Daily Static Quiz Prelims Practice 2027
The Rigveda is the oldest of the four Vedas, comprising 1,028 hymns (Suktas) addressed to deities like Indra, Agni, Varuna, and Soma, and is considered one of the oldest religious texts in the world.
- The Rigvedic economy was primarily pastoral — cattle were the chief measure of wealth and inter-tribal conflicts were often fought over cattle (Gavishti).
- Iron was widely used in the Rigvedic period for making agricultural tools and weapons.
Statement 1 is correct — the Rigvedic economy was pastoral, with cattle (Go) serving as the primary unit of wealth, and the word Gavishti, literally "search for cows," described inter-tribal battles fought over cattle. Statement 2 is incorrect, since the Rigvedic period belonged to the Bronze Age and iron was completely absent — iron (Shyama Ayas) appears only in the Later Vedic period, where it enabled forest clearance and agricultural expansion into the Gangetic plains.
Option (c) is incorrectly matched — Aranyakas literally means "forest texts," composed and studied in forests by hermits, dealing with philosophical and symbolic interpretations of rituals, and they have nothing to do with urban governance or law codes. Options (a), (b), and (d) are all correctly described.
- Assertion (A): The Ganga and Yamuna rivers, though central to later Indian civilisation, are mentioned only rarely in the Rigveda.
- Reason (R): The Rigvedic Aryans were concentrated in the northwestern Sapta Sindhu region — their eastward expansion into the Gangetic plains occurred only during the Later Vedic period.
Assertion A is correct — the Ganga appears only 1–3 times and the Yamuna about 3 times in the Rigveda, remarkably rare for rivers that later became India's holiest. Reason R is correct and directly explains A, since the Rigvedic Aryans were settled in the Punjab-Afghanistan corridor (Sapta Sindhu), and the Ganga-Yamuna region became central only in the Later Vedic period (c. 1000–600 BCE) as settlements moved eastward.
- The Ashrama system (four stages of life) was codified in the Later Vedic period.
- The Varna system became more rigid and hereditary compared to the relatively flexible Rigvedic period.
- Iron tools enabled forest clearance and agricultural expansion into the Gangetic plains during the Later Vedic period.
All three statements are correct. The Ashrama system, comprising Brahmacharya, Grihastha, Vanaprastha, and Sannyasa, was codified as a normative life-stage framework in the Later Vedic period. Varna divisions became increasingly hereditary and birth-based, a shift from the relatively flexible occupational structure of Rigvedic society. Iron (Shyama Ayas), which appears in the Atharva Veda and Later Vedic texts, enabled systematic forest clearance and agricultural expansion eastward into the Gangetic plains.
