| A | B |
|---|
| monsoons | winds that mark the seasons in India |
| citadel | a strong central fortress built on a brick platform where food and grain were also stored |
| Harappa and Daro | ancient cities of the Indus River Valley |
| Indo-Aryans | nomadic people who came into northwestern India from the Black and Caspian Sea |
| Vedas | great works of religious literature written by the Indo-Aryan |
| Sanskit | the Indo-Aryan language |
| Vedic Age | the period of India's history from 1500 B. C. to 1000 B. C. |
| Brahmins | special priest of the Indo-Aryans |
| epics | long poems |
| Upanishads | a written collection of the teaching of the Vedic religion |
| Bhagavad Gita | the most famous Hindu scripture |
| Hinduism | the religious believe that all things in the universe are of the same essence as God |
| monism | the believe in the unity of God and creation |
| reincarnation | the be belief in the rebirth of souls |
| dharma | a principle of Hinduism where people do one's moral duty in this life so that the soul can advance in the next life |
| karma | the good and bad force created by a person's actions |
| nirvana | a perfect peace which souls who gain spiritually can attain |
| caste system | a complex form of social organization |
| varnas | four distinct social classes of the caste system |
| polytheistic | based on a belief in more than one god |
| Siddhartha Gautama | the founder of Buddism, also known as the Buddha |
| The Four Pillars of Truth and the Eightfold Path | codes of moral and conduct of Buddhism |
| maya | an exceptance rejected by Hinduism that the world we see is an illusion |
| polygyny | the ancient Indian practice allowing men to have more than one wife |
| suttee | the ancient Indian practice in which widows committed suicide by throwing themselves on top of their husbands flaming funeral pyres |
| inoculation | the practice of infecting a person with a mild form of a disease so that he or she will not develope a more serious form |
