Allred, Deseret News Occasionally, an ad appears in a column adjacent to my blog on patheos. Will there be a reckoning? Sign up for the newsletter Morning Edition Start your day with the top stories you missed while you were sleeping. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email address required. In , Hindus were incited to tear down the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, which they believe was deliberately and provocatively built over the site of Rama's birth. Tensions have been exacerbated by attempts to covert Hindus to other religions and reactions by the continuing hindutva movement.
However, the post-war Hindu movements imported into the west, and wide migration of Hindus, raised questions about the exact nature of Hindu identity. From the s onwards, many Indians migrated to Britain and Northern America. Gurus travelled to the West to nurture the fledgling Hindu communities, sometimes starting missionary movements that attracted Western interest. In the late s, Transcendental Meditation achieved worldwide popularity, attracting the attention of celebrities such as the Beatles.
Perhaps the most conspicuous was the Hare Krishna movement, whose male followers sported shaved heads and saffron robes.
Many such Western adherents, and casual practitioners of yoga also, were attracted to the non-sectarian spiritual aspects of Hinduism. Many Hindu youth in the diaspora have similarly preferred these universal aspects of Hinduism, standing in tension with its more political and sectarian elements.
At the end of the millennium, the Hindu communities became well established abroad, excelling socially, economically and academically. They built many magnificent temples, such has the Swaminarayan Temple in London. Hindus in diaspora were particularly concerned about the perpetuation of their tradition and felt obliged to respond to Hindu youth, who sought a rational basis for practices previously passed down by family custom.
They are now particularly concerned about how to deal with contentious issues such as caste , intermarriage and the position of women. In many ways, Hindus in the West are turning back to their roots. Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled.
While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Introduction History of Hinduism India Hinduism's early history is the subject of much debate for a number of reasons.
Secondly, Hinduism is not a single religion but embraces many traditions. Hindu notions of time Hindus in general believe that time is cyclical, much like the four seasons, and eternal rather than linear and bounded. Main historical periods Although the early history of Hinduism is difficult to date with certainty, the following list presents a rough chronology. Religion in the Indus valley We know little of the religion, social structure or politics of this early civilisation and we do not know the language, but seals have been found with what looks like a script inscribed on them.
Male figure found at Mohenjo-Daro. Vedic Period The Vedic Period c. The Aryan migration thesis that the Indus Valley groups calling themselves 'Aryans' noble ones migrated into the sub-continent and became the dominant cultural force. Hinduism, on this view, derives from their religion recorded in the Veda along with elements of the indigenous traditions they encountered.
The cultural transformation thesis that Aryan culture is a development of the Indus Valley culture. On this view there were no Aryan migrations or invasion and the Indus valley culture was an Aryan or vedic culture. Vedic religion If we take 'Vedic Period' to refer to the period when the Vedas were composed, we can say that early vedic religion centred around the sacrifice and sharing the sacrificial meal with each other and with the many gods devas. Dasavatara Temple, Deogarh, 6th century.
Poet-saints and gurus During this time not only religious literature in Sanskrit developed but also in vernacular languages, particularly Tamil. Madhva c. The 9th and 8th centuries BCE witnessed the composition of the earliest Upanishads. Upanishads form the theoretical basis of classical Hinduism and are known as Vedanta conclusion of the Veda. The older Upanishads launched attacks of increasing intensity on the rituals. The diverse monistic speculations of the Upanishads were synthesized into a theistic framework by the sacred Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita.
They contain mythological stories about the rulers and wars of ancient India, and are interspersed with religious and philosophical treatises. The later Puranas recount tales about devas and devis, their interactions with humans, and their battles against rakshasa. Increasing urbanization of India in 7 th and 6 th centuries BCE led to the rise of new ascetic or shramana movements, which challenged the orthodoxy of rituals. Mahavira c. One year later, Alexander had defeated the Achaemenid Empire and firmly conquered the Indian subcontinent.
