India's Cultural Roots

Why This Matters

Think about an old, tall tree near your home. It looks so strong. But have you ever wondered how it stands up? The answer is hidden under the ground. Deep roots hold it firm.

India is like that old tree. Its culture is very, very old — thousands of years old. We sing, we cook, we tell stories, we celebrate festivals. All of this is our culture.

But where did all this come from? Just like the tree, India’s culture has deep roots. These roots are old ideas, old teachers, and good values. Many of them are thousands of years old. Yet they still shape how we live today.

In this chapter, we will dig down to these roots. We will meet India’s oldest books, the Vedas. We will meet two great teachers, the Buddha and Mahavira. And we will see the kind, wise values they all shared. By the end, you will understand why India is the way it is — not just that it is.

Let us begin digging.

The Big Idea

India’s culture is like a giant tree. Its roots are its oldest ideas — the Vedas, great teachers like the Buddha and Mahavira, and shared values like truth and non-hurting. From these roots grew one strong trunk. And from that trunk grew many branches — our art, music, science, stories and festivals. The branches all look different. But they share the same roots. So to understand India today, we must first understand its roots.

Let’s Break It Down

What are “cultural roots”?

First, let us be clear about two small words.

Culture is the way a group of people live. It is their food, language, music, stories, festivals, and what they believe is right and wrong. Your family has a culture. Your town has one. India has one too.

A root, you know, is the part of a plant that is under the ground. It is hidden, but it holds the plant up and feeds it.

So a cultural root is an old idea or belief from long ago that still feeds our culture today. It is hidden in the past, but it is still working.

Here is the picture to keep in your mind for the whole chapter. India’s culture is a tree. Figure 7.1 below shows it clearly.

Tap to zoom

Some of these roots are so old that they go back to the time of the Harappan (or Indus) people you read about earlier. Over a long time, India grew many groups of thinkers. A school of thought is just a group of people who share similar ideas about life and the world. (It does not mean a school with a building. It means a “school” of thinking, like a group who think alike.)

Now let us look at the very first root — the Vedas.

The Vedas and Vedic culture

The Vedas are the oldest books of India. In fact, they are among the oldest books in the whole world.

Where does the name come from? The word “Veda” comes from an old Sanskrit word, vid, which means knowledge. So a Veda is a book of knowledge. (We still use this idea today. The Hindi and Sanskrit word vidya, meaning learning, comes from the same root.)

There are four Vedas. Figure 7.2 below names them all.

Tap to zoom

The Vedas are full of hymns. A hymn is a prayer in the form of a poem or song. There are thousands of them.

Now here is something amazing. For a very, very long time, the Vedas were not written down. People learnt them by heart. Then they spoke them aloud and taught them to their children. Those children taught their own children. This went on for hundreds and hundreds of years.

You may quietly wonder: how is that even possible? How can people remember thousands of verses for so long without a single book? Good question. Let us not leave it as a “given”.

The answer is very careful training. Young learners did not just read the hymns once. They repeated each verse again and again, for years, with a teacher checking every sound. They even learnt special ways to chant the words in a fixed order, so that not one word could change. It was hard work, like learning a long song so perfectly that you can never get it wrong. Because of this care, the Vedas were passed on for thousands of years almost exactly the same. This is so special that, in 2008, a world body called UNESCO honoured Vedic chanting as a great treasure of human heritage.

The people who first composed these hymns were called rishis (wise men or seers) and rishikas (the women among them). Yes — women were among the great thinkers too. The hymns praised many gods and goddesses, such as Agni (the god of fire) and others.

But here is a deep idea from the Vedas. The early rishis did not see all these gods as totally separate. One famous line says:

The Existent [the one supreme reality] is one, but the wise call it by many names.

In simple words: there is one great truth behind everything, and people give it many names. From this came a love of one big value above all — Truth. The Vedas also asked people to live together in peace, with united hearts and minds.

Over time, new texts called the Upanishads built on these ideas. They asked big questions, like “what happens after we die?” They taught ideas such as karma — that our actions have results. (Karma simply means: what you do comes back to you. Do good, and good tends to follow.) These Vedic ideas slowly grew into what we today call Hinduism.

New ideas & teachers

About 2,500 years ago, something exciting happened in India. Many new thinkers appeared. They asked fresh questions about life. Why do people suffer? How can we be truly happy and good?

Some of these thinkers followed the Vedas. But some did not. They started their own new schools of thought instead. People in India were free to choose what made sense to them. This freedom to think and choose is itself an old root of Indian culture.

Two of these new teachers became famous all over India, and later all over Asia. One was the Buddha. The other was Mahavira. Let us meet them, one at a time. Both, interestingly, were born as princes who gave up royal life to search for truth.

The Buddha and Buddhism

Long ago, a prince named Siddhartha Gautama was born. He grew up inside a grand palace. His life was easy and comfortable. He was kept away from all the sad things of the world.

Then one day, when he was a young man, he went out of the palace. For the first time, he saw an old person, a sick person, and a dead body. He was shaken. He realised that everyone grows old, falls ill, and dies. He also saw a calm holy man who seemed at peace.

These sights changed him. He asked himself a huge question: Why do people suffer? And can suffering be ended?

To find out, he gave up his comfortable life. He left the palace and travelled as a simple seeker. He met other thinkers. Finally, he sat and thought deeply under a pipal tree at a place called Bodh Gaya (in today’s Bihar). There, he found his answer. We say he gained enlightenment — a sudden deep understanding.

After this, people called him the Buddha. The word “Buddha” means the awakened one or the enlightened one. (Think of someone who was half-asleep and then woke up fully — that is the idea.)

Figure 7.3 below shows his story and his main teachings in simple boxes.

Tap to zoom

So what did the Buddha actually teach? Let us keep it simple.

