Belief Systems

1

• Belief Systems
• Cultural and Intellectual Life
• Political Systems

2
GEOGRAPHIC SETTING

• Mountains helped protect these civilizations from
  foreign invaders
• Indus and Ganges rivers flowed through the
  northern region, providing water and fertile soil.

3
Hinduism in the Gupta Society
4
The Caste System

• Castes originated in the Aryan times
• People believed that their Karma, all good things
  and bad things they had done in life, determined
  their caste
• Castes could not change in ones life time, but
  they could be born into a higher cast in the next
  life by fulfilling moral duties, or dharma.

5

• The village is the center of life
• Home were built around farms
• Little government interference unless you forgot
  to pay your taxes.
• Life was governed by caste rules and traditions
• Higher castes had strict rules
• The rules kept them from being contaminated by
  the lower castes.
• UNTOUCHABLES were outcasts who lived harsh lives
• There jobs were impure
• Cleaning streets
• Digging graves
• The had to live outside of the Gupta community

6

• Joint Families parents, children, grandparents,
  uncles, and their children shared a common home.
• Patriarchal Structure- father or oldest male
  heading the household
• Children and Marriage-
• learned family trade or field and that is what
  they were expected to do as adults.
• Hindu law required that people marry only within
  their own cast
• Role of Women
• Upper class women restricted to their home
• Cover themselves from head to foot when outside
• Lower class women worked in fields of did
  spinning and weaving

7

• Mathematics
• Zero and decimal system
• Arabic Numerals
• Medicine
• Herbs and other remedies to treat illness
• Plastic surgery on facial injuries
• Vaccinated people from small pox 1000 yrs before
  Europe.
• Architecture
• Beautiful stone temples for Hindu worship
  (typical shape was a square symbolizing the Earth
  within a circle symbolizing eternity)
• Stupas- large dome shaped shrines that contained
  remains of holy people. (elaborate carvings
  depicting the life of Buddha)

8

• Literature
• Fables and folk tales
• Poet, Kalidasa wrote the play Shakuntala
• King marries a beautiful orphan and later an evil
  spell causes him to forget his bride, the story
  ends with him recovering his memory and they are
  happily reunited.

9

• After about 200 years, the Gupta empire declined
  because of weak rulers and foreign invasions.
• The invaders were the White Huns from central
  Asia
• Nomads who destroyed villages
• And disrupted trade in the Gupta empire