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Vedic Period

Vedic Period

The Vedic period (or Vedic age) (c. 1500 – c. 500 BCE) was the period in Indian history during which the Vedas, the oldestscriptures of Hinduism, were composed.

During the early part of the Vedic period, the Indo-Aryans settled into northern India, bringing with them their specific religious traditions. The associated culture (sometimes referred to as Vedic civilisation was initially a tribal, pastoral society centred in the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent; it spread after 1200 BCE to the Ganges Plain, as it was shaped by increasing settled agriculture, a hierarchy of four social classes, and the emergence of monarchical, state-level polities.^[3][4] Scholars consider Vedic civilisation to have been a composite of the Indo-Aryan and Harappan cultures.

The end of the Vedic period witnessed the rise of large, urbanised states as well as of shramana movements (including Jainism andBuddhism) which challenged the Vedic orthodoxy. Around the beginning of the Common Era, the Vedic tradition formed one of the main constituents of the so-called "Hindu synthesis".

Vedic Period

Early Vedic Period[1500-1100 Bc]

These migrations may have been accompanied with violent clashes with the people who already inhabited this region. The Rig Vedacontains accounts of conflicts between the Aryas and the Dasas and Dasyus. The Rig Veda describes Dasas and Dasyus as people who do not perform sacrifices (akratu) or obey the commandments of gods (avrata). Their speech is described as mridhra which could variously mean soft, uncouth, hostile, scornful or abusive. Other adjectives which describe their physical appearance are subject to many interpretations. However, many modern scholars connect the Dasas and Dasyus to Iranian tribes Dahae and Dahyu and believe that Dasas and Dasyus were early Indo–Aryan immigrants who arrived into the subcontinent before the Vedic Aryans.

Internecine military conflicts between the various tribes of Vedic Aryans are also described in the Rig Veda. Most notable of such conflicts was the Battle of Ten Kings, which took place on the banks of the river Parushni (modern day Ravi). The battle was fought between the tribe Bharatas, led by their chief Sudas, against a confederation of ten tribes— Puru, Yadu, Turvasha, Anu, Druhyu, Alina, Bhalanas,Paktha, Siva, Vishanin. Bharatas lived around the upper regions of the river Saraswati, while Purus, their western neighbours, lived along the lower regions of Saraswati. The other tribes dwelt north-west of the Bharatas in the region of Punjab. Division of the waters of Ravi could have been a reason for the war. The confederation of tribes tried to inundate the Bharatas by opening the embankments of Ravi, yet Sudas emerged victorious in the Battle of Ten Kings. Purukutsa, the chief of Purus, was killed in the battle and the Bharatas and the Purus merged into a new tribe Kuru after the war.

Vedic Period

Later Vedic Period[1100-500 BC]

After the 12th century BCE, as the Rig Veda had taken its final form, the Vedic society transitioned from semi-nomadic life to settled agriculture. Vedic culture extended into the western Ganges Plain.^[42] The Gangetic plains had remained out of bounds to the Vedic tribes because of thick forest cover. After 1000 BCE, the use of iron axes and ploughs became widespread and the jungles could be cleared with ease. This enabled the Vedic Aryans to settle at the western Gangetic plains.^[43] Many of the old tribes coalesced to form larger political units.^[

The Vedic religion was further developed when the Indo-Aryans migrated into the Ganges Plain after c. 1100 BCE and became settled farmers, further syncretising with the native cultures of northern India. In this period the varna system emerged, state Kulke and Rothermund, which in this stage of Indian history were "hierarchical order of estates which reflected a division of labor among various social classes". The Vedic period estates were three, Brahmin priests and warrior nobility were first, peasants and traders as second, and laborers and artisans belonging to indigenous (non-Aryan) people were third. This was a period where agriculture, metal and commodity production as well trade greatly expanded, and the Vedic era texts including the early Upanishads and many Sutras important to later Hindu culture were completed.

The Kuru Kingdom, the earliest Vedic "state", was formed by a "super-tribe" which joined several tribes in a new unit. To govern this state, Vedic hymns were collected and transcribed, and new rituals were developed, which formed the now orthodox Srauta rituals. Two key figures in this process of the development of the Kuru state were the kingParikshit and his successor Janamejaya, transforming this realm into the dominant political and cultural power of northern Iron Age India.

The most famous of new religious sacrifices that arose in this period were the Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice).This sacrifice involved setting a consecrated horse free to roam the kingdoms for a year. The horse was followed by a chosen band of warriors. The kingdoms and chiefdoms in which the horse wandered had to pay homage or prepare to battle the king to whom the horse belonged. This sacrifice put considerable pressure on inter-state relations in this era. This period saw also the beginning of the social stratification by the use of Varna, the division of Vedic society in Kshatriya, Brahmins, Vaishya and Shudra.

The Kuru kingdom declined after its defeat by the non-Vedic Salva tribe, and the political centre of Vedic culture shifted east, into the Panchala kingdom on the Ganges. Later, the kingdom of Videha emerged as a political centre farther to the East, in what is today southern Nepal and northern Bihar state in India, reaching its prominence under the kingJanaka, whose court provided patronage for Brahmin sages and philosophers such as Yajnavalkya and Uddalaka Aruni.

Vedic Period