Vedic Civilization
Vedic civilization began in India around 1500 BC, with the Rigveda being
the oldest of the Vedas. The Rigveda was told in Vedic Sanskrit, which is
very similar to Avestan, the ancient language in which the Persian Zoroastrian
sacred text Avesta was written. The Vedas and the Avesta appear to agree that
the Aryans migrated from their original homeland due to a "flood" of some
kind. In the Vedic account, the flood was of water, while the Avesta indicates
that it was of snow and frost. The story has obvious parallels with the Semitic
account of the Great Flood and the emergence of Noah. According to the traditions
of the Vendidad, Aryans lived in fifteen nations, one of these being Haptahindu,
which is the Avestan form of the Sanskrit Saptasindhu, meaning "seven rivers"
and referring to the region of the Indian subcontinent.
The Vedic Civilization is the Indo-Aryan culture associated with the Vedas.
Vedic civilization into the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, while many date its beginnings as early as the 7th millennium BCE starting from the Mehrgarh Culture; Families were patrilineal. The main deities of the Vedic pantheon were Indra, Agni (fire), and Soma. Other deities were Varuna, Surya (the Sun), Mitra, Vayu (the wind). Goddesses included Ushas (the dawn), Prithvi (the Earth) and Aditi. Rivers, especially Sarasvati, were also considered goddesses. The use of Vedic Sanskrit continued up to the 6th century BCE, when the culture began to be transformed into classical forms of Hinduism. The Rigveda is by far the most archaic of the Vedic texts preserved, and it retains many common Indo-Iranian elements, both in language and in content, that are not present in any other Vedic texts. Its creation must have taken place over several centuries, and apart from the youngest books (1 and 10), it must have been essentially complete by 1500 BCE when Stonehenge was built in Wiltshire, England as well as an early settlement at Aylesbury.
Settlers from Crete, Greece move to Miletus, Turkey and early traces of Maya civilization develop in Belize. At this time, the Phoenicians develop an alphabet, 200 years after the Indus Valley civilization; it was predated by the first farming cultures in South Asia, which emerged in the hills of what is now called Balochistan, to the west of the Indus Valley. Well over 400 Indus symbols have been found on seals or ceramic pots and over a dozen other materials, including a 'signboard' that apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dholavira. Typical Indus inscriptions are no more than four or five characters in length.
The last king of the Kassite dynasty was Samsu-Ditana, son of Ammisaduqa. He was overthrown following the sack of Babylon in 1595 B.C. by the Hittite king Mursili I, and Babylonia was turned over to the Kassites (Kossaeans) from the mountains of Iran, with whom Samsu-Iluna had already come into conflict in his 6th year. The Kassite dynasty was founded by Kandis or Gandash of Mari.
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The Medes were an Iranian people. The Persians, a closely related and subject people, revolted against the Median empire during the 6th century BC. The Elamites were a people located in Susa, in what is now Khuzestan province. Their language was neither Semitic nor Indo-European, and they were the geographic precursors of the Persian/Median empire that later appeared. Some have offered evidence for a linguistic kinship between Elamite and the modern Dravidian languages of Southern India. The proto-Elamites lived in the early realms of Iran even as far back as 7,500 years ago in Iran.
In 627 B.C. with the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler, Ashurbanipal, and Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar the Chaldean the following year. With help from the Medes, Niniveh was sacked in 612, and the seate of the Neo-Babylonian empire was again transferred to Babylonia. Nabopolassar the Chaldean was followed by his son Nebuchadnezzar II, whose reign of 43 years made Babylon once more the mistress of the civilized world. Only a small fragment of his annals has been discovered, relating to his invasion of Egypt in 567 BC, and referring to "Phut of the Ionians".
| Already Cyrus the Great, King of Anshan and Persia founded the Persian Empire under the Achaemind Dynasty of Anshan, unifying the Medes and the Persians. Cyrus was said to be part-Persian (Parsua) and part Mede and his overlord was his own grandfather Astyages who had conquered all Assyrian kingdoms apart from Babylonia. The Nemean Games following were one of the four Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, and were held at Nemea every two years. With the Isthmian Games, the Nemean Games were held both the yeare before and the yeare after the Olympic Games and the Pythian Games in the third yeare of the Olympiad cycle. Like the Olympic Games, they were held in honour of Zeus. They were said to have been founded by Heracles after he defeated the Nemean Lion. The winners received a wreath of wild celery leaves from the Mycenaean city of Argos in Peloponnese Greece. |  |
In 538 B.C. Cyrus invaded Babylonia. A battle was fought at Opis in the month of June, where the Babylonians were defeated; and immediately afterwards Sippara surrendered to the invader. Nabonidus fled to Babylon, where he was pursued by Gobryas, the governor of Kurdistan, and on the 16th of Tammuz, two days after the capture of Sippara. Cyrus did not arrive until the 3rd of Marchesvan (October), Gobryas having acted for him in his absence. Gobryas was now made governor of the province of Babylon, and a few days afterwards the son of Nabonidus died. A yeare before Cyrus' death, in 529 BC, he elevated his son Cambyses II in the government, making him king of Babylon, while he reserved for himself the fuller title of "king of the other provinces" of the empire. Nidinta-Bel, who took the name of Nebuchadnezzar III, and reigned from October 521 B.C. to August 520 BC.
The late Vedic period from ca. 500 B.C. more or less seamlessly blends into the period of the Middle kingdoms of India.
The period of Mantra language includes both the mantra and prose language of the Atharvaveda (Paippalada and Shaunakiya), the Rigveda Khilani, the Samaveda Samhita (containing some 75 mantras not in the Rigveda), and the mantras of the Yajurveda. This is the time of the early Iron Age in north-western India, corresponding to the Black and Red Ware (BRW) culture, and the kingdom of the Kurus, dating from ca. the 12th century BCE. The Sutra language is the last stratum of Vedic Sanskrit leading up to 500 BCE, the bulk of the Shrauta and Grhya Sutras, and some Upanishads which are prosaic Brahamana, proper of the four Vedas. Videha as a third political center is established. Younger Upanishads are post-Vedic. The language of the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics, and the Classical Sanskrit described by Panini is considered post-Vedic, and belongs to the time after 500 BCE. The Vedanta, the Buddha, and the Pali Prakrit dialect of Buddhist scripture belong to this period.
The Post-Vedic period may correspond with the Gandhara Grave culture, and the successors of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), Cemetery H cultures of the Punjab and the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (OCP) further east. Indo-European to have originated somewhere around the Black Sea: a favorite candidate is the Kurgan culture, phonetically emerged in Swedish and Norwegian only in recent centuries, as a result of combinations with r. The presence of retroflex consonants (including L) in Vedic Sanskrit is generally taken by linguists to indicate the influence of a non-Indo-European speaking substratum population.