NCERT Book Class 6 Social Science Indias Cultural Roots

Indian culture, by any estimate, is several millenniums old. Like any ancient tree, it has many roots and many branches. The roots nurture a common trunk. And from the trunk emerge many branches, which are different manifestations of Indian culture, yet united by a common trunk.

Some of these branches are about art, literature, science, medicine, religion, the art of governance, martial arts, and so on. There are also ‘schools of thought’, by which we mean groups of thinkers or spiritual seekers who share similar ideas about human life, the world, etc.

Many archaeologists and scholars have pointed out that some of India’s cultural roots go all the way to the Indus or Harappan or Sindhu-Sarasvatī civilisation (which we visit in Chapter 6). Later on, over time, hundreds of schools of thought emerged in India. We will see here a few early schools, which have shaped India into a country with a unique personality. By understanding them and their roots, we can understand ‘India, that is Bharat’ better.

The Vedas and Vedic Culture

a. What are the Vedas?

The word “Veda” comes from the Sanskrit vid which means ‘knowledge’ (hence vidyā, for instance). We briefly mentioned the Ṛig Veda in earlier chapters. In fact, there are four Vedas — the Ṛig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sāma Veda and the Atharva Veda. They are the most ancient texts of India, and indeed among the most ancient in the world. The Vedas consist of thousands of hymns — prayers in the form of poems and songs — that were recited orally, not written. Those hymns were composed in the Sapta Sindhava region (which we visit in Chapter 5). It is difficult to say when exactly the Ṛig Veda, the most ancient of the four, was composed; experts have proposed dates ranging from