.............following

The Indus Valley civilization

(c. 2500 B.C.–c. 1500 B.C.)

As   early as 6000 B.C.,  villages began appearing in  the valley formed  by  the Indus (IN-dus)  River.  The  town  of Mehrgarh (mare-GAR), for instance, was a small settlement at the foot of the  mountains separating the  subcontinent from what is now Iran and Afghanistan. It appears that the people of Mehrgarh domesticated (tamed)  sheep, goats, and  cattle; grew various grains; used stone tools; and may have engaged in trade (exchange of goods) with peoples in surrounding areas.

Eventually these villagers moved southward, into the flood plains created by the Indus, where the soil was better for farming. This better physical environment made possible the establishment of walled cities containing thousands of people. Technology advanced: from making tools of stone, the crafts- men of  the Indus Valley  began creating  knives,  axes, and arrows  from copper. They also produced pottery and small fig- ures of male and female deities.

As   to exactly who the people or peoples of the Indus Valley  were—that is, their place  of origin and  their ethnicity (eth-NIS-i-tee)—historians know  little.  The  Indo-Europeans who later invaded the area  described  them primarily by the ways  in which  they differed  from themselves. Whereas the Indo-Europeans were Caucasians (“white,” in everyday terms), they referred to the inhabitants  of the Indus Valley as “people with a black skin.” It is also apparent that the Indus Valley peo- ples had  flatter noses than those of the Indo-Europeans, who called them “noseless.”

These  terms suggest that the peoples of the Indus Val- ley may have shared some racial characteristics with the peo-

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Words to Know: India

Ascetic: A person who renounces  all earthly pleasures as part of their search for spiri- tual truth.

Caste system:  A system of ranking people into very  specific  social  groups, which  pre- vailed in India from ancient times to the modern day.

Charioteer: Someone who drives a chariot, a horse-drawn wagon.

Citadel: A fortress.

Civil servant:   Someone  who  works  for  the government.

Commentary:  A written  work  that  helps  to explain another work.

Craftsman: A skilled  worker  who  produces items according to his specialty.

Cremation: The burning, as opposed to  the burying, of a dead body.

Deforestation:  Cutting down trees and other plant life, which often has disastrous envi- ronmental consequences.

Domesticate: To tame a wild animal.

Drainage system:  The use of pipes and sewers to  transport waste water from a high- population area to a place where it can be disposed of safely.

Economy:  The whole system of  production, distribution, and consumption  of goods and services in a country.

Enlightenment: In Eastern religions, a state of being at one with God, the  universe, or some other form of higher truth.

Epic: A long poem that recounts the  adven- tures of a legendary hero.

Fasting:  Deliberately   going  without  food, often but not always for religious reasons.

Godhead: The divine nature or essence of God.  Granaries: Warehouses for storing grain.

Grid:  A network  of evenly spaced lines that intersect one another at right angles,  as horizontal and vertical lines do.

Immunization: Taking  measures  to  protect people  from  getting  a  specific  illness, often by injecting them with a small dose of the virus that causes the illness.

Indo-European languages: The languages  of Europe,  India, Iran, and   surrounding areas, all of which share common roots.

Industrial Revolution: A period of rapid devel- opment, beginning  in about A.D.  1750, which transformed the economies of the West from agriculture-based to manufac- turing-based systems.

Irrigation: A method of keeping crops watered, often by redirecting water supplies.

Islam: A faith that arose in Arabia in the A.D.

600s, led  by  the  prophet  Muhammad

(A.D. 570?–632).

Linguist: A scholar who studies languages.

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Literary: Referring to or involving literature.

Mantra: A chant used by participants in East- ern meditation, thought to aid the wor- shiper in concentrating on the Godhead.

Mass-production: A manufacturing system in which goods are produced in large quan- tities, rather than one at a time.

Meditation: In Eastern religion, the focusing of one’s thoughts  on the Godhead, which usually takes place in an atmosphere  of stillness and quiet.

Metropolis: A very large, important city.

