The purpose of this page is to provide
useful information about the world's oldest religion. Hinduism's traditions have been
preserved continuously since ancient times to the present day despite the tyranny of her
invaders. This site catalogs thoughts of world-renowned intellectuals regarding Hinduism,
recommends books for further reading, and provides useful links for further research.
This page was established to inspire Hindus worldwide, to create a
sense of pride, and to give pleasure regarding Hindu heritage. Hindus can take pride in
the fact that India has never invaded any country in the last thousand years of history.
This site is also meant to educate, enlighten, and create awareness of the rich canvass of
religious traditions of Hinduism. It is hoped that it will help to remove some of the
common misconceptions and misinterpretations surrounding rituals and worship found in
popular media.
"Lead me from the unreal to the
real.
Lead me from the darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality."
- an invocation from the Upanishads
Introduction
Hinduism is among the oldest of the world's
faiths. Its traditions extend back before recorded history. Despite, the fact that
it first evolved more than 5,000 years ago, Hinduism (Santana Dharma) is also very much a
living tradition. As such, Hindus are arguably the most intensely religious people on the
earth.
For thousands of years India has been a veritable laboratory of
religion: everything imaginable has been tried out, and nothing ever has completely been
rejected. Despite of many attacks on Hinduism by varied invaders, and malicious spread of
rumors of decay and disarray, Hinduism has outlived all announcements of its impending
demise.
History of Hinduism
Hinduism remains a vibrant, cultural and
religious force in the world today. To understand Hinduism, it is necessary that we
examine its history and marvel at its sheer stamina to survive in spite of repeated
attacks across India's borders, time and again, by Greeks, Shaks, Huns, Arabs, Pathans,
Mongols, Portuguese, etc.
India gave shelter, acceptance, and freedom to all. But, in holy
frenzy, millions of Hindus were slaughtered or proselytized. Their cities were pillaged
and burnt, temples were destroyed, and accumulated treasures of centuries carried
off. Even under grievous persecutions from the ruling foreigners, the basics of its
civilization remained undefiled and, as soon as the crises were over, Hindus returned to
the same old ways of searching for the perfection or the unknown.
India and Greece
Indian civilization is distinctive for its
antiquity and continuity. Apart from its own vitality, the continuity of Indian
civilization is largely due to its ability to adapt to alien ideas, harmonize
contradictions and mould new thought patterns. Her constant contacts with the outside
world also gave India the opportunity to contribute to other civilizations. Whilst other
ancient civilizations have long ceased to exist, Indian civilization has continued to grow
despite revolutionary changes. Jawaharlal
Nehru says in his book The Discovery of India, " Till recently many European
thinkers imagined that everything that was worthwhile had its origins in Greece or Rome.
Sir Henry Maine has said somewhere that except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves
in this world which is not originally Greek." However,
Indian contacts with the Western world date back to prehistoric times. Trade relations,
preceded by the migration of peoples, inevitably developed into cultural relations. This
view is not only amply supported by both philological and archaeological evidence, but by
a vast body of corroborative literary evidence as well: Vedic literature and the Jatakas,
Jewish chronicles, and the accounts of Greek historians all suggest contact between India
and Greece.
Alexander's raid, which was so significant
to Western historians, seemed to have entirely escaped the attention of Sanskrit authors.
From the Indian point of view, there was nothing to distinguish his raid in Indian
history. Jawaharlal Nehru says, " From a military point of view his invasion, was a
minor affair. It was more of a raid across the border, and not a very successful raid at
that."
First Indologists
Motivated western scholarship in India's
religious, cultural and historical spheres has a checkered history. The pioneers in this
field have been western Christian missionaries. Pope Honorius IV (1286-87 A.D.) who first
encouraged the study of oriental languages as an aid to missionary work. Soon after, the
Ecumenical Council of Vienna (1311-12 A.D.) decided that "the Holy Church should have
an abundant number of Catholics well versed in the languages, especially in those of the
infidels, so as to be able to instruct them in the sacred doctrine."
