What Books and Burials Tell Us

Why this chapter matters for UPSC: This chapter sets two very different sources side by side: a text (the Rigveda) composed in the north-west, and burials (the megaliths and Inamgaon) from the Deccan and the south. Mains GS1 has asked about Vedic society and religion (2023) and about the changes from the Rigvedic to the later Vedic period (2024); Prelims 2026 asked about the Rigvedic economy. In the rationalised 2023-24 edition this is Chapter 4, with the same title; only the "Elsewhere" box on China's oracle bones was dropped.

Contemporary hook: In June 2025 a paper in Cell (Kerdoncuff, Patterson and colleagues) reported whole-genome sequences of 2,762 people from India and found that most Indians draw ancestry mainly from three groups: South Asian hunter-gatherers, Eurasian Steppe pastoralists, and Neolithic farmers related to Iranian and Central Asian cultures. These are genomes of living people; they inform, but do not settle, questions about who composed the Rigveda. The chapter's own lesson applies: each kind of evidence answers different questions.

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

There are four Vedas: the Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharvaveda. The oldest, the Rigveda, was composed about 3,500 years ago (NCERT VI); NCERT XII says it was compiled between c. 1500 and 1000 BCE. It has more than a thousand hymns, called sukta ("well-said"), praising gods and goddesses, three of them especially: Agni (fire), Indra (a warrior god) and Soma (a plant from which a special drink was made).

It was recited, not read. The hymns were composed by sages (rishis); priests taught students to memorise every syllable with great care. Most hymns were composed, taught and learnt by men; a few were composed by women. The language is old or Vedic Sanskrit. The Rigveda was written down several centuries after it was composed and printed less than 200 years ago.

Burials are a second, independent source. Around 3,000 years ago people in the Deccan, south India, the north-east and Kashmir began marking burials with big stones, megaliths. What was buried with the dead tells us about their tools, their wealth and the differences between people.

Why UPSC cares: the Rigveda is the main source for early Vedic society, and the megaliths are the main source for the south in the same centuries. Knowing what each can and cannot tell you is the core of any "sources" answer.

PART 1 — Quick Reference

The Rigveda at a Glance

The Four Vedas

NCERT VI (ch. 6) calls the Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharvaveda "later Vedic" books, composed after the Rigveda by priests in the areas drained by the Ganga and Yamuna.

Burial Sites in This Chapter

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

How Historians Read the Rigveda

NCERT shows the method with a hymn: a dialogue between the sage Vishvamitra and two rivers, the Beas and the Sutlej, worshipped as goddesses. He asks them to let his chariots and carts cross safely; they agree.

The manuscript NCERT shows is a birch-bark Rigveda from Kashmir, used about 150 years ago to prepare one of the earliest printed texts and an English translation, and now kept in a library in Pune. It is part of the collection described in section 5a below.

Cattle, Horses and Chariots

The Rigveda has many prayers for cattle, children (especially sons) and horses. Horses drew chariots in battles fought to capture cattle; battles were also fought for land (pasture, and hardy quick-ripening crops such as barley), for water and to capture people. Wealth won was shared among leaders, priests and people, and some was used for yajnas (sacrifices with offerings of ghee, grain and sometimes animals into the fire). There was no regular army; there were assemblies where people discussed war and peace and chose leaders, often brave and skilful warriors.

Words to Describe People

Languages and Language Families

Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European family, with Assamese, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri and Sindhi; Persian; and English, French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish (compare matr, ma and mother). Other families in the subcontinent: Tibeto-Burman (the north-east), Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam) and Austro-Asiatic (Jharkhand and parts of central India).

Silent Sentinels: The Megaliths

Common features of megalithic burials: the dead were buried with distinctive Black and Red Ware pots, iron tools and weapons, and sometimes skeletons of horses, horse equipment and ornaments of stone and gold. Some megaliths hold more than one skeleton, probably members of one family buried at different times; the stone circles or boulders on the surface were signposts for finding the grave again.

Finding Out About Social Differences

Objects found with a skeleton probably belonged to the dead person. At Brahmagiri, one person was buried with 33 gold beads and other valuables while others had only a few pots: some were rich, others poor, some chiefs, others followers. At Inamgaon, the man in the four-legged jar, in the courtyard of one of the largest houses, at the centre of the settlement, with a granary, buried cross-legged, may have been a chief.

What else Inamgaon tells us: seeds of wheat, barley, rice, pulses, millets, peas and sesame; bones (many with cut marks) of cattle, buffalo, goat, sheep, dog, horse, ass, pig, deer, antelope, hare and more; and fruits such as ber, amla, jamun and dates. From this you can list the likely occupations of its people.

