Indic Studies Foundation
		(a California non-Profit Organization)
		www.indicethos.org www.indicstudies.us
		Glossary
Alphabet	Word or phrase	Meaning
A
	Agama	Ancient Sanskrit religious text
	Artha	Wealth, one of the goals of life prescribed by the Vedics in the Brahma Vidya
	Aryan	A term connoting the fictitious Aryan race, see also Vedics
	Aryan Race	A fictitious classification without any scientific basis used by the Europeans to distinguish themselves from the semitic speaking people of the world
B
C	Caste	derived from Portuguese  Casta
D	Dasa
	Dharma
	Dravidian languages
E
F
G	Gotra	A term applied to a clan, a group of families, or a lineage - exogamous and
		patrilineal - whose members trace their descent to a common ancestor, usually a
		sage of ancient times.
H	Hinduism	Also known as Sanaatana Dharma, the eternal faith; there are roughly 850 million Hindus in the world as of 2006 (see Dharma)
I	Indo-Aryan languages	A family of languages spoken over a large area of the Eurasian land mass;see Indo-European Languages
	Indo-European languages	A family of languages spoken over a vast geographical area from India to most parts of Europe.
	Indo-Iranian languages	the Indo Iranian branch of the Indo Europrean language family , spoken in central asia,iran and the Indian subcontinent
	Indology	Indology is a name given by Indologists to the academic study of the history, languages, and cultures of the Indian subcontinent.
		strictly speaking it encompasses the study of the languages, scripts of all of Asia that was influenced by  Indic culture
	Indus script
	Indus Valley Civilization	aka Saraswathi Sindhu Civilization, the civilization that endured for several millennia in the Saraswathi and Sindhu (Indus) river valleys
		the people who inhabited these valleys also known as the Vedic Harappans by Bhagwan Singh. Most of the recent excavations indicate a heavy preponderance of settlements on the banks of the dried up Saraswathi river.Mohenjo Daro and Harappa represent a late phase of the civilization.
	Iranian peoples
J
K	Kurgan
	Kushan Empire
L
M	Mitanni
N
O
P	Pancha –	sanskrit term for five e.g Panchabana,panchatantra
	Place Value System	the most common sanskrit word for this is sthana which literally means place
	Purana	literally means the ancients.Traditional sanskrit texts dealing with diverse topics such as the creation of the world ,legends, genealogy of sovereigns,
	Proto-Indo-European
Q
R	Rig Veda	The earliest and the most prominent of the Vedas, the compositions of the Ancient Indics who we will refer to also as the Vedics,held to be sacred and termed Sruti by many Hindus
	Roma_people
S	Sanskrit
T	Tocharians
U	Urheimat
V	Vedic civilization
	Vedics or the Vedic people	the people who composed the Vedas and the vast panoply of subsequent literature and scientific work that spewed forth for several millennia
		thechief characteristic was their oral tradition
	Vedic Sarasvati River
X
Y	Yuezhi
Z