Ancient Man and His First Civilizations
Indus Valley-3
Modern Pakistan (Which was a part of India until 1947)
When last we left the Indus Valley, Arians from the Central Asian Plains had invaded the Valley and then expanded out into the rest of India. They had also melded their religious belief's with local belief's to form the Hindu religion.
Later, the Arian's learned to write, however some Brahmins considered it a sacrilege to change from communicating their beliefs orally, to putting them in written form. But a sufficient number of Brahmins supported this innovation, and they began to put traditional Arian stories into writing. These writings became known as the Vedas - Veda meaning wisdom. These Vedas became wisdom literature, a literature that would be considered as an infallible source of timeless, revealed truth. The most important of the Vedas was the Rig Veda, which consisted of hymns or devotional incantations written in ten books.
In the far northeast, Brahmins performed as teachers and gave instruction to local original inhabitant elites, who had not been completely Hindunized. These elites were accustomed to deference from local people, and they were offended by the posturing, pride and arrogance of the Brahmins. They resisted the claims of the Brahmins to higher rank and superior knowledge. Some among them opposed the bloodletting of Hinduism's animal sacrifices. Some of them also thought the Brahmins to be too involved in ceremonial formalities and ritual, and saw the Brahmin's view of gods and salvation as strange.
With this dissent against orthodox Hinduism, a variety of men with vision appeared, they tried to fill the void left unfulfilled by Hinduism. These new sect leaders denied the authority of the Vedas, and each developed a code of conduct and a way of living and thinking, that would hopefully lead to enlightenment and fulfillment.