A Brief Introduction to Hinduism

Christopher Partridge, Tim Dowley, Christopher Partridge, Tim Dowley

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781506450346
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506450353
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Hinduism

This brief introduction to Hinduism is designed to help readers understand this important religious tradition. With both nuance and balance, this text provides broad coverage of various forms of Hinduism with an arresting layout with rich colors. It offers both historical overviews and modern perspectives on Hindu beliefs and practices. The user-friendly content is enhanced by charts of religious festivals, historic timelines, updated maps, and a useful glossary.

It is ideal for courses on Hinduism and South Asian religions and will be a useful, concise reference for all readers eager to know more about this important religious tradition and its place in our contemporary world.

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HINDUISM

SUMMARY

The religion today known as Hinduism may be almost as old as Indian civilization itself: archaeological evidence suggests continuities between the religion of the Indus Valley society of 2500–1500 BCE and the Hinduism of today. The Vedic texts, from the period that followed, provide the basis for some of the central themes of Hindu belief, including samsara, the doctrine that all creatures are reborn repeatedly unless the cycle can be broken through liberation (moksha), and karma, the notion that actions in one life are rewarded or punished in the next. The Vedic religion was hierarchical, and centred around sacrificial offerings. In time, sacrifice was largely replaced by puja, the personal devotion of an individual to a particular deity.

Hinduism has a vast body of sacred texts, from the early Vedas onward, and generally is divided into the more authoritative Sruti – revealed scripture – and the less authoritative Smriti – which includes Epics such as the Mahabharata (including the Bhagavad Gita) and the Ramayana. A hierarchy of sorts also exists amongst the many gods of India, with Vishnu and Shiva enjoying a privileged position – although there is no consensus as to whether there are in fact many gods, or whether the many are merely different representations of the one God, Brahman.

Today, like so many religions, Hinduism has a following throughout the world, largely because of the many Indian diaspora communities. Despite this, the subcontinent remains hugely important for Hindus, in part because of the value placed on the many sacred sites in the country, such as the River Ganges, and in part because of the strong ties that bind the wider community. Within India itself – now a secular democracy – there exists something of a division between those at ease with recent developments, such as secularization and the changing role of women, and the emergent Hindu nationalists – often deeply hostile to other religions in the region, particularly Islam – who seek a stronger role for religion in public life.

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A Historical Overview

The term ‘Hinduism’ as we understand it today refers to the majority religion of the Indian subcontinent. The present understanding of Hinduism as a ‘world religion’ has come about only since the nineteenth century, when Hindu reformers and Western orientalists came to refer to the diverse beliefs and practices characterizing religious life in South Asia as ‘Hinduism’. Yet this classification is problematic, as Hinduism possesses many features characteristic of ‘indigenous religions’: it has no single historical founder, no central revelation, no creed or unified system of belief, no single doctrine of salvation, and no centralized authority. In this sense, it is different from other ‘world religions’. Huge diversity and variety of religious movements, systems, beliefs, and practices are all characteristic features of ‘Hinduism’. Also, there is no clear division between the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ – or natural and supernatural: religion and social life are inseparable and intertwined. Nevertheless, most scholars would agree there are unifying strands that run through the diverse traditions that constitute it. Although the term Hinduism is recent, the diverse traditions that it encompasses have very ancient origins that extend back beyond the second millennium BCE.

Hinduism is a living organism liable to growth and decay and subject to the laws of nature. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. Mahatma Gandhi, Hindu Dharma (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1987).

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

The earliest traces of Hinduism can be found in the Indus Valley civilization which flourished from 2500 to about 1500 BCE along the banks of the River Indus, which flows through present-day Pakistan. Archaeological excavations in this area have revealed evidence of what appears to be a highly developed urban culture with sophisticated water distribution, drainage and garbage disposal technologies and well-developed systems of farming, grain-storage and pottery. Little is known about the religion of this civilization. The large number of terracotta figurines unearthed through excavations suggest a continuity between the iconographic features of these images and those of such later Hindu deities as Shiva and the mother goddess. Given the lack of systematic evidence for such continuity, however, scholars are inclined to be cautious. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Indus Valley civilization declined rather suddenly between 1800 and 1700 BCE, perhaps because of flooding or inadequate rainfall.

Hinduism

THE ARYANS AND EARLY VEDIC SOCIETY

What followed is a matter of considerable controversy. Some maintain that the Indus Valley civilization came to be replaced by the culture of the Aryans, Indo-European invaders, or migrants from the Caucasus region, who moved south and settled in the Indian subcontinent. Others believe the Aryan civilization developed from within the Indus Valley culture and was not introduced from outside. Whether Aryans came from outside the subcontinent or not, the history of Hinduism as we understand it today is the history of the next 2000 years of Aryan culture, often interacting with, but always dominating, non-Aryan cultures in the area.

