List of Indian inventions and discoveries

Ancient India

Agriculture

• Indigo dye – Indigo, a blue pigment and a dye, was used in India, which was also the earliest major, old world, centre for its production and processing. The Indigofera tinctoria variety of Indigo was domesticated in India. Indigo, used as a dye, made its way to the Greeks and the Romans via various trade routes, and was valued as a luxury product.
• Jute cultivation – Jute has been cultivated in India since ancient times. Raw jute was exported to the western world, where it was used to make ropes and cordage. The Indian jute industry, in turn, was modernised during the British Raj in India. The region of Bengal was the major centre for Jute cultivation, and remained so before the modernisation of India's jute industry in 1855, when Kolkata became a centre for jute processing in India.
• Sugar – Sugarcane was originally from tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia, with different species originating in India, and S. edule and S. officinarum from New Guinea. The process of producing crystallised sugar from sugar cane, in India, dates to at least the beginning of the common era, with 1st century CE Greek and Roman authors writing on Indian sugar. The process was soon transmitted to China with travelling Buddhist monks. Chinese documents confirm at least two missions to India, initiated in 647 CE, for obtaining technology for sugar-refining. Each mission returned with results on refining sugar.

  Construction, civil engineering and architecture

• Stepwell – While the early history of stepwells is poorly understood, water structures in Western India were their likely predecessor. The three features of stepwells in the subcontinent are evident from one particular site, abandoned by 2500 BCE, which combines a bathing pool, steps leading down to water, and figures of some religious importance into one structure.
• Stupa – The origin of the stupa can be traced to 3rd-century BCE India. It was used as a commemorative monument associated with storing sacred relics. The stupa architecture was adopted in Southeast and East Asia, where it evolved into the pagoda, a Buddhist monument used for enshrining sacred relics.
• Residential University – Nalanda was a renowned mahavihara in ancient Magadha, eastern India. Considered by historians to be the world's first residential university and among the greatest centres of learning in the ancient world, it was located near the city of Rajagriha and about southeast of Pataliputra and operated from 427 until 1197 CE.

  Finance and banking

• Cheque/Check – There is early evidence of using cheques/checks. In India, during the Maurya Empire, a commercial instrument called the "Adesha" was in use, which was an order on a banker desiring him to pay the money of the note to a third person.

  Games

• Atya-patya – This variation of tag was being played as early as 100 CE, and was possibly invented by farmers as a way of practicing driving away birds. It was later used as a form of military training in Kerala in close relation to the martial art of kalaripayattu.
• Blindfold chess – Games prohibited by Buddha includes a variant of ashtapada game played on imaginary boards. Akasam astapadam was an ashtapada variant played with no board, literally "astapadam played in the sky". A correspondent in the American Chess Bulletin identifies this as likely the earliest literary mention of a blindfold chess variant.
• Carrom – The game of carrom originated in India. One carrom board with its surface made of glass is still available in one of the palaces in Patiala, India. It became very popular among the masses after World War I. State-level competitions were being held in the different states of India during the early part of the twentieth century. Serious carrom tournaments may have begun in Sri Lanka in 1935 but by 1958, both India and Sri Lanka had formed official federations of carrom clubs, sponsoring tournaments and awarding prizes.
• Chaturanga – The precursor of chess originated in India during the Gupta dynasty. Both the Persians and Arabs ascribe the origins of the game of Chess to the Indians. The words for "chess" in Old Persian and Arabic are chatrang and shatranj respectively – terms derived from caturaṅga in Sanskrit, which literally means an army of four divisions or four corps. Chess spread throughout the world and many variants of the game soon began taking shape. This game was introduced to the Near East from India and became a part of the princely or courtly education of Persian nobility. Buddhist pilgrims, Silk Road traders and others carried it to the Far East where it was transformed and assimilated into a game often played on the intersection of the lines of the board rather than within the squares. Chaturanga reached Europe through Persia, the Byzantine empire and the expanding Arabian empire. Muslims carried Shatranj to North Africa, Sicily, and Spain by the 10th century where it took its final modern form of chess.
• Kabaddi – The game of kabaddi originated in India during prehistory. Suggestions on how it evolved into the modern form range from wrestling exercises, military drills, and collective self-defence but most authorities agree that the game existed in some form or the other in India during the period between 1500 and 400 BCE.
• Kalaripayattu – One of the world's oldest form of martial arts is Kalaripayattu that developed in the southwest state of Kerala in India. It is believed to be the oldest surviving martial art in India, with a history spanning over 3,000 years.
• Kho-kho – This is one of the oldest variations of tag in the world, having been played since as early as the fourth century BCE.
• Ludo – Pachisi originated in India by the 6th century. The earliest evidence of this game in India is the depiction of boards on the caves of Ajanta. A variant of this game, called Ludo, made its way to England during the British Raj.
• Mallakhamba – It is a traditional sport, originating from the Indian subcontinent, in which a gymnast performs aerial yoga or gymnastic postures and wrestling grips in concert with a vertical stationary or hanging wooden pole, cane, or rope.The earliest literary known mention of Mallakhamb is in the 1135 CE Sanskrit classic Manasollasa, written by Someshvara III. It has been thought to be the ancestor of Pole Dancing.
• Nuntaa, also known as Kutkute.
• Seven stones – An Indian subcontinent game also called Pitthu is played in rural areas has its origins in the Indus Valley Civilization.
• Snakes and ladders – Vaikunta pali Snakes and ladders originated in India as a game based on morality. During British rule of India, this game made its way to England, and was eventually introduced in the United States of America by game-pioneer Milton Bradley in 1943.
• Suits game: Kridapatram is an early suits game, made of painted rags, invented in Ancient India. The term kridapatram literally means "painted rags for playing." Paper playing cards first appeared in East Asia during the 9th century. The medieval Indian game of ganjifa, or playing cards, is first recorded in the 16th century.
• Vajra-mushti – refers to a wrestling where knuckleduster like weapon is employed.The first literary mention of vajra-musti comes from the Manasollasa of the Chalukya king Someswara III, although it has been conjectured to have existed since as early as the Maurya dynasty

