🏮 VEDAS [PART - 1]

#Historicalsources

📍 The word Veda comes from the root vid (literally, ‘to know’) and means ‘knowledge’.

📍 The Vedas have the status of shruti (literally, ‘that which has been heard’).

📍 They are thought to embody an eternal, self-existent truth realized by the rishis (seers) in a state of meditation or revealed to them by the gods.

📍 The category of smriti (literally, ‘remembered’) texts includes the Vedanga, Puranas, epics, Dharmashastra, and Nitishastra.

📍 There are four Vedas—Rig, Sama, Yajur, and Atharva.

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🏮 VEDAS [ PART 2]

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Each Veda has four parts, the last three of which sometimes blend into each other— the Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanishad.

SAMHITA

📍The Rig Veda Samhita is a collection of 1,028 hymns arranged in 10 books.

📍The Sama Veda consists of 1,810 verses, mostly borrowed from the Rig Veda, arranged according to the needs of musical notation.

📍The Yajur Veda deals with the details of the performance of rituals.

📍The Atharva Veda is the latest Veda and contains hymns, but also spells and charms which reflect aspects of popular beliefs and practices.

BRAHMANAS

📍The Brahmanas are prose explanations of the Samhita portions and give details and explanations of sacrificial rituals and their outcome.

ARANAYAKAS

📍 It interpret sacrificial rituals in a symbolic and philosophical way.

UPNISHADS

📍 There are 108 Upanishads, among which 13 are considered the principal ones.

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🏮 MAHABHARATA

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📍 The Mahabharata consists of 18 Parvas (books) and has two main recensions—a northern and southern.

📍According to tradition, Mahabharata was composed by Vyasa.

📍The Mahabharata is truly an encyclopaedic work, and it boasts of this fact.

📍 A heroic story formed the core to which many other stories, sermons, and didactic portions containing teachings, were added over centuries.

📍 Whether a bitter war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas ever happened cannot be proved or disproved.

📍 It is possible that there was a small-scale conflict, transformed into a gigantic epic war by bards and poets.

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🏮 RAMAYANA

#Historicalsources

📍 The composition of Ramayana can be placed between the 5th/4th century BCE and the 3rd century CE.

📍 Of seven Kandas (books), of which the first (Bala Kanda) and last (Uttara Kanda) are later interpolations.

📍 The Ramayana exists in the form of two main recensions—northern and southern.

📍 The language of the northern recension is more elaborate and polished than that of the southern one.

📍 The compact vocabulary and style indicate that the core of the text was the work of a single individual, identified as Valmiki.

📍 The popularity and dynamism of the Rama story is indicated by the fact that apart from the Valmiki Ramayana there are numerous other tellings of the story :-

• a Jaina version (the Paumachariu of Vimalasuri, in Prakrit),

• a Buddhist version (the Dasharatha Jataka in Pali),

• a 12th century Tamil version by Kamban (the Iramavataram), and

• The Ramcharitmanas (16th century) by Tulsidas, to name only a few.

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🏮 PURANAS.

#Historicalsources

📍 The word ‘Purana’ means ‘old’.

📍 The Puranas were composed by Vyasa.

📍 There are 18 Mahapuranas (great Puranas), and many more Upapuranas (secondary Puranas).

📍 The standard list of the 18 Mahapuranas includes the Vishnu, Narada, Bhagavata, Garuda, Padma, Varaha, Matsya, Kurma, Linga, Shiva, Skanda, Agni, Brahmanda, Brahmavaivarta, Markandeya, Bhavishya, Vamana, and Brahma.

📍 The origins of the Puranas may have overlapped to some extent with the Vedas, but their composition stretched forward into the 4th– 5th centuries CE, and in some cases, even later.

📍 The Puranas are supposed to have five characteristics (pancha-lakshanas), i.e.,
they are supposed to discuss five topics—

• The creation of the world (sarga);

• Re-creation (pratisarga);

• The periods of the various Manus ;

• The genealogies of gods and rishis ; and

• an account of royal dynasties, including the Suryavamshi and Chandravamshi kings, whose origin is traced to the sun and the moon.

🏮 DHARMASHASTRA.

#Historicalsources

📍 A special group of Sanskrit texts dealing specifically with dharma are collectively known as the Dharmashastra.

📍 These texts can be subdivided into three groups :-

• The first two are the Dharmasutras (composed during c. 600–300 BCE)
and the Smritis (c. 200 BCE–900 CE).

• The third includes brief and elaborate commentaries (Tikas and Bhashyas, respectively), collections with comments and conclusions (Nibandhas), and compendia of views from different texts (Sangrahas), all composed between the 9th and the 19th centuries.

• The Dharmasutras are part of Vedanga literature as well as the Dharmashastra corpus.

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🏮 BUDDHIST LITERATURE. [PART 1]

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Canonical buddhist texts.

📍Canonical texts are the books which lay down the basic tenets and principles of a religion.

📍 Various Buddhist schools classify their canonical literature in different ways, some into 9 or 12 Angas, others into 3 Pitakas.

📍 There are Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan versions of the Tipitaka. The Pali Tipitaka of the Theravada school is the oldest of them all.

