Hinduism

A Beginner's Guide

Klaus K. Klostermaier

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781780740263
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Hinduism

A fresh introduction to an ancient religion Explaining the origins, beliefs, scriptures and philosophies of this ancient religion, Klaus K. Klostermaier succeeds in capturing the rich diversity of rituals and gods that comprise Hinduism, while keeping the tone both engaging and informative. Covering contemporary issues such as the relationship between Hinduism and modern Western ideas, and imminent challenges the religion faces, this sweeping exploration of a fascinating and long-lasting belief system is essential reading for students, followers, and interested readers alike.

Part I

The Vedic Tradition

Before the words ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ became accepted (they are terms introduced by foreigners – Persians, Greeks and the English) the Hindus called their tradition vaidika dharma, the vedic dharma. Dharma is one of those words that are virtually untranslatable because of the large number of meanings they have in their original context. It only partly overlaps with theWestern notion of ‘religion’. It designates first and foremost the universal law that is believed to govern everything and that existed even before the creation. In a more specific sense vedic dharma is the application of this universal, timeless law to Indian society and the regulation of all aspects of life according to its principles. Its most basic and socially relevant expression is the stratification of Indian society into four hierarchically ordered varnas (literally ‘colours’).

Vedic dharma is built on the assumption that all humans have rights and duties according to the varna they are born into.Vedic dharma is based on a large mass of canonical literature, collectively called ‘Veda (knowledge)’. It was transmitted orally for many centuries and kept secret from outsiders, and was commented upon and interpreted by respected scholars and sages whose work also acquired a status of authority. Veda-based notions of caste, vedic rituals accompanying birth, marriage and death, vedic notions of purity and pollution, and vedic divisions of life-stages provide a framework that still effectively shapes the collective and individual existence of Hindus. Other aspects of vedic dharma, such as the prominence of yajñas (sacrifices), the memorization and recitation of vedic texts and certain beliefs concerning life after death expressed in them, have become marginal and have largely been replaced by more ‘modern’ forms of worship and more recent teachings, as expressed in the epics and Puranas.

In this part we will explore the origins of Hinduism, focusing both on traditional Indian and scholarly Western points of view. We will provide a brief summary of the scriptural basis of vedic dharma, go into some detail on the division of society and lifestages, and give a description of the rituals associated with it.

While vedic religion in its own age and time was certainly a ‘complete’ tradition, it was overlaid in later times by Puranic Hinduism and by later philosophical and socio-political developments. But it was never abolished or replaced. It forms the basis of Hinduism and is still alive in present-day India.The real Hinduism of the Indian people is the accumulation of many different layers of religion.To consider one aspect only would be to miss out on Hinduism as such.There are scholars who criticize a philosophical system like Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta for its alleged lack of ethics. Leaving aside the question of an Advaita ethic for the time being, one should note that before beginning a study of Advaita, a Hindu would have been introduced to his tradition through a study of the Dharmasastras (lawbooks), which contain a very detailed and sophisticated ethic – an ethic which is binding also for a student of Advaita.

1

Origins of Hinduism

All are agreed that Hinduism has no known founder and that its origins go far back into the past; much further than those of any other living major religion. Similarly, there is no doubt that what is called Hinduism today is the result of many developments, the fusion and fission of diverse religious movements. The result of these processes is a ‘religion’ that exhibits the most diverse and contradictory features. Hinduism is often called a ‘family of religions’ rather than one religion, and even within this ‘family’ the differences are often more pronounced than the similarities.

Sources of Hinduism

India is a very large country with many distinct geographic and cultural regions. It has a known history of over five thousand years and even today it is the home of many racially and linguistically different peoples.The forms in which Hinduism appears in various parts of the country are marked by regional and local specificities and exhibit the influence of historical personalities that introduced or reformed religious customs.

As the self-designation vaidika dharma would suggest, the ‘vedic’ element has always been seen as prominent and defining. ‘Vedic’ refers to the authors of theVeda, who described themselves as arya (noble). In Western scholarly literature the arya became ‘Aryans’, and the term was used first to define a group of languages that had major affinities and then to establish a racial identity for the peoples using these languages. For over a century it was commonly assumed that the fair-skinned ‘Vedic Aryans’ came to India around 1500 BCE as invaders and settlers, establishing their rule over the dark-skinned natives of India. A great many theories were developed concerning the ‘original homeland of the Aryans’.Without any archaeological evidence whatsoever, the Aryans were supposed to have lived originally in the Arctic Circle, in Scandinavia, in today’s Ukraine, in Persia, Turkey, or somewhere else in the Middle East or Central Asia. The proof for such migrations was sought and found in linguistic affinities. The languages of the Zoroastrian Avesta and the Hindu Rgveda are indeed strikingly close, and scholars have established common roots for many words in many ‘aryan’ languages.

Mylapur street scene at temple entrance

The literatures of the Hindus themselves – beginning with the oldest book, the Rgveda– do not contain any references to a migration of their forefathers from outside India.They do, however, refer to numerous battles against hostile tribes.They celebrate victories over enemies ensconced in forts, and glorify Indra, the most often invoked deity in the Rgveda, as powerful ally and helper.When in the first decades of our century the ruined cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro (in today’s Pakistan) were discovered, the missing archaeological evidence for the victorious Aryan invasion of India seemed to have been found. The presumed destruction of these (and other) cities of what became known as the ‘Indus civilization’ was believed to have taken place around 1750 to 1500 BCE – quite close to the assumed date of the vedic age, arrived at speculatively by assigning a developmental framework to the Veda. The argument lost some of its power when it was found that the Indus civilization had not come to a violent end on account of an invasion from the outside but had slowly ebbed away due to desiccation of the area and major geographic changes.

