Hinduism

The Puranas are long verse stories that contain many important Hindu myths about Hindu gods and goddesses and the lives of great Hindu heroes. They also describe the Hindu beliefs about how the world began and how it periodically ends and is reborn. There are 18 important Puranas. The Bhagavata Purana is the most widely read text for the worshippers of Vishnu. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are long epics. The Ramayana tells the story of Prince Rama and his attempts to rescue Sita, his wife, who has been kidnapped by the demon king Ravana. The Mahabharata describes a battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, two families who are cousins. The Bhagavad-Gita, a philosophical work, forms part of the Mahabharata. In it, the god Krishna and the Pandava warrior Arjuna discuss the meaning and nature of existence. The Dharma-Shastras are books on Hindu law and custom. The important ones are those written by Manu, Yajnavalkya, Parashara, and Narada. Philosophical ideas.Vedanta philosophy and the Bhagavad-Gita define atman as the divine energy in every creature. Atman, the soul, continues to exist when the body dies, when it is rehoused in a new body. Each atman, because of its karma, experiences many lives until it achieves moksha. The philosopher Shankara held that atman and BrahmaSwarupn were identical. Ramanuja maintained that atman does not merge with BrahmaSwarup when it achieves liberation. Madhava stated that atman and BrahmaSwarup were quite separate. Hindu philosophers teach that three qualities, prakriti (the matter necessary for all creation), gunas (the attributes built into the character of every created object), and maya (which makes this impermanent world appear merely as an illusion) bind atman to the material world. It is trapped in the cycle of successive lives. History Excavations in the Indus Valley in the 1920's revealed the existence of an ancient civilization which flourished between 3000 and 2000 B.C. at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, now in Pakistan. The ancient Indus Valley people probably worshipped a Mother Goddess and a male deity, the forerunner of Shiva in later Hinduism. When tribes speaking an Aryan language settled in northwest India in about 1500 B.C., the Indus cities were probably in decline. The new settlers probably adopted some religious ideas from the earlier inhabitants and incorporated them into their rituals. The Aryan-speakers worshipped spirits of nature. What is known of their religion comes from the hymns of the Rig-Veda, composed in stages from around 1500 B.C., which praise the spirits controlling natural forces. The Vedic deities were mostly male, and the Mother Goddess concept may have been taken from the Indus Valley people. Among the Vedic deities, Indra, Mitra, and Varuna were important, along with the Adityas, Rudra, and Prajapati. In time the first three gods were forgotten but the others gave rise to the Trimurti of modern Hinduism. Prajapati became Brahma, Rudra became Shiva, and one of the Adityas became Vishnu. These gods came to be represented as a single image. The Upanishads are the earliest books of Hindu philosophy, and were begun over 2,700 years ago. During the next 2,000 years, important compositions like the ancient law books, the epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the Puranas firmly established the Hindu tradition in India. Each of these texts was compiled over hundreds of years. Hindu reform movements. After 1498 when the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama sailed to India from Portugal, Indians came into contact with Western seamanship, science, European (and particularly English) literature, and European Christian missionaries. The British eventually became the dominant European power in India. From the 1700's, the British East India Company employed Indians in large numbers as clerks, minor revenue officials, and common soldiers. Contact with very different and challenging cultural patterns gave rise to new ideas in India, which resulted in important Hindu reform movements in the 1800's. Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833) was born into a Brahmin family in Bengal and experienced the orthodox practice of Hinduism in his youth. He studied the Quran, Buddhism, and the New Testament. He disliked image worship and hated the practice of suttee ever since the time he saw his brother's widow burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. He fought to abolish polytheism, image worship, the caste system, child marriage, animal sacrifice, and suttee. In 1828 he founded the Brahmo Samaj--Society of BrahmaSwarup (God)--in an attempt to reform Hindu religious practice. The hall of worship of the Samaj had no images, statues, or pictures. Only prayers and hymns affirming One God were selected. Members offered worship as a group. This congregational form of worship was new to Hinduism. The form of worship adopted by the Brahmo Samaj was based on the Christian way of worship, since the founder was inspired by Western ideas. The Samaj inspired progressive development in Hindu society, religion, and politics. The various important laws passed between 1829 and 1950 concerning suttee, caste disabilities, Hindu widows' remarriage, child marriage, women's property, and untouchability were indirect results of the reform movement of Ram Mohan Roy. Dayananda (1824-1883) founded the Arya Samaj in 1875. Dayananda was born in Gujarat, into a rich Brahmin family who worshipped Shiva. He was invested with the sacred thread at the age of eight. Three years later, when he was keeping vigil in a Shiva temple at night, he saw that rats appeared from the holes in the walls and began to eat the food offered to Shiva. He began to doubt the deity's power and formed a dislike for image worship. When his parents arranged his marriage he left home. From the age of 20 he travelled widely to meet holy men to widen his knowledge of religion and philosophy. He studied the Vedas for three years at Mathura until 1863. When his studies were completed, his teacher charged him with the duty of spreading the Vedic faith. In 1875 Dayananda founded the Arya Samaj (Society of Aryans). He claimed the Vedas to be eternal, infallible, and a complete revelation of God. He accepted the doctrines of karma and rebirth, but opposed image worship, polytheism, animal sacrifice, caste based on birth, untouchability, pilgrimages, and ritual bathing. He condemned child marriage and the segregation of women, but opposed the remarriage of widows. He introduced "purification rites" to reconvert those Hindus who had been converted to Christianity or Islam. Arya Samaj followers worship on Sundays. They make offerings to Agni (fire) while reciting the Gayatri Hymn from the Rig-Veda, and read, preach and teach the Vedas. The Samaj is a democratic organization without regular priests. Every member is required to practise austerity, truth, and devotion to God. Modern Hinduism is developing in many ways. There are several modern examples of sectarian worship such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the Hare-Krishna Movement), the Swaminarayan Religion, and the Sathya Sai Baba Movement. These forms of Hinduism lay great emphasis on worship through bhakti (devotion).