Vedic Period Essay

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Vedic period The Vedic period (or Vedic age) (ca.1750–500 BCE) was the period in Indian history during which the Vedas, the oldest scriptures 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 civilization) 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. The end of the Vedic period witnessed the rise of large, urbanized states as well as of shramana movements (including Jainism and Buddhism) 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" Hystory The commonly proposed period of earlier Vedic age is dated back to 2nd millennium BCE. After the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, which ended ca. 1900 BCE, groups of Indo-Aryan peoples migrated into North-western India and started to inhabit the northern Indus Valley. The Indo-Aryans were a branch of the Indo-Iranians, which originated in the Andronovo culture in the Bactria-Margiana era, in present northern Afghanistan. The roots of this culture go back further to the Sintashta culture, with funeral sacrifices which show close parallels to the sacrificial funeral rites of the Rig Veda. The Indo-Aryans split-off around 1800–1600 BCE from the Iranians, where-after they were defeated and split into two groups by the Iranians, who dominated the Central Eurasian steppe zone and "chased them to the extermities of Central Eurasia." One group were the Indo-Aryans who founded the

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