Venky's note: This is not complete, factually incorrect, and unedited for contents. Many things are wrong!

On Hinduism

An extract from my novel to be read as an essay

I am not a complete modernist, Mama. I take great pride in the fact that I am a Hindu. The glorious traditions of our ancestors, passed on from generation to generation for 3000 years is something remarkable, something I would never break for anything. I am a very strong believer in carrying on the traditions because they are what give us our identity. I am a Hindu and a Brahman, and there is no way I am ever going to forget that or negate that. These are core values of my very being and to deny it or to take on any other way of  life  for  me is  inconceivable

             "But you are the last person I would call a Hindu, you do not follow any of the traditions, you do not know about a lot of our customs, I know you do not go to temples to pray and in this very room you have told me that you neither believe in God nor in most of the central tenets of Hinduism. And yet you want to tell me that you are a good, indeed a perfect Hindu. I would be most interested in knowing just why you still persist in calling yourself a Hindu"

            "I really like talking with you here, mama. Somehow all my thoughts and feelings seem to take on a concrete shape only here in this room, when I am trying hard to talk to you and convince you with my arguments. Many of the observations you make about me are to a large extent true. So true that my father calls me the nastigan, or atheist, and makes fun of the fact that I speak English at the expense of  Hindi and Tamil and because I listen almost exclusively to rock music and do not savour our own classical music. When he found me listening to Western classical music, he was actually hurt by it. Somehow, having interests and tastes more like the Westerners is considered as being anti Hinduism. But my understanding of  Hinduism is very different. There are three things which I believe Hinduism encompasses, which other religions also do, but less effectively and less comprehensively. The first is religion , the second is culture and way of life and the third is philosophy. Most religions are concerned about just religion, by which I mean a set of rules and beliefs that govern the interaction between the people and their God. At a sociological level, religion is just a mechanism of giving values and beliefs to a group of people, by which they can live. The central figure is a God or other supernatural being who gives laws and beliefs for us to live by. Hindusm has all of the typical things one finds in any religion. There is a mythology that tells us a story of our creation and an imaginary early history of humans, which is totally alien to actual facts as it is in all the old relgions. There is some philosophy involved in the construction of this mythology, but for the common man which is the one for whom religion is intended, the story stands by itself as a mythology, and being less intelligent they swallow it as the Gospel truth as the christian metaphor would go. Then there is a set of religious observances which the people have to follow, as in the Brahmanas attached to our vedas. There is a code of conduct which sets out right and wrong and sets out the punishments for wrong doing, as in the Manusmriti. In all of these, our religion is just like the Muslims or Christians. Our religion of course is much more flamboyant than these two, having a prolific mythology that would put the other two religions to shame. Instead of ten simple commandments, we have a huge list of rights and wrongs, so that we need a priest to interpret it for us, and as for religious observances, there is no end to them. In terms of simplicity these two religions beat us solid, and that is why they appeal to so many people. They are fairly simple and straight forward religions and so immediately find a mass appeal. But there are two very important weaknesses in these two religions, which are a belief in one God and a written book, one book, which is supposed to have everything written down. Belief in one God, monotheism, is a central doctrine to both these religions. This I believe is a terrible weakness in a monotheistic religion. Weakness in the sense that it encourages evil practices. Belief in one and only one God has always encouraged hatred and enemity with people who do not believe in that one God. So the Muslims went on a conquering spree, killing all who did not profess their faith, converting people at the point of their sword, and indulging in an orgy of violence. Some of the things they have done in India and other countries as well have been unimaginable in their cruelty. Temples of Mathura, Ayodhya and Kashi were destroyed in barbarian frenzy, people killed, women carried off into harems, an entire countries vibrant people pushed into a state of oppressed stultification. India is one of the countries which has actually survived the terrible onslought of Islam. Great civilisations of Persia, Mesopotamia,and Egypt, religions that had evolved over thousands of years were savagely destroyed at the hands of Islam. All for the sake of one God. And christianity with its crusades did pretty much the same, though less successfully than the Muslims. Only the barbarians of the West really converted to christianity and one can say it was Christianity that civilised a people with hardly a religion at all, just primitive beliefs of tribal people. But the tendency to do evil in the name of one God is there all right. in the name of Christianity, horrendous acts of proselitisation were committed by the spaniards in their brutal conquering of the new world. The Incas and the Mayans and the Aztecs suffered the monotheistic zeal as did the Indians.

