Page 33 - SST Class 06
P. 33
4 4 4
What Books and Burials
Tell Us?
ONE OF THE OLDEST BOOKS IN THE Their three Gods were Agni, the god of Fire;
WORLD Indra, the warrior god; and Soma, a plant from
After the Harappan civilisation, which disap- which a special drink was prepared.
peared suddenly, around 3,500 years ago, there The hymns were composed by sages (rishis).
appeared some groups of people in the east The priests taught these hymns to the students,
Punjab area. These pastoral nomads are known word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence. It is
as Vedic people. They chanted hymns derived also said that mostly men composed, taught and
from Vedas. The early Vedas are four in Number learnt these hymns. A few were composed by
– Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda and women. The Rigveda is a great collection of these
Atharvaveda. The Rigveda, is the oldest Vedic early hymns which were later written down in
literature, consisting of 1028 hymns, sung in Vedic Sanskrit. The Vedic Sanskrit is different
praise of Gods of nature. These hymns in from the Sanskrit spoken or written that emerged
Rigveda are called Sukta meaning “well-said”. in the later years.
SANSKRIT – THE INDO-EUROPEAN For example, Dravidian family of languages
LANGUAGE includes Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European group of The Languages spoken in the north-east
languages. Other languages of this group are belonged to Tibeto-Burman family. The Austro-
English, French, German, Greek, Italian and Asiatic family of languages includes the lan-
Spanish, It is interesting to note that a group of guages spoken in parts of central India and
people who chanted the hymns of Rigveda, Jharkhand. Each language in a similar manner
known as Aryans, also belong to the Indo- can be associated or identified with its own
European people. These languages are called a group.
‘family’ because there are many similarities and Rigveda, though not written down in the
many root words are also common. For example, early period, survives to this day, because of oral
the latin word ‘matr’ means mother and which is tradition. It was written down several centuries
pronounced similar to mother in English. Later, after it was first composed and printed only
during the medieval period, 'ma' in Hindi was about 200 years back.
also derived from this word. There are many
other similarities.
List the languages you have heard or spoken and try
Other language spoken in the subcontinent,
to associate them with the family to which they
belong to the different groups of families. belong.
Social Science-6 33
