User:Joshua Jonathan/Roots of Hinduism

Hinduism has been called the "oldest religion" in the world. It is "a fusion of Aryan and Dravidian cultures", which consists of many diverse traditions. It has diverse roots and no single founder. Among its roots are the historical Vedic religion of Iron Age India, but also the religions of the Indus Valley Civilisation, the Shramana or renouncer traditionsof north-east India, and "popular or local traditions".

Since Vedic times a process of Sanskritization has been taking place, in which "people from many strata of society throughout the subcontinent tended to adapt their religious and social life to Brahmanic norms".

After the Vedic period, between 500-200 BCE and ca. 300 CE, at the beginning of the "Epic and Puranic" c.q. "Preclassical" period, the "Hindu synthesis" emerged, which incorporated shramanic and Buddhist influences and the emerging bhakti tradition into the Brahmanical fold. During the Gupta reign the first Puranas were written, which were used to disseminate "mainstream religious ideology amongst pre-literate and tribal groups undergoing acculturation." The resulting Puranic Hinduism differed markedly from the earlier Brahmanism of the Dharmasastras and the smritis.

During the 12-16th century started "a blurring of philosophical distinctions", which treated various Indian religions as belonging to "a single whole", and influenced the modern understanding of Hinduism. This inclusivism has become characteristic of modern Hinduism, but can also be discerned in earlier strands of Indian thought. Both the Indian and the European thinkers who developed the term "Hinduism" in the 19th century were influenced by these philosophers.

Since the 19th century, under the influence of western colonialism and Indology, the popular understanding of Hinduism has been dominated by neo-Vedanta, in which mysticism, Aryan origins and the unity of Hinduism have been emphasised.

Common background of Indian religions

Geoffrey samuel:

In arguing for the fundamental commonality of the Indic religious background (a very different position, it should be added, from seeing Buddhism merely as a development from or a reaction to 'Hinduism', which is a position that by now has hopefully lost any scholarly respectability it may once have had)

Gavin Flood:

These renouncer traditions offered a new vision of the human condition which became incorporated, to some degree, into the worldview of the Brahman householder. The ideology of asceticism and renunciation seems, at first, discontinuous with the brahmanical ideology of the affirmation of social obligations and the performance of public and domestic rituals. Indeed, there has been some debate as to whether asceticism and its ideas of retributive action, reincarnation and spiritual liberation, might not have originated outside the orthodox vedic sphere, or even outside Aryan culture: that a divergent historical origin might account for the apparent contradiction within 'Hinduism' between the world affirmation of the householder and the world negation of the renouncer. However, this dichotomization is too simplistic, for continuities can undoubtedly be found between renunciation and vedic Brahmanism, while elements from non-Brahmanical, Sramana traditions also played an important part in the formation of the renunciate ideal. Indeed there are continuities between vedic Brahmanism and Buddhism, and it has been argued that the Buddha sought to return to the ideals of a vedic society which he saw as being eroded in his own day."

Gavin Flood also mentions samkhya.

Roots of Hinduism

Hinduism is "a fusion of Aryan and Dravidian cultures" According to Zimmer,

[Th]e history of Indian philosophy has been characterized largely by a series of crises of interaction between the invasive Vedic-Aryan and the non-Aryan, earlier, Dravidian styles of thought and spiritual experience. The Brahmans were the principal representatives of the former, while the latter was preserved, and finally reasserted, by the surviving princely houses of the native Indian, dark-skinned, pre-Aryan population."

Among its roots are the historical Vedic religion of Iron Age India, but also the mesolithic and neolithic cultures of India, such as the religions of the Indus Valley Civilisation, the Shramana or renouncer traditionsof north-east India, and the local traditions and tribal religions of the Austric, Dravidian, and Mongoloid people.

Since Vedic times a process of Sanskritization has been taking place, in which "people from many strata of society throughout the subcontinent tended to adapt their religious and social life to Brahmanic norms".

After the Vedic period, between 500-200 BCE and ca. 300 CE, at the beginning of the "Epic and Puranic" c.q. "Preclassical" period, the "Hindu synthesis" emerged, which incorporated shramanic and Buddhist influences and the emerging bhakti tradition into the Brahmanical fold via the smriti literature. During the Gupta reign the first Puranas were written, which were used to disseminate "mainstream religious ideology amongst pre-literate and tribal groups undergoing acculturation." The resulting Puranic Hinduism differed markedly from the earlier Brahmanism of the Dharmasastras and the smritis.

According to Nicholson, already between the twelfth and the sixteenth century, "certain thinkers began to treat as a single whole the diverse philosophival teachings of the Upanishads, epics, Puranas, and the schools known retrospectively as the "six systems" (saddarsana) of mainstream Hindu philosophy." Lorenzen locates the origins of a distinct Hindu identity in the interaction between Muslims and Hindus, and a proces of "mutual self-definition with a contrasting Muslim other", which started well before 1800. This inclusivism has become characteristic of modern Hinduism, but can also be discerned in earlier strands of Indian thought.

Since the 19th century, under the influence of western colonialism and Indology, the popular understanding of Hinduism has been dominated by neo-Vedanta, also called in which mysticism, Aryan origins and the unity of Hinduism have been emphasised.

"Fusion" or "synthesis"

Lockard:

The encounters that resulted from Aryan migration brought together several very different peoples and cultures, reconfiguring Indian society. Over many centuries a fusion of Aryan and Dravidian cultures occurred, a complex process that historians have labeled the Indo-Aryan synthesis. The mixing explains why many aspects of Aryan culture, such as the joyous and lusty consumption of beef and liquor, differed dramatically from the traits of later Indian society. The mixing forged a distinctive new social system and Hinduism, a religion of diverse beliefs and traditions.

Lockard:

Hinduism can be seen historically as a synthesis of Aryan beliefs with Harappan and other Dravidian traditions that developed over many centuries.

Hopfe & Woodward:

The religion that the Aryans brought with them mingled with the religion of the native people, and the culture that developed between them became classical Hinduism.

Karel Werner (2005), A Popular Dictionary of Hinduism, Routledge:

Brahmins, on the other hand, ... the Brahmins now made their comeback ... the final goal.

Plural roots

Wangu:

The theory that Indo-Aryan migration was the key factor in the development of Hinduism, was put forward by European scholars in the 19th and early 20th century. That theory, however, is now the subject of much debate and should be conssidered only one possible interpretation of history.

Flood:

Contemporary Hinduism cannot be traced to a common origin.

Jones & Ryan:

Hinduism has organically absorbed hundreds of separate cultural traditions, expressed in as many as 300 languages. As a result, Hindu tradition is metaphorically like the Grand Canyon gorge, where the great rive of time has sliced through the landscape, leaving visible successive historical layers.

Cousins:

Hinduism evolved organically, with new inititiaves and developments taking place within the tradition, as well as interaction with and adjustment to other cults and traditions which were then assimilated into the Hindu fold. These two processes of evolution and assimilation have produced an enormous variety of religious systems, beliefs and practices.

Indo-European c.q. Aryan or Vedic roots

Traditional view

Crangle:

[T]raditional Hinduism regards the Vedas to be the source of all spiritual knowledge.

Knott:

Many describe Hinduism as sanatana dharma, the eternal religion or tradition. This refers to the idea that it's origins lie beyond human history, and its truths have been divinely revealed (shruti) and passed down through the ages to the present day in the most ancient of the world's scriptures, the Veda. Many share this faith perspective, but various views arise when it comes to interpreting human history in India. A popular view today among some Hindus - particularly those who are often referred to as Hindu nationalists, owing to their belief that Hinduism is India's true religion - is that divine truth was revealed to the Aryans, whom they see as the noble, enlightened race which lived in India thousands of years ago. The Aryans shared a great language, Sanskrit, in which the Vedic scriptures were composed, and built a majestic Hindu civilization, the rituals, literature and law of which remain the common culture of Hindus today and India's rightful national heritage. According to this view, people belonging to the religions which developed in India after the time of the Aryans, like Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs, are all embraced as part of the Hindu religion.