Middle  Ages: The period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning  of the Renaissance, roughly A.D. 500 to 1500.

Middle class: A group in between the rich and the  poor,  or  between  the  rich  and  the working class.

Migration:     Movement by  a  large  group  of people from one place to another.

Missionaries: People who travel to other lands with the aim of converting others to their religion.

Pantheon: All the recognized gods in a religion. Pyre: A bonfire on which a body is cremated.

Racist: A person who believes that race is the primary  factor that determines  peoples’ abilities and that one race is superior to

others.

Raja: An Indian noble or prince of lesser rank than a king or an emperor.

Reincarnation: The  idea  that  people   are reborn on earth, and live and die, again and again.

Renaissance: A period of renewed interest  in learning and the arts that began in Europe in the 1300s and continued to the 1700s.

Ritual:  A type  of religious  ceremony  that  is governed by very specific rules.

Seal:  An emblem or a symbol that takes the place  of a name  or signature,  which  is often  pressed  into  wax  or  hot  clay  to make a permanent mark.

Shrine:  A holy place for believers of a religion.

Soma: An intoxicating drink used in Vedic and

Zoroastrian religious rituals.

Stupa:  A dome-shaped Buddhist temple. Sultan:  A type of king in the Muslim  world. Trade:  The  exchange  of  goods  for  units  of

value  (money, gold, or   other  goods)

between two individuals or two countries.

Trinity:   A group  of  three  gods, usually  the highest in a religion.

Urban planning/city planning: Careful design of cities to handle problems such as over- crowding, traffic, and waste disposal.

Vegetarian: Someone who does not eat meat or—in  some  cases—products   such  as eggs and cheese that come from animals.

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ple who lived south of the Sahara  Desert in Africa,  however, there is no clear evidence that they came from that part of the world. What is clear is that the Indo-Europeans looked down on the peoples they conquered. Yet the Indus Valley civiliza- tion was one of the most advanced in all of human  history.

The establishment of great cities

The Indus Valley civilization truly came into its own in about 2500 B.C., when its people established two great cities at Harappa  (huh-RAH-puh) and   Mohenjo-Daro  (moh-HIN-joh DAHR-oh), which lay about 400 miles south of Harappa along the  Indus. These  two cities, discovered by British   archaeolo- gists  in the 1920s, represented a triumph of urban planning. The cities established by the Egyptians and  the Sumerians at around the same time seem to have sprung up without any clear  plan. In Harappa and  Mohenjo-Daro,  by contrast, the wide, straight  streets formed a grid, intersecting one another at right angles as  though they had  been carefully  laid  out—as  they obviously were.

The center  of Harappa was  a great citadel, or  fortress. Outside the citadel  were neatly arranged areas where workers lived. Each city  also included enormous public buildings  not unlike the city hall or the post office in a great urban center  of today. There  were temples and granaries, warehouses for stor- ing grain. Little booths on each street may have provided a sta- tion for a night watchman or a policeman. Mohenjo-Daro had an enormous public bath and  another great building  for pub- lic meetings.

Equally impressive were the private dwellings. Houses had two or three stories and were built around an inner court- yard. Windows, and  possibly also  wooden balconies, opened onto this courtyard, whereas the walls of the house facing the street were windowless to keep out noise and heat. This design continues to be used in many parts of the Indian subcontinent and  neighboring countries  today.  But  the most  remarkable aspect of homes in the Indus Valley—indeed, one of the great- est triumphs of their civilization—could be found in the hum- blest  part of the home: the bathroom.

Whenever large numbers of people come together  in cities, there is  always   a  great potential for health  hazards.

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Human beings create  waste: not only the garbage from  their homes, which must be disposed of properly so that people do not get sick  from the bacteria  in rotting food,  but also  the waste from their bodies. In Europe  during the Middle  Ages (A.D. 500–1500), when toilets were crude at best, people simply dumped their waste into the streets. Germs spread, and  with them diseases that killed millions and  millions of people. But in India  thousands  of years earlier,  brilliant engineers devel- oped indoor  toilets and  a system of clay pipes to carry the waste into public sewers.

