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World Studies
Chapter 5 India
Question | Answer |
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What culture’s ideas did the social structure of ancient India reflect? | The social structure of ancient India reflected the Aryan concepts of the ideal society. |
What were the four varnas of ancient Indian society? | The four varnas, or social groups, were the Brahmins, or priestly class; the Kshatriyas, or warriors; the Vaisyas, or merchants and farmers; and the Sudras, or peasants and servants. |
Why were Sudras important to ancient India? | Sudras were peasants and servants. Though they had limited rights, they constituted the bulk of ancient India’s population. |
How did one’s jati, or caste, influence one’s life in ancient India? | Caste determined what jobs people could have, whom they could marry, and what groups they could socialize with. |
Why were Untouchables outside the caste system? | The caste system was based on beliefs about the religious purity of people in each jati. Untouchables were deemed to be so impure they couldn’t even be admitted to society. |
What beliefs merged and developed into Hinduism? | Hinduism emerged as a blend of ancient Aryan beliefs and Dravidian religious practices. |
What is Brahman? | Brahman is the single force in the universe, also known as ultimate reality or the Great World Soul. |
How do Hindus regard their gods? What do they seek through devotion to the gods? | Many Hindus regard their many gods as simply different expressions of the one ultimate reality, Brahman. Through devotions at a Hindi temple, Hindus seek salvation. They also seek solutions to ordinary problems. |
What is the concept of reincarnation? | Reincarnation is the belief that the individual soul is reborn in a different form after death. |
How are karma and dharma important to the process of reincarnation? | Dharma, or the divine law, requires all people to do their duty. Karma, or the force of a person’s actions in this life, determines how the person will be reborn in the next life. |
How did early Hindus believe one could achieve oneness with ultimate reality? | Early Hindus believed each person was part of Brahman, or ultimate reality; by achieving a sense of oneness with ultimate reality, one could return to Brahman after death. |
What did the Hindus develop to help with this oneness with ultimate reality? | Hindus developed four types of yoga, or training, to meet different needs; they include the path of knowledge, the path of love, the path of work, and the path of meditation. |
What is the final goal of any path of yoga (which means “union,”)? | The final goal is to leave behind the cycle of earthly life and achieve spiritual union between the individual soul and the Great World Soul, or Brahman. |
Who was Siddhārtha Gautama? | Siddhārtha Gautama was the son of a princely family in a small kingdom in the foothills of the Himalaya in what is today part of southern Nepal. |
What new doctrine emerged in northern India in the sixth century? | In the sixth century a new doctrine called Buddhism emerged in northern India and became a rival of Hinduism. |
What did Siddhārtha Gautama set out to do in his last twenties? | In his late twenties he set out to find a solution to the pain of illness, the sorrow of death, and the effects of old age on ordinary people. |
What did Siddhārtha Gautama do when he couldn't yield the results he was seeking? | After a period of asceticism did not yield results, he turned to meditation and found enlightenment. |
Though it may have begun as an attempt to reform Hinduism, what did Buddhism become? | Buddhism became a new religion dedicated to awakening and seeing the world anew. |
What are the principals of Buddhism? | The principles of Buddhism are grounded in the conviction that the pain and sorrow that afflict human beings can be set aside through wisdom. |
Buddhism is believed to be a key step in achieving what? | In Buddhism, bodhi, or wisdom, is a key step in achieving nirvana or union with ultimate reality. |
What is the path of moderation? | The Buddha taught a path of moderation he called the Middle Way, also known as the Eightfold Path to enlightenment. |
Siddhārtha accepted the idea of reincarnation but rejected what? | Siddhārtha accepted the idea of reincarnation but rejected the Hindu caste system and Hinduism’s multitude of gods. |
Siddhārtha agreed to accept women into the Buddhist monastic order. What was their position/status? | Over time, Siddhārtha agreed to accept women into the Buddhist monastic order, and though they held an inferior position, their status was higher in Buddhist societies than elsewhere. |
