Understanding Hinduism

• Éditeur: Dunedin Academic Press
• Année: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781906716608
• Sujet: Theologie & Religion
• Sous-sujet: Hinduismus

The Hindu tradition can claim to be the worlds oldest religion. It has evolved in India over the past three thousand years. It differs from monotheistic beliefs, such as Christianity, in that there is no identifiable founder, specific theological system, or single system of morality. Frank Whaling provides an overview of the history and development of the Hindu tradition. He takes account of recent scholarship and regards Hinduism as a worldview as well as a religious tradition. The book covers the core areas of Hindu religious organisation, rituals, ethics, social involvement and sacred texts as well as key concepts, aesthetics and spirituality. It illustrates these topics by personal example as well as by informed analysis. While more stress is placed upon the modern situation including the neo-Hindu and Hindutva movements, the Hindu past is not ignored. Village Hinduism as well as sophisticated and high Hinduism is addressed as well as the Hindu presence in Britain and the wider world.

1

Introduction

The aim of this book is to understand Hinduism or, more precisely, to try to understand Hinduism. The Hindu tradition is very elaborate and bewildering in its complexity. It is also rewarding and energising to engage with. It is one thing to describe Hinduism, it is another to understand Hinduism, yet that is my aim.

The Meaning of Hinduism

An initial task is to grapple with the word ‘Hinduism’. In some recent scholarship it has been said that ‘Hinduism’ is a comparatively new word, coined by westerners at the time of the Enlightenment, to denote a kind of monolithic entity. That is, according to some scholars, a meaningless abstraction that does not accord with reality. There is no such thing as ‘Hinduism’ or even ‘religion’ they say – these are empty words. This is given extreme form in Jonathan Z. Smith (1998) whose notion is that religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. There is an element of truth in this. However, it is significant that this postmodern and post-colonial debate is basically a western debate. Surely if the term is in question, it is the Hindus who should have the most say about who and what they are? I will emphasise the Hindu sense of the word, and the Hindu sense of themselves. Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1964), in his seminal book The Meaning and End of Religion, raised a different but allied point to the effect that the modern words for religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Daoism, Confucianism and so on, and indeed the word ‘religion’ itself, are unhelpful in that they make religions and religion into things that can be studied like ‘objects’. For Smith ‘religion’ is to do with persons in religious traditions under transcendence, not with ‘religions’ or ‘religion’ as abstract entities. Whilst agreeing with Smith to an extent, it is not clear that the term Hinduism can simply be dropped. It may be misleading but it is in fair measure accepted by Hindus themselves. However, there are alternatives to using the word Hinduism, as I will suggest later.

The term Hinduism is misleading if it suggests that Hinduism is one entity. Hinduism is broad and it contains a number of traditions. The term Hinduism also implies that there is a basic essence that is within all Hindus. This must be debated. The term also dwells upon Hinduism as a religion and whilst that is appropriate to a book in a series called Understanding Faith, Hinduism is a total way of life that includes religion as part of a total world-view. The term also assumes that there is a set of beliefs common to the whole of Hinduism and this is not the case.

There have also been attempts to keep the term ‘Hinduism’ but to apply it too widely. Hinduism is not coterminous with India nor are all Indians Hindus. The term Hindu appears to have originated in connection with the river Indus, in the north-west of India, which was an obvious invasion point into the subcontinent. Passages in the original Rig Veda (e.g. V.53.9) refer to the river Sindhu as early as about 1200 BCE. Later invaders such as Darius I of Persia, Alexander the Great and the Muslims considered the people by or on the other side of the river Indus to be ‘Hindus’ which amounted to Indians. There have been attempts by the Hindutva Movement in contemporary India to equate Hindus with Indians. Whilst Hinduism has had a profound effect upon other religions and groups in India, there were non-Hindu Buddhists, Jains and Christians in India when the Muslims invaded India and there are many groups in India today, including Sikhs, who are not Hindu. Indeed the Adivasi tribal peoples were in India before Hindus were in existence unless, that is, we call them ‘Hindus’ also. The Hindu way of life has had a strong influence upon wider India but that influence has not been total. Hinduism is now a global tradition present in other parts of the world. It transcends India. New modes of living and new forms of Hinduism are developing in different countries.

So I prefer the phrase ‘the Hindu tradition’ rather than Hinduism and I will use it believing that the Hindu tradition describes many strands and groups within its outstretched branches.

What is a Hindu?

Insofar as the Hindu tradition has no founder, no central authority to ordain what is orthodoxy, no set of creeds, a wide variety of sacred texts and no obvious ‘big bang’ at the beginning it is clear that generalisations about ‘what is a Hindu?’ can be fraught with problems.

At one end of the spectrum there is Dandekar’s suggestion that ‘a Hindu is one who is born of Hindu parents and who has not openly abjured Hinduism’ (Dandekar, 1979, p. 4). This is pragmatic but it is also slightly negative and takes no account of people who may become Hindus. Dandekar (1979, p. 7) further suggests that ultimately ‘a study of Hinduism would invariably amount to a study of the various Hindu castes and sects’. This makes reasonable sense in that caste has been important at the social level of relationships between people whilst religious traditions (Sampradāyas) have been important at the level of relationships between persons and the divine. However, debate about caste has been ongoing for centuries among Hindus, even more so now in Indian cities, universities and amongst Hindus abroad.