  Textile and material production

• Button – Ornamental buttons—made from seashell—were used in the Indus Valley civilization for ornamental purposes by 2000 BCE. Some buttons were carved into geometric shapes and had holes pierced into them so that they could be attached to clothing by using a thread. Ian McNeil holds that: "The button, in fact, was originally used more as an ornament than as a fastening, the earliest known being found at Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley. It is made of a curved shell and about 5000 years old."

• Calico – Calico had originated in the subcontinent by the 11th century and found mention in Indian literature, by the 12th-century writer Hemachandra. He has mentioned calico fabric prints done in a lotus design. The Indian textile merchants traded in calico with the Africans by the 15th century and calico fabrics from Gujarat appeared in Egypt. Trade with Europe followed from the 17th century onward. Within India, calico originated in Kozhikode.
• Carding devices – Historian of science Joseph Needham ascribes the invention of bow-instruments used in textile technology to India. The earliest evidence for using bow-instruments for carding comes from India. These carding devices, called kaman and dhunaki would loosen the texture of the fibre by the means of a vibrating string.
• Cashmere – The fibre cashmere fibre also known as pashm or pashmina for its use in the handmade shawls of Kashmir, India. The woolen shawls made from wool in Indian administered Kashmir find written mention between the 3rd century BCE and the 11th century CE.
• Charkha : invented in India, between 500 and 1000 CE.
• Chintz – The origin of Chintz is from the printed all cotton fabric of calico in India. The origin of the word chintz itself is from the Hindi language word चित्र्, which means an image.
• Cotton cultivation – Cotton was cultivated by the inhabitants of the Indus Valley civilisation by the 5th millennium BCE4th millennium BCE. The Indus cotton industry was well developed and some methods used in cotton spinning and fabrication continued to be practised until the modern industrialisation of India. Well before the Common Era, the use of cotton textiles had spread from India to the Mediterranean and beyond.
• Single roller cotton gin – The Ajanta Caves of India yield evidence of a single roller cotton gin in use by the 5th century. This cotton gin was used in India until innovations were made in form of foot powered gins. The cotton gin was invented in India as a mechanical device known as charkhi, more technically the "wooden-worm-worked roller". This mechanical device was, in some parts of India, driven by water power.
• Worm drive cotton gin – The worm drive later appeared in the Indian subcontinent, for use in roller cotton gins, during the Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.
• Crank Handle Cotton Gin – The incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared in either the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire.
• Palampore – पालमपोर् of Indian origin was imported to the western world—notable England and Colonial America—from India. In 17th-century England these hand painted cotton fabrics influenced native crewel work design. Shipping vessels from India also took palampore to colonial America, where it was used in quilting.
• Prayer flags – The Buddhist sūtras, written on cloth in India, were transmitted to other regions of the world. These sutras, written on banners, were the origin of prayer flags. Legend ascribes the origin of the prayer flag to the Shakyamuni Buddha, whose prayers were written on battle flags used by the devas against their adversaries, the asuras. The legend may have given the Indian bhikku a reason for carrying the 'heavenly' banner as a way of signyfying his commitment to ahimsa. This knowledge was carried into Tibet by 800 CE, and the actual flags were introduced no later than 1040 CE, where they were further modified. The Indian monk Atisha introduced the Indian practice of printing on cloth prayer flags to Tibet.
• Shellac - a biopolymer resin that is secreted by an insect called lac bug onto tree trunks, it has multiple uses such as wood polishing, drug coating, candies etc. its name is derived from lakh word.
• Roller sugar mill – Geared sugar rolling mills first appeared in Mughal India, using the principle of rollers as well as worm gearing, by the 17th century.