The Vedic civilization is the earliest civilization in the history
of ancient India associated with the coming of Aryans. It is named after the
Vedas, the early literature of the Hindu people.
The Vedic Civilization
flourished along the river Saraswati, in a region that now consists of the
modern Indian states of Haryana and Punjab. Vedic is synonymous with Aryans and
Hinduism, which is another name for religious and spiritual thought that has
evolved from the Vedas.
The largely accepted view is that a section of Aryans
reached the frontiers of the Indian subcontinent around 2000 BC and first
settled in Punjab and it is here, in this land, where the hymns of Rigveda were
composed.
The Aryans lived in tribes and spoke Sanskrit, which belonged to
the Indo-European group of languages. Gradually, the Aryans intermingled with
the local people and a historic synthesis was worked out between the Aryan
tribes and the original inhabitants. This synthesis broadly came to be known as
Hinduism. The Ramayana and Mahabharata were the two great epics of this period.