By     ancient  standards, Harappa  and   Mohenjo-Daro were huge: each was about three miles around. Based on the size of the granaries at Harappa, it appears that  as  many  as

40,000 people lived in the city. Though a medium-sized town by modern standards, in ancient times, such  a great number qualified Harappa as a metropolis (meh-TRAHP-uh-lis)—that is, a major  urban center  on the  order of modern-day New York

City, New York, or Los Angeles, California.

Modern-day New York City is an example of a metropolis. Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.

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There  were many  other such sites throughout an area of about half a million square miles in the Indus Valley, mak- ing the Harappan culture (as it is sometimes called) the most widespread of all civilizations at the time. Between the cities were enormous agricultural areas, where farmers grew wheat, barley,  rice, and  a variety of fruits and  vegetables. They also raised sheep, cattle, and  pigs, and  evidence suggests that they  domesticated animals ranging from the horse to the house cat to the elephant.

But    the Harappan economy was  not solely  based on agriculture. Craftsmen produced pottery, cloth, jewelry of sil- ver and  gold, and  items made of bronze. It also  appears that the peoples of the Indus Valley imported goods from the Sume- rians  to the west. Not  only did  they possess carts drawn by bulls but they also used boats to transport items such as gold, silver, and copper. Imported items included gold and silver, as well as  various  minerals  used in making  beads. Beads have been an  important part  of fashion in  India—where people wear them all over their bodies, including on nose rings—ever since. As   a further mark  of the Harappans’ advanced system, evidence uncovered by archaeologists  suggests that  some  of the pottery from the Indus Valley may even have been mass- produced (produced in quantity   rather  than  one at  a  time), which would indicate an extremely high level of development.

Given the impressive achievements of their culture, it is not surprising to learn that the Harappans also possessed a highly developed form of writing. The written and spoken lan- guage of the Harappans is often described as Dravidian (drah- VID-ee-uhn), which  is  actually the name for a family of lan- guages. They used a form of writing that involved about 400 different symbols. Though archaeologists  have found a num- ber  of examples, most of these are  seals and therefore do  not use many  words. Partly for this reason, no one has ever been able  to translate the writings of the Harappans.

The decline of the Indus Valley civilization

Historians know little about the religion of the Indus Valley, though it appears that the Harappans used fire in their religious rituals  (religious ceremonies)—an  idea that  would later be  absorbed into  Zoroastrianism.  Even  less is  known

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Mass production: How many pins can one worker produce?

Archaeological  evidence from the Indus Valley suggests that some of  that civilization’s pottery was mass-produced. If this    is     so,  it    would    mean    that manufacturing methods in Harappa    were several thousand years ahead of their time. In most  ancient  societies,   craftsmen produced goods by slow and  painstaking processes, performing  all the operations involved in making the product. The same worker  might  shape a clay pot, bake it, paint the finished product, and perform all the other necessary  operations. This was the  way for thousands of years, until the Industrial Revolution in England in the mid-

1700s brought about mass  production. The  Industrial Revolution transformed  the economic systems of Europe and North America,  which   had   formerly   been centered around  agriculture, to systems based on manufacturing.

In 1776, the British  economist Adam Smith  (1723–1790) offered  an example of the difference between old

production methods and mass production. Visiting  an  old  factor y  that  produced straight  pins,  Smith found that there were eighteen separate operations or jobs involved in manufacturing a pin. By  the old preindustrial methods, a  single worker would per form all the  operations and could produce as many as  twenty pins a day.  But then Smith visited  a  new-style factor y,  which  employed  ten  people. Instead  of   per forming   all   eighteen operations, each worker performed one or two. When they had  completed their job, they passed the pin on to the next worker, who performed  another operation on it, and so on.

