FREE ESSAY ON HINDUISM

HINDUISM

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 word Hindu is derived from the Sanskrit word sindhu (river-more
specifically, the Indus); the Persians in the 5th century BC called the Hindus by that
name, identifying them as the people of the land of the Indus. The Hindus define their
community as those who believe in the Vedas (see Veda) or those who follow the way
(dharma) of the four classes (varnas) and stages of life (ashramas).
Hinduism is a major world religion, not merely by virtue of its many followers (estimated
at more than 700 million) but also because of its profound influence on many other
religions during its long, unbroken history, which dates from about 1500 BC. 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 1300 and 1000 BC and consisting of
1028 hymns to a pantheon of gods, has been memorized syllable by syllable and preserved
orally to the present day. The Rig-Veda was supplemented by two other Vedas, the
Yajur-Veda (the textbook for sacrifice) and the Sama-Veda (the hymnal). A fourth book,
the Atharva-Veda (a collection of magic spells), was probably added about 900 BC. At this
time, too, the Brahmanas-lengthy Sanskrit texts expounding priestly ritual and the myths
behind it-were composed. Beginning about 600 BC, the Upanishads were composed; these are
mystical-philosophical meditations on the meaning of existence and the nature of the
universe.
The Vedas, including the Brahmanas and the Upanishads, are regarded as revealed canon
(shruti, what has been heard [from the gods]), and no syllable can be changed. The actual
content of this canon, however, is unknown to most Hindus. The practical compendium of
Hinduism is contained in the Smriti, or what is remembered, which is also orally
preserved. 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 200,000 lines long) constitutes a kind of encyclopedia or
even a literature, and the Ramayana (more than 50,000 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 300 BC and AD 300. 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. In addition, they all contain a great deal of
nonsectarian material, probably of earlier origin, such as the five marks, or topics
(panchalakshana), of the Puranas: the creation of the universe, the destruction and
re-creation of the universe, the dynasties of the solar and lunar gods, the genealogy of
the gods and holy sages, and the ages of the founding fathers of humankind (the Manus).
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. This condition of endless
entanglement in activity and rebirth is called samsara (see Transmigration). The precise
quality of the new birth is determined by the accumulated merit and demerit that result
from all the actions, or karma, that the soul has committed in its past life or lives.
All Hindus believe that karma accrues in this way; they also believe, however, that it
can be counteracted by expiations and rituals, by working out through punishment or
reward, and by achieving release (moksha) from the entire process of samsara through the
renunciation of all worldly desires.
Hindus may thus be divided into two groups: those who seek the sacred and profane rewards
of this world (health, wealth, children, and a good rebirth), and those who seek release
from the world. The principles of the first way of life were drawn from the Vedas and are
represented today in temple Hinduism and in the religion of Brahmans and the caste
system. The second way, which is prescribed in the Upanishads, is represented not only in
the cults of renunciation (sannyasa) but also in the ideological ideals of most Hindus.
The worldly aspect of Hinduism originally had three Vedas, three classes of society
(varnas), three stages of life (ashramas), and three goals of a man (purusharthas), the
goals or needs of women being seldom discussed in the ancient texts. To the first three
Vedas was added the Atharva-Veda. The first three classes (Brahman, or priestly;
Kshatriya, or warrior; and Vaishya, or general populace) were derived from the tripartite
division of ancient Indo-European society, traces of which can be detected in certain
social and religious institutions of ancient Greece and Rome. To the three classes were
added the Shudras, or servants, after the Indo-Aryans settled into the Punjab and began
to move down into the Ganges Valley. The three original ashramas were the chaste student
(brahmachari), the householder (grihastha), and the forest-dweller (vanaprastha). They
were said to owe three debts: study of the Vedas (owed to the sages); a son (to the
ancestors); and sacrifice (to the gods). The three goals were artha (material success),
dharma (righteous social behavior), and kama (sensual pleasures). Shortly after the
composition of the first Upanishads, during the rise of Buddhism (6th century BC), a
fourth ashrama and a corresponding fourth goal were added: the renouncer (sannyasi),
whose goal is release (moksha) from the other stages, goals, and debts.
