India’s Cultural Roots

This is Chapter 7 of Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 6, the new 2024 book under NCF-SE 2023) and the first chapter of Theme C, ‘Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions’. Chapter 5 (fees105) named the land and Chapter 6 (fees106) its first cities; this chapter turns to ideas. It answers three ‘Big Questions’: what are the Vedas and what is their message; what new schools of thought emerged in the 1st millennium BCE and what are their core principles; and what folk and tribal traditions contributed. Chapter 8 (Unity in Diversity) builds on the last point. The book avoids the word ‘religion’ and speaks of ‘schools of thought’ and ‘belief systems’; this page follows it and describes each tradition in its own terms. Eight concept sections follow.

• Links in this book: fees104 (the timeline and why the Buddha’s date is uncertain); fees105 (the Ṛig Veda, Sapta Sindhava, the Bharatas — and the positions on the Ṛig Veda’s date); fees106 (the Harappan, or Sindhu–Sarasvatī, civilisation the book calls a root); Chapter 8 (unity in diversity).
• Deeper pages: iest105 (the Vedic period, the four Vedas and their contents); lehs104 (Thinkers, Beliefs and Buildings — the Upaniṣhads, the Buddha, Mahāvīra, stupas); kefa103–kefa106 (Bharhut, Gandhāra, Ajanta, Ellora); lehs102 (janapadas and gaṇas); gess105, hess204 and lesy103 (tribes, the Ghurye–Elwin debate); gess107 (the Jagannath cult of Puri); lesy106 (cultural diversity). This page links them and does not re-teach them.
• UPSC: GS1 ‘Indian culture’ and ancient history. Prelims has asked about the Ṛig Veda (1984), ṛita and dharma (2011), the Upaniṣhads (1991, 1997, 2024), Buddhism and Jainism (1985, 1996, 2009, 2012), the Chārvākas (1994, 2014), Ellora (1994) and the Todas (1985, 2005); Mains about Vedic society (2023), the Buddha and Mahāvīra (GS4 2020, 2025) and tribes (2022).

• The tree: roots (Harappan for ‘some’, Vedic, Buddhist, Jain, folk and tribal) → one trunk of shared concepts (dharma, karma, rebirth, ending suffering and ignorance) → many branches. The book says ‘schools of thought’ and ‘belief systems’, not ‘religions’.
• Vedas (vid, knowledge): Ṛig, Yajur, Sāma, Atharva; hymns recited orally, not written; composed in Sapta Sindhava by rishis and rishikas; dates proposed: 5th–2nd millennium BCE; UNESCO honours Vedic chanting (book: 2008).
• Vedic ideas: deities (Indra, Agni, Varuṇa, Mitra, Sarasvatī, Uṣhas) sustain ṛitam; ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti — one reality, many names; unity hymn. Society: 30+ janas (Bharatas, Purus…); rājā, sabhā, samiti.
• Upaniṣhads: rebirth, karma; Vedanta — all is brahman (not Brahmā); ātman one with brahman; aham brahmāsmi, tat tvam asi; stories: Śhvetaketu (Chhāndogya), Nachiketa–Yama (Kaṭha), Gārgī–Yājñavalkya (Bṛihadāraṇyaka). Yoga.
• Buddha: born Lumbini (Nepal); left home at 29; enlightenment under a pipal at Bodh Gaya; causes of suffering = avidyā + attachment; ahimsa, inner discipline, Sangha. Mahāvīra: near Vaiśhālī, early 6th c. BCE; left at 30, 12 years’ discipline; jina = conqueror (of ignorance); ahimsa, anekāntavāda, aparigraha.
• Others and folk/tribal: Chārvāka/Lokāyata — only the material world, no afterlife. 705 tribes, ~104 million (2011); Jagannath once tribal (tradition); Todas (Nilgiris), Donyipolo, Khandoba, Singbonga; André Béteille: influence both ways. UPSC: Nachiketa (1997), anekāntavāda (2009), Ellora (1994), Chārvāka (1994).

Indian culture, the book says, is several millenniums old and, like an ancient tree, has many roots and many branches, joined by a common trunk. The branches include art, literature, science, medicine, religion, the art of governance and martial arts, and also schools of thought — groups of thinkers or spiritual seekers with similar ideas about life and the world. Many archaeologists and scholars, the book adds, trace some of India’s cultural roots to the Indus, Harappan or Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation (Chapter 6); later, hundreds of schools of thought emerged, and the chapter looks at a few early ones that gave India ‘a unique personality’, to understand ‘India, that is Bharat’ better. The trunk, revealed at the end of the schools’ story, is what they share: dharma, karma, rebirth, the search for an end to suffering and ignorance, and many values (p. 120).

