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The epoch may be divided into two equal periods of five hundred years each, the first running from the eighth to the thirteenth and the second from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century of the Christian era, the first may be designated the early middle age and the second the later middle age. During the first age Islam began to penetrate into India peacefully in the south and forcibly into Singh and the north-west, and during the second it became the dominant force practically over the whole of the Indian peninsula.

In order to trace the changes in the culture of the country which Muslim influences produced, it is first necessary to give a description of it as it existed before their advent. It will be convenient to divide culture into two heads - religion and philosophy, and art - and to treat each head separately from the time of the advent of the Muslims into India till the passing of the Moghal empire in the eighteenth century.