            The reason why monotheism encourages evil and brutality is because the so called holy books invariably say that all other Gods are false Gods, that only the one God is the true one. Denigration of other faiths is a central part of these religions, so poor Baal was a terrible enemy for Jehovah. Worship of the bull god was a terrible sin indeed by the Jews and their God rained down all kinds of calamities on the head of his poor people just because they happened to worship another God. This is an apt illustration, if such were needed, that monotheism is in itself an invitation for people to sin. Converting people has always been a strong point in Christianity and Islam, because people of these religions cannot bear to see other Gods being worshipped. To them it is unbearable because it says so in their so called holy books that there is only one God and all others are false Gods.

            This is the very area where Hinduism scores. Freedom and change  are essential values built into the Hindu religion because it is polytheistic. Hinduism is the closest that the ancient religions has ever got to democracy, and in this respect it is truly remarkable. It is one of the really ancient religions of the world, it did not start at one point in time as the others have done, it did not have a single person who originated it. Instead it crystallised out of the mists of time, somewhere in our ancient past, growing ever larger and more concrete, changing with the times, incorporating new ideas and becoming better for it. It had a glorious tradition of free thinking and except for a short time of tribulation and torture under the Muslims which stultified but not extinguished it, it is now growing and becoming better still. All this just because it does not say there is just one God.

            The logic is simple. If you have a hundred Gods, and a hundred and oneth God comes along, you do not take up arms to defend your faith. You do not have to convert the other people to your Gods, you just adopt the new /God as one of your own, you absorb the essence of  the new God and his new religion into your own. The people are free to worship whichever God they please, just as modern democracy gives that very freedom. Anybody would concede that the freedom to worship your own God is a good thing, an essential thing, a bedrock of the great modern democratic movement. This very important tenet is built into Hinduism and that is its real greatness. People can do evil, even Hindus, but people do not commit evil in the name of Hinduism, they are not encouraged to commit evil by their religion. Many muslims come and say that their religion does not encourage aggression and proselitisation, that it is nor written in their Koran. Show me where it is written in the Koran that people should kill for the sake of conversion they say. Maybe true.

TheChristians say theirs is a religion of peace, that Jesus preached love not war. But I do not judge a religion by arguements but by actions and effects. There is no credit in what the Muslims and Christians did in the name of religion and only the written words of history act as a judge to my statements, not the written words of Koran or the Bible.

            A written and codofied book is another evil of religion which unfortunately Hinduism shares with the other religions. The written laws of manu have been distorted into most horrid ways, leading to all kinds of evil. Laws should be changed to suit new ideas and discoveries, they should not be set down for all time. Modern law changes with the times, and so should religious laws change with the times. The reason why most Westerners are not practicing Christians is because they can no longer relate to the written words of the bible. Modern science has upset too much of the book, and there is too much resistance to change built into the book for it to keep pace with modern advances. The religion which cannot keep pace with the present finds its place in the dustbin and that is where christianity is headed unless it changes. Islam is still going strong, mainly because it is the less advanced who practice it. The people are still too primitive to understand the meaning and consequences of modern science, when they start getting smarter, Islam too will have to change or bite the dust. The same holds true for Hinduism too, but fortunately it is easier to change than the others. Change has been an essential part of Hinduism, and because it does not have one book but has many books, some of which are philosophy rather than theology, a Hindu can always change with the times without cutting the traditional links with the past. In fact change is the very essence of Hinduism. Many Hindus today do not want to change, but the moment they quote one passage from a religious book, say the Manusmriti, to hold on to some evil practise, it is possible to quote a more important passage from the Upanishad or some other sacred work to disprove and countermand what they say. The obstinate person would hold on to his opinion, but society and religion would not be bound down by what is said, as the muslim or catholic would. There is no pope  no Ayatollah, no Imam who stands as the supreme interpreter of our religious works. No one book stands alone as the supreme book. These all prevent evil creeping in, they permit change all the time.

