Vedic period

The Vedic period, roughly 1500 to 500 BCE, is the age in the history of northern India in which the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of the Hindu tradition, were composed. It falls between the end of the cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation and the rise of new cities in the Ganges plain from about 600 BCE. The period is known mainly from the Vedic texts themselves, read alongside a set of archaeological cultures.

The Vedas were composed and passed down orally, with remarkable precision, by people who spoke an Old Indo-Aryan language. The oldest collection, the Rigveda, is usually dated to about 1400–1000 BCE, and the period is divided into an Early Vedic phase (c. 1500–1000 BCE) and a Later Vedic phase (c. 1000–600 BCE), followed by a transition to urban states. Mainstream scholarship holds that Indo-Aryan groups migrated into the north-western subcontinent early in this period, having split from other Indo-Iranian peoples in Central Asia. Some Indian writers and archaeologists instead argue for an indigenous origin with an unbroken line back to the Indus civilisation; this view is popular in India but lies outside the academic mainstream.

Several archaeological cultures have been linked with phases of Indo-Aryan material culture, including the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture, the Gandhara grave culture, the Black and Red Ware culture and, above all, the Painted Grey Ware culture of about 1200–600 BCE, which did not spread east of the Ganges–Yamuna Doab. Settlement surveys suggest modest chiefdoms in the Ganges valley between 1000 and 600 BCE, with large towns and fortified cities appearing only afterwards. Linking particular pots and sites to peoples named in the texts remains a matter of interpretation.

The early Indo-Aryans lived in the Punjab as tribes rather than kingdoms, mainly as cattle herders. A tribal chief, the rajan, was checked by councils called the sabha and samiti. The Rigveda describes conflicts with peoples called Dasas and Dasyus, and wars between Vedic tribes themselves, notably the Battle of the Ten Kings on the Ravi River, after which the Bharatas and Purus merged to form the Kuru. Cattle served as a unit of exchange, and gifts to chiefs and priests moved much of the wealth; coins were not yet in use.

From around 1200–1000 BCE Vedic culture spread east into the western Ganges plain. Iron axes and ploughs, widespread after 1000 BCE, made it easier to clear forests and farm. The Kuru kingdom, often described as the first Vedic state, gathered the hymns into collections and developed the elaborate Shrauta rituals; whether it was a true state or a complex chiefdom is debated. The centre of Vedic culture later shifted to Panchala and then to Videha, whose king Janaka patronised sages such as Yajnavalkya. In this phase the four-fold varna order of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras took shape, and the early Upanishads were composed.

Worship centred on fire sacrifice, with hymns chanted to gods such as Indra, Agni and Soma, as well as Mitra–Varuna, Surya and Ushas. The cosmic order was called rita. Many later Indian ideas, including dharma and karma, trace their roots to Vedic texts, and by about the start of the Common Era the Vedic tradition had become one of the main strands of what scholars call the Hindu synthesis.

By the sixth century BCE larger kingdoms, the mahajanapadas, had formed and cities were growing. In the region of Magadha, the shramana movements, among them Jainism and Buddhism, rejected Vedic ritual authority, and the Achaemenid Empire reached the Indus valley. The grammar of Panini marks the shift from Vedic to Classical Sanskrit.

Our maps for 1500, 1000 and 700 BCE label this area "Vedic Aryans", an approximate outline over the Indus and upper Ganges plains that reaches further east by 700 BCE. On the 500 BCE map it gives way to a patchwork of early Hindu kingdoms, the world from which the Maurya Empire later rose.