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| 30844246 | untouchables | lowest catse in Indian society; performed tasks that were polluting | 0 | |
| 30844247 | Ramayana | great epic tale from classical India; traces adventures of King Rama and his wife Sita | 1 | |
| 30844248 | gurus | Brahmans who were teachers for the princes of the imperial court of the Guptas | 2 | |
| 30844249 | Kushans | dynasty that succeeded the Mauryas in norhtwestern India; sponsors of Buddhism | 3 | |
| 30844250 | Tamils | seafaring people along southern coast of India; traded cotton and silks, dyes, drugs, gold, and ivory | 4 | |
| 30844251 | reincarnation | successive attachment of the soul to some animate form according to merits in previous lives | 5 | |
| 30844252 | nirvana | Buddhist state of enlightenment, as state of tranquility | 6 | |
| 30844253 | Mahabarata | Indian epic of war, princely honor, love, and social duty; written down in last centuries BCE; previously handed down in oral form | 7 | |
| 30844254 | stupas | stone shrines built to house pieces of bone or hair and personal possessions said to be relics of the Buddha; preserved Buddhist architectural forms | 8 | |
| 30844255 | Mauryas | dynasty established in Indian subcontinent in 4th century BCE following invasion by Alexander the Great | 9 | |
| 30844883 | Buddha | creator of major Indian and Asian religion; born in 6th century BCE as son of local ruler among Aryan tribes located near Himalayas; taught enlightenment could be achieved only by abandoning desires for all earhtly things | 10 | |
| 30844884 | Chandragupta Maurya | founder of Maurya dynasty; established first empire in Indian subcontinent; first centralized government since Harappan civilization | 11 | |
| 30844885 | Ashoka | grandson of Chandragupta Maurya; completed conquests of Indian subcontinent; converted to Buddhism and sponsored spread of new religion throughout his empire | 12 | |
| 30844886 | Kautilya | political advisor to Chandragupta Maurya; one of the authors of Arthashastra; believed in scientific application of warfare | 13 | |
| 30844887 | Arthashastra | political treatise written during reign of Chandragupta Maurya; advocated use of spies and assassins, bribery, and scientific forms of warfare | 14 | |
| 30844888 | Guptas | dynasty that succeeded the Kushans in the 3rd century BCE; built empire that extended to all but the southern regions of the Indian subcontinent; less centralized than Mauryan empire | 15 | |
| 30844889 | Sanskrit | the scared and classical Indian language | 16 | |
| 30844890 | Skanda Gupta | last of able rulers of the Gupta dynasty; following his reign the empire dissolved under the pressure of nomadic invasions | 17 | |
| 30844891 | dharma | the caste position and career determined by a person's birth; Hindu culture required that one accept one's social position and perform occupation to the best of one's ability in order to have a better situation in the next life | 18 | |
| 30844892 | Upanishads | later books of the Vedas; contained sophisticated and sublime philosophical ideas; utilized by Brahmans to restore religious authority | 19 | |
| 30844893 | mandala | a religious symbol associated with meditation, usually created with geometric patterns and shapes | 20 | |
| 30844894 | Kamasutra | written by Varsayana during Gupta era; offered instrustions on all aspects of life for higher caste males, including grooming, hygiene, etiquette, and selection of wives | 21 | |
| 30844895 | karma | the sum of merits accumulated by a soul at any given point in time; determined the caste to which the soul would be assigned in the next life | 22 | |
| 30859210 | Alexander the Great | invaded India but did not establish a durable empire; allowed important Indian contacts with Hellenistic culture | 23 | |
| 30859211 | monsoon | torrential rains crucial for farming; vary from year to year sometimes bringing too little rain or too late | 24 | |
| 30859212 | Vedas | literary epics developed by Aryans; initially passed down orally; most of what we know about preclassical period in Indian history comes from these sacred books | 25 | |
| 30859213 | Rig-Veda | the first epic of the Vedas; consists of 1028 hymns deticated to the Aryan gods and composed by various priests | 26 | |
| 30859214 | Vishnu | hindu god; the preserver | 27 | |
| 30859215 | Shiva | hindu god; the destroyer | 28 |
