NCERT Class 6 History What Books And Burials Tell Us

CHAPTER 5

WHAT BOOKS AND BURIALS TELL US

Mary in the library

As the bell rang, the teacher asked the students to follow him, because they were going to the library for the first time. When Mary stepped inside, she found that the library was much larger than their classroom. And there were so many shelves, all full of books. In one corner was a cupboard filled with large, old volumes. Seeing her trying to open the cupboard, the teacher said, “That cupboard has very special books on different religions. Did you know that we have a set of the Vedas?” What are the Vedas? Mary wondered. Let us find out.

One of the oldest books in the world

You may have heard about the Vedas. There are four of them – the Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharvaveda. The oldest Veda is the Rigveda, composed about 3500 years ago. The Rigveda includes more than a thousand hymns, called sukta or “well-said”. These hymns are in praise of various gods and goddesses. Three gods are especially important: Agni, the god of fire; Indra, a warrior god; and Soma, a plant from which a special drink was prepared.

These hymns were composed by sages (rishis). Priests taught students to recite and memorise  each syllable, word, and sentence, bit by bit, with    great care. Most of the hymns were composed, taught and learnt by men. A few were composed by women. The Rigveda is in old or Vedic Sanskrit, which is different from the Sanskrit you learn in school these days

Sanskrit and other languages

Sanskrit is part of a family of languages known as Indo-European. Some Indian languages such as Assamese, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri and Sindhi, and many European languages such as English, French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish belong to this family. They are called a family because they originally had words in common. Take the words ‘matr’ (Sanskrit), ‘ma’ (Hindi) and ‘mother’ (English).

Do you notice any similarities?

Other languages used in the subcontinent belong to different families. For instance, those used in the north-east belong to the Tibeto-Burman family; Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam belong to the Dravidian family; and the languages spoken in Jharkhand and parts of central India belong to the Austro-Asiatic family.

List the languages you have heard about and try and identify the families to which they belong

Let’s recall

1. Complete the sentences:

(a) Slaves were used for ————————

(b) Megaliths are found in ————————

(c) Stone circles or boulders on the surface were used to ————————

(d) Port-holes were used for ————————

(e) People at Inamgaon ate ————————

Let’s discuss

2. In what ways are the books we read today different from the Rigveda?

3. What kind of evidence from burials do archaeologists use to find out whether there were social differences amongst those who were buried?

4. In what ways do you think that the life of a raja was different from that of a dasa or dasi?

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 6 History What Books And Burials Tell Us