World History

Unit 1: The Beginnings of Civilization

Chapter 3: Ancient Indian Civilization

Mon, Sep 23, 2013

7. Tue, Sep 24, 2013

To start with geography, it's worth asking what the fundamental isolation of the Indian subcontinent has to do with the kinds of civilizations and cultures that grow up there.

We are likely to have some almost parodic images of Indian culture and society, based on some of the things we have seen on television or in movies, many of them filtered through the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British imperialist views of the subcontinent, from General Clive through Rudyard Kipling; we also are assailed by ideas and images of Indians ranging from the Simpsons to the neverending barrage of jokes about help-desk technical support that has been “outsourced” to India. None of these really does justice to the variety and complexity of Indian history or culture, which is enormously varied.

The terms Indo-Aryan and Indo-European are often used interchangeably. It's worth going out of our way to point out that the way Hitler used the term “Aryan”, to denote what he considered the "Master Race", lacks any serious historical or scientific grounding. Nevertheless, there are distinct Indo-European peoples, and the languages of the Indo-European cultures carry with them certain presuppositions, many of which are important. The origins of the caste system seem to break down into the broader Indo-European threefold categorization of those who work, those who pray, and those who fight. We still see these preserved in the Indian caste hierarchy, and many other Indo-European cultures, including Europe during the Middle Ages.

Those who haven't taken World Literature might find some of the more important and interesting pieces of Indian literature there interesting. We do discuss (all too briefly) both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, as well as the Rig-Veda and the Panchatantra. It's worth noting that the Mahabharata is probably the world's longest poem. It's the length of a dozen Iliads, if not more, and has not yet been fully translated into English, though there are some fairly decent abridged translations, some of them running to multiple volumes.

• How are the Indian valley civilizations different, say, from the Fertile Crescent civilizations that grew up in the midst of nearly constant trade and commerce and in the shadow of frequent invasion?
• How valid is the correlation of ethnicity, cultural identity, and language groups? What of these things is particularly worth tracking?
• What kinds of presuppositions do you bring with you about the historic civilization of the Indians? How many of those are valid?

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