Meanwhile, further excavations have shown considerable geographical overlap between the area occupied by the Indus civilization (which at its height covered over one million square kilometres!) and the habitats of the Vedic Aryans. There is also cultural continuity. Satellite photography made it possible to identify the dried-out bed of the river Sarasvati, mentioned as the mightiest of the seven rivers in the area of settlement of the vedic people, which had completely disappeared. It was found that the Sarasvati, due to tectonic changes in the area, had virtually ceased to carry water by 1900 BCE, 400 years before the Vedic Aryans were supposed to have invaded India. Remnants of many settlements were found along its banks, and it does not make sense to assume that the vedic people built their villages and towns along a driedout riverbed. Many scholars are inclined to drop the ‘invasion theory’ and accept the traditional Indian version of an indigenous development. Some Indian scholars also suggest that the Indus valley civilization was a branch of vedic culture. It is too soon to declare vedic India the ‘cradle of civilization’, as scholars like S. Kak and D. Frawley do, antedating the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations. However, there is no doubt that ancient Indian chronology has to be completely revised and that probably little of the chronology based on the assumed 1500 BCE invasion of India by theVedic Aryans can be maintained.

In addition to theVeda, which is undoubtedly the major historical source of Hinduism, the traditions of the original inhabitants of India, whose Stone Age culture has been traced back about half a million years, and some of whose practices and beliefs may still be alive among the numerous tribes of adivasis (original inhabitants), have influenced Hinduism. Thus it is assumed that the notion of rebirth, so universally accepted today by Hindus, had its origin in animistic tribal notions.

A third component is the very old and highly developed Dravidian culture. It encompassed the entire south of India and is supposed to be older than the Sanskrit-based Northern Vedic culture. There is evidence that Dravidian words, and with them Dravidian cultural notions, were absorbed by the vedic people. Philologists have identified Dravidian elements present in the Rgveda and in later vedic writings. There is no doubt that many Dravidian rituals, myths and practices have survived the Aryanization of South India and that South Indian Hinduism has many features not found in the North.

If the Indus civilization, as some claim, is an offshoot of theVedic culture, one does not have to argue for mutual influences. If it was an independent development, an outpost of Mesopotamian cultures, some findings such as worship of linga (the phallic symbol associated with Siva worship) and yoga practices (represented on a seal with a figure interpreted as Siva Mahayogi) would indicate an influence on the vedic tradition.

Since Indian culture continued to grow through the millennia, bringing forth such major non-vedic movements as Buddhism and Jainism (to mention only the most prominent ones), Hinduism kept developing and changing as well. Literally hundreds of different religious communities, all with their distinctive beliefs and rituals, developed over the centuries.Their Hindu character was largely restricted to acceptance of the Veda and observance of caste regulations in social contacts.The many invasions to which the Indian subcontinent was subjected also left their traces on Hinduism. Centuries of Muslim domination and 150 years of English colonial rule challenged Hinduism in many ways and produced new movements within it, so that it assimilated some foreign elements but defined itself more narrowly in other respects.

India – the Holy Land of Hinduism

If Hindus speak of Bharat Mata (Mother India), it is much more than a metaphor or a nationalist slogan: for the Hindu, India is Holy Land. For thousands of years many of its rivers, mountains, cities and groves have been associated, often identified, with deities and events of religious importance.The very names of mountain peaks like Kailasa or Arunacala, of rivers like Ganges andYamuna, of places like Prayaga and Kañcipuram, of groves like Vrndaban and Bhadraban suggest to the Hindu the presence of Siva orVisnu, Devi or Krsna. Virtually all older place names have associations with Hindu gods, and so have the proper names of most people. Hinduism is linked in a very literal way to the geography of India.

The avataras (descents, incarnations of God) of Visnu are associated with very specific, real places: the birthplace of Krsna in Mathura and the birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya are identified by large temples and have been for many centuries the destination of countless pilgrims.The Muslim invaders knew about the intimate linkage between Hinduism and these sanctuaries, and they not only razed them but built large mosques on top of them. The ‘re-possession’ of the birthplace of Rama by militant Hindus in December 1992, leading to the destruction of the Babri Masjid (the mosque built over it by Babur) and subsequently to Indiawide Hindu-Muslim riots, underscores the importance which localities have for Hinduism.

Hinduism is not just a system of beliefs or a collection of rules but also an intense identification with the many ways in which the sacred is present in India.The country is filled with large and small temples, with wayside shrines and holy places, sometimes marked by a man-made image, sometimes by a stone or a tree.At any given time there are millions of Hindus on pilgrimage to holy sites from which they will take some water or soil to make their own dwellings part of these places. Each of the major holy places has a religious history of its own. Often this is available as a Sthala Purana, an account of the miraculous foundation of the place by a god, and a narrative of many miraculous events that have taken place over the centuries.The kinds of stories told and the specific forms of worship practised at each place show great diversity and underscore the importance of locality. Hinduism did not originate from one centre and it is not controlled by a central agency; it consists of a number of complicated networks of local shrines and locally generated beliefs and rituals.

The theme of Bharat Mata, India as Holy Land of the Hindus, played a great role in the centuries-long struggle for independence. First directed against the Muslims, then against the British, the call to liberate Mother India from the unholy presence of mlecchas (foreigners, non-Hindus) was the call for a crusade rather than a simple rebellion.The famous nineteenth-century Bengali writer Bankim Cha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Note on pronunciation of Indian words and names
• Maps
• Introduction
• Part I: THE VEDIC TRADITION
• Part II: THE HINDU RELIGIONS
• Part III: THE HINDU PHILOSOPHICAL QUEST
• Part IV: HINDUISM ENCOUNTERS OTHER RELIGIONS
• Index