Another view of ‘what is a Hindu?’ relates to the authority of the Veda. According to J. L. Mehta (1984, p. 33), the original Veda has remained the ‘animating source of the religiousness that has generated and sustained the Hindu tradition’. However, there has been ongoing discussion about what is the Veda – is it the original Rig Veda? Is it the ‘wider Veda’ including the Upanishads? Should later sacred texts such as the Bhagavad Gītā be added to it? Moreover, how should the whole be interpreted?

Yet another view relates to concepts and to the idea that a Hindu is a person who holds certain implicit beliefs. These would normally include the concept of Brahman as ultimate reality, the notion of ātman as the real self of human beings, the notion of rebirth (samsāra) according to one’s actions (karma) and the notion of final release (moksha) from the round of rebirths as one’s ultimate destiny. However, not all Hindus accept these beliefs and they are subject to reinterpretation in the light of changing historical situations.

Other views as to what is a Hindu are less universal: for example, the idea that all Hindus are vegetarians and venerate the cow. Any complete view of the Hindu tradition can hardly ignore the fact that India has roughly a third of the world’s cattle on 3% of the world’s land area, that her cattle represent the largest concentration of domestic animals in the world, that her animal homes are ‘essentially religious institutions’ and that lying behind them are notions of cow veneration, avoidance of beef, non-violence to living creatures (ahimsa) and even ecological echoes (Lodrick, 1981, p. 198). This view is accepted sympathetically by many Hindus although it is also seen from different angles. Moreover, these differing viewpoints are not always compatible. Dandekar (1979, p. 8) states, ‘the true glory of Hinduism consists in presenting all these polarities and paradoxes as also the various levels of doctrine and practice as constituting a single well-coordinated religious system’. However, this is debatable and in the Hindu tradition there are many varied traditions in India and elsewhere.

A Model of the Hindu Tradition

The complexities within the Hindu tradition are legion. In order to give structure to this study, a model will be used to help the reader to make sense of the Hindu tradition. The model is universal: it can be used to study any religious tradition. The Hindu tradition, indeed all the major religious traditions, contains eight interlinked elements. The eight links are those of religious community; ritual; ethics; social and political involvement in wider society; scripture/sacred texts; concepts; aesthetics; and spirituality. Before examining them in depth, it is worth setting the background for all eight elements within the Hindu tradition.

The Hindus lacked a founder and this is one reason why there is no strong sense of a Hindu religious community. There is no ‘church’ and no ‘orthodoxy’. Instead there are many Sampradāyas (traditions) that focus upon different objects of worship including Shiva, the Goddess and Vishnu with his various avatāras (incarnations) notably Rāma and Krishna. Many Hindus belong to no religious community as such, and others owe their allegiance to local gurus often with small followings.

Ritual is accordingly varied and scattered. The main Hindu ‘sacraments’ (birth, initiation, marriage and death) generally centre upon the home as does daily worship (pūjā). Hindus can attend festivals associated with many different deities and they may visit many temples that are open for worship on a daily basis.

Hindu ethics encourage good actions and support the maxim of the Bhagavad Gītā that one should do one’s duty because it is right and without thought of reward (albeit mainly within the orbit of caste). The Hindu notion of dharma involves concern for nature as well as for human beings.

Social involvement for Hindus relies fairly heavily upon the question of caste. Hindus are involved in wider society, in the main, through their status in the caste system. Their status in the caste system is determined by their actions, good or bad, according to which they are reborn at the end of each earthly life. The caste system has provided social stability and security to Hindus. It has also raised questions that are now coming to the fore concerning the role of women and the role of the Dalits (former outcastes) in the total scheme of things. Because the caste system has provided security there has been less need for political power to rest fully in Hindu hands. Hindus have lived under Buddhist, Muslim and British rule and independent India is a secular state by constitution.

Hindu views of scripture are also flexible. In theory, the original Rig Veda is the fountainhead of sacred texts containing that which was heard (shruti) and revealed. However the Rig Veda, together with the other three Vedas and the Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads, is part of a wider corpus of scripture known collectively as the Veda. In practice the Upanishads are the key to the Veda. Furthermore, later sacred texts, such as the Bhagavad Gītā, that are not revealed but handed down and remembered (smriti) and are, in theory, subsidiary to the revealed Veda, are often more popular and more used than the Veda itself.

Some key Hindu concepts, although they may be differently interpreted, are: Brahman as ultimate reality; the ātman as the real inner self of human beings; human life as a round of rebirths (samsāra) according to one’s karma; and salvation (moksha) as release from the round of rebirths.

