Indian History Quiz: Vedic Age

The correct answer is B, the Samaveda. Its verses are largely borrowed from the Rigveda but are arranged to be sung to fixed melodies during sacrifices, and those melodies are the earliest record of musical notation in India, which is why the Samaveda is called the root of Indian classical music.

Option A, the Rigveda, is a collection of hymns recited in praise of the gods rather than sung to a tune, and it is remembered as the oldest Veda with 1,028 hymns. Option C, the Yajurveda, gives the formulas a priest utters while performing a sacrifice and is the only Veda written partly in prose. Option D, the Atharvaveda, contains charms, spells, cures and material on everyday life, and was the last collection to be accepted as a Veda. Papers often place all four together, so fix one identifying word to each: hymns, melody, formula and charm.

The correct answer is C, the Parushni, known today as the Ravi. The seventh mandala of the Rigveda describes how Sudas, the king of the Bharata tribe, defeated a confederacy of ten tribes on its banks, and the battle is the clearest political event recorded in the whole of Rigvedic literature.

Option A, the Vitasta, is the modern Jhelum, and option D, the Asikni, is the modern Chenab; both lay within the Rigvedic homeland but neither is connected with this battle. Option B, the Shutudri, is the modern Sutlej, again one of the seven rivers but not the site of the fight. Examiners like this question because it tests two things at once, the event and the pair of old and modern river names, so memorise the pairs Vitasta for Jhelum, Asikni for Chenab, Parushni for Ravi, Vipasha for Beas and Shutudri for Sutlej.

The correct answer is D, the tenth mandala. The Purusha Sukta describes the sacrifice of the cosmic being from whose parts the brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya and shudra are said to have come, and it is the first statement of the fourfold varna order. The tenth mandala is one of the latest parts of the Rigveda, which is why historians argue that the varna order hardened only towards the end of the early Vedic period.

Option A, the third mandala, is where the Gayatri Mantra appears, addressed to the sun god Savitri. Option B, the seventh mandala, records the Battle of Ten Kings. Option C, the ninth mandala, is devoted entirely to Soma. Because papers ask about all four of these mandalas, the safest way to remember them is as a set: three for Gayatri, seven for Dasarajna, nine for Soma and ten for Purusha Sukta.

The correct answer is B, Indra. He is the god of rain and of war, called Purandara, the breaker of forts, and the largest number of Rigvedic hymns is addressed to him, which matches a people whose life turned on rainfall and on cattle raids.

Option A, Agni, the god of fire, stands second and is treated as the messenger who carries offerings from men to the gods; the very first hymn of the Rigveda is addressed to him, and candidates often confuse that first place with the largest number. Option C, Varuna, is the guardian of rita, the cosmic and moral order, an important but less frequently invoked god. Option D, Prajapati, is a later Vedic figure: he becomes the supreme creator only in the Brahmanas, by which time Indra and Agni had lost their old importance. The rise of Prajapati is itself a favourite question.

The correct answer is C, the Saraswati. The Rigveda praises it as the naditama, the best or holiest of rivers, and treats it as a goddess as well as a stream. It is believed to have dried up later, which is why it does not carry the same importance in the texts of the following centuries.

Option B, the Sindhu, is a strong distractor because it is the river mentioned most often in the Rigveda, but frequency and sanctity are two different questions and papers deliberately place the two together. Option A, the Ganga, is mentioned only once, in the tenth mandala, and option D, the Yamuna, three times; their rarity is itself the evidence that the early Vedic people lived in the north-west and moved east only later. Remember the pair: Sindhu most mentioned, Saraswati most praised.

The correct answer is C, the Atharvaveda, which calls the sabha and the samiti the two daughters of Prajapati. The phrase is quoted so often in examinations because it fixes both the names of the assemblies and the text they are described in.

Option A, the Rigveda, does mention the sabha, the samiti and the older vidatha, but not this description. Option B, the Samaveda, is a book of melodies and has nothing to say about political institutions. Option D, the Satapatha Brahmana, is the largest Brahmana, attached to the Yajurveda, and deals mainly with ritual and with legends such as the story of the flood; it belongs to the later Vedic period when the assemblies were already losing their power. Keep the distinction clear: the sabha was the smaller council of elders and the samiti the larger assembly of the whole people.