            The second thing which Hinduism is, matched by none other, is the amount of philosophy woven into it. Many of our religious books are pure philosophy, like the upanishad part of the vedas, the sutras, much of our epics and the works of other great thinkers like shankara. Our religion is not founded on the teaching of one single individual like Christ or Mohammad, who is supposed to have received the word of God in some magical moment. It is founded, not on one man's thinking, but on those of many men, who have written their thoughts down. So there is a great body of philosophical thought which forms a bedrock on which Hinduism stands, which implies two things. First, one man's thinking is not forced down our throats. Second, our laws are founded on philosophical principles which are an anchor of reason preventing blind application of the theological books like the manusmriti. Philosophy can and does change, so different people have interpreted the vedantas in their own different ways. We should continue to do so. The great thing about our upanishads is that they are an essential part of the vedas, which is recognised by everybody as the ultimate religious work. The upanishads are pure philosophy. In a conceptual way they have handled every aspect of philosophy. They lacked the scientific understandings of today, of course, but there is no concept I have grasped today with all this science at my back, which has not been dealt with in Hindu philosophy. Because the concept is there, a modern reinterpretation is always possible, yielding sensible solutions to any problem modern science throws up. Every concept thrown up by modern science, be it the big bang theory or the steady state theory, the theory of evolution or genetically preprogrammed life, all have been addressed on a conceptual level. So belief in a new theory based on modern science does not throw the whole religion out of the window. Problems like man being created in the image of God, or the six day creation, or Adam and Eve, all of which obviously never happened, do not create an upheaval in the whole of Hinduism as it did in Christianity. They are simply absorbed and while it changes the religion and makes it modern, there is plenty of the old stuff left to provide continuity. One does not have to rewrite the whole of the religion to accomodate new things. That is the advantage of having a religion foinded on pure philosophy as its foundation.

            At this point I would like to talk about the history of Hinduism. A lot of it is Indian history, but the two are so intricately interlinked that it is impossible to separate the two.

          It all began 5000 years ago in the Indus valley where people formed one of the earliest of civilisations. It was a primitive theological civilisations having similarity to the Mesopotamian civilisation more than anything else. The people were cultivators having many Gods, of which the easily recognisable ones from Hinduism are the Linga, at that time not fully associated with Shiva and Mother Godesses similar to the ones we have in Hinduism. The people spoke in an unknown language, had unknown practices for worshipping these Gods. We know nothing of their mythology, theology or philosophy. But I find it easy to draw parallels with the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, with the blanks being supplied by later day Hinduism and my knowledge of human nature. It is not scientific or rigorous, but it satisfies me as an explanation.

(Venky's note: I have formulated a better story, with many changes, recently. It is in much better agreement with the facts than what I have written here. But I am not deleting this version - it is not without merit)

            People like to think of the Aryan invaders as the source of most of Hinduisms beliefs, but I cannot agree with that. The Indus valley people lived there for 2000 years, were advanced city people with a strong civilisation and had the advantage of the larger population in comparison to the invading central Asians. Their civilisation was obviously more advanced than the simple aryan central Asians, and there fore their philosophy and theology was also more advanced. The later Hinduism as we know it should inevitably drawn more upon this than the simple aryans. Most of current Hinduism, I believe, drew on the mythology and theology of these people, and so much of what is written in the oldest of our puranas, the Vishnu Purana, must originate in the beliefs of the Indus valley people. They surely had the idea of the trinity of Brahma Vishnu and Shiva, the idea of the universe being created in a cosmic egg, the idea of mother godesses like kali and durga for which sacrifices had to be done, the idea of snake and other Gods. Other people in similar situations had similar ideas, these may not have been as sophisticated as they later became. But the essential things of the Hindu religion were bound to be there in the Indus valley for thousands of years before they became modified into hinduism. Another essential part of Hinduism is the caste system, which of course is there in every society. People like to say that the Aryans brought the four varnas with them when they came, but which society does not have a priest class, a business class, a ruling class and a slave or serf class? If the Aryans brought this with them, then there would have been no problem in integrating it with the local caste system of the Indus people. Imagine the complex priest class which is bound to have been there in the Indus valley, were the Aryan priests going to just replace that big and powerful body? Never. Experience with polytheistic faiths show that their Gods and their priests change and intermingle all the time. In terms of sheer number, the Indus valley priesta are sure to have outnumbered the Aryan priests, and so we should all claim descent from Indus valley rather than Aryan ancestors. Those Indus valley priests did not just go away.