Fosse:

From a nationalist point of view, it is clear that the concept of an Aryan-Dravidian divide is pernicious to the unity of the Hindu state, and an important aim for Hindutva and neo-Hindu scholarship is therefor to introduce a counter-narrative to the one presented by Western academic scholarship.

Historical development

Bowman - Early history of India.[3]

Samuel:

'About 500 BCE', however, represents a point at which I assume that an early form of 'Brahmanical' culture using an Indo-Aryan language had been firmly established in parts of Northern India (present day Punjab, Haryana and Western UP), but had not yet reached dominance over the North-Eastern areas (including present-day Bihar, West-Bengal and Bangladesh.

Influence

Narayanan:

[Hinduism] is a cumulative collection of communities, faiths, beliefs and practices that have come together over the centuries, although its ancient roots are usually seen in the cultures of the Indus Valley, Saraswati River civilization, and Indo-European people.

Wangu:

Hinduism was not always the complex religion it is today. Indologists, those who study the language, culture and history of the Indian subcontinent, have theorized that it developed gradually as a merging of the beliefs and practices of two main groups - the people of the Indus Vally in India and the Aryans of Persia. The theory that Indo-Aryan migration was the key factor in the development of Hinduism, was put forward by European scholars in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That theory, however, is now the subject of much debate and should be considered only one possible interpretation of history.

Narayanan:

It's beginnings lie in the ancient indigenous culture of India and of the Indo-European people.

Flood:

The many traditions which feed into contemporary Hinduism can be subsumed under three broad headings: the traditions of Brahmanical orthopraxy, the renouncer traditions and popular or local traditions.

Hopfe & Woodward:

The religion that the Aryans brought with them mingled with the religion of the native people, and the culture that developed between them became classical Hinduism.

Lockard:

Hinduism can be seen historically as a synthesis of Aryan beliefs with Harappan and other Dravidian traditions that developed over many centuries.

Disappearance

Michaels:

The legacy of the Vedic religion in Hinduism is generally overestimated. The influence of the mythology is indeed great, but the religious terminology changed considerably: all the key terms of Hinduism either do not exist in Vedic or have a completely different meaning. The religion of the Veda does not know the ethicized migration of the soul with retribution for acts (karma), the cyclical destruction of the world, or the idea of salvation during one's lifetime (jivanmukti; moksa; nirvana); the idea of the world as illusion (maya) must have gone against the grain of ancient India, and an omnipotent creator god emerges only in the late hymns of the rgveda. Nor did the Vedic religion know a caste system, the burning of widows, the ban on remarriage, images of gods and temples, Puja worship, Yoga, pilgrimages, vegetarianism, the holiness of cows, the doctrine of stages of life (asrama), or knew them only at their inception. Thus, it is justified to see a turning point between the Vedic religion and Hindu religions.

Halbfass:

Louis Renou has characterised ...

Mesolithic

Doniger:

Much of what we now call Hinduism may have had roots in cultures that thrived in South Asia long before the creation of textual evidence that we can decipher with any confidence. Remarkable cave paintings have been preserved from Mesolithic sites dating from c.30,000 BCE in Bhimbetka, near present-day Bhopal, in the Vindhya Mountains in the province of Madhya Pradesh.

Neolithic

Jones & Ryan:

Some practices of Hinduism must have originated in Neolithic times (c. 4,000 BCE). The worship of certain plants and animals as sacred, for instance, could very likely have very great antiquity. The worship of goddesses, too, a part of Hinduism today, may be a feature that originated in the Neolithic.

Indus Vally

Narayanan:

[Hinduism] is a cumulative collection of communities, faiths, beliefs and practices that have come together over the centuries, although its ancient roots are usually seen in the cultures of the Indus Valley, Saraswati River civilization, and Indo-European people.

Hiltebeitel:

There are good reasons to suspect that a largely unknown quantity, the religion of the peoples of the Indus Valley, is an important source for determining the roots of Hinduism.

Jones & Ryan:

The first attested elements that can be argued to be "Hindu" are found in the Indus Valley civilization complex.

Shramanic

Flood:

The many traditions which feed into contemporary Hinduism can be subsumed under three broad headings: the traditions of Brahmanical orthopraxy, the renouncer traditions and popular or local traditions.

Gomez:

The sramanas set religious goals that stood outside, and in direct opposition to, the religious and social order of the brahmanas (brahmans), who represented the Indo-Aryan establishment. Most of the values that would become characteristic of Indian, and therefore Hindu, religion in general were shaped by the interaction of these two groups, especially by a process of assimilation that transformed the Brahmanic order into Hindu culture.

Wolpert:

Pre-Aryan wisdom distilled from the "heat" of silent yogic meditation provided Aryan conquerors with new mystic keys to understanding and salvation. After some seven centuries of Aryan and pre-Aryan intercourse, a synthesis of what seems to have been the finest fruits of both systems emerged in scripture called Vedanta ("End of the Vedas"), starting by about 800 B.C.

Joshi: (EXPAND!)

Modern Indian culture of course is composite ... of human faith and practice.

Indigenous and local cultures

See also: Adivasi

Copied from Adivasi#Adivasi roots of modern Hinduism Some historians and anthropologists assert that much of what constitutes folk Hinduism today is actually descended from an amalgamation of adivasi faiths, idol worship practices and deities, rather than the original Indo-Aryan faith. This also includes the sacred status of certain animals such as monkeys, cows, peacocks, cobras (nagas) and elephants and plants such as the sacred fig (pipal), Ocimum tenuiflorum (tulsi) and Azadirachta indica (neem), which may once have held totemic importance for certain adivasi tribes. End of copied section

Narayanan:

It's beginnings lie in the ancient indigenous culture of India and of the Indo-European people.

Flood:

The many traditions which feed into contemporary Hinduism can be subsumed under three broad headings: the traditions of Brahmanical orthopraxy, the renouncer traditions and popular or local traditions.

Tiwari:

According to Professer (sic) Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, various people of diverse origins-the Austric Nishads (Kols or Mundas), Dramidas or Dravidians, the Aryans and Kiratas or Mongolians-began to live together in the well-demarcated geographical area of India three to four thousand years ago. Then began a racial fusion and cultural and linguistic miscegenation among them. In this work of welding together diverse people into one, Brahmin thinkers (mainly of Aryan origin) and the various Aryan language-speaking groups of military adventurers and business classes, always on the move, made the greatest contribution. A cultural ideology, including some social trends and practices and religious notions, became established. This cultural basis, with its Sanskrit name of Dharma, became at least from the end of second millennium B.C. (circa 1500-1000 B.C.), an irresistible force bringing together, under the guidance of the Brahmin priestly class, various peoples of India.

Hopfe & Woodward:

The religion that the Aryans brought with them mingled with the religion of the native people, and the culture that developed between them became classical Hinduism.

Momin:

From early times, tribal and folk cults and ritual practices were incorporated and assimilated into the corpus of Brahmanism. Totemic deities such as fish, tortoise and boar were made into incarnations of Vishnu. Shiva was formed by a fusion of the Vedic Rudra with some non-Aryan deity, including the Indus deity which has been described as proto-Shiva. Similarly, Narayani and Durga, manifestations of Shiva’s consort, which were associated with non-Aryan tribes, later came to be absorbed into classical Hinduism.