Again, foreign influences were brought to bear on the region, giving rise to the Greco-Buddhist culture, which impacted all areas of culture in northern India from art to religion to dress. Statues and reliefs from this period depict Buddha, and other figures, as distinctly Hellenic in dress and pose known as the Gandhara School of Art. Badrinath, Puri, Dwarkha and Rameshwaram are four holiest places for the Hindus.
Some rivers are also holy to them. Another holy river is Sarasvati and it is invisible. Hindus also worship and respect some animals and birds like cobra, apes, peacocks and cow.
Hindus also respect some trees and bush trees. The famous and the most respected bush tree is Tulsi. Some of the Hindu customs, which exist or existed, do not have their bearing in Hindu scriptures but became part of Hinduism in different ways and fashion. For example, the Hindus see in cow a sacred animal. Religiously there is no reason to see cow as sacred and it is believed that cows were made 'sacred' to prevent their slaughter during periods of droughts and hunger. Cobra worship also is not found in Hindu scripts.
This custom became part of Hinduism when some Indian tribes who use to worship cobra adopted Hinduism. Burning of the widow on the dead husband's pyre also has no religious justification. This custom, outlawed in , was probably brought to India by the Scythians invaders of India. Among the Scythians it was a custom to bury the dead king with his mistresses or wives, servants and other things so that they could continue to serve him in the next world.
When these Scythians arrived in India, they adopted the Indian system of funeral, which was cremating the dead. And so instead of burying their kings and his servers they started cremating their dead with his surviving lovers.
The Scythians were warrior tribes and they were given a status of warrior castes in Hindu religious hierarchy. The different castes who claimed warrior status or higher also adopted this custom. There are four castes in Hindu religion arranged in a hierarchy. The highest caste is Brahman, and they are the priest caste of Hinduism. After them are the Kshatria, who are the warrior castes. After them are the Vaishya caste , who are business people. And after them are the Sudra, who are the common peasants and workers.
Below these four castes there are casteless, the untouchables. The four castes were not allowed to have any physical contact with the untouchables. Each caste is divided into many sub-castes. The religious word for caste is Varna and for sub-caste Jat or Jati. But sometimes in English the term caste is used in both cases.
Religiously, people are born in a caste and it cannot be changed. Each caste has some compulsory duties, which its members must do. Each caste has professional limits which decides what profession each caste can follow. Each caste members can have social relations only with its caste members. Religiously this includes marraige and even eating only with caste members. Please note that socially the caste system is different from the religious form of caste system.
How did Hinduism originated is a difficult question. The accepted theory is that Hinduism was evolved after the historical meeting between the Aryans and Dravidians. Some claim that Hinduism is mainly an Aryan culture whereas the others claim that it is mainly a Dravidian culture.
Religiously the Vedas were given by Brahma. Before Hinduism there existed another religion in India called Brahmanism and its followers were called Brahmans. The Brahmans were the spiritual and moral guides of the Indian society. The members of this religion were a close sect and others could not join it.
The Brahmans slowly started accepting others into their religion and so was created Hinduism which included in it the customs which aren't the part of the Vedas. One of the reasons the Brahmans accepted others to their religion was the fear to loose their status as moral guides to priests of a new religion that started in India, namely Buddhism.
The Brahmans even accepted Buddha as a Hindu God and part of his teachings and philosophy like non-violence into their religion. Introduction Hinduism , religion that originated in India and is still practiced by most of its inhabitants, as well as by those whose families have migrated from India to other parts of the world chiefly East Africa, South Africa, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, and England.
The corresponding influence of these various religions on Hinduism it has an extraordinary tendency to absorb foreign elements has greatly contributed to the religion's syncretism—the wide variety of beliefs and practices that it encompasses. Moreover, the geographic, rather than ideological, basis of the religion the fact that it comprises whatever all the people of India have believed and done has given Hinduism the character of a social and doctrinal system that extends to every aspect of human life.
