Which one of the following is not related to the Rigvedic period?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Gargi. Gargi Vachaknavi belongs to the Later Vedic and Upanishadic stratum, not to the Rigvedic one, and the question is asking about period, not about eminence. She was the daughter of the sage Vachaknu of the Garga line, from which her patronymic Vachaknavi comes, and the text in which we actually meet her is the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: in the sixth and the eighth brahmanas of its third chapter she stands up at the brahmayajna convened by King Janaka of Videha and twice interrogates Yajnavalkya, first on what the worlds are woven across like warp and woof, then on the imperishable, the akshara. That Upanishad forms the closing portion of the Shatapatha Brahmana of the Shukla Yajurveda — a Later Vedic composition — and the principal Upanishads are conventionally dated to roughly 800–300 BCE, whereas the core of the Rigveda is placed at roughly 1500–1000 BCE, with Michael Witzel putting its codification between about 1200 and 1000 BCE in the early Kuru kingdom. Several centuries therefore separate Gargi from the other three names, each of whom has an actual Rigvedic hymn against her name: Ghosha, patronymic Kakshivati, is the seer of Rigveda 10.39 and 10.40, two hymns to the Ashvins of fourteen verses each; Apala Atreyi is the seer of Rigveda 8.91, addressed to Indra; and Vishvavara Atreyi is the seer of Rigveda 5.28, addressed to Agni. The Commission said the same thing when it disposed of objections to this question on 31 October 2025 — the Rigveda was composed in the early Vedic period while Gargi belongs to the later Vedic and Upanishadic age, remembered for her disputation in the Upanishads. Note also what is not claimed: no hymn of the Rigveda is attributed to Gargi anywhere in the traditional index of seers, however often popular lists file her beside the rishikas.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Ghosha is squarely Rigvedic. The traditional index of seers assigns her Rigveda 10.39 and 10.40 — two consecutive hymns to the Ashvins, fourteen verses each — and she carries the patronymic Kakshivati, marking her as of the family of the rishi Kakshivan. She feels like a candidate for the odd one out only because she is the least famous of the four outside the Vedic index itself.  (c) Apala is the seer of Rigveda 8.91, a hymn to Indra whose opening verse has a young woman find soma by the water and press it for the god. She is styled Apala Atreyi, of the Atri lineage. Her presence in the samhita is exactly as secure as Ghosha's, so nothing in the period test touches her; only her relative obscurity makes her tempting.  (d) Vishvavara Atreyi is the seer of Rigveda 5.28, a short hymn to Agni in six verses whose first line shows her going eastward with offerings and ghee — a woman performing the fire ritual herself. Book 5 is the Atri mandala, so the patronymic and the hymn's placement corroborate each other. She is the most commonly discarded name here simply because she is the least often revised.

Concept: Indian historians split the Vedic age in two, and the split is defined by texts rather than by dynasties. The Early Vedic or Rigvedic period, roughly 1500–1000 BCE, produced only one text, the Rigveda samhita, and is set in the Sapta-Sindhu — the Indus system and the Punjab — among semi-nomadic pastoralists organised in jana and tribal assemblies. The Later Vedic period, roughly 1000–600 BCE, produced everything else: the Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharvaveda, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads, and it belongs geographically to the eastward push into the Ganga–Yamuna doab and then to Kosala and Videha, with iron, settled agriculture, larger kingdoms and an increasingly elaborate sacrificial system. Women appear in both halves, but in different roles and different books. In the Rigveda they appear as rishikas, seers to whom whole hymns are ascribed — Lopamudra, Ghosha, Apala, Vishvavara, Vak Ambhrini, Sikta. In the Upanishads they appear as disputants in philosophical dialogue — Gargi Vachaknavi and Maitreyi. Tradition labels both groups brahmavadini, women who pursue knowledge of Brahman rather than domesticity, and it is that single shared label, spanning six or eight centuries, that makes this question workable as a trap.

State PCS 2025 Q87 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q87 — History PYQ with Answer