L1: Indian Ancient History- R.S. Sharma|| The Significance of Ancient Indian History

Namaste friends, how are you all? From today, we will start the book of Ancient India which is written by R. S. Sharma and I will finish this book completely means I will finish it line by line and if you don't have this book if you haven't bought it, then please purchase it because this is a very good book for UPSC and State PSC and when you will watch all these videos when you will watch all the upcoming videos then this book will be covered very well so without any delay let's start and move ahead and let's see the first chapter which is Significance of Ancient Indian History and in this we will know reasons to study about ancient India unity in diversity and relevance of the past to the present yes, if you like this video anywhere, then please like, share and subscribe now let's come to the topic so friends, when we talk about the importance of Indian ancient history so the first question that comes to mind is what is the need to know so much about the past so this becomes important because we get to know how our ancestors started the earliest cultures means how did they develop the initial civilization, when and where along with that we also get to know how agriculture activities were started and along with that stock raising activities were also involved by these early men because these stock raising activities were done by sheep and goats so they used to extract wool from sheep and goats to save themselves in extreme weather and along with that with the help of these livestock they used to use these livestock for farming then how these people used natural resources like gold, silver, stones so gold and silver were used to make jewelry and silver was used to mint coins and along with that your stones were used to make sculptures and buildings and finally these people also created livelihood for themselves so that they can earn something and along with that they arranged food, shelter and transportation for themselves because they needed transportation because if they want to go from one place to another then there should be a medium so they introduced transportation and finally how these people learned to do farming spinning, weaving and metal working then slowly these people started clearing the forest and when they cleared the forest then they settled villages villages were set up and as these villages developed cities were created and finally when cities grew and expanded then big kingdoms also emerged along with that now we come to the origin of today's language so all the modern forms of writing all the modern forms of writing are derived from scripts all the modern forms of writing are derived from scripts and these scripts are a type of writing system these scripts are a type of writing system which means representing what you are saying with specific marks and these scripts are somewhere the root of today's languages today's languages also have these roots so somewhere languages had these roots but writing forms had scripts and if you talk about languages then you remember Bengali language Tamil, Malayalam and even though our Hindi which came from Devanagari script and this Devanagari script came from Brahmi script so basically if you talk about Brahmi script Tamil, Malayalam all these languages came from and this Brahmi script gave us Devanagari script with which we can converse in Hindi with each other so somewhere the modern languages are derived to a great extent from these ancient scripts now we move ahead so friends now we talk about unity and diversity so somewhere in our early India many races and tribes came together and intermingled like pre Aryans like Indo Aryans, Greeks Sindhians, Hunas, Turks when all these tribes came together these ethnic groups contributed to India's social system, art form, architecture language, literature and further evolved it so if you talk about the artistic techniques of Greeks were blended with Indian Buddhist art and finally Buddha was depicted in a human form if you talk about Turks when Turks entered India they introduced Persian language and all these people all these cultural elements all these ethnic groups their cultural elements their cultural characteristics came together and intermingled but even today we can identify some things separately at the same time ancient India has a remarkable feature in which cultural elements from every part of India North, South, West East came out and mixed and somewhere common cultural elements which we can see today are not possible without this mixing it means that all the cultural elements in North, South, West East they did not exist in isolated pockets they all came and mixed and finally what we see today a blend cultural element is the result of this mix up and finally how can we prove this particular point in North we see Aryan elements and Vedic and ancient cultures we see Aryan elements and in South we see Pre-Aryans Pre-Aryans in South who followed Dravidian and Tamil culture and some Munda Dravidian and other non Sanskrit terms some Munda Dravidian and other non Sanskrit terms appeared in Vedic text this Vedic text was from North and this Vedic text was written from 1500 to 500 B.C at the same time we come to know that some cultural words of South forms in North and from this we come to know that the ideas, institutions and settlements were linked between peninsular India and non Vedic India now we will cover further similar to this many Pali and Sanskrit terms which tell us about ideas and institutions developed and emerged from Ganga plain which is part of North and these Pali and Sanskrit terms we get to see in initial Tamil text which is Sangam Literature and this Sangam Literature was part of South as I told you this is Tamil text so in this Sangam Literature there was a collection of poems and this Sangam Literature was in use