‘Veda’ comes from the Sanskrit vid, ‘knowledge’. There are four Vedas — the Ṛig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sāma Veda and Atharva Veda — the most ancient texts of India and among the oldest in the world. They consist of thousands of hymns — prayers in the form of poems and songs — that were recited orally, not written, composed in the Sapta Sindhava region (fees105). The Ṛig Veda is the oldest; experts have proposed dates from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BCE, so the texts have been memorised through rigorous training and passed on orally for 100 to 200 generations ‘with hardly any alterations’. The hymns were composed by rishis (male seers) and rishikas (female seers) in an early form of Sanskrit, addressed to many deities — Indra, Agni, Varuṇa, Mitra, Sarasvatī, Uṣhas and more — who, with the seers, sustained ṛitam, truth and order in human life and in the cosmos. Yet the early seers saw the gods and goddesses as one: a famous hymn says the Existent — the supreme reality — is one, though sages give it many names. Some values mattered especially, beginning with Truth, often another name for God; and the last verses of the Ṛig Veda call for unity among people: to come together, speak together and be of one mind and purpose.

Early Vedic society was organised in janas — ‘clans’, larger groups of people. The Ṛig Veda alone lists over 30, such as the Bharatas, Purus, Kurus, Yadus and Turvaśhas, each linked with a region of the north-west of the Subcontinent. Not much is known of how the janas governed themselves; the Vedas give only clues through words like rājā (a king or ruler), and sabhā and samiti, both meaning a collective gathering or assembly. The Vedic texts mention many professions: agriculturist, weaver, potter, builder, carpenter, healer (one who uses traditional practices to heal), dancer, barber, priest and others.

Vedic culture developed many rituals (yajña, often read ‘yagya’) to various deities for individual or collective well-being; daily rituals were usually prayers and offerings to Agni, the deity of fire, and became more complex over time. A group of texts called the Upaniṣhads built on Vedic ideas and introduced new ones — rebirth (being born again and again) and karma (our actions or their results). According to one school, generally known as Vedanta, everything — human life, nature, the universe — is one divine essence, brahman (not to be confused with the god Brahmā), sometimes just tat, ‘that’; two famous sayings put it as ‘I am brahman’ (aham brahmāsmi) and ‘You are That’ (tat tvam asi). The Upaniṣhads also introduced ātman, the Self — the divine essence in every being, ultimately one with brahman. So everything is connected and interdependent, which explains the common prayer beginning sarve bhavantu sukhinah, ‘may all creatures be happy’, free from disease and sorrow. Early in the 1st millennium BCE more schools grew out of the Vedas; one was Yoga, which developed methods to realise brahman in one’s consciousness. Together, says the book, these schools became the foundations of what we call ‘Hinduism’ today.

Other schools emerged that did not accept the authority of the Vedas and built their own systems; one is Buddhism. About two and a half millenniums ago a prince, Siddhārtha Gautama, was born in Lumbini (today in Nepal); scholars’ dates for his birth differ widely, and Chapter 4 used 560 BCE as an approximation. As the story goes, he grew up in a protected palace life; at 29, driven through the city, he saw for the first time an old man, a sick man and a dead body, and also a peaceful ascetic. He left the palace — and his wife and son — and wandered as an ascetic, meeting other ascetics and scholars, looking for the root cause of suffering. After meditating for many days under a pipal tree at Bodh Gaya (Bihar) he attained enlightenment: avidyā (ignorance) and attachment are the source of human suffering, and he conceived a method to remove them. He became the Buddha, ‘the enlightened’ or ‘awakened’ one. He taught ahimsa — usually ‘non-violence’, originally ‘non-hurting’ — and a sincere inner discipline; purity comes from truth and dharma, not from bathing in rivers, and conquering oneself is greater than conquering thousands in battle. He founded the Sangha, a community of bhikṣhus (monks) and, later, bhikṣhuṇīs (nuns), to practise and spread his teaching; his influence on India and all of Asia was enormous and is still felt.