            This is what I think happened. When agriculture started 10000 or so years ago, it spread takingwith it languages of the people who first came up with it. There were three language groups, The semitic spoken by the middle eastern people, Dravidian spoken by the Indus valley people and Aryan spoken by the central asian and Mediterranean people. For 2000 years the Indus valley civilisation went on, but around 1500 BC a slow process of desertification began in the Indus valley. The large population of the Indus valley started trickling into the east, the wild jungles of northern India, where only tribals lived. Just around this time, the Aryans arrived. They were a tribal nomadic people from the central asian plains who spoke in a Sanskrit like language, which belonged to the Aryan group of languages. These people had a simple religion common to most nomadic people. Their Gods were the gods of  natural phenomenon like storms and thunder [Indra], fire [Agni] air [Marut] and other similar Gods like Varuna, Rudra, Soma etc. In all likelihood, these people were the Kassites who ruled in Mesopotamia. These were people whose mythology is set out in the Rig Veda Samahita, which tells the story of a simple people with a simple mythology. This mythology is simple. Their gods were the vedas who battled against the Asuras, who were fierce dark skinned moustached evil people. The Devas were driven out of heaven by the Asuras who took it over. But Indra gets a magical weapon Vajra which helps the him lead the Devas back into victory, getting back heaven fron the Asuras. This is the earliest of the Hindu books, the earliest of the Hindu mythological legends. Is it founded in fact? I think so.

            The Kassites with their primitive beliefs had one great weapon - chariots of war. I think they became rulers of  a part of Mesopotamia by their warrior skills, and that was the heaven that they ruled. Then the Asuras came. I think they were the Assyrians. The similarity in names is too close for coincidence. The modern Iraquis are still called Asuryas, and are still known for their size and fierceness. These people drove the Kassite Aryans out from their heaven. The Kassites migrated eastwards and came across the Indus valley people,  another great civilisation. These were darker skinned than the Assyrians and it was from these people that the Kassite Aryans reconquered their heaven. These people became the Asuras, instead of the real Asuras. And so the great heaven of Indus valley was reconquered and became the place for the Aryans to live. The land became Aryavarth. The Kassites brought with them them four things - Sanskrit, the Rigveda Samihita, the caste system and Chariots. Nothing more. Everything else was waiting for them there.  

          There is a lot of talk about the dasas, or dark skinned people, who became their slaves. The Aryans seem to have despised them. For how long the Indus religion and people and the Aryan religion and people remained totally separate is something I just cannot decide. There is just no evidence except the ancient writings of the Hindus. For ages and ages have broken my head over it, but dont have enough to decide o the two main hypothesis.

            First hypothesis is that the two religions remained side by side at the same time for centuries. From 12 to 1500 BC or so when the Aryans first came here, to around 400 BC when the two religions finally merged, under mutual threat from Buddhism. It is possible for Kings to have a different religion from their subjects, this is well known. Did the Kassites live separately from the conquered Indusites, practicing the Rig Veda religion which over a period evolved from a simple nomad creed into a magnificent complex religion? A religion described by our vedas? Did a great civilisation get created by the cassites in which wonderful philosophers who wrote the Upanishads lived? The Vedas which probably were completed around800 to 600 BC have no mention of the Indus Gods. The only Gods are the original Kassite ones. They are in Sanskrit which is definitely a Aryan language. Were the Indus people merely slaves with their own religion? We know their religion survived, in the form of most of later Hindu mythology and Gods. Did their rich, ruling and priestly class embrace the Aryan religion and give up their own? We know people change their religions in the face of  a ruler with a different one. Polytheistic faiths are particularly vulnerable to this. Maybe it happened in ancient India. But the poor people continued with their own beliefs, so that they also survived. But the Aryan religion was so wonderful that in a few centuries, by around 800 to 600 BC, the first of all the golden ages of reason that have ever been came about. The key word here is free thinking and philosophy. Until now there was civilisation based on theology and closed thinking. But now in India, 300 years before Greece at least, people were thinking independently and formulating great philosophical schools. The six great schools of Indian philosophies were laid down around this period, the Upanishads were written,  great teachers like Badarayana and Charvaka propounded complex philosophies, there was a free flow of knowledge and thinking. At the end of it came two more great people, Budha and Jaina. Only in a free atmosphere can such independent thinking occur and it resulted in two new religions which started around the same time, 600 BC.

            Until now, the kings and rulers were definitely following the Aryan Brahmanical religion, which is set forth in the vedas. Now kings became Buddhist. Power went out of the hands of  the Brahmin priests. 200 years later we know that current day Hinduism was in place, pushing out Budhism, in around 400 BC. What happened? Nobody knows.

