Hinduism

Charity Rittman

Hum/130 Religions of the World

October 15, 2010

Martha Taylor

Hinduism

Hinduism is a religion of the people of India and has no founder or date of origin. It dates back as far as 2000 B.C., making it one of the oldest religions surviving today. Although rooted in a 4000-year history in the Indian subcontinent, Hinduism is a world religion with new groups such as the Transcendental Meditation movement and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness combining classical Indian religion with contemporary social forms. The notion of a reality that goes beyond the merely material coupled with an emphasis on duty and responsibility make Hinduism, Sanatana Dharma, attractive to elements of contemporary Western culture.

The name “Hinduism” itself hints at problems in describing “this religion.” Hinduism was a term applied by Muslims to the non-Islamic religious practices they found when they entered the Indus River Valley. In the nineteenth century, the British also used the term to assist in their colonial rule of India. So the name itself comes “from the outside.” A better label, perhaps, is Sanatana Dharma, “eternal religion” or “eternal duty.” But even if this phrase is used instead of “Hinduism”, it still covers a broad array of often contradictory experiences, ideas, rituals, or images.

Hinduism, or Santana Dharma, has its roots in the civilizations that appeared in the Indus River Valley as long as 4000 years ago. Aryan invaders of northern India brought other religious influences and, eventually, a set of scriptures—the Vedas—preserved the oral traditions from those earlier religions. The Vedas are a collection of sacred hymns dealing with the praise and worship of deities, ritual sacrifices to the deities, as well as a description of the personal transformation that results from participation in the process. This last section of the Vedas is called the Upanishads. Epic stories called the Ramayana and the...