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1. Belief Systems
Cultural and Intellectual Life
Political Systems
2. GEOGRAPHIC SETTING
5. The village is the center of life
Home were built around farms
Little government interference unless you forgot to pay your taxes.
Life was governed by caste rules and traditions
Higher castes had strict rules
The rules kept them from being contaminated by the lower castes.
UNTOUCHABLES were outcasts who lived harsh lives
There jobs were “impure”
Cleaning streets
Digging graves
The had to live outside of the Gupta community
6.
Joint Families: parents, children, grandparents, uncles, and their children shared a common home.
Patriarchal Structure- father or oldest male heading the household
Children and Marriage-
learned family trade or field and that is what they were expected to do as adults.
Hindu law required that people marry only within their own cast
Role of Women
Upper class women restricted to their home
Cover themselves from head to foot when outside
Lower class women worked in fields of did spinning and weaving
7. Mathematics
Zero and decimal system
Arabic Numerals
Medicine
Herbs and other remedies to treat illness
Plastic surgery on facial injuries
Vaccinated people from small pox 1000 yrs before Europe.
Architecture
Beautiful stone temples for Hindu worship (typical shape was a square symbolizing the Earth within a circle symbolizing eternity)
Stupas- large dome shaped shrines that contained remains of holy people. (elaborate carvings depicting the life of Buddha)
8. Literature
Fables and folk tales
Poet, Kalidasa wrote the play Shakuntala
King marries a beautiful orphan and later an evil spell causes him to forget his bride, the story ends with him recovering his memory and they are happily reunited.
9. After about 200 years, the Gupta empire declined because of weak rulers and foreign invasions.
The invaders were the White Huns from central Asia
Nomads who destroyed villages
And disrupted trade in the Gupta empire