            Did the Aryan priests and the local Indus priests get together and amalgamate their religions? Or did a Indus religion priest get into favour with a big king in Pataliputra, and made his religion supreme?

            Since the common people were all of Indus religion, the Brahmin priests would have found it good to adopt their religion for themselves. If the king was not with them, being Buddhist, at least the people would be with them and so they survived with a new religion, and soon the kings were also Hindu, probably because the new religion was very successful.

            Alternatively, a group of Indus priests came to power under an Indus religion king, became powerful and everybody else joined the bandwagon. They might have found it useful to preserve the established Aryan religion, and utilise the vedas and the religious practices for their own. In either case the two religions merged.

            Thence came about the great paradox of Hinduism. We have Indus gods like the trinity, linga and mother godess being worshipped using an alien Aryan language of Sanskrit, and using the Aryan worshipping method of offereings to a fire using the vedic Brahmana methods. We have the Aryan gods like Indra having humiliating mythology written about them, making them nothing but servile also rans to the powerful Indus Gods. The Aryan Gods were completely out, but their language and vedic methods still survived and became a part of the Hindu worship methods.

            A new mythology was written around this time, in which the main stories we are so familiar with were set forth. The Vishnu Purana, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were also set forth in their final form around this time.

            There is a paradox even in the stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The Mahabharata talks about an initial time in north India when the Aryans were pushing into the jungles. There is war between the different Royal families and a dark complexioned king Krishna is involved, some kind of Indus type. Obviously a story about Aryan types, probably a drama. But in the version around 400 BC it is a complex epic with Krishna being a avathar of Vishnu and an all powerful god, and a lot of mythology putting down Devas and promoting Indus Gods.  The Ramayana is the story of a great Aryan king who pushed southwards, probably a legend of the Aryans. But in the final form he becomes an incarnation of Vishnu, an Indus type God and his story is fully integrated with a complex new mythology.

            Is this the way the central paradox of Hinduism got created? There is a second hypothesis which is just as likely to be true.

            When the Aryans came, they integrated soon with the Indus people and a new religion of Hinduism got created together. In the early years around 1200 BC when the invasion occurred, the Indus civilisation was in decline, the people travelling east to escape drought. The Aryans conquered the declining civilisation and imposed their language and religion, but these two intermingled soon creating  what we know as Hinduism. In such a situation one can say the Indus civilisation triumphed largely, even though the Aryan language and worship methods were adopted.

This amalgamated people were the Hindus, and together the new people pushed east into the gangetic plain. There they created a wonderful age of reason, which was threatened for a time by Buddhism, but not for long. The stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata are the stories not of Aryan but of the amalgamaed people. The paradox of  Aryan language and methods, but Indus Gods and mythology is a survival of  the earlier amalgamation process, in which the Indus religion largely triumphed.

            The second hypothesis is more likely to be true on probability. The powerful Indus religion is soon likely to have swallowed the primitive Aryan one. It is simpler and common sense says it probably happened.

            But there are two problems with accepting this theory, which is why I have set down the alternative.  First, if the Aryans were militarily successful, if their Aryan chariot warfare is so successfully described in our mythology, then why did their Gods become inferior in so short a time?  Second and more important, all early Hindu texts, which are the vedas, do not have Indus mythology in it. The Rig Veda one can say came before or at the time of the invasion around 1200 BC, and hence has only Aryan themes in it. But other ancient texts like the rest of the Vedas and the Upanishads, all of the Brahmanas were definitely later texts which must have been written around 800 to 600 BC. They are much more complex  and developed than the Rigveda Samahita. Why did a purely Aryan religion survive for centuries, if the combination with Indus religion occurred so early? Also, the earliest of the combined mythology is not earlier than 400 BC and final versions were only finished around 200AD. Did these only write down ancient amalgamated mythology or did they write down a new religion formed to counter Buddhism? There seems to be no talk, no discussion and no research into a fascinating piece of our countries history. The Christians have researched their bible and the early days of christianity to death, with controversy after controversy as new theories came up. But there seems to be no discussion at all about a much more fascinating story, about the early days of Hinduism. Whatever little is known is due to the efforts of western investigators, we ourselves seem to be totally disinterested in our own past. Until clever brains examine the issue and sift the evidence, we will never know for sure.