The cult of sun-worship was brought to India by the Magas who came to India around the first century bc from Sakadvip or Persia. Initially, they were not admitted to all the rituals and ceremonies but subsequently they came to be absorbed into the mainstream of Vedic society and known as Sakadvip or Maga Brahmans. The Krishna cult was substantially expanded and enriched by the Abhiras, who were a foreign pastoral tribe. The deities of tribals and low-caste groups were absorbed by Brahmanism. This is testified by the popularity of the Jagannath cult in Orissa and that of Viththala in Maharashtra. Similarly, serpent worship and phallus worship which later found their way into classical Hinduism were taken over from forest-dwelling tribal communities. Heterodox sects and cults, such as Shakta and the Tantric tradition, incorporated several esoteric features from indigenous, particularly tribal cultures.
The incorporation and assimilation of regional features into the mainstream of Vedic culture is attested by linguistic and philological evidence as well. Certain kinds of echo formations which are characteristic of the Austric family of languages found their way into the Indo-Aryan speeches. The presence of non-Aryan elements, especially Proto-Dravidian, in vocabulary, syntax and phoenetics, in Vedic Sanskrit is now fairly well established. The later Vedic texts indicate an even greater admixture of non-Aryan words.

The foregoing discussion makes it fairly clear that from very early times Vedic society was internally differentiated and pluralistic, rather than monolithic and homogeneous. It was an amalgam or synthesis of Aryan and non-Aryan, including tribal elements. In other words, since its very inception Hinduism appears to be a "mosaic of distinct cults, deities, sects and ideas", as Romila Thapar puts it. The point which I have tried to establish is that since ancient times Indian civilization has had a pluralistic and composite character, the pluralistic and composite ethos of Indian civilization, which began germinating during the Vedic period, was supp-lemented by the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, and was further reinforced during the early medieval period which witnessed the early flowering of the Bhakti Movement. This composite tradition attained efflorescence during the late medieval period.

Knott:

Many describe Hinduism as sanatana dharma, the eternal religion or tradition. This refers to the idea that it's origins lie beyond human history, and its truths have been divinely revealed (shruti) and passed down through the ages to the present day in the most ancient of the world's scriptures, the Veda. Many share this faith perspective, but various views arise when it comes to interpreting human history in India. A popular view today among some Hindus - particularly those who are often referred to as Hindu nationalists, owing to their belief that Hinduism is India's true religion - is that divine truth was revealed to the Aryans, whom they see as the noble, enlightened race which lived in India thousands of years ago. The Aryans shared a great language, Sanskrit, in which the Vedic scriptures were composed, and built a majestic Hindu civilization, the rituals, literature and law of which remain the common culture of Hindus today and India's rightful national heritage According to this view, people belonging to the religions which developed in India after the time of the Aryans, like Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs, are all embraced as part of the Hindu religion. But many Hindus, as well as Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs themselves, do not share this understanding. They challenge the idea that the roots of Hinduism were entirely Aryan. They believe instead that some of the great deities and important religious developments that we now assiate with Hinduism came from indigenous people who lived in India before the Aryans. According to them, the latter were incomers, migrating into north-west India, conquering peaceful, settled communities, imposong their ideology yet absorbing what was valuable and popular from the surrounding culture. This has also been a widely held view among western scholars, who have dated the Aryan migration to about 1500 BCE and the Rig Veda, the earliest known scripture of the Aryans, to about 1200 BCE.

Embree:

Even in very early times there had existed, side by side with the hieratic Vedic religion, several other religous traditions. The gods and goddesses of these tarditions differed from the divinities of the Vedic pantheon, and the religious parctices associated with them also differed fundamentally from the religious practices of the Vedic Aryans. Nevertheless, these indigenous religions eventually found a place under the broad mantle of the Vedic religion. While Brahmanism remained in the ascendancy, the Brahmans'sphere of influence was restricted to the groups among which they had originated. The gradual decline of brahmanism, however, combined with competition from Buddhism and Jainism, afforded the popular religions an opportunity to assert themselves. Indeed, the Brahmanists themselves seem to have encouraged this development to some extent as a means of meeting the challenge of the more heterodox movements. At the same time, among indigenous religions, a common allegiance to the authority of the Vedaprovided a thin, but nonetheless significant, thread of unity among their variety of gods and religious practices.

Dravidian cultures

Lockard:

Hinduism can be seen historically as a synthesis of Aryan beliefs with Harappan and other Dravidian traditions that developed over many centuries.

Lockard:

The encounters that resulted from Aryan migration brought together several very different peoples and cultures, reconfiguring Indian society. Over many centuries a fusion of Aryan and Dravidian cultures occurred, a complex process that historians have labeled the Indo-Aryan synthesis. The mixing explains why many aspects of Aryan culture, such as the joyous and lusty consumption of beef and liquor, differed dramatically from the traits of later Indian society. The mixing forged a distinctive new social system and Hinduism, a religion of diverse beliefs and traditions.

According to Tyler, Hinduism developed as a "resurgence of the ancient, aboriginal Indus civilization":

Aryan orthodoxy was obliterated by heterodoxy, and even though the heterodox cults themselves eventually declined, the pattern of Aryan dominance was forever shattered. Remnants of Aryan culture were to survive the destruction but only in "Dravidianized" form. In every cultural sphere the ancient Dravidian forms reasserted themselves, transmogrifying Aryan doctrines and conventions, reducing Aryan gods to Dravidian gods, replacing the Aryan cult of the family altar with the Dravidian temple, subordinating ritualism to devotionalism, transforming class divisions into caste distinctions, and welding loosely knit tribal confederacies into centralized empires. The Hindu synthesis was less the dialectical reduction of orthodoxy and heterodoxy than the resurgence of the ancient, aboriginal Indus civilization. In this process the rude, barbaric Aryan tribes were gradually civilized and eventually merged with the autochthonous Dravidians. Although elements of their domestic cult and rit ualislll werejealously preserved by Brahman priests, the hody of their culture survived only in fragmentary tales and allegories embedded in vast, syncretistic compendia. On the whole, the Aryan contribution to Indian culture is insignificant. The essential pattern of Indian culture was already established in the third millennium B.C., and ... the form of Indian civilization perdured and eventually reasserted itself.

Zimmer

Crangle notes that Zimmer has been the most notable opponent of "the linear argument", which attempts "to interpret the origin and early development of Indian contemplative practices as a sequential growth from an Aryan genesis".

Zimmer:

[T]the history of Indian philosophy has been characterized largely by a series of crises of interaction between the invasive Vedic-Aryan and the non-Aryan, earlier, Dravidian styles of thought and spiritual experience. The Brahmans were the principal representatives of the former, while the latter was preserved, and finally reasserted, by the surviving princely houses of the native Indian, dark-skinned, pre-Aryan population. Since Jainism retains the Dravidian structure more purely than the other major Indian traditions-and is consequently a relatively simple, unsophisticated, clean-cut, and direct manifestation of the pessimistic dualism that underlies not only Samkhya, Yoga, and early Buddhistic thought, but also much of the reasoning of the Upanisads, and even the so-called "non-dualism" of the Vedanta ...

According to Zimmer, Yoga is part of the pre-Vedic heritage, which also includes Jainism, Samkhya and Buddhism:

[Jainism] does not derive from Brahman-Aryan sources, but reflects the cosmology and anthropology of a much older pre-Aryan upper class of northeastern India - being rooted in the same subsoil of archaic metaphysical speculation as Yoga, Sankhya, and Buddhism, the other non-Vedic Indian systems."

