Chapter 7 — India's Cultural Roots

The four Vedas are the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda. They are the most ancient texts of India — and among the most ancient in the world. They consist of thousands of hymns (prayers in the form of poems and songs) that were composed in an early form of Sanskrit and passed down orally, not written.

The Rig Veda is the most ancient of the four Vedas. Experts have proposed dates for its composition ranging from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BCE, making it extremely old. Its hymns were composed in the Sapta Sindhava region and passed down orally for between 100 and 200 generations with hardly any alterations.

In 2008, UNESCO recognised Vedic chanting as 'a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.' This recognition was given because the Vedic hymns were transmitted through rigorous memory training for thousands of years without being written down, and preserved with remarkable accuracy across generations.

The Vedic hymns were composed by rishis (male seers or sages) and rishikas (female seers). They were addressed in poetical form to many deities such as Indra, Agni, Varuna, Mitra, Sarasvati and Ushas. These deities together with the seers were seen as sustaining ṛitam — truth and order in human life and in the cosmos.

The Upanishads are a group of texts that built upon Vedic concepts and introduced new ones, including rebirth (taking birth again and again) and karma (our actions or their results). They also introduced the concept of brahman — the divine essence that underlies everything in human life, nature and the universe — and ātman, the divine essence within every living being.

Prince Siddhartha Gautama grew up in a palace in Lumbini (today in Nepal). At the age of 29 he left the palace after seeing, for the first time, an old man, a sick man and a dead body. He gave up his palace life and wandered as an ascetic searching for the root cause of suffering. After meditating for many days under a pipal tree at Bodh Gaya (Bihar) he attained enlightenment and became known as the Buddha, meaning the 'enlightened' or 'awakened' one.

After attaining enlightenment the Buddha taught that avidyā (ignorance) and attachment are the sources of human suffering and gave a method to remove them. He stressed the idea of ahimsa, which is generally translated as 'non-violence' but originally means 'non-hurting' or 'non-injuring.' He also insisted on sincere inner discipline, teaching that conquering oneself is greater than conquering a thousand men in battle.

Prince Vardhamana was born into a royal family near the city of Vaishali in modern-day Bihar in the early 6th century BCE. At the age of 30 he left home in search of spiritual knowledge and, after 12 years of ascetic discipline, achieved 'infinite knowledge' or supreme wisdom. He became known as Mahavira, meaning 'great hero.' The word Jain or jaina comes from jina, meaning 'conqueror' — not of territory, but of ignorance and attachments.

Ahimsa means non-violence toward all breathing, living and sentient creatures. Anekāntavāda means 'not just one aspect or perspective' — that truth has many aspects and cannot be fully described by any single statement. Aparigraha means 'non-possession' and advises detachment from material possessions, limiting oneself to what is truly necessary in life.

The Jataka tales are stories that tell of the Buddha's former births and express Buddhist values in simple terms. They have delighted generations of Indian children and adults. One well-known tale tells of the Buddha as the king of a troop of monkeys who sacrificed his own body as a bridge to save his troop, illustrating selfless sacrifice and the role of a leader toward those in their care.

According to official figures from 2011, India had 705 tribes spread over most States, with a combined population of about 104 million people — more than the populations of Australia and the United Kingdom together. Ancient India did not have a separate word for 'tribe'; tribes were simply different janas living in specific environments such as forests or mountains.

Folk and tribal traditions have interacted with the leading schools of thought for millenniums, with deities, concepts, legends and rituals exchanged freely in both directions. For example, Jagannath worshipped at Puri (Odisha) is said to have originally been a tribal deity, while some tribes adopted Hindu deities and developed their own versions of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Indian sociologist André Béteille noted that tribal religions and Hinduism have influenced each other throughout history.

The Charvaka school (sometimes called Lokayata) believed that the material world is the only thing that exists and therefore there can be no life after death. It did not gain much popularity and eventually disappeared. The chapter mentions it to show that ancient India had a wide diversity of intellectual and spiritual belief systems, and people were free to choose what suited them.

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