Economic Life in Early Vedic Age

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The life of the Rigvedic Aryans was distinctly rural. The village with its pastoral and agricultural land formed the unit of the Rigvedic economic life.

The cattle occupied a position of great importance. Values of commodities or lands were determined in terms of cattle.

Agriculture was the main occupation. Ploughing of land and reaping of java (barley) was done and there was also to a crude system of irrigation.

Hunting too was one of the approved, though subsidiary means of livelihood.

The Rigvedic age also saw the cultivation of industrial arts, to some extent. The bronze smiths acquired a skill which was admitted as higher than that attained by their Indus Valley predecessors.

Among other industrial artists were the carpenters, the chariot-makers, cabinet-makers, tanners, weavers, potters and metal workers. The use of iron was probably unknown till later times.

The cow was the usual means of barter but there is evidence of the use of gold coin, names niska which had begun to appear as a sort of rudimentary currency.

Trade was mostly land-borne, but the possibility of trade through the medium of water-ways and even seas cannot be excluded. The mention of the samudra and ‘ships’ with hundred oars (Sataritra) occurring in the early Vedic texts is suggestive of sea-borne commerce.