Sjoberg:

Indeed, Zimmer (p. 228) contended that the analysis of the psyche that prevailed in the synthesis of the "Six Systems" of classical Indian philosophy was prefigured in the Jaina view and introduced via Sankhya and yoga. It was, he argued, originally a non-Aryan contribution. The system of Tantra, which emerged in the medieval period in India, perpetuated many of the ideas of Sankhya, particularly, and refined the application of the psychological principles alluded to above. Zimmer (1951:219) saw these as affecting the whole texture of the religious life of India as well as much of the popular and esoteric Buddhist teaching in Tibet and East Asia.

Samuel too argues that yoga derives from the Śramana tradition:

Our best evidence to date suggests that [yogic practice] developed in the same ascetic circles as the early sramana movements (Buddhists, Jainas and Ajivikas), probably in around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE.

Nicholson notes:

Heinrich Zimmer, who fled Nazi Germany with his Jewish wive to settle in New York, accpeted the Orientalist depiction of agressive Aryan migrants who invaded India in the second millennium BCE and conquered the Dravidian peoples they found there. Yet Zimmer insisted that ultimately it was the Dravidians who conquered the materialistic, warlike Aryans by infiltrating their religion with the Buddhist and Samkhya values of pacifism, meditation, and world renunciation.

Sjoberg on Zimmer:

Zimmer's Philosophies of India (1951) (based on his last lectures in the early 1940s and seemingly representing a break with his earlier writings) made him an exception among these scholars in that he recognized the crucial role of the non-Aryan element in the philosophical traditions of India. However, although this book is viewed as a classic work, the implications of his arguments concerning the Dravidians seem to have been generally ignored.

Yet, Crangle notes Zimmer's point of view is supported by other scholars, such as Niniam Smart, in Doctrine and argument in Indian Philosophy, 1964, p.27-32 & p.76, and S.K. Belvakar & R.D. Ranade in History of Indian philosophy, 1974 (1927), p.81 & p.303-409. The Dutch Indologist Alfred Scheepers elaborated Zimmer's hypothese in his An Orientation in Indian Philosophy.

The emergence of Hinduism

"Inclusivism" has become characteristic of modern Hinduism, but can also be discerned in earlier strands of Indian thought. Michaels calls this "the identificatory habit". This inclusivism is reflected in the so-called "Hindu Synthesis".

The "Hindu synthesis"

According to Hiltebeitel, a period of consolidation in the development of Hinduism took place between the time of the late Vedic Upanishad (ca. 500 BCE) and the period of the rise of the Guptas (ca. 320-467 CE), which he calls the "Hindu synthesis", "Brahmanic synthesis", or "orthodox synthesis". It develops in interaction with other religions and peoples:

The emerging self-definitions of Hinduism were forged in the context of continuous interaction with heterodox religions (Buddhists, Jains, Ajivikas) throughout this whole period, and with foreign people (Yavanas, or Greeks; Sakas, or Scythians; Pahlavas, or Parthians; and Kusanas, or Kushans) from the third phase on [between the Mauryan empire and the rise of the Guptas].

Wolpert:

The Hindu synthesis emerged with the second great imperial unification of North India, the Golden Age of the Guptan Dynast (c. A.D. 320-550).

Geoffrey Samuel:

The establishment of Brahmanical Hinduism as a state religion can be associated above all with the Gupta dynasty in North and Central India (c. 320-c. 510 CE). I use the term 'Brahmanical Hinduism' here, because I think that if we want to use the term Hinduism at all before the nineteenth century then this is the point at which we can reasonably start using it.

Nath:

The most remarkable development in the field of religion during Gupta/post-Gupta times was the rise of 'Hinduism', which like a colossus striding across the religious firmament soon came to overshadow all other existent religions. Certain features which distinguished it from its Vedic Smarta roots were its ever widening horizon and popular base, its theological and sectarian pluralism, its Tantric veneer and an extraordinary thrust on devotion or bhakti.

Whereas Brahmanism had represented more or less a single religious strand drawing mainly upon Vedic ideology and throughout manifesting an elitist outlook Puranic Hinduism proved to be a multiplex belief-system which grew and expanded as it absorbed and synthesized polaristic religious ideas and cultic traditions. So that quite in contrast to Brahmanism, Puranic Hinduism through its gargantuan powers of assimilation and synthesis was able to bring within its vortex all possible classes and segments of society, literate as well as preliterate.

The transition from 'Brahmanism' to 'Hinduism' was neither sudden nor abrupt nor was it a complete breaking away from the past tradition. It was more the outcome of a slow and gradual process of evolution and growth, reflecting a remarkable continuity along with significant shift in ideological thrust and approach. What however, is really noteworthy is the precise time of its efforescence. Puranic Hinduism developed at a time when society was in the throes of a changinge conomic and political order.T he periodr epresenteda watershed in Indian history, when a flourishing market economy was giving way to a closed landed economic order; when foreign and indigenous tribal groups had begun staking their claims to political power, leading to its fragmentation and the eventual rise of a feudal order.

Components

Smith:

By the time of the early Gupta empire the new theism had been harmonized with the old Vedic religion, and two of the main branches of Hinduism were fully recognized.

Cousins:

Buddhism was one of the influences that lead to the Hindu synthesis.

Fuller:

One component in the Brahmanical synthesis is the ideological assimilation between Brahman and ascetic renouncer.

Wolpert:

Upanishadic dialogues, often brilliant, introduced new concepts that were to become axiomatic to the subsequently emerging Hindu synthesis. The "laws of action" (karma) and pessimistic ideas of "reincarnation" (samsara) and the material world as illusin (maya) bubbled up to Vedantic light from pre-Aryan antiquity, or so it would seem, for ideologically Upanishadic thought was as far removed from robust Aryan optimism and nature-worship as Bihar is from the North-West frontier. The ultimate goal was now "release" (moksha) of one's Soul (Atman) from this veil of material sorrow and pain, and from any imperative of rebirth. Historically, Aryan conquerors by this time appear to have fallen under the spell of deeper pre-Aryan profundity and quiet wisdom. Upanishadic texts, however, continued to pay lip service to Brahmans and their rituals, hence were accepted as Vedic scripture, despite their radical doctrines. Brahmans have long been ingenious assimilators and synthesizers.

Crossley e.a.:

The kingdoms of southern India, inhabited primarily by speakers of Dravidian languages, which developed in partial isolation, and somewhat differently, from the Arya north. They produced epics, poetry and performance arts. Elements of Tamil religious beliefs were merged into the Hindu synthesis.

Smriti

The smriti texts of the period between 200 BCE-100 CE proclaim the authority of the Vedas, and acceptance of the Vedas became a central criterium for defining Hinduism over and against the heterodoxies, which rejected the Vedas. Of the six Hindu darsanas, the Mimamsa and the Vedanta "are rooted primarily in the Vedic sruti tradition and are sometimes called smarta schools in the sense that they develop smarta orthodox current of thoughts that are based, like smriti, directly on sruti.

Larson:

The Brahmanical reaction to all the developments of the Buddhist and Shramana Period was not rejection or condemnation but rather, to whatever extent possible, assimilation and consolidation. This can be seen in the new literature shaped in the Brahmanical circles towards the end of that period, from about 200 BCE to about 300 CE. This new literature attains its final shape or redaction in the first centuries of the Common Era.
This new literature as a whole is referred to as literature "worthy to be remembered" (smriti) in order to distinguish it from the literature that is considered to be authentic "scripture" (shruti), that is, the Vedas (including the Upanishads) that we have already discussed. Interestingly enough, however, even though Hindus only accept the Vedas as authentic scripture, in fact, most of the basic ideas and practices of classical Hinduism derive from the new smriti literature. In other words, Hindus for the most part pay little more than lip service to the Vedic scriptures. The most important dimensions of being Hindu derive, instead, from the smriti texts. The point can also be made in terms of the emerging social reality. Whereas the shruti is taken seriously by a small number of Brahmins, the smriti are taken seriously by the overwhelming majority of Hindus, regardless of class or caste identity.

