With Aryan invasions or indigenous development (see video below) came the rise of brahmins in India. The Rig Veda and other religious texts outlined a social order framed by castes. The educated elite or brahmanas manipulated the nobles (administrators), farmers (merchants), and servants (outcastes). This Brahminical social order was upset by a new movement of which Buddhism was a part.
These shramanic philosophies had many things in common:
- They rejected the notion of omnipotent gods and a creator.
- They rejected the Vedas as revealed texts.
- They taught karma (deeds) and rebirth (the consequence of deeds) as the "wandering on" in Samsara of a self or soul (atman), views that were later accepted in Brahminic Hinduism.
- They denied the efficacy of animal sacrifices and rituals for cleanliness and purification.
- They reject the caste system.
The British fed India's post-Moghul invasion inferiority complex with Aryan invasion theories to convert Indians to Western culture and religion. Their statements and data can be debunked with modern findings that reveal a highly developed Indus (and Saraswati) River Valley civilization and indigenous literature. Marine archaeology (at sites such as Dvaraka) as well as carbon and thermoluminiscent dating of archaeological artifacts, linguistic analysis of scripts, and studies of the cultural continuity and evolution establish that India's culture did not come from invaders. More>>