pay gap and other indices of human development. The region is also notable for its economic and social scientists, which includes several Nobel laureates. Following the Sylhet referendum and votes by the Bengal Legislative Council and Bengal Legislative Assembly, the region was again divided along religious lines in 1947.īengali culture, particularly its literature, music, art and cinema, are well known in South Asia and beyond. As a result of the first partition of Bengal, a short-lived province called Eastern Bengal and Assam existed between 19 with its capital in the former Mughal capital Dhaka. The company's Bengal Presidency grew into the largest administrative unit of British India with Calcutta as the capital of both Bengal and India until 1911. The last independent Nawab of Bengal was defeated in 1757 at the Battle of Plassey by the East India Company. Bengal Subah later emerged as a prosperous part of the Mughal Empire.

During this period, Bengal's rule and influence spread to Assam, Arakan, Tripura, Bihar, and Orissa. An independent Bengal Sultanate was formed and became the eastern frontier of the Islamic world. By the 14th century, Bengal was absorbed by Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent. The Sena dynasty and Deva dynasty ruled between the 11th and 13th centuries. The Pala Empire was founded in Bengal during the 8th century. The Bengali calendar dates back to the reign of Shashanka in the 7th century. The ancient Vanga Kingdom is widely regarded as the namesake of the Bengal region. Various Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austric and other peoples inhabited the region since antiquity. Bengali is the sixth-most spoken language in the world. A large Bengali diaspora exists across the world. The Indian states of Assam and Tripura have a sizeable Bengali population. The region of Bengal proper is divided between modern-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. The Bay of Bengalīengal ( / b ɛ n ˈ ɡ ɔː l/ ben- GAWL Bengali: বাংলা/বঙ্গ, romanized: Bangla/Bôngô, pronounced ⓘ) is a historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal.

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