            There is an alternative theory, that there was no invasion at all. The Aryan types just drifted in slowly joinig the Indus peoples drift eastwards. That does not explain the language and mythology problem. I read a newspaper article in which another interesting theory was set forth. According to this theory, there never was any Aryan invasion, nor was there an aryan language. Sanskrit was the language of the Indus valley people. This is definitely possible, maybe the Indus valley people were settlers from a Sanskrit speaking people in Aryan Central Asia. That would not explain the peculiar Deva versus Hindu pantheon mythological paradox. If there were only one people who drifted eastwards, then why the early emphasis on Aryan type Gods, then a replacement with Indus type Gods? We know the Indus people worshipped the penis and mother godesses, not Indra and the rest. Unless some historian can come to my rescue with better evidence than what I have seen in the few textbooks I have read, I would not rule out any of these hypotheses.

            Whatever the truth may be, there can be no doubt that the time around 600 BC was a time of great thinkers here. Nearly half the world is either Hindu or Buddhist and these two religions evolved around this time. It must have been a truely marvelous time, going by the philosophical systems which seem to have really proliferated. The Upanishads were written at this time, and these are a goldmine of so many different philosophical thoughts. Then there are the Sutras, especially the Brahma Sutra of Badrayana. He must have been a very great thinker and teacher, who wrote down his brief and enigmatic sutra as an aid to his teaching. The sutra has no sense without a commentary, which he no doubt provided to his students in his discourses. He never wrote his commentary down, which has resulted in a proliferation of other peoples commentary on what they thought he meant. But the sutras themselves are the very essence of Hindu philosophical thought, dealing with the nature of the absolute, the first, the initial all encompassing principle known to us under the name of Brahman. Every thinker down the ages has wondered about this, the nature of life and existence. Nobody has come up with any other concept other that the marvellous'That Thou Art". Perhaps this was the first time in human history that such a concept was at all understood, definitely it is the first time that it was set down. The kenopanishad, another of the ancient upanishads written around this time again discusses the unknowability of the absolute. A few terse slokas are enough to set down what are the topics for endless discussion, but no matter how much you think, no matter how much you do research into the physics of the universe, on a conceptual level you can go no further. The upanishads are without doubt the greatest of ancient heritages, predating anything else that ever was concieved in the mind of man. Every history and sociology book should pay tribute to the greatest thinkers the world has ever seen, long before the Greeks came. These unsung names should be household names not the stuff of obscure philosophers. Why is not every Indian schoolchild not taught about these glorious years that would make us so proud of ourselves? The coming of Jainism and Buddhism were a great renaisance in the ancient age, just as interesting as the more recent renaisance. What a glorious age it must have been when so many great thinkers flourished in so short a time?

            And then there is the materialist philosophies of Charvaka, which are now lost completely. He was unpopular, evidently, because noone bothered to memorise or write down  his teaching, and yet, there is not a single Hindu philosopher who does not start by negating Charvaka. His teaching seems to have been very similar to the later Epicureus, hence his unpopularity. We know more about him from rebuttals of his arguments than from his argument itself which is now lost. How I would love to read what he said so long ago, which would coincide with so many of my own materialist thinking.

            The list of great people is endless. The six systems of Indian philosophy, propounded between 600BC and 600AD. The laws of Manu, Chanakyaniti, Mahabharata, Ramayana, the puranas. It is a feast of philosophy that has never failed to delight the hearts of  seekers for truth. I can write 200 pages on each of these and as for the Mahabharata, I can go on discussing it for ever. People say Kalidasa was India's Shakespeare, but the writer of the Mahabharata is the greatest dramatist and philosopher that ever lived. No other dramatist, no other story ever written can ever come even close to this most marvelous of all stories and dramas. And it is we Indians who did all this. Would I ever deny my heritage and not be a Hindu? Inconceivable. I would be proud and shout it out for all the world to hear. We did it first, we did it first. Our name should be up there with all the worlds greats as the first of the great philosophers. We did it first and we did it all. No progress has been made in philosophy since then. People have lost and rediscovered a lot of it, but nobody has surpassed it. Except perhaps modern science, which has converted hypothesis into fact, concept into harsh truths.

            What is Hinduism all about? Let us leave aside the various philosophical systems and only look at the core of the religion. The central tenet of the religion and most of the philosophies on which Hinduism is based, is that there is an absolute principle, called Brahman which is the Godhead of christian philosophy. It is the entire body of the universe with all of its contents, all of whom are part of one unifying whole. It is a beginning and an end in itself, it is something that we as mere components of it, can never ever comprehend. All the hindu philosophers have described it as that which is absolute, that which is not knowable, that which our senses cannot perceive and our minds cannot comprehend. It is outside of our understanding, it is God.

