The Vedic Age gave India its oldest texts, its classical language and the social grammar — varna, ritual and kingship — on which Brahmanical civilisation was built.
§1The Coming of the Aryans
Around 1500 BCE, Indo-Aryan speaking peoples — who called themselves Arya, 'the noble ones' — entered the north-west. They were pastoral, cattle-centred tribes organised in kin groups and led by rajans chosen in war. The Rig Veda, composed in the region the hymns call Sapta Sindhu (land of the seven rivers of the Indus system), is the oldest religious text of India and one of the oldest in the world still in ritual use.
The Early Vedic period (c. 1500–1000 BCE) was a world of cattle raids, chariot warfare and tribal assemblies — the sabha, samiti, vidatha and gana — in which the rajan was chief among equals, not an absolute monarch. Women attended assemblies, and social divisions were still fluid.
§2The Later Vedic Expansion
Between c. 1000 and 600 BCE the horizon shifted east into the Ganga-Yamuna doab. The introduction of iron tools (called 'shyama' or dark metal) around 1000 BCE enabled the clearing of the Ganga's rain forest, and the plough-based agriculture that followed produced the surplus for new towns and kingdoms. The region is associated with Painted Grey Ware and Northern Black Polished Ware pottery.
Society hardened. The varna order — Brahmana priests, Kshatriya warriors, Vaishya producers and Shudra servants — became hereditary, rituals grew vast and complex under priestly control, and kingship gained divine sanction through ceremonies such as the Rajasuya, Vajapeya and the horse sacrifice, the Ashvamedha. The great battle hymn of the age, the Battle of the Ten Kings on the river Parushni (Ravi), shows the Bharata tribe rising to dominance.
§3The Vedic Literature
Vedic literature falls into layers: the four Samhitas (Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva Veda), the Brahmanas which explain ritual, the Aranyakas or forest texts, and finally the Upanishads, composed from about 800–500 BCE. The Upanishads turned from sacrifice to speculation — asking about atman (the self) and brahman (the absolute) — and form the philosophical fountainhead of Indian thought.
To the later tradition also belong the Satapatha Brahmana (which preserves legends of a great flood and of the easterly march of the Vedic fire) and the two epics whose cores formed in this milieu — the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
End of Chapter 03 · Volume I