Jainism became widespread at the same time, though its roots are said to be much more ancient. Like Siddhārtha, Prince Vardhamāna was born into a royal family in the early 6th century BCE, near Vaiśhālī in today’s Bihar. At 30 he left home for spiritual knowledge; after 12 years of ascetic discipline he achieved ‘infinite knowledge’ and became Mahāvīra, ‘great hero’. ‘Jain’ comes from jina, ‘conqueror’ — not of lands or enemies but of ignorance and attachments. Jain teachings include ahimsa — in Mahāvīra’s words, no breathing, living, sentient creature should be killed, ill-treated, abused, tormented or driven away; anekāntavāda — ‘not just one’ aspect: truth has many aspects and no single statement describes it fully; and aparigraha — ‘non-possession’, detachment from material things, keeping only what is truly needed. These ideas are shared to a large extent with Buddhism and Vedanta and are central to Indian culture. Jainism also stresses the interconnectedness of all creatures, from humans to invisible organisms, which support each other — interdependence that, the book notes, scientists studying nature have confirmed again and again.

In both Buddhism and Jainism, ahimsa means much more than avoiding physical violence: it also means avoiding violence in thought — ill feelings towards anyone, even towards oneself. Monks, and sometimes nuns, of both traditions travelled across the land to spread their teachings; some built monasteries in faraway places, others lived as ascetics in caves cut in the rock, and archaeologists have found traces of those monasteries, sometimes even the names of monks who slept on the stone beds. There were yet other schools: the Chārvāka or Lokāyata school held that the material world is the only thing that exists, so there can be no life after death; it did not gain much popularity and disappeared with time — the book mentions it to show the wide diversity of belief systems, from which people were free to choose. Despite important differences, the Vedic, Buddhist and Jain schools shared concepts such as dharma, karma, rebirth, the search for an end to suffering and ignorance, and many values — the ‘trunk’ of the opening tree.

The roots seen so far are documented in texts; India also has rich oral traditions, passed on through everyday practice without written texts (the book notes that the Vedas, too, were oral). Among them are folk traditions, carried by common people, and tribal traditions, carried by tribes. Anthropologists today usually define a tribe as a group of families or clans sharing a tradition of common descent, a culture and a language, living as a close-knit community under a chief and holding no private property. Ancient India had no word for ‘tribe’: tribes were simply janas living in particular environments such as forests or mountains; the Constitution uses ‘tribes’ and ‘tribal communities’ in English and janjāti in Hindi. In 2011 India had 705 tribes in most States — about 104 million people, more than Australia and the United Kingdom together. Nineteenth-century anthropologists often called tribes ‘primitive’ or ‘inferior’; deeper study of their rich cultures has mostly abandoned such biased judgments. There has been constant two-way exchange between folk and tribal traditions and the leading schools of thought: by tradition, Jagannath of Puri (Odisha) was originally a tribal deity, as were various forms of the mother goddess; some tribes long ago adopted Hindu deities and have their own versions of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, documented from the north-eastern States to Tamil Nadu. The exchange came naturally because folk, tribal and Hindu belief systems share ideas: mountains, rivers, trees, plants, animals and some stones are sacred, with consciousness behind them. For the Todas of the Nilgiris (Tamil Nadu), over thirty peaks are homes of gods and goddesses, so sacred that Todas avoid pointing at them. And many tribal groups, as in Hinduism, also have a higher divinity: several tribes of Arunachal Pradesh worship Donyipolo, a combined Sun and Moon who rose to be a supreme god; so too Khandoba in parts of central India; the Munda and Santhal and others worship Singbonga, the supreme creator. The sociologist André Béteille wrote that castes and tribes have influenced one another’s beliefs since before history, and that Hinduism — not only in its formative phase but throughout — has been influenced by tribal religions, just as tribal religions were by Hinduism. The result: mutual enrichment; folk and tribal beliefs count among India’s cultural roots.

The chapter’s activity boxes, in page order.