🔺️ Tripitaka:

The Tipitaka consists of three books :-

1. The Sutta Pitaka contains the Buddha’s discourses on various doctrinal issues in dialogue form.

2. The Vinaya Pitaka has rules monks and nuns of the sangha (monastic order).

3. The Abhidhamma Pitaka is later work, and contains a thorough study and systemization of the teachings of the Sutta Pitaka.

📍 Three Pitakas are divided into books known as the Nikayas.

📍 For instance, the Sutta Pitaka consists of five Nikayas— the Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta, Anguttara, and Khuddaka Nikayas.

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🏮 BUDDHIST LITERATURE [PART -2]

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Non - canonical Buddhist literature.

📍 Non-canonical Buddhist literature in Pali includes the Milindapanha which consists of a dialogue on various philosophical issues between king Milinda— the Indo-Greek Menander and the monk Nagasena.

📍 The Nettigandha or Nettipakarana belongs to the same period and gives a connected account of the teaching of the Buddha.

📍 Commentaries on the Tipitaka include a 5th century work by Buddhaghosha.

📍 The first connected life story of the Buddha occurs in the Nidanakatha (1st century).

📍 The Pali or Sri Lankan chronicles—the Dipavamsa (4th–5th centuries) and the Mahavamsa (5th century)—contain a historical-cum-mythical account of the Buddha’s life, the Buddhist councils, the Maurya emperor Ashoka, the kings of Sri Lanka, and the arrival of Buddhism on that island.

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🏮 JAINA LITERATURE. [ PART 1 ]

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📍 The sacred books of the Jainas are collectively known as the Siddhanta or Agama.

📍 The language of the earliest texts is an eastern dialect of Prakrit known as Ardha Magadhi.

📍 The Jaina monastic order came to be divided into the Shvetambara and Digambara schools, perhaps in about the 3rd century CE.

📍 The Shvetambara canon includes the 12 Angas, 12 Uvamgas (Upangas), 10 Painnas (Prakirnas), 6 Cheya Suttas (Cheda Sutras), 4 Mula Suttas (Mula Sutras), and a number of individual texts such as the Nandi Sutta (Nandi Sutra) and Anugodara (Anuyogadvara).

📍 Both schools accept and give prime importance to the Angas.

📍According to Shvetambara tradition, the Angas were compiled at a council held at Pataliputra. The compilation of the entire canon is supposed to have taken place in the 5th or 6th century at a council held in Valabhi in Gujarat, presided over by Devarddhi Kshamashramana.

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🏮 JAINA LITERATURE. {PART - 2}

#Historicalsources

📍 The non-canonical Jaina works are partly in Prakrit dialects, especially Maharashtri, and partly in Sanskrit, which started being used in the early centuries CE.

📍 Commentaries on the canonical works include the Nijjuttis (Niryuktis), Bhashyas, and Churnis in Maharashtri and Prakrit; the early medieval Tikas, Vrittis, and Avachurnis are in Sanskrit.

📍 The genealogical lists in the Jaina Pattavalis and the Theravalis contain very precise chronological details about the Jaina saints, but they sometimes contradict each other.

📍 The Jaina Puranas (the Shvetambaras call them Charitas) are hagiographies of the Jaina saints known as tirthankaras, but they contain other material as well.

📍 The Adi Purana (9th century) narrates the life of the first tirthankara Rishabha, also known as Adinatha.

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■ KANNADA LITERATURE.

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◇ Earliest Kannada inscriptions date from the 5th/6th century onwards, but the oldest surviving piece of literature in this language is the Kavirajamarga (The Royal Road of the Poets), a 9th century work on poetics.

◇ The best known poets of the 10th century were Pampa, Ponna, and Ranna, all of whom wrote Jaina Puranas.

◇ Pampa, author of the Adi Purana (an account of the life of the first tirthankara Rishabha or Adinatha), also wrote the Vikramarjunavijaya, based on the Mahabharata story.

◇ Ponna wrote both in Sanskrit and in Kannada, and was given the title of Ubhaya-kavichakravarti.

◇ Chavunda Raya wrote the Trishashtilakshana Mahapurana, an account of the 24 Jaina saints, in continuous prose.

◇ In the 12th century, Nagachandra or Abhinava Pampa wrote the Ramachandracharitra Purana.

◇ Kannada works of the 12th century include Neminatha’s Lilavati which tells the love story of a Kadamba prince and a beautiful princess.

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🏮 TELUGU LITERATURE.

#Historicalsources

📍 Place names in inscriptions from the 2nd century CE suggest the antiquity of Telugu, while epigraphs of the 5th–6th centuries CE reflect the shaping of the classical form of the
language.

📍 The earliest surviving work of Telugu literature is Nannaya’s 11th century rendering of the first two-and-a-half books of the Mahabharata in mixed verse and prose.

📍 Nannaya laid the foundations of Telugu poetic style, and Telugu tradition gave him the epithet Vaganushasanundu (maker of speech).

