All About India: The Hindu Way Part i

Hinduism is the oldest living religion of the world and the third largest. More than 1 billion Hindus live in 150 different countries, mostly in India. The United States alone is home to over 2 million Hindus.

Origins of Hinduism: 

To find the distant beginnings of Hindu religion we have to go back over 6000 years to the Saraswati Indus region of the Indian sub-continent. This vast area extends from Sri-Lanka in the south to the Himalayan Mountain’s in the north from the Arabian Sea in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the East. The Saraswati Indus region developed here eventually becoming the world’s largest and most advanced, surpassing even those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. The civilization is named after areas two main river system, The Saraswati and The Indus. It is called the Vedic culture after the earliest Hindu sacred text. It is also known as the Harappan Culture after the site of its first discovery in 1920. This was an urban culture centred on many highly organised cities some with population of 80,000 which was rare in those days. The cities were connected by trade routes which extended west to Mesopotamia and east to central Asia. 5000 years later archaeologists discovered pottery, seals, statues, beads, jewelry, tools, toys, miniature carts and dice all of which hint that what life was like at the source of civilization that has evolved into modern day India. The flat stone seals have writing on them and images of deities, ceremonies, symbols, people, plants and animals. 

Even though writing was wide spread among people we are not able to decipher it yet. From these artefacts we learn that certain culture and religious practices were identical to those followed by Hindus today. One seal shows meditating figure that links to Lord Shiva while the others show the lotus posture used in hath yoga. Other discoveries connect the far past with today like Swastikas, statues of the Mother Goddess, worship of the Shiva lingam, fire altar that shows the ceremonial practise of Vedic people who are also known as Aryans, Sacred baths, Sacred animals. You must be familiar with traditional greeting “Namaste”, clay statues have been discovered symbolising the same.

As the Saraswati Indus region declined the river dried around 2000B.C. many people migrated to more fertile places in Eastern and Central India especially along the river Ganga and also beyond the sub-continent.

Hindu Scriptures:

The four Vedas (Rig Veda, Saam Veda, Yagur Veda, Atharv Veda) the central holy books of Hindu religion was composed in Sanskrit almost 6000 years ago. The Rig Veda, earliest of the four speaks repeatedly of the Saraswati describing it as the mightiest of the rivers flowing from the Himalayan Mountains to the Sea. Thus we know that large part of this sacred text was composed way before 2000B.C. by which time the river had dried up. Vedic Helms praises God, Goddess and describes a powerful and spiritual people there clans, kings and emperors, fights and battles. There sophisticated economy included agriculture, industry, trade, commerce and cattle rising. Vedas called the country SAPTSINDHU meaning the land of seven rivers (Indus, Saraswati, Ganga, Brahmaputra, Narmada, Krishna, Cauvery).

The word Hindu and India both come from the Sanskrit word Sindhu which means river. These Vedic helms describe a form of fire worship Yagya performed around a fire altar. Archaeologists have unearthed such altars in the Saraswati Indus cities. Hindus still perform fire worship in this form. Originally these thousands of helms were not written down but memorised, even today there are priests who can chant from memory as many as 10,500 verses which take almost 50 hours. There are dozens of other sacred text that Hindus revere including the puranas and the writing of illuminating sages. The epics Ramayana and Mahabharata are traditional histories of India that are store houses of Hindu heritage. 

The Ramayana is the story of Lord Rama 7^th incarnation or avatar of Lord Vishnu and his divine wife Sita. The Mahabharata is the world’s longest epic; it is about a massive war in India between cousins fighting for the throne of the great kingdom. A central episode called the Bhagwat Gita, dialogue between Arjuna and Lord Krishna (8^th carnation of Vishnu) on the day of the Battle. The Mahabharata remains the most wide spread scriptures in the world with its dominant message of justice. Hindus sacred music, dance, drama and arts draw heavily on these two literary epics.

More about Hinduism in the next part. Happy reading