Vedic Age - Guide
Vedic Age - Guide
Vedic Age - Guide
Aryans were people belonging to Central Asia, and in the early 1500 BC, these
people moved to India and transformed the social and religious beliefs of Indians.
The Aryans were a linguistic group of people who belonged to Indo-European
culture, following similar mixed culture and language. In the Vedic age, Aryans
brought the culture and customs of worshipping specific gods and goddesses.
During the entry of Aryans in the Vedic age, the religious customs and beliefs
mentioned in Vedas were influenced by Indo-European culture, which also
comprises a distant relation with Greek and German culture. During this period,
worship of fire as God Agni with fire ceremonies became an integral part of Indian
worship culture and important ceremonies.
This trait was shared by the Iranian culture much before the Aryans entered India,
who are also considered sharing the similar root-like Indians. The concept of the
life cycle (period of life to death) with the reincarnation of a specific soul and
transfer of life on earth from one form to another emerged in this period. During
this period, God Indra is the leading god for worship, after God Agni. Many of the
religious practices, customs and stories are mentioned in Rigveda
and Atharvaveda.
Rigveda
The system bestowed many privileges on the upper castes while sanctioning
repression of the lower castes by privileged groups.
In the picture there is Brahma on the left, the Hindu god of creation, whose body
parts are connected to a part of the colorful triangle in the middle of the picture:
Head- Brahmins (priests); upper body-Kshatryas (warriors); lower body-Vaishyas
(merchants); feet-Shudras (peasants). Under the triangle there are two other
categories explained: Adivasis- Indigenous people of South Asia. For self-
determination and political/cultural autonomy, they fights against the stripping of
their ancestral land and its natural resources. Dalits-Caste communities that were
forced by Caste apartheid into slave and bonded agricultural labour, and undignified
sanitation work like manual scavenging. Branded untouchable for jobs considered
spiritually polluting, they struggle against extreme violence and discrimination. On
the right side, and arrow from up (high) to down (low)indicates the level of
access/ownership to resources and opportunities.
Since the Hindu traditions and the Indian culture is so intertwined, this kind of
social order is not only a religious belief about the creation and classification of
humankind, but a more thousands years old model of a real, functioning society.