The name used in the West to designate the traditional socioreligious structure of the Indian people. Those Indians who are not followers of the distinct teachings of Islam, Jainism, or Sikhism are generally referred to as “Hindus.” In India this religious complex is called sanātana-dharma, “the eternal religion,” because it incorporated for centuries all aspects of truth. As a religion based on mythology, it has neither a founder (as do Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity) nor a fixed canon. Myriad local cults and traditions of worship or belief can be distinguished. Common to all Hindus, however, is the teaching of the law of karma.
Ever since the penetration of the Indo-Aryan peoples into India and their subsequent introduction of the Vedic period, seers, saints, and avatāras have discovered spiritual truths that were first laid down in the shrutis and still represent the foundation and substance of Hindu life. The Indo-Aryans who came upon the Dravidian cultures of South India were receptive to their religious teachings, which in turn permeated the teachings of sanātana-dharma. The latter system, ever open to new insights, has thus maintained its living power in an unbroken line to the present day. Because the Indian mind was directed from the outset toward eternity, no significance was given to the temporal sequence of events and discoveries. For this reason, the historical dates given in Hindu accounts for saints, philosophers, schools, and so forth often diverge by as much as centuries. Nevertheless, a certain chronology can be determined in broad strokes.
The Vedas and Upanishads were followed by other sacred texts, although these no longer belonged to the category of shruti (revelatory scripture). Of these texts, the Itihāsas, the most prominent are the two great epics, the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata. The latter contains the Bhagavad-Gītā; one of the most sacred texts in Hinduism, it is known to every Indian and is often consigned to memory.
The Itihāsas, more historical in character than the earlier texts, were followed by the Purānas, whose vivid sagas and legends chiefly served to make the abstract teachings of the Vedas and Upanishads accessible to the people of later periods, most of whom were no longer able to understand the earlier works. The Purānas thus became the chief texts of Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Brahmanism.
Next in importance for the religious and spiritual development of Indian thought is Tantrism. This teaching focuses primarily on the study of divine energy, which if rightly used can be of great help to aspirants on the path to illumination, but if misused can be highly dangerous.
The six philosophical doctrines, or darshanas, were not fixed in writing until a relatively late date, but their origins are evident in Vedic times. In particular, the perceptions of Vedānta, regarded by Western scholars as the apex of Indian philosophy, can be traced through the entire history of Indian thought from the Rigveda down to the reform movements of the past two centuries.
The six darshanas are collectively characterized as orthodox (āstika), because they acknowledge the authority of the Vedas. Yet alongside these there arose from early times teachings and schools that did not acknowledge the Vedas’ authority and that are therefore known as nāstika (unorthodox). Of these, the most important are Jainism and Buddhism. For Hindus, the Buddha is not only a Hindu but an avātara, an incarnation of divine consciousness on earth, in particular the ninth of the traditional ten avatāras. (The tenth has not yet appeared; see Kalki.)
The most significant present-day Indian devotional movements are Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Shaktism; Brahmanism, to use a term frequently employed in the West in connection with India, plays no more than a minor role in Hinduism in the sense of a following devoted to the worship of Brahmā.
The influences of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Jainism, and the Parsis were not without importance and contributed considerably to the gradual spread of Hinduism. A text as early as the Rigveda contains the fundamental statement “Ekam sat vipra bahudhā vadanti” (“Truth is one, many are its names”). The modern-day mystic Rāmakrishna bore witness to truth as he practiced the various paths of individual religions in the course of his life and in each attained the same enlightenment.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
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