NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 7 Chapter opening — The Big Questions

Book page 105 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

What are the Vedas? What is their message?

Answer

The Vedas are India's most ancient texts — and among the most ancient in the world. The word comes from the Sanskrit vid, meaning 'knowledge' (the same root gives us vidyā). There are four of them.

The four Vedas	What the name itself means
Ṛig Veda	From ṛich, a verse of praise — the oldest of the four, and the one the chapter quotes twice
Yajur Veda	From yajus, a ritual formula
Sāma Veda	From sāman, a melody — the Veda that is sung
Atharva Veda	Named after the rishi Atharvan

They consist of thousands of hymns — prayers in the form of poems and songs — composed by rishis (male seers or sages) and rishikas (female ones) in an early form of Sanskrit, in the Sapta Sindhava region. They were recited orally, not written. Experts have proposed dates for the Ṛig Veda ranging from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BCE, so for anything between 100 and 200 generations these texts were carried in human memory, passed on “with hardly any alterations”.

The message — four ideas that hold it together.

The idea	What the chapter says
1. The one behind the many	The hymns address many deities — Indra, Agni, Varuṇa, Mitra, Sarasvatī, Uṣhas — yet the early rishis and rishikas “saw those gods and goddesses as one, not separate beings”: ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti, “The Existent is one, but sages give it many names”
2. Ṛitam — truth and order	Together with the seers, the deities sustained ṛitam, that is, truth and order in human life and in the cosmos. The same word covers both — order in the world and honesty in a person
3. Truth as the highest value	“Some values were especially important, beginning with ‘Truth’, which was often another name for God”
4. Unity among people	The last mantras of the Ṛig Veda call for it directly: “Come together, speak together; common be your mind, may your thoughts agree … United be your purpose, united your heart … may your thoughts be united, so all may agree!”

Why the two ends of the Ṛig Veda matter so much: a book of prayers to many deities could have ended by saying “our god is the true one”. Instead it ends by asking human beings to agree with one another, and elsewhere it says the supreme reality is one whatever name you give it. Those two statements together are the reason this chapter can describe Indian culture as a tree with many branches and one trunk.

Did you know? Because the Vedas were memorised rather than written, elaborate techniques of recitation were developed to protect every syllable and accent from change. In 2008 UNESCO recognised Vedic chanting as “a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity” — an award given not for a book, but for a way of remembering.

Q2.

What new schools of thought emerged in India in the 1st millennium BCE? What are their core principles?

Answer

Four are named in this chapter. Two grew out of the Vedas; two did not accept the authority of the Vedas and built their own systems.

School of thought	Where it came from	Core principles	Key texts named in the chapter
Vedanta	Grew out of the Vedas, through the Upaniṣhads	Everything — human life, nature, the universe — is one divine essence, brahman (or just tat, 'that'). The ātman or Self in every being is ultimately one with brahman, so everything is connected and interdependent. Rebirth and karma are taken as given	The Upaniṣhads — Chhāndogya, Kaṭha, Bṛihadāraṇyaka are the three the chapter tells stories from
Yoga	Grew out of the Vedas, “early in the 1st millennium BCE”	Developed methods intended to achieve the realisation of brahman in one's own consciousness — practice rather than argument	Not named in this chapter
Buddhism	Did not accept the authority of the Vedas. Founded by Siddhārtha Gautama, born at Lumbini (today in Nepal)	Avidyā (ignorance) and attachment are the source of human suffering, and there is a method to remove both. Ahimsa — 'non-hurting'. A sincere inner discipline: “Conquering oneself is greater than conquering a thousand men on the battlefield.” The Sangha, a community of monks and later nuns	The Jātaka tales — stories of the Buddha's former births
Jainism	Did not accept the authority of the Vedas; “its roots are said to be much more ancient”. Preached by Vardhamāna, who became Mahāvīra	Ahimsa — no living creature “should be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away”. Anekāntavāda — truth has many aspects, no single statement can capture it. Aparigraha — non-possession. All creatures, from humans to invisible organisms, are interdependent	Not named; the chapter gives a Jain story, of Rohineya
Chārvāka (also Lokāyata)	A separate school “at the time”	Only this material world exists; therefore there can be no life after death. It did not gain much popularity and disappeared with time	None survive

The chapter's own timeline, on page 108, places all of this on one line:

The book's timeline, redrawn. The arrow on the left says the story does not begin at 1500 BCE — the Ṛig Veda is older, and how much older is still debated. The Upaniṣhads and the Vedic schools of thought are drawn as broken lines because their dates are approximate.