Bhagavad Gita

Main article: Bhagavad Gita

Synthesis

According to Hiltebeitel, "the consolidation of Hinduism takes place under the sign of bhakti". It is the Bhagavadgita that seals this achievement, incorporating bhakti into the brahmanical fold. The result is a synthesis that may be called smarta. It views Shiva and Vishnu as "complementary in their functions but ontologically identical".

Scheepers mentions the Bhagavat Gita as a Brahmanical text which uses the shramanic and Yogic terminology to spread the Brahmanic idea of living according to one's duty or dharma, in contrast to the yogic ideal of liberation from the workings of karma. Nicholson mentions the Shiva Gita as an adaptation of the Vishnu-oriented Bhagavat Gita into Shiva-oriented terminology.

According to Basham,

The Bhagavadgita combines many different elements from Samkhya and Vedanta philosophy. In matters of religion, its important contribution was the new emphasis placed on devotion, which has since remained a central path in Hinduism. In addition, the popular theism expressed elsewhere in the Mahabharata and the transcendentalism of the Upanishads converge, and a God of personal characteristics is identified with the brahman of the Vedic tradition. The Bhagavadgita thus gives a typology of the three dominant trends of Indian religion: dharma-based householder life, enlightenment-based renunciation, and devotion-based theism.

Raju:

The Bhagavadgita may be treated as agreat synthesis of the ideas of the impersonal spirtual monism with personalistic monotheism, of the yoga of action with the yoga of transcendence of action, and these again with yogas of devotion and knowledge.

According to Raju, the Bhagavad Gita presents Brahman as being both nirguna and saguna:

• "[A] clearcut distinction between the personal Brahman and the impersonal is not possible"
• "Brahman really transcends the distinction between the personal and the impersonal"
• "It is nirguna (without qualities) and yet it is full of qualities (saguna)"

Heroism and war

The Bhagavad Gita is set in the narrative frame of the Mahabharata, which values heroism, "energy, dedication and self-sacrifice", as the dharma, "holy duty" of the Ksatriya (warrior). In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is "exhorted by his charioteer, Krsna, among others, to stop hesitating and fulfill his Ksatriya (warrior) duty as a warrior and kill."

Miller:

The epics are repositories of myths, ideals and concepts that Hindu culture has always drawn upon to represent aspects of dharma. As befits their social position as warrior-kings, the figures of the epic heroes embody order and sacred duty (dharma); while their foeas, whether human or demonic, embody chaos (adharma). The rituals of warrior life and the demands of sacred duty define the religious and moral meaning of heroism throughout the Mahabharata. Acts of heroism are characterized less by physical prowess than by the fulfillment of dharma, which often involves extraordinary forms of sacrifice, penance, devotion to a divine authority, and and spiritual victory over evil. The distinctive martial religion of this epic emerges from a synthesis of values derived from the ritual traditions of the Vedic sacrificial cult combined with loyalty to a personal deity.

Michaels:

The king is the epitome of the man of action, and power assimilated with interest in salvation is heroism.

Michaels:

Even though the frame story of the Mahabharata is rather simple, the epic has an outstanding significance for Hindu heroism. The heroism of the Pandavas, the ideals of honor and courage in battle, are constant sources of treatises in which it is not sacrifice, renunciation of the world, or erudition that is valued, but energy, dedication and self-sacrifice. The Bhagavad Gita, inserted in the sixth book (Bhismaparvan), and probably completed in the second century A.D., is such a text, that is, a philosophical and theistic treatise, with which the Pandava is exhorted by his charioteer, Krsna, among others, to stop hesitating and fulfill his Ksatriya (warrior) duty as a warrior and kill.

According to Malinar, "Arjuna's crisis and some of the arguments put forward to call him to action are connected to the debates on war and peace in the UdP [Udyoga Parva]". According to Malinar,

While the refrain that rums through the UdP and many other passages in the epic is that one must put up with fate and surrender one's personal interests to the power of destiny, the BhG offers an alternative view of fate by disclosing the identity of the god who is in charge of it and propagating the view that accepting and enacting the fatal course of events is an act of devotion to this god and his cause.

According to Malinar, a central point in the dispute between the two parties in the Mahabharata is the question how to define "the law of heroism":

"[W]hat law must a warrior follow, on what authority, and how does the definition of ksatriyadharma affect the position of the king, who is supposed to protect and represent it?"

Malinar gives a description of the dharma of a Ksatriya (warrior) based on the Udyogaparvan, the fifth book of the Mahabharata:

This duty consists first of all in standing one's ground and fighting for status. The main duty of a warrior is never to submit to anybody. A warrior must resist any impulse to self-preservation that would make him avoid a fight. In brief, he ought to be a man (puruso bhava; cf. 5.157.6; 13;15). Some of the most vigorous formulations of what called the 'heart' or the 'essence' of heroism (ksatrahrdaya) come from the ladies of the family. They bare shown most unforgiving with regard to the humiliations they have gone through, the loss of their status and honour, not to speak of the shame of having a weak man in the house, whether husband, son or brother.

Criticism

• Arvind Sharma (2003), The Study of Hinduism, Univ of South Carolina Press, pp. 163-165 [4]

Puranic Hinduism

See also: Katha (storytelling format)

After the end of the Gupta Empire and the collapse of the Harsha Empire, power became decentralised in India. Several larger kingdoms emerged, with "countless vasal states". The kingdoms were ruled via a feudal system. Smaller kingdoms were dependent on the protection of the larger kingdoms. "The great king was remote, was exalted and deified", as reflected in the Tantric Mandala, which could also depict the king as the centre of the mandala.

The disintegration of central power also lead to regionalisation of religiosity, and religious rivalry. Local cults and languages were enhanced, and the influence of "Brahmanic ritualistic Hinduism" was diminished. Rural and devotional movements arose, along with Shaivism, Vaisnavism, Bhakti and Tantra, though "sectarian groupings were only at the beginning of their development". Religious movements had to compete for recognition by the local lords. Buddhism lost its position, and began to disappear in India.

Emergence of Puranic Hinduism

Thapar [5]

According to Nath, the early medieval Puranas were composed to disseminate religious mainstream ideology among the pre-literate tribal societies undergoing acculturation. The Brahmanism of the Dharmashastras and the smritis underwent a radical transformation at the hands of the Purana composers, resulting in the rise of Puranic Hinduism, "which like a colossus striding across the religious firmanent soon came to overshadow all existing religions". Puranic Hinduism was a "multiplex belief-system which grew and expanded as it absorbed and synthesized polaristic ideas and cultic traditions" It was distinguished from its Vedic Smarta roots by its popular base, its theological and sectarian pluralism, its Tantric veneer, and the central place of bhakti.

Thapar:

In the ideology of kingship the rituals of Vedic Brahmanism were encouraged and grants of land enabled its survival, although it eventually made way for Puranic Hinduism. But, as priests in Vaishnava and Shaiva worship, the brahmans had to make concessions, for instance that brahmans could be temple priests although these were given a lower status than specialists in Vedic ritual.

Scheepers mentions the Bhagavat Gita as a Brahmanical text which uses the shramanic and Yogic terminology to spread the Brahmanic idea of living according to one's duty or dharma, in contrast to the yogic ideal of liberation from the workings of karma. Nicholson mentions the Shiva Gita as an adaptation of the Vishnu-oriented Bhagavat Gita into Shiva-oriented terminology.