The language of the Aryans was Sanskrit. Knowledge of the early Aryans derives primarily from early Sanskrit compositions, the Vedas, a corpus of texts compiled over hundreds of years. It is important to note that the Vedas were oral for thousands of years before being written down. In South India, the oral performances of the Vedas are still important; the Vedas are articulated, embodied, and performed, rather than simply read. Many Hindus today regard the Vedas as timeless revelation and the repository of all knowledge, and as a crucial marker of Hindu identity. The Vedas constitute the foundation for most later developments in Hinduism.

The earliest Vedas were mainly liturgical texts, used primarily in ritual. The Vedic rituals were rituals of sacrifice, addressed to such early gods as Agni (the fire god) and Soma (the plant god). The central act was the offering of substances – often animals, but also such items as milk, clarified butter, grain, and the hallucinogenic soma plant – into the sacrificial fire. The ritual was usually initiated by a wealthy sponsor (yajamana), and conducted by ritual specialists, who were the most highly ranked in Vedic society, which followed a fourfold system of hierarchical classification. Below the priests or ritual specialists (Brahmans) came the warriors or rulers (Kshatriyas), followed by the traders (Vaishyas). These three classes (varna) were known as ‘twice-born’ (dvija), because their male members underwent initiation that confirmed their status as full members of society. This initiation rite separated them from a fourth class, the servants (Shudras), who – because of their ‘low’ status – were debarred from perpetuating Vedic ritual traditions.

In due course, Aryan culture came to be well established in northern India. Brahmanic ideology became central to social and political life, and was concerned with the ritual status and duties of the king, the maintaining of social order, and the regulation of individual behaviour in accordance with the all-encompassing ideology of duty, or righteousness (dharma). Dharmic ideology related to ritual and moral behaviour, and defined good conduct according to such factors as one’s class (varna) and one’s stage of life (ashrama). It operated simultaneously at several levels: the transcendental, and therefore eternal (sanatana dharma), the everyday (sadharana dharma), and the individual and personal (svadharma). Neglecting dharma was believed to lead to undesirable social, as well as personal, consequences.

THE LATER VEDIC PERIOD

Alongside the performance of Vedic ritual, speculation arose about its meaning and purpose. These speculations were developed in the later Vedic texts – the Aranyakas and Upanishads – which tended to see the observance of ritual action as secondary to the gaining of spiritual knowledge. Central to this approach was the karma-samsara-moksha doctrine:

• all beings are reincarnated into the world (samsara) over and over again;
• the results of action (karma) are reaped in future lives;
• this process of endless rebirth is characterized by suffering (dukkha);
• liberation (moksha) from this suffering can be obtained by gaining spiritual knowledge.

Gaining spiritual knowledge thus came to assume central importance, and the self-disciplining and methods of asceticism necessary for gaining it were developed in Hinduism’s traditions of yoga and world renunciation. Ascetic groups known as strivers (sramanas) were formed during this period, seeking liberation through austerity. Buddhism and Jainism, both of which rejected the authority of the Vedas, originated in these groups. Whereas monastic institutions developed in Buddhism from its inception, similar institutions appeared within the Hindu pale only later, possibly in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, when – according to Hindu belief – the theologian Shankara (c. 788–820 CE) founded monastic centres in the four corners of India, and instituted the first renunciatory order of the Dasanamis.

Alongside early Hinduism’s elaboration of systems of ritual, and its teachings about liberation/salvation involving yoga and meditation, there developed highly sophisticated philosophical systems, the darshanas, comprising mainly Samkhya and Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta, and Nyaya and Vaisheshika. These in turn generated a multitude of metaphysical positions, and traditions of rigorous philosophical debate, within the parameters of Vedic revelation and the doctrine of liberation. One of the most important of these Indian philosophical traditions today is the philosophy of non-dualism (advaita vedanta), propounded by Shankara, the most famous of Indian philosopher-theologians.

SECTARIAN WORSHIP

Through much of the first millennium CE, sectarian worship of particular deities grew and flourished in Indi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Consulting editors
• Contributors
• List of Maps
• List of Time Charts
• List of Festival Charts
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• UNDERSTANDING RELIGION
• HINDUISM
• Gallery
• Rapid Fact-Finder
• Index
• Picture Acknowledgments