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

Rigvedic and Later Vedic Society Compared

This is the skeleton for Mains GS1 2024 ("changes in society and economy from the Rig Vedic to the later Vedic period"). Note that NCERT VI draws the later column from the later Vedic books and from archaeology of the janapadas (Painted Grey Ware sites), the next chapter.

Books and Burials as Sources

The Origins Debate: What the Evidence Can Say

The Rigveda's language belongs to the Indo-European family (NCERT VI). Genetic evidence is new and limited. The Rakhigarhi genome (Shinde et al., Cell, 2019) comes from one Harappan individual out of 61 tested, and has no detectable steppe-pastoralist ancestry. The 2025 Cell study of 2,762 present-day genomes finds Steppe-pastoralist ancestry as one of three main components in most Indians, without dating when it arrived. In an answer, state each finding with its sample and say what it cannot show.

[Additional] 5a. The Rigveda Manuscripts in UNESCO's Memory of the World

[Additional] 5b. Adichanallur: An Iron Age Urn-Burial Site

Exam Strategy

Prelims traps:

• Oldest Veda: the Rigveda. Mandala 9 is entirely to Soma.
• Vishvamitra and the rivers: the Beas and the Sutlej. The Ganga and Yamuna are named only once in the Rigveda.
• Rigvedic rajas had no capitals, palaces, armies or taxes.
• Black and Red Ware goes with megalithic burials (NCERT VI); Harappan pottery is red with black designs.
• Inamgaon is on the Ghod, a tributary of the Bhima, in Maharashtra; it is a separate example from the megaliths, not a megalithic site.
• Charaka Samhita: 360 bones (counting teeth, joints and cartilage).

Mains frameworks:

• Vedic society: use the Rigvedic/later Vedic table; tie each row to its source.
• Sources: what texts tell vs what burials tell, with limits of each.
• Social difference without writing: Brahmagiri and Inamgaon.

Practice Questions

Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers). Real UPSC questions on this chapter are listed in the PYQ box above.

Prelims:

1. Which of the Vedas is mainly a collection of spells and charms?
   (a) Rigveda
   (b) Samaveda
   (c) Yajurveda
   (d) Atharvaveda

2. In the Rigvedic hymn in which the sage Vishvamitra addresses two rivers, the rivers are:
   (a) Ganga and Yamuna
   (b) Beas and Sutlej
   (c) Indus and Jhelum
   (d) Sarasvati and Drishadvati

3. Consider the following about the rajas described in the Rigveda:
   

   1. They had capital cities and palaces.
      
   2. They collected regular taxes.
      
   3. Sons did not automatically succeed fathers as rajas.
      Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
      (a) 3 only
      (b) 1 and 2 only
      (c) 2 and 3 only
      (d) 1, 2 and 3

4. The pottery most commonly found with megalithic burials, according to NCERT, is:
   (a) Painted Grey Ware
   (b) Black and Red Ware
   (c) Northern Black Polished Ware
   (d) Red pottery with black painted designs

Mains:

5. Compare the Rigveda and megalithic burials as sources for the history of the subcontinent around 1000 BCE. What can each tell us, and what can neither? (GS1, 10 marks)

📦 Revision Capsule

Sources

Sources

• NCERT, Our Pasts – I (Class VI), ch. 5 and ch. 6, 2018-19 reprint: 2019 copy; Rationalised 2023-24 edition, ch. 4: 2023-24 copy.
• NCERT, Themes in Indian History, Part I (Class XII), ch. 2 and ch. 4, Reprint 2026-27: book archive.
• UNESCO Memory of the World nomination, "Rigveda" (Ref. 2006-58), Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute: media.unesco.org.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Vedic religion" and "Samaveda": britannica.com.
• Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, "Critical Edition of the Mahabharata": bori.ac.in.
• PIB, 18-Apr-2025, Gita and Natyashastra on the Memory of the World Register: pib.gov.in.
• A. Rea, Catalogue of the Prehistoric Antiquities from Adichanallur and Perumbair (Madras: Government Museum, 1915): archive.org.
• Union Budget 2020-21, Budget Speech, para 74: indiabudget.gov.in.
• News on AIR, 5-Aug-2023, Adichanallur museum foundation stone: newsonair.gov.in.
• E. Kerdoncuff et al., "50,000 years of evolutionary history of India", Cell 188(13) (2025): doi.org; V. Shinde et al., Cell 179(3) (2019): PMC6800651.