Every aesthetic approach known to humankind has been utilised by Hindus to represent the diversity of truth within the Hindu world-view. Throughout most of history the majority of people could not read and write, but they could enjoy architecture and sculpture, music and dance, painting and movement. By contrast with the ordered simplicity of a Muslim mosque or the soaring spire of a Christian church reaching up to transcendence, a Hindu temple mirrors Hindu aesthetics and the Hindu vision of life with its ornate structure, its many-crannied complexity, its different levels and its elaborate series of rooms and roofs.

Hindu spirituality is also very varied as can be seen in the yoga systems and in the Bhagavad Gītā with its ‘three ways’ (trimarga) of inward realisation through yoga, devotional trust in a personal deity and serving one’s fellows and God in the world unselfishly. There is wide variety within Hindu spirituality in its inward as well as its outward sense

When summarising the eight elements in this model it is helpful to realise that Hindu traditions; home worship and worship in Hindu temples; Hindu ethical codes; the caste system; the Veda and later scriptural traditions; Hindu concepts of Brahman, ātman and reincarnation; classical Hindu dance and music; and spiritual modes such as yoga are not a chaotic and separate jumble but are interlinked. They give meaning to each other in the developing organism that is the Hindu tradition. Different Hindus will participate in differing ways at different levels in differing elements. But the model is helpful in providing a framework of understanding what will be elaborated in the rest of this book

Behind the model, however, lies another element of great importance. That element is transcendence or transcendent reality. Insofar as it is transcendent, transcendent reality is less clear than the eight elements already proposed. The eight elements of the model are directly observable, transcendence is not. For Hindus transcendent reality is Brahman. However, Brahman is made clearer by means of mediating focuses that lie at the heart of the Hindu tradition. Not all Hindus have a sense of Brahman, some Hindus are atheists. Many Hindus do have a sense of Brahman as ultimate reality but often more immediately clear and available is one of many mediating focuses in the form of personal deities. Some of the main deities are Shiva, the Goddess in her various forms, Vishnu in his own right, and Vishnu in the form of avatāras (incarnations) such as Rāma and Krishna. I will consider Brahman and the whole panoply of Hindu deities later. One final ingredient is also important. It is difficult to pin down but it is vital: it is that quality and intention within persons and groups of persons that makes a pattern out of life, that responds to mediated reality, that breathes life into a tradition, and makes transcendence real. It is intangible and like transcendence it cannot be seen directly. For it is persons, or groups of persons, who respond to mediated reality and use the eight elements that form the Hindu tradition dynamically, otherwise these elements are lifeless forms. Persons and their intentions matter. Without their ‘intentionality’, or even ‘faithful intentionality’, or the ‘faith’ of Hindu men and women, there would be no Hindu tradition to study.

Hindu History

The model described is important in that it provides a structure with which sense may be made of the extraordinarily complex phenomenon that is the Hindu tradition. However, it needs to be complemented by an awareness of Hindu history. Without history the model is becalmed, without the model history lacks context.

It is quite difficult to reconstruct the history of the Hindu tradition. Hindus sometimes call their tradition the sanatana dharma, the eternal law. Within Hindu sacred texts very few historical events are mentioned. It is difficult to pin down whether or when the great Hindu heroes and deities, Rāma and Krishna, lived on earth. The considerable interest of Christians and Muslims in investigating the lives of the historical Jesus and Muhammad is something of a mystery to many Hindus. The classical Hindu views of history see it in terms of yugas or ages which repeat themselves in enormous cycles in a universe that has no beginning or end. The yugas last for vast periods of time and descend through the three golden, silver and copper ages to the final declining iron age (kali yuga). During kali yuga society reaches a stage where property confers rank; wealth becomes the only source of virtue; passion the sole bond of union between husband and wife; falsehood the source of success in life; sex the only means of enjoyment; a time when outer trappings are confused with inner religion. There are Hindus who for obvious reasons are tempted to apply this notion, taken from the Vishnu Purāna, to today. The Brahmā Kumaris, who began within the Hindu tradition but are now separate, have telescoped the four yugas, which last for aeons of time in classical Hinduism, into a total cycle of six thousand years divided into four ages of one thousand five hundred years each. According to the Brahmā Kumaris we are now reaching the end of a cycle and, after a cataclysmic set of events, the present cycle will end and a new golden age will immediately begin. So the foreshortened round of the ages will continue. This view is very untypical. In the light of the eternal view of Hindu historical cosmology it is perhaps not surprising that actual, mundane history has been relatively underplayed.

The paradoxical background to Hindu history is that most of the great empires in Indian history were not Hindu. There were a number of small Hindu kingdoms throughout Indian history but, with a few exceptions, the largest and best-known Indian empires were led by Buddhist, Muslim and British rulers. The great Mauryan emperor Ashoka ruled from 273 to 232 BCE and during his victorious reign he inclined to Buddhism. In the latter part of his reign he ruled equitably, set up a moral political economy, retreated from war, inaugurated helpful public works and worked for peace and security. He set out his memorable edicts on pillars and great rocks and built Stūpas for all to see. He did not establish a Buddhist kingdom but, through...