One  might think that ten people would produce about ten times as many pins as the single worker did, but that was not  so. Using mass-production  methods, the   workers   in   the   second   factor y produced more than 2,400 times as many pins as a single worker in the old factory— well over 4,800 pins per worker.

about the political organization of the area, but it is safe to guess that the Harappans lived under a powerful government, just as the Egyptians of the Old  Kingdom  did. The Egyptian pyramids and the great cities of the Indus Valley both seem to suggest a highly organized  society,  something that  does not simply happen by itself.

Without a strong ruler or a belief system to unite them (a religion, for instance, or in America, love of liberty), people tend to be  disorganized, like the  Israelites in the time of the

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judges. It is clear that the Harappans had  strong leadership. It is just as clear that  at some point, the power of their leaders began to fade. Between  1900 and  1700 B.C., the Indus Valley civilization  underwent a  long  period  of decline and  decay. Again  like Egypt, this fact  is strikingly obvious in the Harap- pans’   architecture.  Just  as  Egyptian pyramids  of  the Fifth Dynasty  proved to be  far  less enduring than  the ones of the Fourth Dynasty,  later  Harappan structures were poorly built, often constructed with used bricks.

A  number of outside factors contributed to the decline of the Indus Valley civilization. It appears that the Harappans faced a series of environmental problems, including flooding and  deforestation (dee-fohr-es-TAY-shun) caused  by poor farm- ing methods. Another environmental factor may have been an increase in the salt content of the water they used to irrigate their fields. Furthermore, it is quite possible that disease spread among  the inhabitants of the great Indus Valley cities, a situa- tion  that  may  have resulted  from the  breakdown of their plumbing and  sewer systems.  Whatever the case, by about

1700 B.C., the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were virtu- ally deserted. The land  was ripe for new conquerors.

The Indo-Europeans (c. 1500–c.  500 B.C.)

In modern times, it may not seem as though the peo- ples of India or Iran have much in common with the peoples of Europe or with the descendants of European peoples who live in the Americas. But  in fact  these groups are  all related by race and  language. Thus  Asian Indians, though their coloring tends to be  much  darker than  that  of most Europeans, have facial  features similar  to those of their Western cousins.

More important, the languages of the Indian subconti- nent, Europe, Iran, and  surrounding areas  are all part  of the same Indo-European “family of languages.” Within this fam- ily,  certain  languages are  more  closely related than  others— much  as brothers and  sisters are  closer to one another than they are  to cousins—but  all  are  united by a common  Indo- European thread. For  instance, the name of the Indo-Euro- peans’ goddess  of fire, Agni    (AG-nee) is related to the Latin word ignis (IG-nis), which also means “fire”; these words are in turn reflected in the English word ignite.

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In studying most ancient  groups,  archaeologists   are  able to uncover ruins that provide a wealth of knowledge. The Indo-Europeans, however,  were  nomads  and   therefore left behind little  physical  evidence  of their  migration to India. Thus the real detective work  concerning the Indo-Europeans has fallen to linguists, scholars who study language.

One can “dig” into a language just as archaeologists dig  into  a  site. Just as  there are   deeper and  deeper  layers beneath the surface of the earth, so there are “layers” within a language. In English, for  instance,  there is a thick  layer of Latin on top of an even thicker layer of German. At   perhaps the deepest layer of all is the Indo-European root that unites English with the ancient languages of India, particularly San- skrit [SAN-skrit].

The coming of the Indo-Europeans

Only in the A.D. 1800s did linguists such as the Grimm brothers of Germany (also famous for their fairy tales) become  aware of the link between the various  languages of the Indo- European family.  This discovery  greatly  increased historians’ understanding of the  migrations that occurred in the ancient world. From what they were able to uncover, it appears that in about 3000 B.C., a group of people began to spread out from what is now eastern Europe.

