Vedic period
The era, roughly 1500–500 BCE, when the Vedas were composed and early Vedic society and religion developed in the Indian subcontinent.
Indo-Aryan migration: The movement of Indo-Aryan-speaking groups into South Asia during the second millennium BCE. It helps explain the linguistic and cultural setting in which early Vedic traditions took shape.
Vedas: The foundational collection of ancient Sanskrit texts central to Hindu traditions. The Vedic period takes its name from these texts and their composition.
Oral tradition: The transmission of knowledge, stories, and practices through spoken performance and memory. Vedic texts were preserved and transmitted orally across generations.
Vyasa: A legendary sage credited in Hindu tradition with compiling the Vedas and composing the Mahabharata. Later tradition links him to the organization of the Vedic corpus.
Upanishads: Late Vedic texts that investigate ritual, selfhood, knowledge, and ultimate reality. They develop philosophical questions within the later Vedic textual tradition.
Rigveda: The oldest Veda, a collection of hymns composed in Vedic Sanskrit. Its hymns are the principal textual evidence for the early Vedic period.
Vedic religion: The religious traditions reflected in the Vedas, centered on ritual offerings, hymns, and deities. It captures the period’s evolving ritual practices and conceptions of divine powers.
Brahmin: A member of the priestly varna, traditionally responsible for Vedic learning and ritual. Brahmin specialists maintained recitation and performed complex Vedic rites.
Yajnavalkya: A Vedic sage associated with teachings in the Shatapatha Brahmana and Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. His teachings exemplify the later period’s reflection on ritual and knowledge.
Hinduism: A diverse family of religious traditions originating in the Indian subcontinent. Vedic texts and rituals became enduring sources within Hindu traditions, though Hinduism extends far beyond them.