Vedic age
Early Indo-Aryans were a Late Bronze Age society centred in the Punjab, organised into tribes rather than kingdoms, and primarily sustained by a pastoral way of life.
the Aryan culture spread eastward to the fertile eastern Ganges Plain.
Iron tools adopted, which allowed for the clearing of forests and the adoption of a more settled, agricultural way of life.
The second half of the Vedic period was characterised by 1)emergence of towns, kingdoms,
2)caste system distinctive to India,
3)the Kuru Kingdom's codification of orthodox sacrificial ritual.
During this time, the central Ganges Plain was dominated by a related but non-Vedic Indo-Aryan culture, of Greater Magadha.
The end of the Vedic period witnessed the rise of true cities and large states (called mahajanapadas) as well as śramaṇa movements (including Jainism and Buddhism) which challenged the Vedic orthodoxy.
The Vedic period saw the emergence of a hierarchy of social classes that would remain influential. Vedic religion developed into Brahmanical orthodoxy, and around the beginning of the Common Era, the Vedic tradition formed one of the main constituents of "Hindu synthesis".
The Rigveda contains accounts of conflicts between the Aryas and the Dasas and Dasyus.
It describes Dasas and Dasyus as people who do not perform sacrifices (akratu) or obey the commandments of gods (avrata).
Accounts of military conflicts in between the various tribes of Vedic Aryans are also described in the Rigveda.
Most notable of such conflicts was the Battle of the Ten Kings, which took place on the banks of the river Parushni (modern day Ravi).
The battle was fought between the tribe of Bharatas, led by their chief Sudas, against a confederation of ten tribes.
The Bharatas lived around the upper regions of the river Saraswati, while the 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.
Sudas emerged victorious in the Battle of Ten Kings.
The Bharatas and the Purus merged into a new tribe, the Kuru, after the war.
Later Vedic period
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 extend their settlements into the western area of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab.Many of the old tribes coalesced to form larger political units.
The Vedic religion was further developed with the emergence of the Kuru kingdom, systematising its religious literature and developing the Śrauta ritual.
It is associated with the Painted Grey Ware culture which did not expand east of the Ganga-Yamuya Doab.
It differed from the related, yet markedly different, culture of the Central Ganges region, which was associated with the Northern Black Polished Ware and the Mahajanapadas of Kosala and Magadha.
This was a period where agriculture, metal, and commodity production, as well as trade, greatly expanded,[53] 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 Śrauta rituals.[55] Two key figures in this process of the development of the Kuru state were the king Parikshit and his successor Janamejaya, transforming this realm into the dominant political and cultural power of northern Iron Age India.[45]
The most well-known of the new religious sacrifices that arose in this period were the Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice).[56] 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.[56] This period saw also the beginning of the social stratification by the use of varna, the division of Vedic society into Brahmins, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra.[55]
The Kuru kingdom declined after its defeat by the non-Vedic Salva tribe, and the political center of Vedic culture shifted east, into the Panchala kingdom on the Ganges, under King Keśin Dālbhya (approximately between 900 and 750 BCE).[45] Later, in the 8th or 7th century BCE, the kingdom of Videha emerged as a political center farther to the East, in what is today northern Bihar of India and southeastern Nepal, reaching its prominence under the king Janaka, whose court provided patronage for Brahmin sages and philosophers such as Yajnavalkya, Uddalaka Aruni, and Gargi Vachaknavi;[8] Panchala also remained prominent during this period, under its king Pravahana Jaivali.
By the 6th century BCE, the political units consolidated into large kingdoms called Mahajanapadas.
The process of urbanisation had begun in these kingdoms, commerce and travel flourished, even regions separated by large distances became easy to access.
Anga, a small kingdom to the east of Magadha (on the door step of modern-day West Bengal), formed the eastern boundary of the Vedic culture.
Yadavas expanded towards the south and settled in Mathura.
To the south of their kingdom was Vatsa which was governed from its capital Kausambi. The Narmada River and parts of North Western Deccan formed the southern limits.
The newly formed states struggled for supremacy and started displaying imperial ambitions.
The end of the Vedic period is marked by linguistic, cultural and political changes.
The grammar of Pāṇini marks a final apex in the codification of Sutra texts, and at the same time the beginning of Classical Sanskrit.
Meanwhile, in the Kosala-Magadha region, the shramana movements (including Jainism and Buddhism) objected the self-imposed authority and orthodoxy of the intruding Brahmins and their Vedic scriptures and ritual.
the sramana culture arose in "Greater Magadha," which was not Vedic. In this culture, kshatriyas were placed higher than Brahmins, and
Greater Magadha reached its zenith under the Maurya Empire. Meanwhile, the Achaemenid invasion of Cyrus and Darius I of the Indus valley in the early 6th century BCE marks the beginning of outside influence, which continued in the Kingdoms of the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, and Indo-Parthians.
This period culminated with the Kushan and Gupta Empire, which resulted in the "Hindu Synthesis".
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