Questions about Ancient India:

Question

1. What is the caste system?
2. Talk about the importance of the Ganges for the Indians.
3. Give characteristics of at least 3 varieties.
4. Who was Buddha? (do not respond in a religious context).
5. What does Marajá mean?
6. What are some curiosities about Ancient India.

Answer 1

Hi Juliana,

I think I can shed some light on these questions for you, though some of them are posed somewhat vaguely and present challenges of misinterpretation.

1. The "caste system" is a hierarchical framework for social ordering. It has an immensely complex social and historical development. As such, a proper answer here is simply not possible. Very basically, the caste system as it is understood today has its heritage in two indigenous concepts known as "varna" and "jati". Varna generally refers to the basic divisions of roles in society. These are Brahmin ("priests" or ritual presiders), Ksatriya (warriors and kings), Vaishya (merchants, artisans, and agriculturalists), and Shudra (laborer). Jati appears later in South Asian history, and refers more specifically to occupational groupings. Metalworkers, carpenters, masons, etc. The way these relate to the modern caste system is complicated. Let's sum it up here by saying that the way caste is equated with rigid social identities has much to do with the administration of the British colonial apparatus as well as orientalist approaches to South Asian history.

2. The Ganga (Ganges) was and is important to the peoples of the Indo-Gangetic plain (as well as India more widely today) for numerous reasons. The two primary ones are that 1) ancient societies tended to form along well-established waterways. The Ganga is one of them. The fertility of the region and regular access to water catalyzed ancient urbanization. 2) The Ganga has a prominent place in South Asian cosmologies and religious and ritual expressions. It is a place of pilgrimage in Hinduism and is celebrated as a deity throughout scriptural and folk traditions.

3. I’m not sure what you mean by “characteristics of at least 3 varieties”. Characteristics of Ancient India possibly? In short, “Ancient India” was very far from a homogenous society as this phrase suggests. We can perhaps say three basic things. 1) South Asia in ancient times was an extremely diverse and pluralistic society (as it is even today). It had many different forms of social organization and, contrary to how it used to be understood as isolated, had extensive networks of communication with other peoples, through which exchange of materials and culture was facilitated. 2) Urbanization began in the Indus river valley and in northern India. It came later to the central plateau region known as the Deccan as well as to southern India. 3) “Hinduism” was not a singular faith historically as the term would otherwise suggest. Religious expression in South Asia was also enormously diverse and pluralistic, with different traditions and ritual behavior interacting and changing from one locale to the next.

4. The Buddha can hardly be discussed except in a religious context. We can say a bit about his life historically, but virtually everything we know about him comes from religious and philosophical sources. The Buddha, whose name was Siddartha Gautama, lived sometime between the 5^th and 4^th century BCE. Later dramatized biographies depict Gautama as a Ksatriya prince who one day leaves the palace and is appalled to see the depth of human suffering everywhere. As a result of this, he dedicates himself to spiritual striving in the search to ameliorate suffering. The Buddha was disillusioned with what he took to be the stale ritualism of the brahmins. He believed it to be artificial and their logic to be full of absurdities. What we can say about the Buddha is that he was responsible for an explosion of philosophical traditions that radically altered the religious and philosophical makeup of South Asia. Extensive philosophical traditions did not arise just out of Buddhism, but out of Vedic traditions as well as they sought to respond to the ideological challenges posed by Buddhism.

5. Maraja is, I believe, a variant of Maharaja. The term is Sanskrit for “Great Ruler” or “Great King”.

6. There are certainly innumerable curiosities about ancient India. Two that are particularly interesting to me personally is 1) the interconnectedness it had with other peoples and societies. Despite being surrounded by water to the west, south, and east and to the north by the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, ancient India had extensive networks of exchange. Mountain passes that older histories assumed were obstacles were actually vital conduits of travel and punctuated interaction. All this activity led to a massive and steady influx of materials, traditions, ideas, and customs that contributed to the cultural diversity of India. 2) In some cases, urbanization seems to have taken place in unusual ways. There is some evidence supporting the idea of small groups of people subsisting nomadically for certain seasons out of the years. In other seasons, however, they might have banded together in more urbanized settings and assumed more rigid social roles before disbanding and becoming nomadic again. This is fascinating because it challenges our usual conceptions of state formation and how people tend to organize on larger scales.

I hope this helped!