            This absolute principle I believe in as a concept. In spite of all our modern advances this concept cannot be got away from. Even the big bang concept of creation of the universe is still not enough to negate this most essential of all. It is a concept, not an explanation and only intuitive knowledge can ever grasp it. It cannot be taught by any teacher, it can only be understood. It is the only thing in Hinduism worth knowing.

            Around this central concept is woven some other central ideas of Hinduism, the most important of which is the atma. The atma is the soul, an essential principle of all living creatures. In Hinduism the soul is indestructable and immortal, existing as long as Brahman itself. It is a part of the Brahman. It goes through innumerable cycles of death and rebirth. All of this happens in a real world which is brought into being by three parts of the Brahman known as Brahma the creater, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer.

            Brahma is the Godly version of Brahman and the universe is his creation. He creates and destroys the world endlessly, an infinite number of times. Infinite worlds have been created and destroyed, and another infinite worlds are to be created and destroyed in the future. Each time he opens his eyes, another world is created only to be destroyed when he goes to sleep. The life of the current universe he has created, in which we are now living, is just one day in the life of Brahma. Infinite more are to follow.

            In this are the atmas, all the souls of living creatures. In  each universe or day of Brahma, each atma goes through innumerable cycles of birth and rebirth. At the end of his day when the universe is destroyed, only the atma remains,  to go through more cycles of rebirth in the next day of Brahma. This happens endlessly and timelessly, for as long as Brahman exists which is for ever.

            I know it sounds pointless, but modern science paints an equally depressing picture of a meaningless existence. There is no reason behind these endless cycles of birth and rebirth except for an ultimate unification of atman with  Brahman, of which the atman is a part anyway. This unification is Moksha or salvation, which can happen at anytime.

            In each cycle of birth, the atma can be born as any organism, from a lowly worm to man. The actions of the person inhabited by the atma in its janma or birth, will dictate the fate of the atma in the next birth. If you are a lower animal, then in each birth you are born as a higher animal until you are born as a man. It is not clear wether actions of animals would dictate its fate or wether they automatically move up. Conceptually yes, the actions of an animal would determine its fate. Mythological animals which have human characteristics are definitely governed by this principle.

Anyway, once you are born as a human, your actions will influence your fate in the next janma. In a crrent incarnation you accumulate good and bad points for everything you do. At the end of your life it is totaled up and the books are balanced. If you have done good, you go to heaven where you reside for a time, enjoying yourself. The more good you do, the more time you spend there. After you use up all your points, your atma gets born again, in a very favourable life form. You usually move up to better intelligence or better station in life, where presumably you would do more good and earn more points and get born again until you get enough intelligence or capacity to attain moksha. At that point your soul unites with the Brahman and becomes a part of it and the endless cycles of rebirth are at an end. That is the purpose behind the whole charade.

            If you do evil, then you accumulate negative points. When you die you go to a hell where Yama and his men would torture you. The period of torture would depend on the amount of sin you have committed. After you have suffered enough, you are reborn in a lower station than before. If you led a thoroughly villainous life you would get reborn as a worm and work your way up all over again. If less sins were committed, then you get born as a higher animal or as a lower caste man. If in the same caste, then poorer or with less intelligence. Again you have to work your way up to the highest level and finally unify with the Brahman.

            Unfortunately, you do not have free will in what you do in your own life. Everything that happens to you is a predetermined sequence of events which you have to live through. Time exists only in as much as you experience it during your existense. For the Brahman there is no time, everything is timeless. There is no before and after. So while you think you are conducting your own life, actually your present is both past and future for the Brahman. It already knows what you will do in this life and what will happen to you in the after life. Only an exceptional person can understand the concepts involved, and when he does that he attains Moksha anyway. Even that however is a predetermined event, because the Brumman knows and orchestrates everything. You are a part of an ununderstandable predetermined sequence of events over which you have no control, but are a mere spectator. If you understand the meaning of life, you cease to be a part of it, but merge with the essense of it.

            Everything is a part of this creation including messiahs, soothsayers, druids shamans, priests, everybody. If someone helps you to become better, as for example Jesus Christ with his preachings, that too is a part of what the creation has in store for itself. If you believe him you will follow him, if you dont, you wont. But whether you believe him or not is already a predetermined fate. Why these predetermined events take place at all is not known. If you do know it, you attain Moksha and are no longer a part of it. So by definition, if you are a part of it, you do not know it.