The first Westerners to investigate the
Vedic literatures were the British in the last half of the eighteenth century. It was the
British Sanskritists and educators in India, during the 1700 and 1800's, who first
portrayed Vedic literature and culture as something barbaric, inferior, and recent. This
cultural prejudice was the result of deliberate undermining with the disguised intention
of asserting the superiority of their own Christian-based values and outlook, as well as
the perpetuation of colonial rule. And many of the notable professors at the time had the
audacity to consider themselves to be better authorities on their questionable
translations of the Vedas then the Indian scholars. However, soon, "the company
manifested a laudable zeal for extending, as far as its means went, the knowledge of the
Gospel to the pagan tribes among whom its factories were placed"
Aryan Invasion Theory
Since the nineteenth century, India's ancient
history from Vedic times and the true content of the Veda have both been distorted by a
blinkered and unsympathetic scholarship. British rulers, European scholars and
missionaries joined in a campaign to disparage the roots of Indian civilization, and using
the wholly groundless Aryan Invasion theory to sow seeds of division in the Indian society
- "divide and rule," but also "divide and convert." The same fallacies
continue to be promoted today. Unfortunately, many of the wounds the Aryan invasion theory
inflicted on Indian society are still painfully open today, nurtured as they have been by
missionaries, Marxist historians and politicians, who together have made sure that
divisions between castes have been sharpening rather than subsiding - for the simple
reason that without such divisions, they would all be out of business. Today, it is
necessary to examine the birth of the Aryan myth and the misuses it has bred; the chapter
takes a fresh look at the invasion theory in the light of recent scientific evidence, and
shows how it now stands overwhelmingly disproved.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, famous for his work on the Indian Constitution, as well as his campaign
in support of the Harijans, studied the Vedas. His conclusions are unequivocal, though are
largely ignored. He said:
" The theory of invasion is an invention. This invention is necessary because of a
gratuitous assumption that the Indo-Germanic people are the purest of the modern
representation of the original Aryan race. The theory is perversion of scientific
investigation. It is not allowed to evolve out of facts. On the contrary, the theory is
preconceived, and facts are selected to prove it. It falls to the ground at every
point. The Vedas do not know of any such race as the Aryan race."
Dwaraka
Hindu Epics such as Mahabharata have
often been described as myths. Dwaraka was submerged by the sea right after the death of
Lord Krishna. This was regarded as a grandiose metaphor, part of a story filled with great
myths. In the early eighties, an important archaeological site was found at Dwaraka,
India, the site of the legendary city of Lord Krishna. Now, it is discovered that
the whole coast of western India sank by nearly 40 feet around 1500 B.C. E.
Why is that the rediscovery of Dwaraka has
not attracted the same degree of attention in the West, as that of ancient Troy by
Heinrich Schliemann? Here is a report about the latest excavations done by Dr. S. R. Rao
of the Marine Archaeology Unit of the National Institute of Oceanography of India.
Following this report are a few articles.
Hinduism's influence on World Religions
From the beginning of her history, India
has adored and idealized, not soldiers and statesmen, not men of science and leaders of
industry, not even poets and philosophers, who influence the world by their deeds or by
their words, but those rarer and more chastened spirits, whose greatness lies in what they
are and not in what they do; men who have stamped infinity on the thought and life of the
country. India, which is, in a sense, representation of the Asiatic consciousness, has
never been isolated from the Western continent in spite of geographical, linguistic, and
racial barriers. A large part of the world received its religious education from India.
Jules Michelet, (1789-1874), French writer, the greatest historian of the romantic school,
affirms this: " Follow the migration of mankind from East to West along the sun's
course and along the track of the world's magnetic currents; observe its long voyage from
Asia to Europe, from India to France.....At its starting point in India, the birthplace of
races and religions, the womb of the world...."
Hindu Cosmology
In India science and religion are not
opposed fundamentally, as they often seem to be in the West, but are seen as parts of the
same great search for truth and enlightenment that inspired the sages of Hinduism,
Buddhism, and Jainism. Thus, in the Hindu scientific approach, understanding of external
reality depends on also understanding the godhead. In all Hindu traditions the Universe is
said to precede not only humanity but also the gods. Fundamental to Hindu concepts of time
and space is the notion that the external world is a product of the creative play of maya
(illusion). Unlike the West, which lives in a historical world, India is rooted in a
timeless universe of eternal return: everything which happens has already done so many
times before, though in different guises. Hinduism arose from the discoveries of
people who felt that they had gained an insight into the nature of reality through deep
meditation and ascetic practices. Science uses a heuristic method that requires objective
proof of mathematical theories. Yet both have proposed similar scenarios for the creation
of the universe. Here is a look at Creation, Maya, Churning of Milky Ocean, Shiva's Cosmic
Dance, Serpent of Infinity and a few articles on Hindu Cosmology.