What were the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths? (1 & 2) | The Four Noble Truths—(1) Ordinary life is full of suffering; (2) This suffering is caused by our desire to satisfy ourselves; |
What were the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths? (3 & 4) | (3) The way to end suffering is to end desire for selfish goals and to see others as extensions of ourselves; (4) The way to end desire is to follow the Middle Path, or Middle Way, or moderation. |
What steps composed the Eightfold Path? | The Eightfold Path—(1) right view, (2) right intention, (3) right speech, (4) right action, (5) right livelihood, (6) right effort, (7) right mindfulness, and (8) right concentration. |
After 400 B.C. India faced threats from whom? | The Persians |
The Persians extended their empire into where? | Western India and then from the Greeks and Macedonians. |
Under what leadership did the Persians extend their empire into Western India, and then from the Greeks and Macedonians? | Under the leadership of Alexander. |
Who was the Mauryan Empire’s greatest ruler? | Aśoka |
What did Aśoka expanded? | Trade |
What type of ideals did Aśoka use to rule? | Buddhist ideals to rule. |
After the collapse of what Empire, did the nomadic warriors seize power? | The Mauryan Empire. |
After the collapse of the Mauryan Empire, nomadic warriors seized power and established what new kingdom? | The new Kushān kingdom. |
Where did the new Kushān kingdom prospered though trade? | Along the Silk Road. |
Who actively engaged in mining and trade? | The Guptas. |
Who did the Guptas welcome in their mining and trade? | The Guptas welcomed religious pilgrims. |
The Guptas, actively engaged in mining and trade and welcomed religious pilgrims until what happened? | Invasions by nomadic Huns weakened their empire. |
List the cultural accomplishments of India? | Lasting achievements in oral and written literature, stone architecture, and in the sciences and mathematics. |
India’s literature includes religious chants and stories from where? epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and poems such as Kālidāsa’s The Cloud Messenger. | The Vedas. |
India’s literature includes religious chants and stories from the Vedas. What are the epics and poems? | Epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and poems such as Kālidāsa’s The Cloud Messenger. |
Stone pillars from Aśoka’s reign mark sites important to what? | The Buddha’s life. |
The stupas house Buddhist relics. The rock chambers house monks. What are these used for? | They are used for ceremonies. |
Indian mathematicians invented what? | The Indian Arabic numerical system. |
Indian mathematicians invented the Indian Arabic numerical system and introduced what concept? | The concept of and symbol for zero, and were the first scientists known to have used algebra. |
What is the importance of the Mahabharata to Indian culture and world culture? | Mahabharata is the longest poem in any written language; it includes the Bhagavad Gita, which sets forth one of the key points of Indian society: one must not worry about success or failure but be aware only of the moral rightness of the act itself. |
What is the time frame of the Mahabharata and what does is describe? | It is set around 1000 B.C. and describes a war between cousins for control of the kingdom; the Bhagavad Gita is a sermon given by the god Krishna on the eve of a major battle. |
Which Indian literary work is an epic that includes riddles about the meaning of life? | Mahabharata |
From whom did the Kushāns adapt the alphabet? | The Greeks. |
Which of the following Indian civilizations emerged as a classical civilization of lasting value? | The Guptas. |
Structures built in the form of burial mounds to house a relic of the Buddha were called.... | stupas. |
Under the reign of __________, India became a major crossroads in a trade network that extended from the rim of the Pacific to Southwest Asia and the Mediterranean Sea. | Aśoka |
Located between influential cultures, the Kushān Empire was shaped by contact with China, Persia, and.... | the Roman Empire. |
What religion that originated in Persia was practiced in the Kushān Empire? | Zoroastrianism. |
What key lesson of Indian society does the Bhagavad Gita contain? | In taking action, one must not worry about success or failure. |
After the Arabs conquered large parts of India in the eighth century A.D., they.... | adopted the Indian numeric system. |