Each of these two ways of being Hindu developed its own complementary metaphysical and
social systems. The caste system and its supporting philosophy of svadharma (one's own
dharma) developed within the worldly way. Svadharma comprises the beliefs that each
person is born to perform a specific job, marry a specific person, eat certain food, and
beget children to do likewise and that it is better to fulfill one's own dharma than that
of anyone else (even if one's own is low or reprehensible, such as that of the Harijan
caste, the Untouchables, whose mere presence was once considered polluting to other
castes). The primary goal of the worldly Hindu is to produce and raise a son who will
make offerings to the ancestors (the shraddha ceremony). The second, renunciatory way of
Hinduism, on the other hand, is based on the Upanishadic philosophy of the unity of the
individual soul, or atman, with Brahman, the universal world soul, or godhead. The full
realization of this is believed to be sufficient to release the worshiper from rebirth;
in this view, nothing could be more detrimental to salvation than the birth of a child.
Many of the goals and ideals of renunciatory Hinduism have been incorporated into worldly
Hinduism, particularly the eternal dharma (sanatana dharma), an absolute and general
ethical code that purports to transcend and embrace all subsidiary, relative, specific
dharmas. The most important tenet of sanatana dharma for all Hindus is ahimsa, the
absence of a desire to injure, which is used to justify vegetarianism (although it does
not preclude physical violence toward animals or humans, or blood sacrifices in
temples).
In addition to sanatana dharma, numerous attempts have been made to reconcile the two
Hinduisms. The Bhagavad-Gita describes three paths to religious realization. To the path
of works, or karma (here designating sacrificial and ritual acts), and the path of
knowledge, or jnana (the Upanishadic meditation on the godhead), was added a mediating
third path, the passionate devotion to God, or bhakti, a religious ideal that came to
combine and transcend the other two paths. Bhakti in a general form can be traced in the
epics and even in some of the Upanishads, but its fullest statement appears only after
the Bhagavad-Gita. It gained momentum from the vernacular poems and songs to local
deities, particularly those of the Alvars, Nayanars, and Virashaivas of southern India
and the Bengali worshipers of Krishna (see below).
In this way Hindus have been able to reconcile their Vedantic monism (see Vedanta) with
their Vedic polytheism: All the individual Hindu gods (who are said to be saguna, with
attributes) are subsumed under the godhead (nirguna, without attributes), from which they
all emanate. Therefore, most Hindus are devoted (through bhakti) to gods whom they
worship in rituals (through karma) and whom they understand (through jnana) as aspects of
ultimate reality, the material reflection of which is all an illusion (maya) wrought by
God in a spirit of play (lila).
Gods 
Although all Hindus acknowledge the existence and importance of a number of gods and
demigods, most individual worshipers are primarily devoted to a single god or goddess, of
whom Shiva, Vishnu, and the Goddess are the most popular.
Shiva embodies the apparently contradictory aspects of a god of ascetics and a god of the
phallus. He is the deity of renouncers, particularly of the many Shaiva sects that
imitate him: Kapalikas, who carry skulls to reenact the myth in which Shiva beheaded his
father, the incestuous Brahma, and was condemned to carry the skull until he found
release in Benares; Pashupatas, worshipers of Shiva Pashupati, Lord of Beasts; and
Aghoris, to whom nothing is horrible, yogis who eat ordure or flesh in order to
demonstrate their complete indifference to pleasure or pain. Shiva is also the deity
whose phallus (linga) is the central shrine of all Shaiva temples and the personal shrine
of all Shaiva householders; his priapism is said to have resulted in his castration and
the subsequent worship of his severed member. In addition, Shiva is said to have appeared
on earth in various human, animal, and vegetable forms, establishing his many local
shrines.
To his worshipers, Vishnu is all-pervasive and supreme; he is the god from whose navel a
lotus sprang, giving birth to the creator (Brahma). Vishnu created the universe by
separating heaven and earth, and he rescued it on a number of subsequent occasions. He is
also worshiped in the form of a number of descents-avatars (see Avatar), or, roughly,
incarnations. Several of these are animals that recur in iconography: the fish, the
tortoise, and the boar. Others are the dwarf (Vamana, who became a giant in order to
trick the demon Bali out of the entire universe); the man-lion (Narasimha, who
disemboweled the demon Hiranyakashipu); the Buddha (who became incarnate in order to
teach a false doctrine to the pious demons); Rama-with-an-Axe (Parashurama, who beheaded
his unchaste mother and destroyed the entire class of Kshatriyas to avenge his father);
and Kalki (the rider on the white horse, who will come to destroy the universe at the end
of the age of Kali). Most popular by far are Rama (hero of the Ramayana) and Krishna
(hero of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata-Purana), both of whom are said to be avatars
of Vishnu, although they were originally human heroes.