What is common to all of them, and what is not. The chapter is careful about this: “Although the Vedic, Buddhist and Jain schools had important differences, they also shared some common concepts, such as dharma, karma, rebirth, the search for an end to suffering and ignorance, and many important values.” Where they part company is on the authority of the Vedas — accepted by the Vedic schools, not accepted by Buddhism and Jainism — and on what exactly lies behind the world: brahman for Vedanta, no such single essence in the Buddhist and Jain analyses, and nothing at all beyond matter for the Chārvākas.

Beyond the book: Buddhist tradition sums up the Buddha's discovery as the Four Noble Truths (there is suffering; it has a cause; it can end; there is a path to its ending) and the Eightfold Path that leads to Nirvāṇa. Jain tradition counts 24 Tīrthaṅkaras, 'ford-makers', of whom Mahāvīra was the twenty-fourth. These terms are not used in this chapter, but they are the words each tradition itself uses, and they are worth knowing correctly.

Q3.

What is the contribution of folk and tribal traditions to Indian culture?

Answer

Their contribution is that they are one of the roots of the tree — not a decoration on it. The chapter's phrase for the result is “mutual enrichment”: “There was free borrowing and giving from every side.”

Contribution	The chapter's evidence
Deities that became national	According to tradition, Jagannath, worshipped at Puri in Odisha, was originally a tribal deity. So were various forms of the mother-goddess worshipped across India
A living, oral way of passing on culture	India's rich oral traditions — teachings and practices carried by everyday practice, without written texts. Folk traditions are transmitted by common people, tribal traditions by tribes
Their own versions of the great epics	Some tribes adopted Hindu deities long ago and possess their own versions of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa — documented from the northeastern States all the way to Tamil Nadu
Reverence for nature	Mountains, rivers, trees, plants, animals and even some stones are held sacred, “because there is consciousness behind all of them”. For the Toda of the Nilgiris, over thirty peaks are the residences of a god or goddess, so sacred that the Todas will not point at them with a finger
A concept of a supreme being	Donyipolo, the combined form of the Sun and the Moon, worshipped by several tribes of Arunachal Pradesh; Khandoba in parts of central India; Singbonga, worshipped by the Munda and Santhal, “a supreme deity who created this whole world”
Concepts, legends, rituals and art	“Deities, concepts, legends and rituals have been freely exchanged in both directions” — and “tribal belief systems and art have interacted for millenniums with Hinduism”

The Indian sociologist André Béteille states the two-way traffic exactly:

“The thousands of castes and tribes on the Indian subcontinent have influenced each other in their religious beliefs and practices since the beginning of history and before. That the tribal religions have been influenced by Hinduism is widely accepted, but it is equally true that Hinduism, not only in its formative phase but throughout its evolution, has been influenced by tribal religions.”

Why the second half of that sentence is the important half: people find the first half easy to accept — a big tradition influencing a small one. The chapter insists on the direction people usually forget. Jagannath at Puri is not a footnote; he is one of the most visited deities in India, and tradition says he came from a tribal community. Contribution, here, means something that went into the trunk, not something that hung off a branch.

Careful with words: in the 19th century anthropologists studying tribes often described them as ‘primitive’ or ‘inferior’ to civilised people. The chapter records that “with deeper studies of tribal communities and their rich and complex cultures, such biased judgments have been mostly abandoned.” Never use those two words for a community in an answer.

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