Brahmanas became landowners

With the breakdown of the Gupta empire, gifts of virgin waste-land were heaped on brahmanas, to ensure provitable agrarical exploitation of land owned by the kings, but also to provide status to the new ruling classes. Brahmanas spread further over India, interacting with local clans with different religions and ideologies. The Brahmanas used the Puranas to incorporate those clans into the agrarical society and its accompanying religion and ideology. Local chiefs and peasants were absorbed into the castesystem, which was used to keep "control over the new kshatriyas and shudras. The use of caste worked better with the new Puranic Hinduism than with the shramanic sects. The Puranic texts provided extensive genealogies which gave status to the new kshatriyas. Buddhist myths pictured government as a contract between an elected ruler and the people. And the Buddhist chakkavatti "was a distinct concept from the models of conquest held up to the kshatriyas and the Rajputs."

Assimilation of local religions

Many local religions and traditions were assimilated into puranic Hinduism. Vishnu and Shiva emerged as the main deities, together with Sakti/Deva.

Nath:

Vishnu came to subsume the cults of Narayana, Jagannaths, Venkateswara and many others [...] [S]ome incarnations of Vishnu such as Matsya, Kurma, Varaha and perhaps even Nrsimha helped to incorporate certain popular totem symbols and creation myths, specially thse related to wild boar, which commonly permeate preliterate mythology, others such as Krsna and Balarama became instrumental in assimilating local cults and myths centering around two popular pastoral and agricultural gods [...] vishnu's two most popular incarnations as Rama and Krsna, also became the focus of a strong bhakti tradition, which found expression particularly in the Bhagavata Purana. Thus Rama became the object of complete devotion to some preliterate tribes which have been mythicised as vanaras [...] Similarly the ever widening current of Krsna tradition deeply immersed in pastoralism, began to subsume numerous Naga yaksa and even some hill and tree based cults.

Nath:

Siva became identified with countless local cults by the sheer suffixing of Isa or Isvara to the name of the local deity, e.g., Bhutesvara, Hatakesvara, Chandesvara.

Adivasi

Main article: Adivasi

http://books.google.nl/books?id=VDGIpkJ9BgwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=adivasi&hl=nl&sa=X&ei=O6aRUpqjJ8Se0QW2loHQDg&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=adivasi&f=false

The Smarta Tradition

Main article: Smarta Tradition

According to Flood,

The Brahmans who followed the puranic religion became known as smarta, those whose worshio was baed on the smriti, or pauranika, those based on the Puranas.

Origins

Hiltebeitel situates the origins of the Smarta tradition in the ongoing interaction between the Vedic-Brahmanic tradition and non-Vedic traditions. According to Hiltebeitel, a period of consolidation in the development of Hinduism took place between the time of the late Vedic Upanishad (ca. 500 BCE) and the period of the rise of the Guptas (ca. 320-467 CE):

The emerging self-definitions of Hinduism were forged in the context of continuous interaction with heterodox religions (Buddhists, Jains, Ajivikas) throughout this whole period, and with foreign people (Yavanas, or Greeks; Sakas, or Scythians; Pahlavas, or Parthians; and Kusanas, or Kushans) from the third phase on [between the Mauryan empire and the rise of the Guptas].

The smriti texts of the period between 200 BCE-100 CE proclaim the authority of the Vedas, and acceptance of the Vedas becomes a central criterium for defining Hinduism over and against the heterodoxies, which rejected the Vedas. Of the six Hindu darsanas, the Mimamsa and the Vedanta "are rooted primarily in the Vedic sruti tradition and are sometimes called smarta schools in the sense that they develop smarta orthodox current of thoughts that are based, like smriti, directly on sruti. According to Hiltebeitel, "the consolidation of Hinduism takes place under the sign of bhakti". It is the Bhagavadgita that seals this achievement. The result is an universal achievement that may be called smarta. It views Shiva and Vishnu as "complementary in their functions but ontologically identical".

Philosophy

Smartas believe in the essential oneness of five (panchadeva) or six (Shanmata deities as personifications of the Supreme. According to Smartism, supreme reality, Brahman, transcends all of the various forms of personal deity. God is both Saguna and Nirguna:

As Saguna, God exhibits qualities such as an infinite nature and a number of characteristics such as compassion, love, and justice. As Nirguna, God is understood as pure consciousness that is not connected with matter as experienced by humanity. Because of the holistic nature of God, these are simply two forms or names that are expressions of Nirguna Brahman, or the Ultimate Reality.

Smartas and Advaita Vedanta

The majority of members of Smarta community follow the Advaita Vedanta philosophy of Shankara. Smarta and Advaita have become almost synonymous, though not all Advaitins are Smartas. Traditionally, Shankara (8th c. CE) is regarded as the greatest teacher and reformer of the Smartha. According to Hunduism-guide.com:

Not all Brahmins specialized in this Smriti tradition. Some were influenced by Buddhism, Jainism or Charvaka tradition and philosophy. This did not mean that all these people rejected the authority of Vedas, but only that their tradition of worship and philosophy was based not on smriti texts. In time, Shankaracharya brought all the Vedic communities together. He tried to remove the non-smriti aspects that had crept into the Hindu communities. He also endeavoured to unite them by arguing that any of the different Hindu gods could be worshipped, according to the prescriptions given in the smriti texts. He established that worship of various deities are compatible with Vedas and is not contradictory, since all are different manifestations of one nirguna Brahman. Shankaracharya was instrumental in reviving interest in the smritis.

According to Hiltebeitel, Shankara established the nondualist interpretation of the Upanishads as the touchstone of a revived smarta tradition:

Practically, Shankara fostered a rapprochement between Advaita and smarta orthodoxy, which by his time had not only continued to defend the varnasramadharma theory as defining the path of karman, but had developed the practice of pancayatanapuja ("five-shrine worship") as a solution to varied and conflicting devotional practices. Thus one could worship any one of five deities (Vishnu, Siva, Durga, Surya, Ganesa) as one's istadevata ("deity of choice").

Spread from North to South

From northern India this "Hindu synthesis", and its societal divisions, spread to southern India and parts of Southeast Asia.

Geoffrey Samuel:

Certainly, there is substantial textual evidence for the outward expansion of Vedic-Brahmanical culture.

Geoffrey Samuel:

By the first and second centuries CE, the Dravidian-speaking regions of the south were also increasingly being incorporated into the general North and Central Indian cultural pattern, as were parts at least of Southeast Asia. The Pallava kingdom in South India was largely Brahmanical in orientation although it included a substantial Jain and Buddhist population, while Indic states were also beginning to develop in Southeast Asia."

Buddhist and Jain influences

Gerald Larson:

Also, the spread of the culture of North India to the South was accomplished in many instances by the spread of Buddhist and Jain institutions (monasteries, lay communities, and so forth). The Pallavas of Kanci appear to have been one of the main vehicles for the spread of specifically Indo-Brahmanical or Hindu institutions in the South, a process that was largely completed after the Gupta Age. As Basham has noted, "the contact of Aryan and Dravidian produced a vigorous cultural synthesis, which in turn had an immense influence on Indian civilization as a whole.""

Sanskritization and Brahmanization

Narayanan:

Local traditions have entered Hinduism through processes of "Sanskritization", whereby a local deity becomes identified with pan-Indian gods, and "brahminization", the adoption of "high"-caste rituals by many communities.

