Introduction to the Vedic Period | World History | Khan Academy

First civilization that we have evidence of around modern-day India and Pakistan is the Indus Valley Civilisation. It's right around the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan and Northwest India. In other videos, we talked about how it really comes into being in the third millennium BCE. As we enter into the second millennium BCE, it starts to decline. We don't know exactly why it declined; it might have been climate change, drying up of a river, a natural disaster, or an influence of other people.

What we're going to talk about in this video is the next significant period in the history of South Asia. It involves the migration or the introduction of another group of people. We believe another group of people, and that's the Indo-Aryans. Let me write this down: Indo-Aryans, sometimes referred to as just the Aryans. We believe they began to migrate into Northwest India, into modern-day Pakistan and Northwest India, right about the same time that the Indus Valley Civilisation was declining. Some historians actually believe, well, maybe the Indus Valley Civilization declined because of them. Maybe it was some type of an invasion, although that theory is not as widely held anymore.

Some folks believe that the Indus Valley Civilization and this Indo-Aryan migration somehow merged. This period that we're talking about, with the migration of these Indo-Aryans, is called the Vedic period. It’s called the Vedic period because we learn about it from a collection of literary works that we get from that time, most famously the Vedas. "Veda" comes from Sanskrit, and Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas. It means "knowledge," and they’re the foundation of what we know about the Vedic period, but they're also the foundation of modern Indian culture and religion.

Now, the primary pieces of the Vedas are the Rigveda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Atharva Veda. The Rig Veda, in particular, is considered the oldest of the Vedas. It's believed that it was composed around the early part of that Vedic period, between maybe 1500 BCE and around 1200 BCE, so we’re talking between 3,000 and 3,500 years ago. While these three Vedas, we believe, were composed later, the Indo-Aryans are believed to have been essentially pastoralists; they were cattle herders, perhaps nomadic.

However, as they began to settle, not just in the Indus River Valley but also throughout the entire Gangetic plain, which would include this area of Northeast India as well as countries like Bangladesh, they became more traditional farmers. So, in this green here, I’ve highlighted when they became more farmers and started to have more settled kingdoms. We believe they started to have more settled kingdoms, which is significant for Hindu epics. We believe the events in them happened around that late Vedic period during the events of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

The Vedas and these epic poems were originally orally transmitted, but then later, either in the late Vedic period or after the Vedic period, is when they were actually written down. To give you some context here, Sanskrit is considered one of the oldest Indo-European languages we have. I'll talk more about Indo-European languages in a little bit because it turns out that Sanskrit is related to European languages like Greek and Latin, and even Germanic languages. Sanskrit is one of the oldest, alongside Mycenaean Greek and the Hittite language. Those were all contemporary civilizations of around this period, right over here in the second millennium BCE.

If you need context, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha lived in one of these Vedic kingdoms in Northeast India. As I mentioned, the Vedas laid the foundation for much of what we consider to be modern-day India. In fact, the first documented reference to the Indus River comes from the Vedas. The Indus Valley Civilisation’s writing remains undeciphered; they didn’t write down the word "Indus." It was in the Vedas that we have the word "Sindhu," which was later changed or mispronounced into other words that we now associate with India. Words like Hindu, Indus, and India all derived from Sindhu, which was referred to as the river in the Vedas.

Also, in the Vedas is the first time that we have reference to a stratified social structure. We see that with the Varnas, referred to with, at the top, the Brahmins, who could be seen as the priests, scholars, and teachers. Next, you have the Kshatriyas, the kings and warriors, followed by the Vaishyas, the farmers and merchants, and lastly, the Shudras, the laborers. Some historians and Vedic scholars believe that these references to the Varnas were added after the Vedic period to texts like the Rig Veda. Some believe these weren’t traditional castes, as they are sometimes perceived today, but just references to different social strata that weren’t necessarily inherited. We're not actually sure about that.

Just to give you a feel of what was in the Rig Veda, I encourage you to look at the actual primary texts; there’s a lot to read. It includes prayers, praise of the gods, and rituals, but also has interesting philosophy. For example, a hymn referred to as “Nasadiya Sukta,” it's in the tenth book, the 129th hymn. I find it really interesting because it shows a fairly mature philosophical attitude.

This is actually the origin hymn, and here’s just part of it. We're talking about the origin of the universe:

"Who really knows? Who will be able to proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? Gods came afterward with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen? Whether gods will created it, or whether he was mute? Perhaps it formed itself or perhaps it did not. Only he who is the overseer in the highest heaven knows. Only he knows, or perhaps he does not know."

I just find it interesting because it takes a very philosophical view towards this fundamental question of the origin of the universe. The Vedic period is a very important period in India; it really lays the foundation for what we consider to be modern Hinduism and modern-day India. It starts as really a Bronze Age civilization, but as we get into the later Vedic period, we see them smelting iron and creating iron tools and things like that. As we’ll see in the next video, the language of the Vedas, Sanskrit, when Western scholars start to discover it, opens up their minds to what were the roots of many of the people who settled not just in North India, but also Europe.