pieces of gold and cattle to the Brahmana who anoints him. Thus the priest became important in the formation of polity and royalty. The terms such as rashtra , to denote a territory, and rajya , meaning sovereign power appeared. The king received voluntary or compulsory contribution called bali from the people ( vis) .
Such voluntary contributions became tributes. The Mahabharata offers clues to historical development and is suggestive of the power struggle to control the territories. The Ramayana too is suggestive of the Aryan expansion and the encounters with native people in the forest. The territorial formations and the development of lineages became stronger during the Later Vedic period.
Romila Thapar characterises the developments in the first millennium BCE as the movement from lineage to state. The development of state level political organization emerged only after BCE, and the Later Vedic society was therefore Later Vedic Culture and Iron Iron was an important metal used for implements in this period. It was called syama- ayas or krishna-ayas or the dark metal. Iron is believed to have played an important role in the conversion of the forests of the Ganga Valley into agricultural lands.
By the end of Vedic period, the knowledge of iron had reached eastern Uttar Pradesh and Videha. Earlier it was believed that iron originated around BCE, but recent research dates the beginning of iron to around BCE or even earlier. The early views gave excessive emphasis to iron to the colonization of the Ganga Valley, but new scholarship argues that iron was not the only factor behind the expansion of the population. Settlements and territories With the intensification of agriculture, the Later Vedic people led a settled life leading to formation of territorial units.
The term janapada , referring to territory, is found in the Brahmanas dated to ca. BCE. There are more than sites of painted Grey Ware culture in this area, suggesting that new settlements came up and the Upper Ganga Valley was densely populated. People lived either in mud-brick houses or houses with wattle and daub