It will not be a matter of exaggeration if Pandharpur is called as the town of monasteries. There is a majority of monasteries and temples belonging to the Bhagwat sect. At the Centre of the town is located the temple of Lord Vitthal and the surrounding area is occupied by monasteries, religious centers, asylums and sectarian houses of the Waarkari sect. All these are the places where the activities of the Bhagwat sect are held. According to the defination found on one of the inscriptions discovered in and around the temple of Lord Vitthal the word"Laandadue," meaning either a temple or a monastery, is supposed to be the basis of the term monasstery. It got reconstructed before the 10th century A.D. Ramdevray Yadav was the king who ruled Maharashtra. The word "math” meaning monastery is also found in the literature of the Mahanubhav cult. It can be concluded that the concept of monastery got originated before Saint Dnyandev and Saint Namdev's period. However, the development of these monasteries took place after the 17th century.

Tools crafted by proto-humans that have been dated back two million years have been discovered in the northwestern part of the subcontinent. The ancient history of the region includes some of South Asia's oldest settlements and some of its major civilizations. The earliest archaeological site in the subcontinent is the palaeolithic hominid site in the Soan River valley. Soanian sites are found in the Sivalik region across what are now India, Pakistan, and Nepal. The Mesolithic period in the Indian subcontinent was followed by the Neolithic period, when more extensive settlement of the subcontinent occurred after the end of the last Ice Age approximately 12,000 years ago. The first confirmed semipermanent settlements appeared 9,000 years ago in the Bhimbetka rock shelters in modern Madhya Pradesh, India.

The Vedic period (or Vedic age) was a period in history during which the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, were composed. The time span of the period is uncertain. Philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas, was composed roughly between 1700 and 1100 BCE, also referred to as the early Vedic period. The end of the period is commonly estimated to have occurred about 500 BCE, and 150 BCE has been suggested as a terminus ante quem for all Vedic Sanskrit literature. Transmission of texts in the Vedic period was by oral tradition alone, and a literary tradition set in only in post-Vedic times. Despite the difficulties in dating the period, the Vedas can safely be assumed to be several thousands of years old. The associated culture, sometimes referred to as Vedic civilization, was probably centred early on in the northern and northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, but has now spread and constitutes the basis of contemporary Indian culture. After the end of the Vedic period, the Mahajanapadas period in turn gave way to the Maurya Empire (from ca. 320 BC), the golden age of classical Sanskrit literature.