Response to a student discussion

I’m studying for my Writing class and don’t understand how to answer this. Can you help me study?

The response should be a minimum of 150 words. Your response should be substantive. I do not want you to simple agree or disagree, but rather comment on why you agree or disagree, raise more points, indicate commonalities or differences, discuss the issue in relation to our readings, and/or raise new questions about which we can all think. The response does not have to be more than a well-developed paragraph. A sentence will not get you credit. I don’t want you to respond with “Great job. Keep it up.” That is an F response.

Respond to this: “The Rig Veda is a collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns counted among the four Hindu religious texts known as the Vedas. The Rig Veda was likely composed between roughly 1700–1100 BCE, making it one of the oldest texts of any Indo-Iranian language, one of the world’s oldest religious texts. At approximately 1900 B.C.E. scientists assert that the Harappan society began its ecological downfall when they started to cut down trees for firewood and land cultivation.

As a result of the clearings, erosion and less rainfall occurred, turning the Indus River valley into a dessert. This created a climatic and ecological change which caused a reduction of agriculture resulting in the need for artificial agriculture. Another possibility of the Harrapan decline is that there could have been natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes which weakened the Harappan society.

The only source of information about the Aryans is their religious literature–the Iranian Avesta and the Sanskrit Veda. We do not have a shred of hard, material evidence, and these texts are our only window into their world. The texts have survived because they were transmitted orally (the Vedas were not written down until about 1400 CE), and even today there are people who can recite the entire Veda from memory. The word “Veda” literally means “knowledge,” and for the Aryans those who knew the Vedas possessed sacred knowledge, which was a source of power. The Vedas themselves include many types of text, and within them we can clearly see the tradition changing and developing. Within the Vedas are four different KINDS of text: Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads.”