Doniger:

The sociologist M.N. Srivinas, in 1952, coined the useful term "Sanskritization" to describe the way that Vedic social values, Vedic ritual forms, and Sanskrit learning, seep into local popular traditions of ritual and ideology (in part through people who hope to be upwardly mobile, to rise by imitating the manners and habits, particularly food taboos, of Brahmins, and in particular avoiding violence to animals). Indian society, in this view, is a permanent floating game of snakes and ladders (or, perhaps, snakes and ropes, recalling that Vedantic philosophers mistake snakes for ropes and taht you climb up on ropes in the Indian rope trick), which you enter in a state of impurity, gradually advancing over the generations toward the goal of Brahminical purity, trying to avoid the many pitfalls along the way. Tribal groups (Bhils, Gonds, etc.) might undergo Sanskritization in order toclaim to be a caste, and therefo, Hindu.

Doniger:

Sanskrit, the language of power, emerged in India from a minority, and at first it's power came precisely from it's nonintelligibility and unavailability, which made it the power of an elite group.

Doniger:

Sanskrit texts from the earliest period assimilated folk texts that were largely oral and composed in languages other than Sanskrit, vernacular languages.

Gomez:

Most of the values that would become characteristic of Indian, and therefor Hindu, religion in general, were shaped by the interaction of these two groups, especially by a process of assimilation that transformed the Brahmanic order into Hindu culture.

Wendy Doniger:

The process, sometimes called “Sanskritization,” began in Vedic times and was probably the principal method by which the Hinduism of the Sanskrit texts spread through the subcontinent and into Southeast Asia. Sanskritization still continues in the form of the conversion of tribal groups, and it is reflected in the persistence of the tendency among some Hindus to identify rural and local deities with the gods of the Sanskrit texts.

Doniger:

But the opposite of Sanskritization, the process by which the Sanskritic tradition simultaneously absorbs and transforms those same popular traditions, is equally important, and that process might be called oralization, or popularization, or even Deshification (from the local or deshi traditions) or Laukification, from what Sanskrit calls laukika ("of the people" [loka]). Let's setle on Deshification. The two processes of Sanskritization and Deshification beget each other. Similarly, through a kinds of identificatio brahmanica, local gods take on the names of gods in Sanskrit texts: Murukan becomes Skanda, a kind of Sanskritization, while at the same time there is an identificatio deshika, by which Sanskrit gods take on the characteristics of local gods, and to the people who worship Murukan, it is Murukan who is absorbing Skanda, not the reverse. "Cross-fertilization" might be a good, equalizing term for the combination of the two processes.

Wendy Doniger:

If Sanskritization has been the main means of connecting the various local traditions throughout the subcontinent, the converse process, which has no convenient label, has been one of the means whereby Hinduism has changed and developed over the centuries. Many features of Hindu mythology and several popular gods—such as Ganesha, an elephant-headed god, and Hanuman, the monkey god—were incorporated into Hinduism and assimilated into the appropriate Vedic gods by this means. Similarly, the worship of many goddesses who are now regarded as the consorts of the great male Hindu gods, as well as the worship of individual unmarried goddesses, may have arisen from the worship of non-Vedic local goddesses. Thus, the history of Hinduism can be interpreted as the interplay between orthoprax custom and the practices of wider ranges of people and, complementarily, as the survival of features of local traditions that gained strength steadily until they were adapted by the Brahmans.

Gavin Flood:

Sanskritization is the process whereby local or regional forms of culture and religion-local deities, rituals, literary genres-become identified with the 'great tradition' of Sanskrit literature and culture: namely the culture and religion of orthodox, Aryan, Brahmans, which accepts the Veda as revelation and, generally, adheres to varnasrama-dharma.

Gavin Flood:

The process of Sanskritization only began to significantly influence the south after the first two centuries CE and Tamil deities and forms of worship became adapted to northern Sanskrit forms.

Gavin Flood:

Within the developing Hindu traditions we can see the process of Brahmanization or Sanskritization, whereby the great brahmanical tradition of vedic social values, vedic ritual forms and Sanskrit learning absorbs local popular traditions of ritual and ideology.

Absorbtion of local cults and gods

Vijay Nath:

Visnu and Siva, on the other hand, as integral components of the Triad while continuing to be a subject of theological speculation, however, in their subesequent avataras" began to absorb countless local cults and deities within their folds. The latter were either taken to represent the multiple facets of the same god or else were supposed to denote different forms and appellations by which the god came to be known and worshipped. Thus whereas Visnu came to subsume the cults of Narayana, Jagannatha, Venkateswara and many others, Siva became identified with countless local cults by the sheer suffixing of Isa or Isvarato the name of the local deity, e.g., Bhutesvara, Hatakesvara, Chandesvara."

Gifts of land

It was aided by the settlement of Brahmins on land granted by local rulers, the incorporation and assimilation of popular non-Vedic gods,

Geoffrey Samuel:

[T]he Buddhist sutras describe what was in later periods a standard mechanism for the expansion of Vedic-Brahmanical culture: the settlement of Brahmins on land granted by local rulers."

Mīmāṃsā-Vedanta

Decline of Vedic religion; restoration by Mimamsa, which was stronger than Vedanta; eventually eclipsed by Vedanta.

• History of Hinduism#Survival of Vedic ritual
• Mīmāṃsā#History
• Advaita Vedanta#Early influence
• Neo-Vedanta
• Reinterpretation of Shankara by Vivekananda; see, among others, Jivanmukti in transformation, and Rambacharan
• Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (Mimamsa)
• http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/383181/Mimamsa
• http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/324755/Kumarila
• http://www.katinkahesselink.net/india/purva-mimamsa.html
• http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mimamsa
• http://hinduism.iskcon.org/tradition/1102.htm
• http://www.advaitacentrum.nl/nl/literatuur-/932-rc-pandeya-en-manju-purva-mimamsa-en-vedanta

Encyclopedia Britannica:

Kumarila publicly debated Jain and Buddhist teachers throughout India on the issue of the immortality of the individual soul and tried to persuade the powerful to withdraw their patronage of Buddhist monasteries. He hoped, through his revival of Hinduism, to weaken and stop the spread of those two religions in South India.[6]

Diversity and inclusivism

Diversity

See also: Hindu denominations

Hinduism has been described as a tradition having a "complex, organic, multileveled and sometimes internally inconsistent nture." Hinduism does not have a "unified system of belief encoded in a declaration of faith or a creed", but is rather an umbrella term comprising the plurality of religious phenomena of India. According to the Supreme Court of India,

Unlike other religions in the World, the Hindu religion does not claim any one Prophet, it does not worship any one God, it does not believe in any one philosophic concept, it does not follow any one act of religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not satisfy the traditional features of a religion or creed. It is a way of life and nothing more".

Part of the problem with a single definition of the term "Hinduism" is the fact that Hinduism does not have a single historical founder. It is a synthesis of various traditions, the "Brahmanical orthopraxy, the renouncer traditions and popular or local traditions."

Also, Hinduism does not have a single system of salvation, but consists of various religions and forms of religiosity. Some Hindu religious traditions regard particular rituals as essential for salvation, but a variety of views on this co-exist. Some Hindu philosophies postulate a theistic ontology of creation, of sustenance, and of the destruction of the universe, yet some Hindus are atheists. Hinduism is sometimes characterized by a belief in reincarnation (samsara) determined by the law of karma and the idea that salvation is freedom from this cycle of repeated birth and death. Hinduism is therefore viewed as the most complex of all the living, historical world religions.

Inclusivism

Despite the differences, there is also a sense of unity. Most Hindu traditions revere a body of religious or sacred literature, the Vedas, although there are exceptions. Halbfass cites Renou, according to whom this reverence is a mere ""tipping of the hat", a traditional gesture of saluting an "idol" without any further commitment." Halbfass does not agree with this qualification.}} According to Halbfass, although Shaivism and Vaishaism may be regarded as "self-contained religious constellations", there is a degree of interaction and reference between the "theoreticians and literary representatives" of each tradition which indicates the presence of "a wider sense of identity, a sense of coherence in a shared context and of inclusion in a common framework and horizon".

