Vedic ABSOLUTE TIME PERIOD: c. 3900–2000 B.P. RELATIVE TIME PERIOD: Follows the Mature Indus tradi- tion and precedes the historic period. The Indian subcontinent emerges from prehistory during the Vedic period, beginning at about 1000 B.C. The earliest Sanskrit texts date to this era or possibly a century or two earlier. The Vedas are four in number. The first and oldest is the Rgveda, composed and codified to enable the Vedic priests to perform the sacrificial rites necessary for the proper conduct of the life of the Arya or Aryan people. The Samaveda is a reordering of certain verses of the Rgveda for singing the complex sacrificial liturgy. The Yajurveda seems to have come together a century or two later than the Rgveda and is a text of sacrificial formulas to be recited by the priest who performs the manual part of the sacrifice. Esoteric explanations alluding to the actual performance of the sacrifice were added early. The Atharvaveda is a book of spells and magic in verse. It brings to mind a simple animism and sympathetic magic that are philosophically on a lower level than that of the Rgveda. It contains both ancient Indo-European as well as many non-Aryan elements from prehistoric India. The later sections of the Atharvaveda contain early speculation. The full Vedic literature includes other works, including the Brahma- nas, Upanishads, and Aranyakas. ‘‘Rgveda’’ is a compound of rc or ‘‘verse of praise’’ and Veda ‘‘knowledge.’’ Taken together, the title of this text in English would be something like ‘‘Knowledge (consisting) of hymns of praise’’ (Maurer 1986: 5). The Rgveda is made up of ten ‘‘books’’ (mandalas) with 1,028 hymns. The hymns average about eleven stanzas each. This comes to approximately 450,000 words. The relative chronology for the composition of the texts is certain: Rgveda, then the Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda, and finally the later texts such as the Brahmanas. There is also a relative chronology of mandalas in the Rgveda, with Books II through VII being the earliest. These are called the ‘‘Family Books,’’ because each is believed to have been composed by a ‘‘family,’’ or patrilineage, of priests, who called them- selves ‘‘Arya.’’ Books I, VIII, and X are later additions by various authors. Book IX is generally thought of in separate terms because it is devoted exclusively to the deified, potent Soma plant, also the major source for the Samaveda. The relative chronology is based on an analysis of the Sanskrit used in the texts and can be taken as a reliable judgment. Based on the language of the Rgveda, its vocabulary and grammar, Vedic Sanskrit can be thought of as the archaic form of this language. Most western Sanskritists think that the date for the codification of the Rgveda is unlikely to be earlier than 1200 B.C. or later than Customer: Kluwer Academic Dispatch on: 22 June 2002 Book Title: Encyclopedia of Prehistory Chapter No: 38 Pages: 389 – 395 389