Please give South Asia some love! I don't think this has been discussed elsewhere, but I find the culture map for
India/South Asia to be very disappointing.
Judging from the screenshot from the 1066 culture map, there is a regrettably low number of cultures represented in game for a region that is so rich in terms of cultural and linguistic diversity, while calling a culture "Hindustani" in 1066 is anachronistic and wrong.
Understandably, the game cannot have the level of granularity to realistically portray the level of cultural diversity that South Asia had and still has, and for each culture added it also has to add a full list of localised names for the characters, which adds a lot of work. Also, as it has been mentioned in earlier posts, the lack of a system to represents religious or cultural minorities cannot allow for a fully realistic portrayal in the Middle Ages, especially so for a region with a demography as complex as India. However, representing such a massive region, both in terms of population and geography, with only 14 different cultures, while leaving out important ones such as Bihari, Malayalam or Kashmiri is - to me - quite problematic.
EU4 did actually a very good job in portraying India's diversity by picking enough cultures that the map doesn't feel oversimplistic as the CK3 (and the CK2) maps do, and is pretty much realistic. I would argue that this is the level of granularity the game should aspire to, however judging from the screenshot of the CK3 cultural map mode in other parts of the world, this is maybe too much to ask for, as they don't seem to want to go into too much details. Mapping the spread of languages in ancient South Asia is difficult as multilingualism was and still is a common thing. And of course most of what we know about these languages comes from literary texts produced by and for the upper castes and classes, while we have no idea about the language of the common people, as most of the literature was published in Sanskrit, and then in *some* vernaculars such as Tamil.
If the game does not go to the extent of portraying as many cultures as EU4, I would suggest the following cultures should be added:
- Kashmiri: speak a Dardic language, a subbranch of the Indo-Aryan language family. The region of Kashmir was a major centre of Buddhism and Hinduism during the time period, home to Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020 CE), a major theologian and philosopher who developed Tantric Shaivism. The region of Kashmir continued to prosper under Muslim rule after 1339 and kept a distinct identity. In the current CK3 culture map, the region of Kashmir seems to be portrayed as Bodpa, a Tibetan culture, which is very wrong as Kashmiris are ethnically closer to Central Asians. Only the region of Ladakh should be Bodpa.
- Bihari: Bihari culture should be portrayed as culture distinct from "Hindustani" and Bengali. Bihar was historically a political and cultural centre which saw the emergence of Jainism and Buddhism, in a context culturally and linguistically distinct from the Sanskrit-speaking, religiously Brahminical Upper Ganges valley. Pataliputra/Patna was the capital of the Maurya Empire of the Pala kingdoms. While today Hindi is widely spoken in Bihar, local languages such as Maithili or Bhojpuri still retain a strong influence and were at times literary languages too.
- Malayalam: Malayalam culture could be split from Tamil culture in the area corresponding to today's state of Kerala. Although there is no scientific consensus on that, the Malayalam language is considered to have split from Tamil between the 9th and the 13th century CE. Geographical elements such as the fact that Kerala is cut off from Tamil Nadu by the Western Ghats mountains, and looking West towards the Arabian Sea and not East towards the Gulf of Bengal, are other arguments to advocate for a separate Malayalam culture.
This still leaves out interesting options, like that of portraying
Adivasi cultures, that is the culture of indigenous tribes, which were still numerous at this time period and regularly interacted with sanskritised/aryanised polities, adopting mainstream Hinduism while integrating their beliefs in larger religious systems. Playing as an animistic Bhil or Gond tribal ruler of central India surrounded by Hindu or Buddhist kingdoms could make for an interesting experience though!
Finally, the use of "
Hindustani" as culture name for the Upper Ganges Valley (today's "Hindi Belt") is - in my opinion - plainly wrong. There was no such thing as a "Hindustani" language or culture in 1066 or 867. First, the name itself comes from Persian and originally designates people who live in Hindustan, that is the land beyond the Indus, irrespective of local differences. This is probably not the name by which people inhabiting the region of Hindustan would have called themselves. Persians and Arabs first used "Hind" or "Hindustan" to unspecifically name the entire subcontinent (at the time of our 867 start). Only after repeated raids and invasions by Turko-Afghans from the 11th century onwards did Hindustan come to designate North India. To come back to the CK3 culture map mode screenshot, it is correct to have this region named Hindustan, but incorrect to speak of a Hindustani culture.
The language that came to be called Hindustani - and today forms the common basis for Hindi and Urdu - only appeared later in the 13th century. Hindustani emerged in the region between Lahore, Agra and Kanpur, with Delhi as its centre, after the region was conquered by Turko-Afghans who founded the Delhi Sultanate. It is a mix of local Indic dialects (
khari boli) such as Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, or Dehlvi, with a large number of Persian (the sultans' court language) loanwords, as well as some Arabic and Turkic words. Reflecting this process, the new language was called
Rekhta ("mixed" or "scattered") or
Urdu (from the same Turkic word "
ordu" that gave us the word "horde", meaning "army", as it was the
lingua franca spoken by the Sultan's soldiers in his camps). The first ever literary works in Hindustani/Rekhta/Urdu were published by Amir Khusrau (1253 – 1325), who is also credited with systematising the language.
TL;DR, my suggestion is: split Hindustani culture in two:
- Braj culture, spread over both sides of the Yamuna river in the Upper Ganges valley
- Awadhi culture: corresponding to the central part of modern Uttar Pradesh, around Lucknow and Faizabad.
However, Hindustani culture could very realistically be represented in game since melting pots are confirmed. After X years under a ruler of Turkic, Afghan or Persian culture, a Braj or Awadhi county could give rise to a
Hindustani melting pot culture.
This allows for different gameplay options: either follow the historic route, conquer (North) India as a Turko-Afghan ruler and make Hindustani culture thrive as it did historically; or change the course of history, and fend off the Muslim invader as a Braj or Awadhi Hindu king.