He taught that we suffer for two main reasons. First, ignorance — not really understanding life. Second, attachment — wanting things too much and clinging to them. (Attachment is that strong “I must have it!” feeling. The more we cling, the more it hurts when we lose.)

The good news in his teaching was this: if we can remove ignorance and reduce our clinging, we can become peaceful.

He also taught ahimsa. Ahimsa is usually translated as non-violence. But its real meaning is even gentler: non-hurting, or not injuring any living thing. And he asked people to be honest and calm inside. He once said something beautiful in simple words: winning over your own self is greater than winning a thousand battles.

The Buddha did not keep his ideas to himself. He started the Sangha. A Sangha is a community of monks (called bhikkhus) and, later, nuns too. (A monk is a man who leaves ordinary life to live simply and follow a spiritual path.) These monks travelled far and wide. They shared his teaching across India and beyond. That is why Buddhism spread to so many countries in Asia, like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan, and others.

Mahavira and Jainism

At about the same time, another great teacher lived in India. His name was Mahavira, and his teaching is called Jainism. Its roots are said to be even older than Mahavira himself.

His story sounds a lot like the Buddha’s. He too was born a prince. His birth name was Vardhamana. His home was near a city called Vaishali, in today’s Bihar.

When he was about thirty, he left his home. He wanted to find spiritual knowledge. He lived a very hard, simple life for twelve long years. After all that effort, he gained great wisdom. People then called him Mahavira, which means great hero. He spent the rest of his life teaching what he had learnt.

Why “hero”? Not for winning a war. The word Jain comes from jina, which means a conqueror. But it is not about conquering land or enemies. It is about conquering your own ignorance and your own wanting. That is the real victory in Jainism.

Figure 7.4 below shows Mahavira’s story and the three big ideas of Jainism.

Tap to zoom

Jainism has three big ideas. Let us learn each one in plain words.

The first is ahimsa — the same gentle idea the Buddha taught, but Jainism made it the very heart of everything. Ahimsa means non-hurting. In Jainism, this is taken very seriously. You should not harm any living thing — not even a tiny insect. And it is more than just actions. You should not hurt others even in your words or your thoughts. Wishing someone harm in your mind is also a kind of himsa (hurting). So ahimsa means being gentle in act, word, and thought.

The second is anekantavada. This long word has a simple meaning: the truth has many sides. No single person can see the whole truth from just one side. (Imagine four friends touching different parts of an elephant in the dark. One feels the trunk, one the leg, one the ear, one the tail. Each describes the elephant differently — and each is partly right! That is anekantavada. We should respect that others may see a side we missed.)

The third is aparigraha. It means non-possession. It teaches us not to grab and pile up things. We should keep only what we truly need, and not be greedy. (Think of a person who has ten school bags but uses only one. Aparigraha says: keep the one you need, you do not need ten.)

Jainism also teaches that all living things are connected. The smallest insect and the biggest animal all depend on one another. So we must care for them all.

Notice something? The Buddha and Mahavira lived at nearly the same time. Both were princes. Both gave up their riches. Both searched for an end to suffering. And both taught ahimsa. They were different teachers with different ideas. But their hearts pointed the same way.

Shared values & knowledge traditions

We have now met three traditions: the Vedic schools, Buddhism, and Jainism. They were not the same. They had real differences. For example, Buddhism and Jainism did not follow the authority of the Vedas, while the Vedic schools did.

But here is the wonderful part. Even with their differences, they shared many important values. They were all asking the same big question: how do we end suffering and ignorance? And they all valued truth, ahimsa (non-hurting), and respect for knowledge.

Let us see these shared values side by side, with respect for each tradition.

Look at that table. Read down each row. The wording is a little different in each column, but the value is the same. This shared set of values is the strong trunk of our tree. The traditions are the different roots, but the trunk they feed is one.

Figure 7.5 below shows this idea as a web.

Tap to zoom

All this thinking and questioning made India rich in what we call knowledge traditions. A knowledge tradition is a way of learning and keeping wisdom and passing it on. India built many such traditions — in art, science, medicine, mathematics, and more. The simple, kind value of respect for knowledge is itself one of India’s oldest and strongest roots.

Now let us practise putting a teaching with the right teacher.

Common Mistakes

These are easy mix-ups about this chapter. Read them once, and you will not be tricked.

Quick Check

Try these quick questions. Each one checks one idea from the chapter.

Practice Problems

Try each one on your own first. Only then tap to see the full answer.

Easy

Medium

Challenge

Summary

Here is everything you can now explain to a friend:

• Culture is how a group of people live, and a cultural root is an old idea that still feeds our culture today.
• India’s culture is like a tree: many roots feed one trunk, and from the trunk grow many branches.
• The Vedas are India’s oldest texts. “Veda” comes from “vid”, meaning knowledge, and there are four of them.
• For thousands of years, the Vedas were not written down — they were learnt by heart and chanted aloud, parent to child.
• The Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) taught that suffering comes from ignorance and attachment, and he taught ahimsa (non-hurting).
• Mahavira taught Jainism, whose three big ideas are ahimsa, anekantavada (truth has many sides), and aparigraha (non-possession).
• Though these traditions were different, they shared values like truth, ahimsa, karma, and respect for knowledge — the strong trunk of India’s culture.
• These shared values and India’s love of knowledge are among its deepest and longest-lasting roots.

What’s Next

We have seen that India has many roots, yet they feed one trunk. Many different traditions, but shared values at the heart. That is a beautiful idea — being many and one at the same time.

So how does India stay united while being so wonderfully varied? In the next chapter, Chapter 8 — Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’, we will explore exactly this. We will see how India’s many languages, foods, festivals and people come together as one. Get ready to discover the “many in the one”.