The Rigveda and Vedic India

Between 1500 and 1000 BCE the hymns of the Rigveda take shape in the Punjab—more than a thousand songs to the gods of fire, storm and dawn, in the language from which Sanskrit will come. They are not written down: priests learn the text by heart, syllable by syllable, and pass it on so for more than two thousand years before it is set on paper. The people of this age are herdsmen on chariots who came from the north-west; the cities of the Indus are gone. In the hymns one sees too the division of society into priests, warriors, farmers and servants that will become the basis of caste. This is the earliest stage of Hinduism—the faith that a thousand years later will bring forth Buddhism as well.