            Predetermination or fate is a good approximation to the modern concept of a genetic code that predetermines a lot of what you are.

            While these things are the essence, other subsidiary principles come in. Your atma, for example, will go up to the afterworld only if the correct religious observances are done by your son or family, after you die. If they are not performed, your atma is in a suspended animation, being a ghost or disembodied spirit in the real world. It will remain here until it is released by some prescribed act, causing mischief, usually to the progeny.

            There are Gods who live in heaven, where you can go for a while if you are good. These Gods are like preachers and Messiahs, they help the people to live better. If you please them with religious observances, worldly offerings or by doing good deeds, they become pleased and help you to attain your objectives. They have powers that normal humans do not have and are relatively immortal. But they too have atmas, and do not understand the true meaning of the world. They too go through cycles of birth and death, but only if they commit wrong, misusing their powers. For example a Deva like Indra may commit a sin, then he would be born on this earth and go through cycles of birth and death until he becomes purified. Then he returns back to being Indra as before.

But at the end of Brahmas day, everything gets destroyed to be recreated again, including Devas of heaven. They can escape this cycle only one way, just like humans-by knowledge.

            Two Gods are above these Devas, they are the equivalents of Brahma in terms of power, being subservient only to Brahman. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva know the meaning of the world but continue to be a part of it, being the creator, preserver and destroyer of life and universe. They are what make creation possible for Brahman, and are essentially one and the same. Brahma having created the universe and having set the ball rolling, sits back and does nothing. Vishnu takes over to take the world through its preprogramed destiny. For this he can take on many forms and come on this earth, to guide people or show them by example. Usually he just sleeps in his abode. At the end of Brahmas day, there is a flood which destroyes everythimg. The forces of destruction are let loose in the form of Shiva and everything gets consumed. Shiva can unleash short spells of destruction here and there as well, usually making life miserable. But usually he spends all his time in meditation and contemplation of Brahman.

            Vishnu is the people's God, coming down on earth in many forms to instruct common people. He is the most beloved of the Gods, especially in the form of the human God Krishna. In this human form, he is supposed to retained all knowledge that he possessed as Vishnu, and passed it on to us in the form of the Bhagavad Gita or holy book. This book contains the essence of all the philosophies of the vedas, which are the source books of knowledge, and is meant for the common man to live a decent life. It is not a philosophy explaining the intricacies of the universe, but a simple code of living based upon these philosophies. But it is meant not for complete idiots but for reasonably intelligent people. The complete idiots follow the laws of Manu blindly, the average person makes sense of the world with the help of the Bhagavadgita, but for the superintelligent the vedas and sutras are the reference books. With the Bhagavad Gita you can live a decent life, with the sutras you can aim for moksha.

            Shiva is the God of the meditators, the seekers of Moksha. Yogis, Tantriks, and other seekers of knowledge always pray to him and seek to him for guidance.  

          Most of hese are the essential principles of Hinduism, but the mythology is a great deal more. It is all about this particular day of Brahma, this creation and what all happened in it. Naturall y this creation is of supreme importance to us, what came before and what will came after are inconsequential to us. There is some confusion of stories though. Some stories talk about the very first creation, other stories span through pralayas or floods. But most of the rest of the stories are consistent and talk only about this creation.

            The world was silent at first and then a cosmic egg was created out of Brahman which burst open, rather like the big bang. This presumably is the very first creation. At the end of a day of Brahma, there is usually a flood, so when he opens his eyes again, the sky, the earth and the waters are created. In the sky was heaven, on earth was Manu, the first man of this creation from him came all the rest. In heaven are the Gods and Devas. On earth are men and Asuras, both being mortal. Asuras are a leftover from Aryan mythology, as are the Devas. They are not very important in Hinduism any more, but the stories make interesting reading.  

...sudden end!

 Venky's note: I wrote this without reference books and much of the stuff is factually wrong. I will write up a proper essay on Hinduism later as:

1. Vedic Hinduism

2. Puranic Hinduism

3. History of Hinduism

4. Brief summaries of the principal Hindu works

5. Why Indians should be Hindu

6. How to be Hindu and modern at the same time and why.

But that is later and needs - yes - time! and effort!

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