from 300 B.C to 600 A.D then in Eastern region Pre Aryan tribals gave their contribution and people here used to speak Munda or Kolarian languages and many terms which were in Indo Aryan languages many terms which were in Indo Aryan languages we got to see in Munda languages and this was told by linguist like use of cotton, navigation digging stick so these words which were part of Indo Aryan languages we get to see in Munda languages and many Munda pockets were present in Chota Nagpur Plateau many Munda pockets were present in Chota Nagpur Plateau so this is Chota Nagpur Plateau and here the remnants of culture we get to see in Indo Aryan culture and many terms we get to see in Indo Aryan languages many terms we get to see in Indo Aryan languages then the change in phonetics in vocabulary of Vedic language has the same effect of Dravidian language as Munda language or Vedic language has influence on Dravidian language means all these languages are influenced from each other and this tells us how much cultural mix was present in India and things were not isolated but were integrated then India has been a land of several religions since ancient times so India has been a land of different religions since ancient times and even today we can notice how many religions exist in India and some major oldest religions like Brahmanism or Hinduism Jainism, Buddhism birthplace of all these religions has been India and all these cultures and all these religions were mixed and interacted even though the cultural values and way of worship were different but still there was a connection and different languages social customs which were practiced and still are but in core fabric there is unity in India's core fabric because in a way we have a common style of life or a common lifestyle that we follow then in our India the proof of unity is that our Indian subcontinent is geographically well defined geographically well defined means the boundaries of our India are absolutely clear and these geographical boundaries are culturally integrated these geographical boundaries are culturally integrated then many states, languages, cultures communities exist and eventually people associated their identity with their territory and the individual states or territorial units we know them from Janapadas we know them from Janapadas because these Janapadas represented different different tribes these Janapadas told us different tribes then the whole country was named after Aryavart after the dominant cultural community called Aryans then the whole country was named after Aryavart and this Aryavart means a dominant cultural community this Aryavart means a dominant cultural community which we call Aryans and we geographically define because it denotes Northern and Central India it denotes Aryavart this Aryavart denotes Northern and Central India this Aryavart from the East coast of India it also denotes the West Coast then you can see how many big areas Aryavart is signifying then the other name by which India was better known was Bharatvarsh India was also known by another name, which was Bharatvarsh or Land of Bharatvarsh and the word Bharatvarsh tells us about tribe and family and this name is also seen in Rigveda and Mahabharata and this name is also seen in Mahabharata and Post Gupta Sanskrit Texts and this name tells us about one of the nine divisions of earth and Bharatvarsh denotes the whole world but particularly land is called Bharatvarsh and in post Gupta period this word denotes India and this term Bharati is seen in post Gupta period and this term Bharati is for the people who live in India and this Hindu word was seen in Iranian inscriptions and this Hindu word was inscribed in Iranian inscriptions in 5th to 6th century BC and this Hindu word originates from Sindhu which means river and the Persians had an interaction with the people of Indus valley and the Persians started addressing the people of Indus valley as Hindu and this is why this Hindu word was first seen in Iranian inscriptions and in early stage this Hindu word signifies a territorial unit neither a religion nor a community and ancient poets, philosophers and writers saw India as an integrated unit and they said that the land stretching from Himalaya mountain to sea is a proper domain and if there is any control on this land then it is of all the four continents and that ruler's political position is the highest or universal monarch and the ruler's control is from Himalaya to Cape of Comorin and Brahmaputra valley which is in east to the land beyond Indus and these rulers are praised all over the world and they are called Chakravartis and this kind of strong political hold, strong political unity was witnessed only twice in our ancient times one was in 3rd century B.C. where Emperor Ashoka spread his rule all over India except the south part of India so you can see in this map that his empire is spread all over India and the only part which is left is the south part of India and even his empire which is now Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran was under the Ashokan empire which means that even today's Ashokan empire exists in a larger area than India and the inscriptions which were made in Ashoka's regime were seen in India, Pakistan and even Afghanistan because their rule and empire used to exist in such a large area and once again a proper authority and control came to India in 4th century A.D. when Samudraup was there so Samudraup started from Ganga and stretched his empire to Tamil border and during 7th century A.D. Chalukya king Pulakeshin II defeated Harshvardhan where Harshvardhan was the lord of the whole north of India and despite lack of political unity, political formations over India assumed more or less a single form which means that even though there was a lack of central administration, central control, political unity and political formations but