The correct answer is B, barley, called yava in the texts. The early Vedic people were mainly pastoral and grew little, and the one grain their hymns name repeatedly is barley, used both as food and in offerings.

Option A, rice, called vrihi, and option C, wheat, called godhuma, belong to the later Vedic period, when the people had moved east into the fertile Ganga-Yamuna doab and taken to settled farming with iron tools. Option D, cotton, was grown in the Harappan period, and the Greeks later remarked on Indian cotton, but it is not the crop associated with Vedic agriculture. The examiner's point here is the contrast between the two halves of the age: cattle and barley in the early period, iron and rice in the later one, with wealth measured in cattle at first and in land afterwards.

The correct answer is A, Soma. The whole of the ninth mandala consists of hymns to Soma, at once a plant, the drink pressed from it and the god of that drink, which shows how central the soma offering was to Vedic sacrifice.

Option B, Rudra, is a minor and feared god in the Rigveda who grows in importance in the later Vedic period and is joined with Shiva. Option C, Vishnu, appears in the Rigveda as a god of three strides but is likewise a minor figure who rises later. Option D, Ushas, the goddess of dawn, receives some of the finest poetry in the Rigveda but not a mandala of her own. Fix the mandala numbers in a single line, because papers ask them in rotation: the third holds the Gayatri Mantra, the seventh the Battle of Ten Kings, the ninth Soma and the tenth the Purusha Sukta.

The correct answer is C, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who argued in his book The Arctic Home in the Vedas that the Vedic hymns preserve memories of long days and long nights, which he took as evidence of an Arctic origin.

Option A, Max Muller, the German scholar who edited the Rigveda and coined much of the vocabulary of Vedic studies, placed the original home in Central Asia. Option B, Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, held that the Aryans came from Tibet. Option D, A. C. Das, argued in Rigvedic India that they were native to the Sapta Sindhava, the land of the seven rivers itself. Questions on this chapter almost always take the form of matching a scholar with a region, so learn the four pairs together: Tilak and the Arctic, Max Muller and Central Asia, Dayanand Saraswati and Tibet, A. C. Das and Sapta Sindhava.

The correct answer is B, krishna ayas, meaning the dark metal; shyama ayas is used in the same sense. Iron appears only in the later Vedic period, and the axes and ploughshares made from it allowed the forests of the Ganga-Yamuna doab to be cleared, which is why this single word carries so much historical weight.

Option A, ayas, is the general Rigvedic word for metal, usually taken to mean copper or bronze, not iron. Option C, nishka, was a gold ornament worn round the neck and later used as a unit of value, but it was not a coin and has nothing to do with iron. Option D, vrihi, is the word for rice, another later Vedic arrival. Examiners set these four words against each other precisely because they all come from the same chapter, so pair each with its meaning before the exam.

The correct answer is C, the ashvamedha, the horse sacrifice. A horse was set free to wander for a year, guarded by the king's soldiers; every territory it crossed unchallenged was counted as accepting his overlordship, and the animal was then sacrificed with great ceremony.

Option A, the rajasuya, was the consecration sacrifice performed when a king took power, said to confer supreme authority on him. Option B, the vajapeya, was a chariot race that the king was expected to win, performed to raise his standing among his kinsmen. Option D, the agnistoma, was a soma sacrifice, not one of the specifically royal rites. These three royal sacrifices mark the change from the Rigvedic rajan, a tribal leader with no regular revenue, to the later Vedic king with claims over land, and papers regularly ask you to match each sacrifice with its purpose.

The correct answer is A, the Mundaka Upanishad, which belongs to the Atharvaveda. The words, meaning truth alone triumphs, were adopted as the national motto and are inscribed below the state emblem of India in Devanagari script.

Option B, the Chandogya Upanishad, is attached to the Samaveda and is known for the teaching of Uddalaka Aruni to his son Shvetaketu, summed up in the phrase tat tvam asi. Option C, the Aitareya Brahmana, belongs to the Rigveda and deals with the ritual of the soma sacrifice and the consecration of kings. Option D, the Satapatha Brahmana, is the largest Brahmana and is attached to the Yajurveda. General knowledge papers ask this question in both the history and the polity sections, since the motto sits under the Lion Capital of Ashoka that serves as the state emblem.