Along with these two great male gods, several goddesses are the object of primary
devotion. They are sometimes said to be various aspects of the Goddess, Devi. In some
myths Devi is the prime mover, who commands the male gods to do the work of creation and
destruction. As Durga, the Unapproachable, she kills the buffalo demon Mahisha in a great
battle; as Kali, the Black, she dances in a mad frenzy on the corpses of those she has
slain and eaten, adorned with the still-dripping skulls and severed hands of her victims.
The Goddess is also worshiped by the Shaktas, devotees of Shakti, the female power. This
sect arose in the medieval period along with the Tantrists, whose esoteric ceremonies
involved a black mass in which such forbidden substances as meat, fish, and wine were
eaten and forbidden sexual acts were performed ritually. In many Tantric cults the
Goddess is identified as Krishna's consort Radha.
More peaceful manifestations of the Goddess are seen in wives of the great gods: Lakshmi,
the meek, docile wife of Vishnu and a fertility goddess in her own right; and Parvati,
the wife of Shiva and the daughter of the Himalayas. The great river goddess Ganga (the
Ganges), also worshiped alone, is said to be a wife of Shiva; a goddess of music and
literature, Sarasvati, associated with the Saraswati River, is the wife of Brahma. Many
of the local goddesses of India-Manasha, the goddess of snakes, in Bengal, and Minakshi
in Madurai-are married to Hindu gods, while others, such as Shitala, goddess of smallpox,
are worshiped alone. These unmarried goddesses are feared for their untamed powers and
angry, unpredictable outbursts.
Many minor gods are assimilated into the central pantheon by being identified with the
great gods or with their children and friends. Hanuman, the monkey god, appears in the
Ramayana as the cunning assistant of Rama in the siege of Lanka. Skanda, the general of
the army of the gods, is the son of Shiva and Parvati, as is Ganesha, the elephant-headed
god of scribes and merchants, the remover of obstacles, and the object of worship at the
beginning of any important enterprise.
Worship and Ritual 
The great and lesser Hindu gods are worshiped in a number of concentric circles of public
and private devotion. Because of the social basis of Hinduism, the most fundamental
ceremonies for every Hindu are those that involve the rites of passage (samskaras). These
begin with birth and the first time the child eats solid food (rice). Later rites include
the first haircutting (for a young boy) and the purification after the first menstruation
(for a girl); marriage; and the blessings upon a pregnancy, to produce a male child and
to ensure a successful delivery and the child's survival of the first six dangerous days
after birth (the concern of Shashti, goddess of Six). Last are the funeral ceremonies
(cremation and, if possible, the sprinkling of ashes in a holy river such as the Ganges)
and the yearly offerings to dead ancestors. The most notable of the latter is the pinda,
a ball of rice and sesame seeds given by the eldest male child so that the ghost of his
father may pass from limbo into rebirth. In daily ritual, a Hindu (generally the wife,
who is thought to have more power to intercede with the gods) makes offerings (puja) of
fruit or flowers before a small shrine in the house. She also makes offerings to local
snakes or trees or obscure spirits (benevolent and malevolent) dwelling in her own garden
or at crossroads or other magical places in the village.
Many villages, and all sizable towns, have temples where priests perform ceremonies
throughout the day: sunrise prayers and noises to awaken the god within the holy of
holies (the garbagriha, or womb-house); bathing, clothing, and fanning the god; feeding
the god and distributing the remains of the food (prasada) to worshipers. The temple is
also a cultural center where songs are sung, holy texts read aloud (in Sanskrit and
vernaculars), and sunset rituals performed; devout laity may be present at most of these
ceremonies. In many temples, particularly those sacred to goddesses (such as the Kalighat
temple to Kali, in Calcutta), goats are sacrificed on special occasions. The sacrifice is
often carried out by a special low-caste priest outside the bounds of the temple itself.