Hindu Culture
India is the world's most ancient
civilization. Nowhere on earth can you find such a rich and multi-layered tradition that
has remained unbroken and largely unchanged for at least five thousand years. Bowing low
before the onslaught of armies, and elements, India has survived every invasion, every
natural disaster, every mortal disease and epidemic, the double helix of her genetic code
transmitting its unmistakable imprint down five millennia to no less than a billion modern
bearers. Indians have demonstrated greater cultural stamina than any other people on
earth.
Indic civilization has enriched every art
and science known to man. Thanks to India, we reckon from zero to ten with misnamed
"Arabic" numerals and use a decimal system without which our modern computer age
would hardly have been possible. Science and philosophy were both highly developed
disciplines in ancient India. Yet the traditions persists that any early scientific
contribution came solely from the West, Greece in particular.
"Many of the advances in the sciences
that we consider today to have been made in Europe were in fact made in India centuries
ago." - Grant Duff British Historian of India.
India on Pacific Waves?
History is full of misnomers; one such term
is the New World, as applied to the Americas. The landing of Columbus in 1492 undoubtedly
created a new life on the continents, but it neither created nor discovered a new world.
Many centuries ago Asian migrants had come to the western shore in substantial numbers.
What if the popular idea that Tibetans and American Indians have
much in common in terms of their spiritual culture is largely a result of another
historical scenario?
What if Hindus and Hopis, Advantins and Aztecs, Tibetan Monks and
Mayans were part of one world culture - a spiritual one?
Articles
Included here is a a wide selection of
Articles relating to various aspects of Hinduism. Caste system, Mother Goddess, and
Ayurveda are some of the topics covered on this page. Authors include Diane
Eck, Joseph Campbell, Shripathy Sastry, Mark Tully, Alain Danielou, Swami B. V. Tripurari,Jon
Spayde, Hugh and Colleen Ganter, Manoj Das,V.
Sundaran, Rajesh Kumar, Peter Berresford Ellis, David Frawley, Rajeev
Srinivasan, Sandeep Silas
and Satbir Silas,S
Gopikrishna,Parmarthi Raina, Pradeep Krishnanand
others.
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (meaning
"cultured or refined"), the classical language of Hinduism, is the oldest and
the most systematic language in the world. Sir William Jones observed as long ago
as 1784, " The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful
structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely
refined than either."
Sanskrit was considered as "Dev Bhasha" or "
Devavani" or language of the Gods by the ancient Indians. It is made up of the
primordial sounds and is developed systematically to include the natural progressions of
sounds as created in the human mouth. Sanskrit is a language amazingly rich, efflorescent,
full of luxuriant growth of all kinds, and yet precise and strictly keeping within the
framework of grammar which Panini laid down two thousand years ago. It spread out, grew in
richness, became fuller and more ornate, but always it stuck to its original roots.
Vimanas
Vedic literature of India contains many descriptions of
flying machines that are generally called vimanas.
India's national epic, The Mahabharata, is a poem of vast length and complexity. There
are no physical remains of ancient Indian aircraft technology but references to ancient
flying machines are commonplace in the ancient Indian texts. Several popular ancient
epics describe their use in warfare. Depending on one's point of view,
either it contains some of the earliest known science fiction, or it records conflict
between beings with weapons as powerful and advanced as anything used today.
Advanced Concepts in Hinduism
The Vedas have guided Indian civilization
for thousands of years. They are the pillars of Hinduism. "Veda is the source of all
Dharma" declares Manusmirti (2.6.) There is no major religion on the planet, which
has not been influenced by the Vedas. The creation stories of all major religions are
based on Vedas. Though all other religions have forgotten their Vedic root or have been
forgotten, there is one religion, Hinduism, that has kept the flame of the Vedic wisdom
burning continuously. Vedas which means ' knowledge' contain a good deal of scientific
knowledge that was lost over millennia, which needs to be recovered. The Vedic sages had
discovered the subtle nature of reality, and had coded it in the form of the Vedas.
According to Raja Ram Mohan Roy, author of
Vedic Physics, "The knowledge contained in the Vedas is very abstruse, and is
well beyond the comprehension of ordinary human beings. Therefore Vedic sages coded the
knowledge in a simple form in which it could be understood by everyone.
Politics of Conversion
Hinduism and India have been under attack for thousands of
years. First it was Islam, then
came Christianity that have created havoc to the fabric of Hindu society. Swami
Vivekananda and Gandhi both opposed it.
