Hinduism

A Short History

Klaus K. Klostermaier

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780746807
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Hinduismus

The history of the Hindu tradition is captured by Kalus K. Klostermaier in this new survey of a rich and ancient religion. This study moves swiftly but thoroughly through the ages, from early emergence of the Vedic tradition to the developments in contemporary Hinduism. Factual information is balanced with discussion of such problematic areas as the true origins of Hinduism and the controversy of the Aryan invasion. Other features include: full coverage of all the major branches within the religion, and their origins; the role of philosophical reflection in the development of Hinduism; the future of Hinduism; a quick-reference chronology, bibliography and extensive glossary. This guide to the development of a major religion should be of interest to those interested in the subject, from gradates to the curious general reader, and can be used as a companion volume to "Hinduism - a short introduction".

1

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS HINDUISM?

Hinduism is unlike any of the other major historic religions. It does not claim an identifiable human founder or a specific origin in history – some Hindus derive their tradition from a primeval revelation of the Supreme, others consider it the beginningless sanātana dharma, the eternal law that governs everything, independently of any divine or human agent – nor has it ever rejected a parent tradition from which it separated as a rebel child, as all others have done. Hindus had not found it necessary to define “the essentials of Hinduism” or prove it different from other religions until challenged by break-away spiritual movements like Buddhism or invaders from outside, who wanted to impose their own religions, such as Islām and Christianity.

Traditional Hinduism has preserved surprisingly much of the character of autochthonous native traditions, maintaining the holistic, all-embracing approach typical of these: there is no hard and fast distinction between the sacred and the secular, no strict separation of religious ritual from essential daily activities, no real difference or tension between religion and culture.

The various branches of what became known as “Hinduism” do not have a common creed and they do not demand from their followers any declaration of a “Hindu” faith. Until recently one could not become a Hindu unless one was born into a Hindu family; and one could not cease to be a Hindu if one was born a Hindu. As far as one’s membership in the Hindu community was concerned, it did not matter what one thought or believed as long as one participated in the traditional rituals, which were also part and parcel of traditional Indian culture. On the other hand, many of the saṃpradāyas, specific worship traditions within Hinduism, draw very close and narrow boundaries: those who wish to be members must obey a very strict regimen with regard to diet, life-style, reading, and worship; they must not accept the teachings of any other saṃpradāya, or read books or listen to sermons from them.

Left to itself the large and old Hindu civilization quietly appropriated whatever was brought into it from the outside, absorbed it, transformed it, and made it part of its own. That process of assimilation was disturbed in a major way first by the massive onslaught of Islamic conquerors from the tenth century C.E. onwards. The Muslims came to conquer India and to covert the native “idolaters” to their own religion. The rigid monotheism of Islam, the exclusivity claim of Mohammed’s revelation, the rejection of the caste system proved irreconcilable with the native religio-cultural traditions of India.

While Islām could claim partial successes – for over half a millennium most of India was under Muslim rule and a third of the population accepted Islām¹ – it generated a resistance among Hindus who began to realize an identity of their own based on their native “Hindu” traditions. Not by accident was it that from the eleventh century onwards nibandhas were composed – encyclopedic works that collected Hindu legal traditions, information about Hindu holy places, Hindu rituals, and customs of all saṃpradāyas. Hindus became aware of Hinduism as distinct from Islām. Islamic hostility toward “idolatry” further served to underscore the differences between Hindu traditions and other religions.

The second major disturbance was created by Western European powers from the sixteenth century C.E. onwards. While the main interest of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Danish, the French and the English – all of whom established colonies in India – was trade, they were soon persuaded by the ecclesiastical powers of their homebases that they also had a duty to spread their Christian faith among the heathen.

