AP World History Aryans Terms

Jati

Complicated hierarchy of subcastes that emerged with the development of Aryan society and the need for a more elaborate scheme of social classification. Occupation largely determined an individual's ----: people working at the same or similar tasks in a given area belonged to teh same subcaste, and their offspring joined them in both occupation and ---- membership. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ce, the system (caste system) featured several thousand ----, which prescribed individuals' roles in society in minute detail. Members of a ---- ate with one another and intermarried, and they cared for those who became ill or fell on hard times.

Veda (term--meaning)

Means "wisdom" or "knowledge" and refers to the knowledge that priests needed to carry out their functions.

Untouchables

People who performed dirty or unpleasant tasks, such as butchering animals or handling dead bodies, and who theoretically became so polluted from their work that their very touch could defile individuals of higher status--they literally weren't touched. Added about the end of the Vedic Age.

Sanskrit

Sacred Aryan language--not used in everyday communication. The language in which they memorized and orally transmitted extensive collections of religious and literary works from one generation to another.

Nirvana

State of enlightenment

Indra

The chief deity of the Rig Veda. He was boisterous and often violent and was partial to both fighting and to strong drink. He was primarily a war god. The Aryans portrayed as the wielder of thunderbolts who led them into battle against their enemies. He also had a domestic dimension: The Aryans associated him with the weather and especially with the coming of rain to water the crops and the land. *Henotheism

Rig Veda

The earliest and most important of the Vedas. It was a collection of 1,028 hymns addressed to the Aryan gods. Aryan priests compiled it between 1400 and 900 bce, and they committed it to writing, along with the three other Vedas, about 600 bce.

The Vedas

The earliest of the Aryan orally transmitted works. They were collections of hymns, songs, prayers, and rituals honoring the various gods of the Aryans. There are four, the earliest and most important of which is the Rig Veda, a collection of 1,028 hymns addressed to the Aryan gods. They represent a priestly perspective on affairs. They also shed considerable light on early Aryan society in India (important as historical sources).

Brahmins

The highest social caste (varna). It was composed of the priests. In order to reach moksha, must be a Brahmin male.

Prakrit

The language that Aryans relied on for everyday communication--related to Sanskrit but less formal. Later evolved into Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, and other languages currently spoken in northern India.

Shudras

The lowest social caste (varna). It was composed of landless peasants and serfs.

Sati

The practice by which a widow voluntarily threw herself on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband to join him in death. It never became a popular or widely practiced custom in India (although, it was not unheard of). Nevertheless, moralists often recommended sati for widows of socially prominent men, since their example would effectively illustrate the devotion of women to their husbands and reinforce the value that Indian society placed on the subordination of women.

Kshatriyas

The second highest social caste (varna). It was composed of warriors and aristocrats.

Varna

The term the Aryans used to refer to the major social classes. It is a Sanskrit word meaning "color." This terminology suggests that social distinctions arose partly from differences in complexion between the light-skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians.

Vaishyas

The third highest social caste (varna). It was composed of cultivators, artisans, and merchants (commoners).

Punjab

The upper Indus River valley that straddles the modern-day border between northern India and Pakistan. Where Aryan groups settled during the early centuries of the Vedic Age.

Dasas

What the Aryans called the indigenous peoples who the Vedas refer to as having frequent conflicts with the Aryans. The word means "enemies" or "subject peoples."

Upanishads

A body of works that began to appear late in the Vedic age (Later Upanishads continued to appear until the fifteenth century ce, but the most important were those composed during the late Vedic age). The word literally means "a sitting in front of," and it refers to the practice of disciples gathering before a sage for discussion of religious issues. They often took the form of dialogues that explored the Vedas and the religious issues they explored. They taught that appearances are deceiving, that individual human beings in fact are not separate and autonomous creatures--instead, concept of Brahman. The authors of the Upanishads believed that individual souls were born into the physical world not once, but many times: they believed that souls appeared most often as humans, but sometimes as animals, and possibly even occasionally as plants or other vegetable matter. The highest goal of the individual soul was to escape this cycle of birth and rebirth and enter into permanent union with Brahman. Contained doctrine of samsara, doctrine of karma. They discouraged greed, envy, gluttony, and all manner of vice, since those traits indicated excessive attachment to the material world and insufficient concentration on union with the universal soul. They advocated honesty, self-control, charity, and mercy. Most of all, they encouraged the cultivation of personal integrity. They also taught respect for all living things, animal as well as human--animal bodies, after all, might well hold incarnations of unfortunate souls suffering the effects of a heavy debt of karma.

Moksha

A deep, dreamless sleep that came with permanent liberation from physical incarnation. Release from the cycle of Samsara. It was difficult to reach since it entailed severing all ties to the physical world and identifying with the ultimate reality of Brahman, the universal soul. The two principal means to ------ were asceticism and meditation. By embarking on a regime of extreme asceticism individuals could purge themselves of desire for the comforts of the physical world. By practicing yoga, they could concentrate on the nature of Brahman and its relationship to their souls.

Karma

A doctrine in the Upanishads that accounted for the specific incarnations that souls experienced. Tally of good and bad deeds--cumulative.

Samsara

A doctrine in the Upanishads that held that upon death, individual souls go temporarily to the World of the Fathers and then return to earth in a new incarnation. Cycle of rebirth and re-death.

Yoga

A form of intense and disciplined meditation. Four types.

Deccan

A plateau region in the southern cone of the Indian subcontinent about 950 miles south of the Punjab.

Caste

A social class of hereditary and usually unchangeable status, Comes from the Portuguese word casta.

Lawbook of Manu

A work that dealt with proper moral behavior and social relationships, including sex and gender relationships. Although composed after the Vedic age, it reflected the society constructed earlier under Aryan influence. Written by an anonymous sage who attributed it to Manu, founder of the human race according to Indian mythology. The author advised men to treat women with honor and respect, but he insisted that women remain subject to the guidance of the principal men in their lives--first their fathers, then their husbands, and, finally, if they survived their husband, their sons. It also specified that the most important duties of women were to bear children and maintain wholesome homes for their families.

Raja

Aryan chiefdom leader--a Sanskrit term relating to the latin word rex ("king"). He governed in collaboration with a council of village elders.

Varuna

Aryan god that they (the Aryans) believed presided over the sky from his heavenly palace, where he oversaw the behavior of mortals and preserved the cosmic order. He and his helpers despised lying and evil deeds of all sorts, and they afflicted malefactors with severe punishments, including disease and death. They dispatched the souls of serious evildoers to the subterranean House of Clay, a dreary and miserable realm of punishment, while allowing souls of the virtuous to enter the Aryan heaven known as the World of the Fathers.