there was an assumption in the mind that the whole country was one and at the same time it is a united geographical unit in the minds of conquerors and cultural leaders then in point 2, we are told that the unity of India was recognized by the foreigners now here also the same thing which we have already discussed on Hind and Hindu word that Hind and Hindu word came from Sanskrit term Sindhu similarly, the name of our country was India and the name India was very close to Greek term actually, the existence of India word was like this when Greeks and Iranians came from north west, they pronounced Indus as Hindos and the land which they brought east of Indus river was named as India and at the same time, India was known as Hind in Persian and Arabic language and during the post-Khushan period, when the Iranian rulers conquered Sindh area, they named India as Hindustan then we see continuous efforts where India was united on the basis of language and culture and in 3rd century, Prakrit served as lingua franca in a major part of India and this lingua franca means a language which works as a link language or as a bridge language between people whose native language is not similar like in today's case, lingua franca is English and even the inscriptions of Ashoka were written in Prakrit language and Brahmi script was used in this then Sanskrit worked as a link language and Sanskrit worked as a state language in remote areas of India similarly, we got to notice this till 4th century in Gupta period even though many small states emerged in post-Gupta period and the official documents were written in Sanskrit so this Sanskrit language grew a lot in Gupta period and even the code language was recognized in Sanskrit Gupta period and another fact which we got to see in ancient epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata that this Sanskrit language was studied as much in Tamil areas as it was studied in Banaras and Taxila by Buddha and in the beginning, these ancient epics were written in Sanskrit and then different versions were produced and in their own languages, these different versions were produced and came in front of people but the element of commonality existed even though in any form, Indian culture, values and ideas were presented i.e. the co-substance was similar in whole of India and in Indian history, the unusual or peculiar social system came in front of us that's why we should know our history now friends, we will know the relevance of the past to the present we can take an overview of this particular part the first point is that the study of India's past assumes special significance in the context of the problems we currently face so friends, when we know our India's past, we get to see the problems in front of us and to solve them, our past becomes significant along with that, some people believe that the old civilization should be revived but some people also believe that our India's ancient past is full of glories so somewhere, you know and we know as we are studying this history so our India's ancient past is not full of glories there are some blots in our history which are not that good and the people who say that our past is full of glories may get influenced by emotions this doesn't mean that our ancient heritage, ancient architecture should be preserved but the old pattern and culture of the society should come back in today's time but the demands of today's society is almost impossible to meet out because even though Indians have achieved a lot in different fields in medical or technology but these advancements are not enough only against today's modern science or technology apart from this, we know that in ancient India's society there was a lot of gross social injustice prevalent like untouchability which was most prevalent in lower order of society especially against Shudras and Untouchables and because of this, lower order had to face disabilities like if you talk about religious or economic basis and these people didn't even have the right to hold their own land and if you read their history in detail you will be shocked to know what were the conditions in ancient times along with this, the laws and customs were against women and in favor of men that's why women were oppressed a lot and if we restore our ancient way of life then we will be able to see these old practices again and we will be able to see them in a very strengthened form and our ancient success against nature and human factors gives us confidence and hope but if we bring our past back and continue social inequalities will continue which had already plagued India socially and that's why our ancient past becomes important to understand what our past tells us because it is very important to balance things and even today there are a lot of survivors from ancient, medieval, modern who are present and along with this the old norms, social values, customs, ritualistic practices are still in people's minds and this mindset is not only stopping their own development but also stopping the progress of their country that's why if India wants to develop fast and do democratic integration then this caste system and sectarianism or you can say sampradikta will have to end although women have been given voting rights but because of the oppression of women they had to play a role in society and they haven't been able to fully play that role and we get to see the same thing in lower order and when we read India's ancient past then we get a better idea that to know these prejudices and to understand the true nature of our past our ancient Indian history becomes very important and the obstacles that we are facing today the obstacles that we are facing today in India's progress to understand them better this ancient Indian history becomes important for now this chapter ends here so if you liked the video then please like, share and subscribe thank you