Thousands of simple local temples exist; each may be nothing more than a small stone box
enclosing a formless effigy swathed in cloth, or a slightly more imposing edifice with a
small tank in which to bathe. In addition, India has many temples of great size as well
as complex temple cities, some hewn out of caves (such as Elephanta and Ellora), some
formed of great monolithic slabs (such as those at Mahabalipuram), and some built of
imported and elaborately carved stone slabs (such as the temples at Khajuraho,
Bhubaneswar, Madurai, and Kanjeevaram). On special days, usually once a year, the image
of the god is taken from its central shrine and paraded around the temple complex on a
magnificently carved wooden chariot (ratha).
Many holy places or shrines (tirthas, literally fords), such as Rishikesh in the
Himalayas or Benares on the Ganges, are the objects of pilgrimages from all over India;
others are essentially local shrines. Certain shrines are most frequently visited at
special yearly festivals. For example, Prayaga, where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers join
at Allahabad, is always sacred, but it is crowded with pilgrims during the Kumbha Mela
festival each January and overwhelmed by the millions who come to the special ceremony
held every 12 years. In Bengal, the goddess Durga's visit to her family and return to her
husband Shiva are celebrated every year at Durgapuja, when images of the goddess are
created out of papier-mache, worshiped for ten days, and then cast into the Ganges in a
dramatic midnight ceremony ringing with drums and glowing with candles. Some festivals
are celebrated throughout India: Divali, the festival of lights in early winter; and
Holi, the spring carnival, when members of all castes mingle and let down their hair,
sprinkling one another with cascades of red powder and liquid, symbolic of the blood that
was probably used in past centuries.
History 
The basic beliefs and practices of Hinduism cannot be understood outside their historical
context. Although the early texts and events are impossible to date with precision, the
general chronological development is clear.
Vedic Civilization 
About 2000 BC, a highly developed civilization flourished in the Indus Valley, around the
sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. By about 1500 BC, when the Indo-Aryan tribes invaded
India, this civilization was in a serious decline. It is therefore impossible to know, on
present evidence, whether or not the two civilizations had any significant contact. Many
elements of Hinduism that were not present in Vedic civilization (such as worship of the
phallus and of goddesses, bathing in temple tanks, and the postures of yoga) may have
been derived from the Indus civilization, however. See Indus Valley Civilization.
By about 1500 BC, the Indo-Aryans had settled in the Punjab, bringing with them their
predominantly male Indo-European pantheon of gods and a simple warrior ethic that was
vigorous and worldly, yet also profoundly religious. Gods of the Vedic pantheon survive
in later Hinduism, but no longer as objects of worship: Indra, king of the gods and god
of the storm and of fertility; Agni, god of fire; and Soma, god of the sacred,
intoxicating Soma plant and the drink made from it. By 900 BC the use of iron allowed the
Indo-Aryans to move down into the lush Ganges Valley, where they developed a far more
elaborate civilization and social system. By the 6th century BC, Buddhism had begun to
make its mark on India and what was to be more than a millennium of fruitful interaction
with Hinduism.
Classical Hindu Civilization 
From about 200 BC to AD 500 India was invaded by many northern powers, of which the Sakas
(Scythians) and Kushanas had the greatest impact. This was a time of great flux, growth,
syncretism, and definition for Hinduism and is the period in which the epics, the
Dharmashastras, and the Dharmasutras took final form. Under the Gupta Empire (320-480?),
when most of northern India was under a single power, classical Hinduism found its most
consistent expression: the sacred laws were codified, the great temples began to be
built, and myths and rituals were preserved in the Puranas.
Rise of Devotional Movements 
In the post-Gupta period, a less rigid and more eclectic form of Hinduism emerged, with
more dissident sects and vernacular movements. At this time, too, the great devotional
movements arose. Many of the sects that emerged during the period from 800 to 1800 are
still active in India today.
Most of the bhakti movements are said to have been founded by saints-the gurus by whom
the tradition has been handed down in unbroken lineage, from guru to disciple (chela).