Swami Vivekananda has given the
most heart-rending accounts of the calumnies that Christian missionaries spread about
Hinduism and about India. Common evangelistic themes are "Hindus need to be saved
from spiritual darkness," " church plantings, rich harvest of converts, idol
worshippers and a land of unreached people." The missionary zeal has been to convert
Hindus by giving the most lurid accounts in the West to raise money for financing their
activities. According to Arun Shourie book, "Missionaries in India" it costs
$145 billion a year to operate global Christianity
Mahatma
Gandhi called Christian missionaries, "Vendors of Goods". He said " In
Hindu households, the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family coming
in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink." "If I had
power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytizing". "I resent
the overtures made to Harijans." "Stop all conversion, it is the deadliest
poison that ever sapped the fountain of truth." Poverty doesn't justify conversion.
This chapter includes a list of
missionaries, their goals and activities as well as pertinent articles.
The Caste System
The Caste System or varna-ashrama has been
one of the most misrepresented, misinformed, misunderstood, misused and the most maligned
aspects of Hinduism. If one wants to understand the truth, the original purpose behind the
caste system, one must go to
antiquity to study the evolution of the caste system. Caste System,
which is said to be the mainstay of the Hindu social order, has no sanction in the
Vedas. The ancient culture
of India was based upon a system of social diversification according to SPIRITUAL
development, not by birth, but by his karma. Today, this varna system of determining
spiritual and natural aptitude has degenerated into the caste system which resembles it
now only in form.
Alain Danielou, son of French aristocracy,
author of numerous books on India, points out: "Caste system has enabled Hindu
civilization to survive all invasions and to develop without revolutions or important
changes, throughout more than four millennia, with a continuity that is unique in history." Caste system has been exploited against
the Hindus, for the last two centuries by the British, Christian Missionaries, Secular
historians, Communists, Muslims, Pre and Post-Independence Indian politicians and
Journalists for their own ends. One way to discredit any system is to highlight its
excesses, and this only adds to the sense of inferiority that many Indians feel about
their own culture. Caste system is often portrayed as the
ultimate horror, in the media, yet social inequities continue to persist in theoretically Egalitarian Western
Societies. The Caste system is judged offensive by Western norms, yet racial groups have
been isolated, crowded into reserves like the American Indians or Australian Aborigines,
where they can only atrophy and disappear.
In ancient India, women occupied a very
important position, in fact a superior position to, men. Literary evidence suggests that
kings and towns were destroyed because a single woman was wronged by the state.
In Vedic times women and men were equal as
far as education and religion was concerned. Women participated in the public sacrifices
alongside men. One text mentions a female rishi Visvara. Some Vedic hymns, are attributed
to women such as Apala, the daughter of Atri, Ghosa, the daughter of Kaksivant or Indrani,
the wife of Indra.
Apparently in early Vedic times women also
received the sacred thread and could study the Vedas. The Haritasmrti mentions a class of
women called brahmavadinis who remained unmarried and spent their lives in study and
ritual. Panini's distinction between arcarya (a lady teacher) and acaryani (a teacher's
wife), and upadhyaya (a woman preceptor) and upadhyayani ( a preceptor's wife) indicates
that women at that time could not only be students but also teachers of sacred lore. The
Upanishads refer to several women philosophers, who disputed with their male colleagues
such as Vacaknavi, who challenged Yajnavalkya. The Rig Veda also refers to women engaged
in warfare. One queen Bispala is mentioned, and even as late a witness as Megasthenes
(fifth century B.C. E.) mentions heavily armed women guards protecting Chandragupta's
palace.
Of the many nineteenth-century
Indo-Western cultural confrontations, none was more troublesome than that of evangelical
Christianity's challenge to indigenous religious beliefs and practices. The British
conquest of most of the subcontinent had thrust aside the indigenous rulers and their
pattern of rule, as well as an increasingly aggressive propagation of the Christian
gospel by Western missionaries. As early as the 1830's Christian representatives were
visiting towns in the remote corners of the countryside. As these endeavors became more
widespread, so too did popular antipathy and antagonism.
Vishnu Bhikaji Gokhale,
Arumuga Navalar, Dayanand Saraswati, were some of the earlier reformers and revivalists.
Although given scant attention by Indian historians, their contribution and defense of
Hinduism is remarkable. Vishnu Bhikaji Gokhale was not the first Marathi polemicist
against the Christian missionaries, but he was one of the most colorful and widely known.
Arumuga Navalar is regarded as the "father" of modern Tamil prose and a staunch
defender of Shaivism against Christian missionary attacks. Dayanand Saraswati was an
aggressive reformer, who directed his efforts against the missionary faiths, Islam and
Christianity.
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