Vedic Age: Rigveda, Society and Later Vedic Changes

The Vedic Age is the period between about 1500 BCE and 600 BCE, when the oldest Indian literature was composed, first in the north-west of the subcontinent and later in the Ganga valley. It follows the decline of the Harappan cities, and it is studied in two halves. The Early Vedic or Rigvedic period, roughly 1500 to 1000 BCE, is known almost entirely from the Rigveda. The Later Vedic period, roughly 1000 to 600 BCE, is known from the three later Vedas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the early Upanishads. Examiners treat this chapter as a store of names and firsts, so learn it as pairs: which Veda holds what, which old river name belongs to which modern river, and which assembly did what.

The four Vedas and the literature around them

The Vedas are called shruti, that which was heard, while the later law books are smriti, that which was remembered. The Rigveda has 1,028 hymns arranged in ten mandalas. Mandalas two to seven are the family books and the oldest part; mandalas one and ten are the latest, and the tenth contains the Purusha Sukta, the hymn that first names the four varnas. The ninth mandala is devoted wholly to Soma.

Each Veda has its Brahmanas, which explain the rituals, its Aranyakas, the forest texts, and its Upanishads, which turn to philosophy. The Aitareya Brahmana belongs to the Rigveda and the Satapatha Brahmana, the largest of them, to the Yajurveda. Six Vedangas grew up as aids to the study of the Vedas: Shiksha for pronunciation, Kalpa for ritual, Vyakarana for grammar, Nirukta for etymology, Chhanda for metre and Jyotisha for astronomy.

Rivers, tribes and the Battle of Ten Kings

The Rigvedic people lived in the land of the seven rivers, the Sapta Sindhava. The Sindhu is the river named most often and the Saraswati is praised as the holiest, the naditama. The Ganga appears only once, in the tenth mandala, and the Yamuna three times, which is how we know the early settlement lay to the west.

The best known event of the age is the Dasarajna, the Battle of Ten Kings, described in the seventh mandala. Sudas, king of the Bharata tribe, defeated a confederacy of ten tribes on the banks of the Parushni, the modern Ravi. The name Bharata carried forward into the later name of the country.

Early Vedic polity, society and economy

Society was tribal and pastoral. The unit was the family, the kula; families made a village, the grama; villages made a vis and the vis made the jana, the tribe. The chief was the rajan, a leader in war rather than a ruler of territory, and he was helped by the purohita, the priest, the senani, the leader of the army, and the gramani. Two assemblies checked him, the sabha of elders and the larger samiti; the vidatha was the oldest assembly of all. There was no regular tax and no standing army; the chief received voluntary offerings called bali.

Cattle were the measure of wealth, so much so that the word for war, gavishti, literally means the search for cattle. Barley, called yava, was the main crop. Women attended the assemblies and some, such as Lopamudra, Ghosha and Apala, composed hymns. The varna order had not hardened; it is only in the Purusha Sukta of the tenth mandala that the four varnas appear.

The Later Vedic change

In the later Vedic period the people moved east into the Ganga-Yamuna doab, and iron, called krishna ayas or shyama ayas, came into use. Agriculture replaced cattle keeping as the main occupation, rice and wheat were added to barley, and settled kingdoms such as Kuru and Panchala took the place of roving tribes. The chief became a king who performed great sacrifices to announce his power: the rajasuya at his consecration, the ashvamedha or horse sacrifice to claim the land his horse crossed, and the vajapeya, a chariot race. Titles such as samrat and ekrat appear. The sabha and samiti lost their force, the vidatha disappeared, and the varna order hardened into one fixed by birth, with the vaishya paying tribute and the shudra serving.

Religion in the two periods

Early Vedic religion worshipped the forces of nature. Indra, the god of rain and war, called Purandara, the breaker of forts, has the largest number of hymns; Agni, the fire god and the messenger between gods and men, comes next; Varuna upholds rita, the cosmic and moral order. In the later Vedic period Prajapati, the creator, rose to the first place, Rudra and Vishnu gained importance, and Indra and Agni declined. Ritual grew heavy and costly, and against it the early Upanishads turned inward, teaching the identity of the individual soul with the universal soul, and stating for the first time the ideas of karma and rebirth.