Fundamental Principles The canon of Hinduism is basically defined by what people do rather than what they think. Consequently, far more uniformity of behavior than of belief is found among Hindus, although very few practices or beliefs are shared by all. A few usages are observed by almost all Hindus: reverence for Brahmans and cows; abstention from meat especially beef ; and marriage within the caste jati , in the hope of producing male heirs. Most Hindus chant the gayatri hymn to the sun at dawn, but little agreement exists as to what other prayers should be chanted.
Most Hindus worship Shiva , Vishnu , or the Goddess Devi , but they also worship hundreds of additional minor deities peculiar to a particular village or even to a particular family.
Although Hindus believe and do many apparently contradictory things—contradictory not merely from one Hindu to the next, but also within the daily religious life of a single Hindu—each individual perceives an orderly pattern that gives form and meaning to his or her own life. No doctrinal or ecclesiastical hierarchy exists in Hinduism, but the intricate hierarchy of the social system which is inseparable from the religion gives each person a sense of place within the whole.
Texts The ultimate canonical authority for all Hindus is the Vedas. The oldest of the four Vedas is the Rig-Veda , which was composed in an ancient form of the Sanskrit language in northwest India. This text, probably composed between about and BC and consisting of hymns to a pantheon of gods, has been memorized syllable by syllable and preserved orally to the present day.
A fourth book, the Atharva-Veda a collection of magic spells , was probably added about BC. At this time, too, the Brahmanas—lengthy Sanskrit texts expounding priestly ritual and the myths behind it—were composed.
Between the 8th century BC and the 5th century BC , the Upanishads were composed; these are mystical-philosophical meditations on the meaning of existence and the nature of the universe.
The actual content of this canon, however, is unknown to most Hindus. No prohibition is made against improvising variations on, rewording, or challenging the Smriti. The Smriti includes the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana ; the many Sanskrit Puranas , including 18 great Puranas and several dozen more subordinate Puranas; and the many Dharmashastras and Dharmasutras textbooks on sacred law , of which the one attributed to the sage Manu is the most frequently cited.
The two epics are built around central narratives. The Mahabharata tells of the war between the Pandava brothers, led by their cousin Krishna , and their cousins the Kauravas. The Ramayana tells of the journey of Rama to recover his wife Sita after she is stolen by the demon Ravana. But these stories are embedded in a rich corpus of other tales and discourses on philosophy, law, geography, political science, and astronomy, so that the Mahabharata about , lines long constitutes a kind of encyclopedia or even a literature, and the Ramayana more than 50, lines long is comparable.
Although it is therefore impossible to fix their dates, the main bodies of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were probably composed between BC and AD Both, however, continued to grow even after they were translated into the vernacular languages of India such as Tamil and Hindi in the succeeding centuries.
The Puranas were composed after the epics, and several of them develop themes found in the epics for instance, the Bhagavata-Purana describes the childhood of Krishna, a topic not elaborated in the Mahabharata.
The Puranas also include subsidiary myths, hymns of praise, philosophies, iconography, and rituals. Most of the Puranas are predominantly sectarian in nature; the great Puranas and some subordinate Puranas are dedicated to the worship of Shiva or Vishnu or the Goddess, and several subordinate Puranas are devoted to Ganesha or Skanda or the sun. Philosophy Incorporated in this rich literature is a complex cosmology. Hindus believe that the universe is a great, enclosed sphere, a cosmic egg, within which are numerous concentric heavens, hells, oceans, and continents, with India at the center.
They believe that time is both degenerative—going from the golden age, or Krita Yuga, through two intermediate periods of decreasing goodness, to the present age, or Kali Yuga—and cyclic: At the end of each Kali Yuga, the universe is destroyed by fire and flood, and a new golden age begins.
Human life, too, is cyclic: After death, the soul leaves the body and is reborn in the body of another person, animal, vegetable, or mineral.
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