Because they  ultimately conquered regions spanning from Europe to India, this group came to be known as “Indo- Europeans.” Some Indo-Europeans  moved  westward  into Europe, whereas others spread into what is now Afghanistan. The latter tribes were called Aryans (AIR-ee-uhnz). It is impor- tant to stress that all Aryans were Indo-Europeans, but not all Indo-Europeans  were Aryans.  Even more significantly,  both terms  describe linguistic  groups, not “races.” This  must be emphasized because   in  the twentieth century,  Adolf Hitler and  other racists would claim that  the Aryans were a “supe- rior” race that settled in Europe [see sidebar, “Indo-Europeans and Aryans”].

Between 2000 and 1500 B.C., the Aryans split into two groups. Some moved westward into what  is now  Iran, while others ventured eastward into India. To do so, the invaders had to  cross  the high  mountains of the  Hindu Kush   (HIN-doo

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Indo-Europeans and Aryans

Lies usually involve at least a little truth; otherwise people would not  believe them. So it was with the lies  promoted by Adolf Hitler  (1889–1945)—leader of the Nazi  Party and  dictator of Germany   from

1933 to 1945—concerning the Aryans. It is true that there was a group called  the Aryans, a term for the Indo-European tribes that invaded Iran  and India in about 1500

B .C ., and it is also true that they were historically linked with the peoples who later settled Europe. But the Aryans  never moved to Europe. More  important, they were never what  Hitler   said they were:  a race of blond-haired, blue-eyed people that included the Germans   and other  western Europeans.

The Aryans,  Hitler  taught, were racially superior to the  dark-eyed, dark- haired Jews, and therefore it was his job as an Aryan  to  wipe them off the face of the earth—as he tried to do during World War II  (1939–1945), when the Nazis   killed millions of Jews. In fact Hitler   and  many other Nazi  leaders had dark hair and  dark eyes; also, the word  “Jew” describes a religion, not a  race. It is true that the majority  of  Jews are descendants of the Semitic-speaking peoples who  inhabited

Palestine  in  ancient  times, but  so  are Arabs—and Nazi   Germany  had friendly relations with various Arab groups,  simply because they also were in conflict with the “Jews” over control of Palestine.

In addition, Hitler,  who  claimed that white “Aryans” were superior  to the darker-skinned peoples  of  the  world, nonetheless allied his  country with the non-Caucasian  Japanese. Of  course, most people  from  India, though  classified racially  as  Caucasians, are  not  white- skinned either.  But in part  because they considered the Indians to  be their Aryan  “brothers,” the  Nazis  made a minor effort to encourage them  to join Germany   in making war against Britain.

If all this seems  complicated, it is. Lies  usually are. The truth, on the  other hand, is simple:  there is and was  no such thing as an Aryan  “race.”  But this did not stop the Nazis from taking as their emblem the swastika  (SWAHS-ti-kuh),  an ancient Ar yan  symbol. In  Sanskrit, the  word swastika  means  “well-being,” and Hindus considered it a sign of good luck.  Thanks to the Nazis, however, the swastika  came to be a symbol of evil.

KÜSH)    that    separate  the   Indian   subcontinent    from Afghanistan, a difficult journey. Once they went down on the other side, however,  they  discovered a lush  river valley con- taining  dark-skinned groups of people, the descendants of the Harappan civilization.

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Eventually the Indo-Europeans spread across the  two great river valleys of India, some moving eastward into the val- ley of the Ganges (GAN-jeez), others settling in the Indus Val- ley.  Because a number of rivers fed into  the Indus, the latter area  came to be known as Punjab (POON-jahb), an Indo-Aryan term meaning “five rivers.”

The caste system

As      everyone  learns in  school,  when  Christopher Columbus  arrived in  the New  World,  he thought  he  had reached India, and therefore called the Native Americans “Indi- ans.” It was a name that stuck, and it has created confusion ever since; thus people often say “Asian  Indian” when referring to the true Indians of India. In fact the Europeans who invaded North  and  South  America  in about  A.D.  1500  dealt with the natives using methods similar  to those of the Indo-Europeans who invaded India in  about  1500 B.C.  In both situations, a group  with  greater  military   strength  subdued the  natives, killing off many and treating the rest as second-class citizens.

