Historical Terms – III

Harappan and Early Chinese
Monsoons: winds that reverse direction seasonally.
Harappan civilization: first civilization of the Indian subcontinent; emerged in Indus river
valley circa 2500 B.C.E.
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro: major urban complexes of Harappan civilization; laid out on planned grid pattern.
Monsoons: seasonal winds crossing the Indian sub-continent and southeast Asia; during the summer they bring rain.
Yoga: special technique for exercise and meditation; may have originated in Harappan era.
Aryans: Indo-European nomadic, warlike, pastoralists who replaced Harappan civilization.
Sanskrit: the Indo-European language of classical India; mainly used today for ceremony.
Vedas: Aryan hymns originally transmitted orally; written down in sacred books in the 6th
century B.C.E.
Indra: chief deity of the Aryans; god of battle and lightning; depicted as a hard-drinking
warrior.
Dasas: Aryan name for indigenous people of the Indus river valley region; regarded as
societally inferior to Aryans.
Miscegenation: sexual relations between different groups.
Varnas: four broad social class groups: brahmins (priests), warriors, merchants, peasants; beneath them were the untouchables.
Patrilineal: social system in which descent and inheritance is passed through the male line; typical of Aryan society.
Polygamy: marriage practice in which one husband had several wives; present in Aryan
society.
Polyandry: marriage practice in which one woman had several husbands; recounted in Aryan epics.
Huanghe River: river flowing from the Tibetan Plateau to the China Sea; its valley was site of early Chinese sedentary agricultural communities.
Ordos Bulge: located on Huanghe River; region of fertile soil; site of Yangshao and Longshan cultures.
Loess: fine-grained soil deposited in Ordos bulge; created fertile lands for sedentary
agricultural communities.
Yangshao culture: a formative Chinese culture located at Ordos bulge circa 2500 to 2000
B.C.E.; primarily an intensive hunting-and-gathering society supplemented by shifting
cultivation.
Longshan culture: a formative Chinese culture located at Ordos bulge circa 2000 to 1500
B.C.E; based primarily on cultivation of millet.
Yu: a possibly mythical ruler revered for construction of a system of flood control along the Huanghe river valley; founder of Xia kingdom (no archaeological sites yet discovered).
Shang: 1st Chinese dynasty; capital in Ordos bulge.
Vassal retainers: members of former ruling families granted control over peasant and artisan populations of areas throughout Shang kingdom; indirectly exploited wealth of their territories.
Extended families: consisted of several generations, including sons and grandsons of family patriarch and their families; typical of Shang China elites.
Nuclear households: husband, wife, and their children, and perhaps a few other relatives; typical of Chinese peasantry.
Oracles: shamans or priests in Chinese society who foretold the future through interpreting animal bones cracked by heat; inscriptions on bones led to Chinese writing.
Ideographic writing: pictograph characters grouped together to create new concepts; typical of Chinese writing.
Zhou: originally a vassal family of the Shang; possibly Turkic-speaking in origin; overthrew Shang and established 2nd Chinese dynasty (1122-256 B.C.E.)
Wu: early ruler of the Zhou dynasty (r.1122-1115 B.C.E.)
Xian and Loyang: capitals of the Zhou dynasty.
Feudalism: social organization created by exchanging grants of land (fiefs) in return for formal oaths of allegiance and promises of loyal service; typical of Zhou dynasty.
Mandate of Heaven: the divine source of political legitimacy in China; established under Zhou to justify overthrow of Shang.
shi: educated men who serve as professional bureaucrats; grew in importance during Zhou dynasty.
Tian: the deity claimed by the Zhou to have been a associated with the earlier Xia dynasty; probably the original clan deity of the Zhou family.