Ganges river – wider and slower than the Indus
Vedic people become more Indian
After the Vedic people moved into the Ganges valley about 800 BC, they were further from West Asia and Central Asia and had less contact with their relatives there.
Who were the Vedic people?
Vedic architecture
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Hinduism and the Mahabharata
They mixed more with the Indian people. Indian gods mixed with the Indo-European gods and became Hinduism. The Mahabharata, first told about this time, tells the story of how the Vedic people took over the Ganges.
What is the Mahabharata?
More about Hinduism
South India in the Iron Age
But still the Vedic people did not control all of India. In South India a bunch of kings stayed independent. They did not have to do what the Vedic people wanted. Stories of fights between the Vedic people and the southerners make up the Ramayana.
What is the Ramayana?
A Ramayana activity
Iranian archers
Iranians and India
In the 500s BC, the Iranians under their kings Cyrus and Darius conquered part of north-western India (modern Pakistan). The Iranians were also Indo-Europeans, but they had left their homeland later and settled in modern Iran.
More about the Iranians
Who are Indo-Europeans?
The Iranians never really controlled India very well – they made the Indians pay tribute in gold to Iran, but the Iranians couldn’t really tell people in India what to do.
Bigger empires in India
Meanwhile, the Vedic people continued to rule north-eastern India. Seeing how the Iranians formed a big empire, the Vedic people also began to put together bigger empires. As the Mahabharata says, this was a time “where big fishes ate little fishes.”
What is Buddhism?
Who are the Jains?
The end of animal sacrifice
With the big empires starting, big religions also began to form. Animal sacrifice began to seem old-fashioned. About 500 BC, this was where Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, lived and started the faith of Buddhism. Jainism took off about this time too.
Learn by Doing – act out a scene from the Ramayana
Alexander the Great in India
More about Ancient India
Bibliography and further reading about the Vedic Expansion in India:
Early India : From the Origins to AD 1300, by Romila Thapar (University of California Press 2004). For adults, and a little dry.
There’s also a good article on this, with some recent citations, on Wikipedia.