The Rig Vega (REEG VAY-dah) describes battles between the Indo-Europeans and the natives of India, but for the most part  the invaders used the caste system to  control  them. The word “caste” (KAST) is similar  in meaning to class, a term for various  levels in society—for instance, rich, poor, and  middle class. But  caste has much more far-reaching implications.

In America,  for instance, a  poor  person who  works hard   has  a  strong  chance of becoming  wealthy  and  thus changing his or her class; not so in the caste system, which the Aryans  imposed, and  which  the Indian government did  not outlaw  until the twentieth century. A   person was born into a caste and  could never hope to change his or her status. Rules of caste dictated all kinds of social situations and even came to have a religious significance as well.

At  the time they invaded India, the Aryans had a more or less typical class system, which, though it kept the poor peo- ple down, was still not as rigid as the caste system. The caste system came  into  being after  the  invasion  and   probably resulted from the Indo-Europeans’ fear of the people they had conquered. The  native Indians  greatly outnumbered  them; therefore, in order to keep themselves from being swallowed

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by the larger population, the Aryans created a system to pre-  vent intermarriage between natives and themselves.

At     the time of  the invasion,  warriors   occupied  the upper classes of Aryan society. In the caste system, priests out- ranked them—an interesting change, given the later religious significance of castes. Thus the top caste became the Brahmans (BRAH-muhnz), priests whose name was taken from the San- skrit word for God. Next, but close in rank  to the Brahmans,  came the warriors, or Kshatriyas (K’SHAH-tree-ahz). Well below the Kshatriyas were the landowners and  tradespeople, known as Vaisyas (vah-EES-yahz). Far below the Vaisyas were the Shu- dras (SHOO-drahz), who were servants.

But   there was  an  even lower rank  than  the Shudras, one so  low  it  was  not  even part  of the caste  system:  the  Untouchables. The  Untouchables did  jobs that  nobody  else wanted to do, such as hauling  waste. The Indo-Europeans clas- sified the native peoples they had conquered as Untouchables; no wonder,  then, that  many  of the  Harappans’ descendants escaped Indo-European rule. The  ones who fled came  to be known  as  Dravidians.  The  Dravidians  ultimately moved to south India and  the island  of  Ceylon  (seh-LAHN), which  in modern times is the nation of Sri Lanka (SHREE LAHNG-kah). Though  they  initially  adopted the religion  brought by  the Indo-Europeans,  as  Untouchables they had  little  reason to embrace   Hinduism;  therefore in  time they accepted  a  new faith, one that rejected the caste system.

The literature of the Indo-Europeans

Indo-European culture produced a vast body of litera- ture, classified as the Vedas (VAY-dahz) and the Epics. The word Veda means “sacred love.” An  epic is a long poem that recounts the adventures of heroic figures. So important were these two collections of works that they gave their names to two phases in the ancient history of India: the Vedic Age (c. 1500–c. 1000

B.C.) and  the Epic Age (c. 1000–c. 500  B.C.) Like  much ancient literature,  these began as  oral  works and  were  only  written down much later.

Most  important of the Vedas  was  the Rig-Veda.  The word rig in Sanskrit  means “hymn.” The Rig-Veda is a collec- tion of some 1,000 hymns or  sacred  songs divided into ten

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books. Together, they form a long cel-  ebration, praising  the gods for deliver- ing the land  of the Indus Valley to the conquerors. This concept is similar  to parts  of the Old  Testament, in which the Israelites  praised God for deliver- ing them into the Promised Land. The Rig-Veda celebrates the Sun, the Earth, the joys of life—and soma (SOH-muh). Soma  was  a  type  of  drink, a  cross between alcohol  and   a  drug, which the Indo-Europeans drank in religious ceremonies.

The Sama-Veda (SAH-mah) con- sists of chants for use in various types of religious  rituals. The Yajur-Veda (YAH- zhoor) includes hymns to be sung with the offering of sacrifices. Finally, there is the   Atharva-Veda    (ah-THAHR-vah), which provides a set of magical spells to help in  conceiving  children, living  a longer life,  destroying enemies, and warding off evil spirits.