Notwithstanding the presence of significant groups of indigenous Christians, who had lived for centuries peacefully side by side with their Hindu neighbors,² the European Churchmen of various denominations considered India a mission field to be harvested for their sectarian Western Christian Churches. By demanding from the citizens of Goa, the first European colony on Indian soil, either to convert to the Catholic Church or to emigrate, the Portuguese established a hard and fast line between Christianity and Hinduism, and also made sure that future relations between the two religions were based on hostility and exclusivity. Like Islām, Christianity became a foreign invader and remained a foreign religio-cultural presence in India. It also provoked a reaction and a resistance among Hindus that became quite articulate from the end of the nineteenth century onwards.³

The term “Hinduism” has recently been problematized in western scholarly literature. “Hindutva,” the Indian-languages equivalent,⁴ identified with a cultural political program promoted by right-wing Hindu political parties and extremist Hindu organizations, is viewed with suspicion and apprehension by many non-Hindus. Some question the appropriateness of the very word “Hinduism,” which, they say, is an “orientalist construct” invented by western colonial interest. All agree that the term “Hindu” was imposed on the Indians by outsiders. However, the designation “Hindú” has meanwhile been adopted by Indians themselves, who identify their religion as “Hinduism” over against Islām or Christianity.⁵ Others deny historic validity to the very notion of “Hinduism” prior to nineteenth century “Neo-Hinduism,” which arose as a reaction to Christianity, the religion of the foreign colonizers.

The global designation “Hinduism” is apt to disguise the great diversity of Indian religious traditions. Till very recently “Hindus” defined their religious identities by using specific appellations like Vaisnava, Śaiva, Śākta, Smārta etc., and several modern movements like the Rāmakrishna Mission and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness emphatically denied being “Hindu,” so as not to be identified with other branches of Hinduism that hold beliefs contrary to their own.

THE MEANING OF “HISTORY”

There is an uncanny resemblance between the original Greek word historia and the Sanskrit term for history, itihāsa, meaning both story and history (in the modern sense), tale, narrative, as well as the event narrated and told. Herodotus, commonly called the “Father of History” in the West, offers in his Historiae a great variety of reports about events observed by himself, about customs of other peoples, about tales and traditions whose authority he was not able to vouchsafe. By comparison Indian itihāsa, as reflected in the Epics and the Purāṇas, also consists of a rich store of historical events and legends, of myths and of moral lessons inextricably interwoven in order to tell a story, not to document “facts.”

History writing in a more narrow sense is not unknown to India: the Buddhists chronicled the progress of their missions,⁶ and the famous Rājatarangiṇī documents several centuries of Kashmir’s history. The Upanisads maintained lists of guru-paraṃparās, containing scores of genealogies of teacher-disciple successions. But they give no dates and no references that allow precise dating by comparison with historic figures or events elsewhere. The Purāṇas contain many lists of dynasties and attempts have been made to identify these names and to relate them to datable rulers outside India and to historic events.⁷ There are Digvijayas, records of the encounters of great teachers with their opponents, temple-chronicles, like the Koil Olugu, that faithfully describes the history of Śrīraṅgam, and undoubtedly there are still many undiscovered manuscripts with historical information on many persons and places in India.

However, history in the modern sense, a chronological write-up of past events, the recording of “facts, nothing but facts,” was never popular with Hindus.⁸ They were seeking meaning in their religious texts, not résumés of past events. Mahatma Gandhi once said, when doubts about the historicity of the person of Jesus were expressed, that even if it should be proven that Jesus never lived, the Sermon on the Mount would still be true for him.

Until recently Hindus had found it rather unnecessary to prove the historicity of avatāras like Rāma and Kṛṣṇa. Should endeavors of recent Hindu scholarship to find such proof be successful, that would probably not change anything for those who had always considered Rāma and Kṛṣṇa manifestations of the divine, their teaching a revelation, and their myths profoundly symbolically meaningful. It might, however, fuel competition between Hinduism and Christianity, pitting a historical Rāma and Kṛṣṇa against a historical Christ, and possibly worshipers of the one against...