Introduction A conventional view of the timeline of Indian history would simply shift its themes from the Indus Civilization through the Vedic Culture to the Age of the Mahajanapadas. But, if we consider the time after the decline of the Indus Civilization, covering from c. BCE to BCE and the space stretching from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Arunachal Pradesh to Gujarat, it is clear that diverse cultures and people who spoke different languages lived in ancient India. This chapter focuses on the Late Harappan, Chalcolithic, Megalithic Iron Age and Vedic Cultures and the Aryans, except for the Indus Civilization which was covered in the previous lesson.
Essentially, it deals with the history of India from about BCE, up to the emergence of the Mahajanapadas, with a focus on social and economic changes. Sources The history of India, after the decline of the Indus Civilization around BCE, is characterised by the presence of nomadic microlith-using hunter-gatherers and pastoral, semi-sedentary and sedentary agro-pastoral communities of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Iron Ages and Vedic Cultures. We have two main types of sources for this long span of time (c. to BCE) in Indian history.
One source is the archaeological sites and material culture including pottery, plant remains and metal objects.The other is Vedic literature. There are no written documents for this period, since the Vedic texts were transmitted orally. At this point of time, people had not developed a script in India, except the symbols of the Indus script which are yet to be deciphered. Correlating the archaeological cultures and the information related to various groups of people from the Vedic texts is not an easy task.
There are various theories on the identity of the originators of the Indus Civilization, and various other archaeological cultures. We are dealing with diverse cultures and communities with different modes of living in this space-time unit. The Early Vedic culture is correlated with some of the Chalcolithic cultures of India, while the Later Vedic culture is correlated with the Painted Grey Ware Culture of the Iron Age in North India. Unlike the age of Indus Civilization, when the urban sites and farming cultures were in a limited area, we notice cultural, agricultural and technological expansion and developments in many parts of India in this period accompanied by the growth of craft Early India: The Chalcolithic,