Just as the Jews later wrote var-

ious  commentaries, such   as  the Talmud,  to  provide  better understanding of their scriptures, so  were  several  commen- taries attached  to the Vedas. The Brahmanas (brah-MAHN-ahz) offer an explanation of various details contained in the Vedas. The  Aranyakas  (ah-rahn-YAH-kahz), written  by  a  group  of priests who retreated to the wilderness, give still more details. Finally,  there are  the Upanishads (oo-PAHN-i-shahdz),  whose name is related to a term for “sitting down before a teacher.” The Upanishads are  written in the form of discussions between teachers, or gurus (GOO-rooz), and their students.

Like the Vedas,  the Epics were written as  poems, but these tell a story as well. The Mahabharata (mah-HAH-bah-rah- tah; the word Bharat  is Sanskrit  for “India”) consists  of more than 200,000 lines, making  it the longest epic poem in human  history. It is more than  ten times as long as the Greeks’ Iliad and Odyssey combined. Composed  some time between 300 B.C. and  A.D. 300, it tells of a long conflict between two families, the Pandavas (pahn-DAH-vahz), who symbolize good, and the

A  guru is a spiritual guide in Hinduism.  Photograph by Spiros Mantzarlis. Reuters/Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.

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Kauravas (koh-RAH-vahz),  who  sym- bolize  evil. Its central  figure is  the prince Krishna (KREEZH-nah), a god  in human  form; and  its most important part  is  the Bhagavad-Gita (BAH-guh- vahd  GEE-tah). In the latter,  Krishna, disguised as  a  charioteer,  carries  on  a long discussion of life, death, and suf- fering with  the prince  Arjuna  (ahr- ZHOON-ah) just  before they  go  into battle.

Indra, Hindu god of fire and light. Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.

The  Mahabharata   abounds   in such  religious teachings, whereas the Ramayana     (rah-mah-YAH-nah),      a much  shorter work, consists  of a  sim- ple, straightforward story. It is the tale of how  King   Rama  (RAH-mah), with the help of  his   monkey Hanuman (hah-NOO-mahn), rescues his wife Sita (SEE-tah) from  the   clutches of the demon Ravana  (rah-VAH-nah.) (The

1995 film The Little Princess begins with the heroine recounting the story of the Ramayana, complete with a dramatiza-

tion of the  tale’s plot.) Both   the Ramayana and  the  Mahab- harata, as well as a collection of folk tales  called  the Puranas (poo-RAH-nahz), have continued  to be popular.

The religions of India

The literature of the Aryans is full of religious impor- tance. In fact, religion was a central fact of the ancient Indians’ lives. The  faith that  the Aryans  brought  with  them to  the Indian subcontinent  is  called  Vedism  (VAY-dizm)  to  distin- guish it from Hinduism (HIN-doo-izm), which developed from it in about  300  B.C.  In fact, however,  the two religions are  closely linked. Likewise Buddhism (BÜ-dizm) developed out of Hinduism, and  today the faiths stand  side by side, much like Judaism  and Christianity.

Vedic  gods included Agni    (AG-nee), the god  of  fire; Soma, who  ruled over the intoxicating  drink of  the  same

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name; and  Indra (IN-drah), a king of the gods. The  Rig-Veda refers to three families of gods, with eleven deities in each fam- ily.  Some of these gods  survived in the later Hindu religion, whereas others  were transformed.  The  Hindus  developed many other gods as well.

Though  the Vedic  and   Hindu  religions worshiped many  gods, they retained a belief in a single, supreme figure: not so much  a  deity as  a  spirit or an  idea  that  they called Brahman. All  the other gods are  part of Brahman, but separate as well. At  the center  of the Hindu pantheon (PAN-thee-ahn), or group  of gods, is  the trinity,  an  inner circle  of  three gods: Brahma, the creator of life; Vishnu (VEEZH-noo), the preserver of life; and Shiva (SHEE-vah), the destroyer of life. Many other gods are  related to these in some way: thus Krishna is consid- ered to be  Vishnu  in another form, and  Kali  (KAH-lee),  the goddess of destruction, is a wife to Shiva.