This lineage, in addition to a written canon, is the basis for the authority of the
bhakti sect. Other traditions are based on the teachings of such philosophers as Shankara
and Ramanuja. Shankara was the exponent of pure monism, or nondualism (Advaita Vedanta),
and of the doctrine that all that appears to be real is merely illusion. Ramanuja
espoused the philosophy of qualified nondualism (Vishishta-Advaita), an attempt to
reconcile belief in a godhead without attributes (nirguna) with devotion to a god with
attributes (saguna), and to solve the paradox of loving a god with whom one is
identical.
The philosophies of Shankara and Ramanuja were developed in the context of the six great
classical philosophies (darshanas) of India: the Karma Mimamsa (action investigation);
the Vedanta (end of the Vedas), in which tradition the work of Shankara and Ramanuja
should be placed; the Sankhya system, which describes the opposition between an inert
male spiritual principle (purusha) and an active female principle of matter or nature
(prakriti), subdivided into the three qualities (gunas) of goodness (sattva), passion
(rajas), and darkness (tamas); the Yoga system; and the highly metaphysical systems of
Vaisheshika (a kind of atomic realism) and Nyaya (logic, but of an extremely theistic
nature).
Medieval Hinduism 
Parallel with these complex Sanskrit philosophical investigations, vernacular songs were
composed, transmitted orally, and preserved locally throughout India. They were composed
during the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries in Tamil and Kannada by the Alvars, Nayanars, and
Virashaivas and during the 15th century by the Rajasthani poet Mira Bai, in the Braj
dialect. In the 16th century in Bengal, Chaitanya founded a sect of erotic mysticism,
celebrating the union of Krishna and Radha in a Tantric theology heavily influenced by
Tantric Buddhism. Chaitanya believed that both Krishna and Radha were incarnate within
him, and he believed that the village of Vrindaban, where Krishna grew up, had become
manifest once again in Bengal. The school of the Gosvamins, who were disciples of
Chaitanya, developed an elegant theology of aesthetic participation in the ritual
enactment of Krishna's life.
These ritual dramas also developed around the village of Vrindaban itself during the 16th
century, and they were celebrated by Hindi poets. The first great Hindi mystic poet was
Kabir, who was said to be the child of a Muslim and was strongly influenced by Islam,
particularly by Sufism. His poems challenge the canonical dogmas of both Hinduism and
Islam, praising Rama and promising salvation by the chanting of the holy name of Rama. He
was followed by Tulsi Das, who wrote a beloved Hindi version of the Ramayana. A
contemporary of Tulsi Das was Surdas, whose poems on Krishna's life in Vrindaban formed
the basis of the ras lilas, local dramatizations of myths of the childhood of Krishna,
which still play an important part in the worship of Krishna in northern India.
19th and 20th Centuries 
In the 19th century, important reforms took place under the auspices of Ramakrishna,
Vivekananda, and the sects of the Arya Samaj and the Brahmo Samaj. These movements
attempted to reconcile traditional Hinduism with the social reforms and political ideals
of the day. So, too, the nationalist leaders Sri Aurobindo Ghose and Mohandas Gandhi
attempted to draw from Hinduism those elements that would best serve their political and
social aims. Gandhi, for example, used his own brand of ahimsa, transformed into passive
resistance, to obtain reforms for the Untouchables and to remove the British from India.
Similarly, Bhimrau Ramji Ambedkar revived the myth of the Brahmans who fell from their
caste and the tradition that Buddhism and Hinduism were once one, in order to enable
Untouchables to gain self-respect by reconverting to Buddhism.
In more recent times, numerous self-proclaimed Indian religious teachers have migrated to
Europe and the United States, where they have inspired large followings. Some, such as
the Hare Krishna sect founded by Bhaktivedanta, claim to base themselves on classical
Hindu practices. In India, Hinduism thrives despite numerous reforms and shortcuts
necessitated by the gradual modernization and urbanization of Indian life. The myths
endure in the Hindi cinema, and the rituals survive not only in the temples but also in
the rites of passage. Thus, Hinduism, which sustained India through centuries of foreign
occupation and internal disruption, continues to serve a vital function by giving
passionate meaning and supportive form to the lives of Hindus today.