📍 Tikkana, a minister associated with the court of Manumasiddhi, a ruler based in the Nellore area, added 15 Parvas to Nannaya’s Mahabharata and set new trends in narrative style. He also composed a work called the Uttararamayanamu.

📍 Telugu literature reached a level of maturity in the 14th century during the Kakatiya period and its highest point of achievement during the reign of the Vijayanagara king Krishnadevaraya (1509–29 CE).

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🏮 ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES.

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📍 Archaeology usually provides an anonymous history, that sheds light on cultural processes.

📍 It is the only source for prehistory, the longest part of the human past, during which many major discoveries and developments took place.

📍 It is also the only source for those parts of the past covered by non-deciphered written records, and continues to provide valuable information even after the beginning of the historical period.

📍 Archaeology often tells us about aspects of everyday life that are not revealed in texts.

📍 It provides information on the history of human settlements and can give very specific details about modes of subsistence.

📍 Excellent source of information on various aspects of the history of technology—raw materials, their sources, the methods used to make artefacts of various kinds.

📍 Archaeology also helps reconstruct routes and networks of exchange, trade, and interaction between communities.

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🏮 KHAROSHTI SCRIPTS

#sources #Epigraphy

📍 Kharoshthi’s core area lay in the north-west—the land known as Gandhara in ancient times.

📍 Ashoka’s Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra inscriptions are in this script.

📍 Kharoshthi was later used in north India under the Indo-Greek, IndoParthian, and Kushana kings, and was also used in certain records outside the Gandhara area, including in parts of central Asia.

📍 Written from right to left, Kharoshthi seems to have been derived from the north Semitic Aramaic script.

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🏮 BRAHMI SCRIPT.

#Epigraphy

📍 The origins of Brahmi, a script written from left to right, are not as clear.

📍 Some scholars have suggested an indigenous origin, others an Aramaic origin.

📍 A problem in accepting the latter theory is that the direction of writing and the forms of the letters in Brahmi and Kharoshthi are different.

📍 Kharoshthi declined and died out in about the 3rd century CE. Brahmi, on the other hand, became the parent of all the indigenous scripts of South Asia, and also of central and Southeast Asia.

📍 The different stages of the Brahmi script are often labelled on the basis of dynasties, e.g., Ashokan Brahmi, Kushana Brahmi, and Gupta Brahmi.

📍 In the late 6th century, Gupta Brahmi evolved into a script known as Siddhamatrika or Kutila.

📍 Nagari or Devanagari was standardized by about 1000 CE and an eastern script took shape between the 10th and 14th centuries.

📍 From here, it was a short step to the emergence of the Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, and Maithili scripts.

🏮 TAMIL SCRIPT.

#Epigraphy

📍 The earliest inscriptions in the Tamil language are engraved in rock shelters and caves, mostly in Tamil Nadu, especially in the area near Madurai. They are in a script known as Tamil–Brahmi, an adaptation of Brahmi for writing the Tamil language.

📍 Three southern scripts emerged in the early medieval period—Grantha, Tamil, and Vatteluttu. The first of these was used for writing Sanskrit, the second and third for writing Tamil.

📍 These three scripts may have emerged out of southern varieties of Brahmi; or they may have emerged from some other earlier southern scripts.

📍 The Tamil script first appeared in the Pallava territory in the 7th century CE.

📍 Something similar to the modern Telugu and Kannada scripts took shape in the 14th–15th centuries, while the Malayalam script developed out of Grantha at about the same time.

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🏮 PUNCHED MARKED COINS

#Numismatics

📍The oldest coins found in the subcontinent are punch-marked coins, made mostly of silver, some of copper.

📍Usually rectangular, sometimes square or round. These coins are often irregular in shape.

📍Blanks for making these coins were generally cut from a metal sheet.

📍The symbol or symbols were then hammered on these coins using dies or punches.

📍Most of the silver punch-marked coins weighed 32 rattis or about 56 grains.

📍The punch-marked coins of northern India can be divided into four main series :-

• Taxila Gandhara type of the north-west with a heavy weight standard and a single punch type;

• Kosala type of the middle Ganga valley, with a heavy weight standard and multiple punch marks.

• Avanti type of western India, with a light weight standard and single punch mark.

• Magadhan type with a light weight standard and multiple punches.

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🏮 UNINSCRIBED CAST COINS.

#Numismatics

📍 Uninscribed cast coins made of copper or alloys of copper appeared soon after the punch-marked coins.

📍 They have been found in most parts of the subcontinent except the far south.

📍 These coins were made by melting metal and pouring it into clay or metal moulds.

📍 Clay moulds have in fact been found at many sites and a bronze mould was found at Eran in central India.

📍 The discovery of punch-marked and uninscribed cast coins in the same archaeological level at some early historical sites indicates that they overlapped in time.

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🏮 UNINSCRIBED DIE-STRUCK COINS

#Numismatics

📍 Uninscribed die-struck coins were mostly in copper, rarely in silver.

📍 The symbols, some similar to those on the punch-marked coins, were struck onto coin blanks with metal dies that were carefully carved with the required designs.

📍 The minting of such coins may have begun in about the 4th century BCE and they have been found in large numbers at sites such as Taxila and Ujjain.

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