The system of gods in the Hindu religion is  exceed- ingly complicated. Although   one can learn much  about Hin- duism from studying about them, to do  so is a bit like trying to understand a tree simply by looking at its flowers.  At   the heart of Hinduism and other Eastern religions are certain core ideas that  are  at least as important as the gods  themselves if one is to understand the religion  embraced  by the ancient Indians—and by the Indians of today.

Central beliefs of Hinduism

Hundreds of millions of people in present-day  India and  elsewhere continue to uphold the basic beliefs  of Hin- duism, handed down by the Indo-Europeans more than 3,000 years ago. During   the Middle  Ages, various  Hindu schools  of thought  evolved, and  within  the Hindu  religion, there are  many varieties of belief. Nonetheless, the basic system of belief has  remained,  making   Hinduism—a  faith with  no  specific founder—the world’s oldest religion.

One often hears people speak of Eastern  and Western religions, though in fact the so-called Western religions—most notably Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—came from the Mid- dle East. Western religions are  sometimes called “revealed reli- gions,” meaning that in each case, the deity has revealed his truths directly  to humankind through a sacred  book. Western

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Classes, Castes, and Segregation

All   societies  have  classes,  and Ar yan society at the  time of the Indo- Europeans’  arrival   in   India  was   no exception. There were warriors and nobles, the top rung of  the social ladder; then came the  priests; and below them were the common people.

In virtually every civilization on earth during ancient times and the Middle Ages, there were these same three groups: an upper class of royalty,  nobility,  knights, and aristocracy  (air-uh-STAHK-ruh-see;  the ver y  rich); a  class  of  priests,  scribes, scholars, and  perhaps  scientists just below them; and far below these two classes, the great  mass of people, who did all the physical work. Sometimes there might be a fourth group, beneath the  priests and scholars and above the  masses, composed of craftsmen or tradesmen.

This system prevailed until the great social and economic changes that followed the Renaissance  (RIN-uh-sahnts)

and later the Industrial  Revolution. These events helped  create new classes and particularly brought  about the rise of the middle class and  working class from the “fourth group”  composed of craftsmen or tradesmen. But out  of  the  Industrial Revolution also  came Marxism,  named after    the     philosopher    Karl     Marx (1818–1883),  who proposed a political system that would eliminate all classes.

During  the twentieth century, the Soviet Union and other Marxist  (or Communist) countries supposedly created classless societies, but in fact their  social systems were as rigid as any since  the Middle   Ages. There were still kings  and nobles, only now they were  Communist Party leaders. Likewise  Communist society, despite its official  atheism  (Godlessness), still had priests  of a sort, only now they were   writers, educators, and   other intellectuals. Of  course there were still the masses  of  people, still  doing  all  the physical work.

religions place a high emphasis on the individual person, who must work out a personal relationship with God.

Eastern religions such as Hinduism, on the other hand, are  not nearly so concerned with the individual. Instead, Hin- duism views all living creatures as part of a vast circle of life. To a certain extent, Hindus believe that people cannot do  much to affect their destiny. Nor is there an idea of Heaven and Hell, as in Christianity and  Islam. In Hinduism, a person does not die once, but many  times. Nor is he or she born once; rather,

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A  truly classless society,  of  course, is probably  impossible, but the United States (a nation with an economic system almost opposite of Communism) has come closer to it than any society on earth. Even so, the class system is quite  strong in America. People at the  bottom levels of society are often made to believe that they can never do anything to  improve their situation.  Likewise  people at the absolute top of society can seemingly do no wrong. If  one looks closely,  one might see the same old classes, with politicians  and corporate executives in place of kings  and nobles; athletes, movie stars, and members of the media in place of priests; and below these two  ranks, the common people— much better off than in ancient times, but still ruled by the two other groups.