Indus
History
Geography
Economy
Social Structure
Government
Religion
Achievements
Architecture
- Archaeologists didn't know that people had lived in India until around the 1920s
- They found two huge cities while digging
- One was named Harappa
- The other was named Mohenjo Daro
- The two cities are more than 300 miles apart, but are similar in many ways
- Historians don't know much about the Harrapan civilization
- Everything we know comes from artifacts
- The Harappans had developed a writing system, but scholars don't know how to read them yet
- The cities were built with defense in their minds
- Each city had stood near a towering fortress
- They were well planned cities
- The Harappans were careful planners and skilled engineers
- The Harappan civilization ended by early 1700s BC, but we don't know why
- But not long after the collapse of the Harappans, a new group called the Aryans arrived in the Indus Valley
- They had arrived in India in the 2000s BC
- Most of what we know about the Aryans come from religious texts
- They spoke Sanskrit, the most important language of India
- By the 320s BC, a military leader called Candragupta Maurya rose to power
- He had an army of mercenaries, soldiers, that seized contol of northern India
- He founded the Mauryan Empire by doing so
- Mauryan rule had lasted for about 150 years
- By 301, Candragupta decided to become a Jainist monk, and passed the throne to his son
- By about 270 BC, Candragupta's grandson, Asoka, became king
- He was the strongerst ruler of the Mauryan empire
Geography
- The land was fertile for farming
- The Indus provided resources for living
- The Himalayas are northeast of India\
- Arabian Sea to the south
Economy
- Farmed in the Indus Valley
- Grew a variety of crops
- Grew wheat, barley, dates, and vegetables
- Used irrigation canals to bring water to the fields from the Indus and other rivers
Social Structure
- The Aryans had a caste system that divided Indian society into groups based on a person's birth, wealth, or occupation
- The highest varna, class, was Brahmins, India's priests
- Next were the Kshatriyas, rulers and warriors
- Next were the Vaisyas, who were the farmers, craftspeople, and traders
- The last one were Sudras, workers and servents
- If you ate or married someone in a different caste, you could be banned from your homes and caste
- People mostly spent time with their own caste
Government
- The Aryans were nomadic
- They had one leader of the group
- The leaders were called rajas
- They ruled the village and the land around it
Religion
- The Aryan religion was called Brahmanism
- Their religion was based on the Vedas
- There are four Vedas and each contains sacred hymns and poems
- Eventually these ideas mixed with other ideas, creating Hinduism
- Hindus believed in many gods; Brahma the Creator, Siva the Destroyer, and Vishnu the Preserver
- Even though Hinduism was followed widely all over India, some people didn't agree with its beliefs
- One group were the Jains that believed in Jainism
- Jainism was based off of the teachings of a man named Mahariva
- The Jains tried to live by four principles: injure no life, tell the truth, do not steal, and own no property
- They practiced nonviolence
Achievements
- The Harappans were skilled artisans
- They produced sturdy pottery vessels, jewelry, and ivory objects
- Religious art like temples, sculptures, and paintings
- There are religious epics written in Sanskrit
- Indians were pioneers at metallurgy, the science of working with metals
- They created alloys, a mixture of two or more metals
- They created our math system, they used to call them Hindu-Arabic numerals
- They also developed inoculation,the practice of injecting a person with a small dose of a virus to help build up defense to the disease
- The Indians were also interested in astronomy
Architecture
- The Harappan cities were built with a towering fortress so defenders could look down on the cities' streets
- The Harappans built sewer systems too
- Installed plumbing in many buildings
- The Hindu temples were small, stone structures
- Had flat roofs and contained only one or two rooms
- The Gupta period temple architecture was more complex, though