Numbers

One-liners

• ‘Veda’ comes from vid, ‘knowledge’.
• The Vedic hymns were recited orally, not written.
• Rishis and rishikas composed the hymns in an early form of Sanskrit.
• Ṛitam is truth and order in human life and the cosmos.
• Ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti: the Existent is one; sages give it many names.
• Sabhā and samiti were assemblies; rājā meant a ruler.
• The Upaniṣhads introduced rebirth and karma.
• Brahman is the one divine essence — not the god Brahmā.
• Tat tvam asi (Chhāndogya); aham brahmāsmi (Bṛihadāraṇyaka).
• Nachiketa questioned Yama in the Kaṭha Upaniṣhad.
• The Buddha: enlightenment under a pipal at Bodh Gaya; ignorance and attachment cause suffering.
• Ahimsa originally means ‘non-hurting’.
• Jina means conqueror — of ignorance and attachment.
• Anekāntavāda: truth has many aspects; aparigraha: non-possession.
• The Chārvāka (Lokāyata) school held that only the material world exists.
• By tradition Jagannath of Puri was originally a tribal deity.

Traps to avoid

• The Vedas were oral — not written on palm leaves in Vedic times.
• Brahman (essence) ≠ Brahmā (god) ≠ brāhmaṇa (priest or ritual text).
• Nachiketa is in the Kaṭha, not the Chhāndogya, Muṇḍaka or Kena Upaniṣhad.
• Gārgī debated Yājñavalkya; Lopāmudrā is the rishika who composed Ṛig Vedic hymns (UPSC 1995).
• The Buddha left home at 29; Mahāvīra at 30.
• Enlightenment at Bodh Gaya; death (parinirvāṇa) at Kuśhīnagara; first sermon at Sarnath †.
• The Bodhi tree is a pipal; the banyan is the book’s closing symbol.
• Anekāntavāda is Jain, not Buddhist.
• The Middle Way is Buddhist, not shared with Jainism.
• Jainism is not a branch of Buddhism; Buddhism is not older than the Vedas.
• UNESCO: Vedic chanting is intangible heritage (2003/2008); the Ṛig Veda manuscripts are on the Memory of the World register (2007) †.
• Todas live in the Nilgiris (Tamil Nadu), not central India.
• Khandoba’s chief shrine is Jejuri, Maharashtra — the book’s ‘central India’ is loose.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• From this chapter: the Ṛig Veda is chiefly hymns to gods (1984); ṛita and dharma (2011); early Vedic religion = nature worship and yajñas (2012); the Upaniṣhads = Vedānta (1991); Nachiketa–Yama in the Kaṭha (1997); the Upaniṣhads have parables and predate the Purāṇas (2024); a brahmavādinī who composed hymns — Lopāmudrā, with Gārgī as the trap (1995); Buddhism’s chief contribution, ahimsa and self-purification (1985); what Buddhism and Jainism shared (1996, 2012); anekāntavāda is Jain (2009); the Chārvāka aphorism (1994) and Lokāyata outside the six systems (2014); Ellora’s three traditions (1994); the Todas (1985, 2005).
• Key notes: 1985 ‘Gautam Buddha attained Nirvana at’ — stored key (c) Kushinagar. Buddhist usage distinguishes nirvāṇa reached at enlightenment (Bodh Gaya, option a, as this chapter teaches) from parinirvāṇa at death (Kuśhīnagara). The key follows the common exam usage (‘Nirvana’ = his passing); keep it, but the question is disputed — read the stem carefully. 2005: the keyed incorrect statement is (b) — the north-east has about an eighth, not half, of India’s tribal population †; statement (a), ‘no definition of Scheduled Tribe in the Constitution’, is accepted as correct because Article 366(25) only refers to Article 342’s notified lists.
• Elsewhere: the contents of the four Vedas (1985, 1988, 2004) on iest105; Buddhist and Jain details — Sarnath, Mahāvīra as the last tīrthaṅkara, anuvrata, kaivalya (1980, 1993, 1995) — on lehs104; Ajanta and Bharhut art on kefa104–kefa105. Method: for each school learn founder · place · key terms · what it shared.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 (Indian culture; ancient history): the chapter gives the vocabulary for Vedic society and religion (2023: janas, sabhā and samiti, deities, ṛita, yajña — and what survives), and for philosophy shaping monuments (2020: Ellora’s shared hill, Bharhut’s Jātaka, Ajanta’s teaching Buddha). For tribes as a single category (2022), use the definitions table — anthropologists, the Constitution, the Lokur criteria, Béteille’s continuum. GS4 asks for the relevance of the Buddha’s teachings (2020) and of Mahāvīra’s (2025): use ahimsa in thought, inner discipline, anekāntavāda as tolerance and aparigraha as restraint, with examples, and keep the answer free of ranking traditions.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

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