According to Nicholson, already between the twelfth and the sixteenth century, "certain thinkers began to treat as a single whole the diverse philosophival teachings of the Upanishads, epics, Puranas, and the schools known retrospectively as the "six systems" (saddarsana) of mainstream Hindu philosophy." The tendency of "a blurring of philosophical distinctions" has also been noted by Burley. Hacker called this "inclusivism" and Michaels speaks of "the identificatory habit". Lorenzen locates the origins of a distinct Hindu identity in the interaction between Muslims and Hindus, and a proces of "mutual self-definition with a contrasting Muslim other", which started well before 1800. Michaels notes:

As a counteraction to Islamic supremacy and as part of the continuing process of regionalization, two religious innovations developed in the Hindu religions: the formation of sects and a historicization which preceded later nationalism [...] [S]aints and sometimes and sometimes militant sect leaders, such as the Marathi poet Tukaram (1609-1649) and Ramdas (1608-1681), articulated ideas in which they glorified Hinduism and the past. The Brahmans also produced increasingly hitorizing texts, especially eulogies and chronicles of sacred sites (Mahatmyas), or developed a reflexive passion for collecting and compiling extensive collections of quotations on various subjects.

This inclusivism has become characteristic of modern Hinduism. Both the Indian and the European thinkers who developed the term "Hinduism" in the 19th century were influenced by these philosophers.

The construction of "Hinduism"

See also: Aryan and Indo-Aryan migration

Colonialism and the construction of "Hinduism"

The study of India and its cultures and religions has been shaped by the interests of colonialism and by Western notions of religion. Since the 1990s, those influences and its outcomes have been the topic of debate among scholars of Hinduism , and have also been taken over by critics of the Western view on India. The notion of "Hinduism" as a "single world religious tradition" was developed by 19th-century European Indologists who depended on the "brahmana castes" for their information of Indian religions. This led to a "tendency to emphasize Vedic and Brahmanical texts and beliefs as the "essence" of Hindu religiosity in general, and in the modern association of 'Hindu doctrine' with the various Brahmanical schools of the Vedanta (in particular Advaita Vedanta)."

Sweetman

Sweetman identifies several areas in which "there is substantial, if not universal, agreement that colonialism influenced the study of Hinduism":

1. The establishment by European Orientalists of a textual basis for Hinduism, akin to the Protestant culture, which was driven by a preference among the colonial powers for written authority rather than oral authority.
2. The influence of Brahmins on European conceptions of Hinduism. Colonialism has been a significant factor in the reinforcement of the Brahmana castes and the "brahmanisation" of Hindu society. The Brahmana castes preserved the texts which were studied by Europeans and provided access to them. The authority of those texts was expanded by being the focus of study by Europeans. Brahmins and Europeans scholars shared a perception of "a general decline from an originally pure religion".
3. The identification of Vedanta, and specifically Advaita Vedanta, as the "paradigmatic example of the mystical nature of the Hindu religion" and the "central philosophy of the Hindus". Several factors led to the favouring of Advaita Vedanta:
   1. Fear of French influence, especially the impact of the French Revolution; the hope was that "the supposed quietist and conservative nature of Vedantic thought would prevent the development of revolutionary sentiment;
   2. "The predominance of Idealism in nineteenth century European philosophy";
   3. "The amenability of Vedantic thought to both Christian and Hindu critics of 'idolatry' in other forms of Hinduism".
4. The European conception of caste which dismissed former political configurations and insisted upon an "essentially religious character" of India. During the colonial period, caste was defined as a religious system and was divorced from political powers. This made it possible for the colonial rulers to portray India as a society characterised by spiritual harmony in contrast to the former Indian states which they criticized as "despotic and epiphenomenal", with the colonial powers providing the necessary "benevolent, paternalistic rule by a more 'advanced' nation". The defining of caste as a religious system divorced from political power also contributed to the significant role of religion in the Indian freedom movement, since religion was the only area in which Indian leaders could operate freely.
5. The construction of 'Hinduism' in the image of Christianity as "a systematic, confessional, all-embracing religious entity". Several forces played a role in this construction:
   1. The European scholarship which studied India,
   2. The "acts of policy of the colonial state",
   3. Anti-colonial Hindus "looking toward the systematisation of disparate practices as a means of recovering a precolonial, national identity".

The construction of "Hinduism"

Muesse:

As western cultures developed greater interest in India - especially as the British sought control of India's commerce beginning in the eightteenth century - understanding the Hindus and their religion became more important to the West. Both Western administrators and Christian missionaries considered it necessary to their work to describe and comprehend this religion. By the nineteenth century, efforts were under way to ascertain the essential nature of Hindu beliefs and practices. The British relied on their own observations, as well as information provided to them by upper-caste Hindus, to shape their conception of this "religion". Lacking a suitable indigenous word, they began to refer to Hinduism, an English neologism formed by adding the anglicized Greek suffix -ism to the Persian Hindu. Hinduism thus joined Judaism as one of the only religions named for a place.

The British tended to think of this "Hinduism" in much the same manner as they thought of their own religion. Christianity, especially its Protestant manifestation, thus served as the largely unconscious prototype for the way they imagined Hinduism. From the British point of view, a religion was fundamentally a unified set of doctrines pertaining to a belief in god and a code of behavior based on this belief. Religions had sacred books on which these doctrines were founded and creeds in which they were set out systematically. A clearly identifiable clergy was responsible for interpreting these texts to the laity, who gathered at temples for meetings to understand and express their faith.

With these assumptions, the British and other Europeans involved in studying and managing colonial India created a conception of Hinduism that met their expectations. They identified a system of thought that constituted what they took to be the core of Hinduism. That essential philosophy was Advaita Vedanta, a highly influential system formulated by the great south Indian pandit Shankara [...] They identified a sacred set of texts, the Vedas, which they took to be the sriptural surce of this philosophy. And they identified an ecclesiastical hierarchy, the Brahmins, members of the priestly and intellectual caste, whom the Europeans considered Hinduism's religious authorities and interpreters.

Samuel:

The standard story of the development in the mid to late nineteenth century, in a collaboration between Western scholars on the one side, and Hindu and Buddhist scholars and intellectuals on the other. This story was essentially that of the development of a number of separate religions, principally Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, with Hinduism being seen as the oldest and Buddhism and Jainism as reactions against it. The narrative began with the hymns of the Rgveda, thought to be the oldest exsisting texts in an Indian language. The Rgveda was seen as representing the earliest stage of Hinduism and subsequent stages as series of developments from it. The Rgveda was treated as, in effect, a foundational text with a somewhat similar role to that of the Five Books of the Jewish Tora in relation to tarditional accounts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam [...] [A]s has been repeatedly pointed out by numerous scholars, most parts of this story are problematic, and the story as a whole is largely untenable.

Samuel:

[T]he Vedic hymns are not much like the Petateuch either in content or in the way in which they were used by later Indian religious traditions. Hindu religious reformers did not necessarily use the early Vedic texts as their primary 'scriptural basis', since these were poorly adapted to such a function:; Ram Mohan Roy looked rather to the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutra.

Brahmanical influences

Doniger:

Like many of the Indian branch of Orientalists, Europeans picked up this assumption of timeless, unified Hinduism from some Hindus and then reinforced it in other Hindus, many of whom today regard Hinduism as timeless.

Jouhki:

Sheldon Pollock contends that, in a way, British Orientalists, with the help of Indian informants emphasizing the hegemony of Brahmanic texts, created an Indian history and the widely accepted view of the contemporary Indian society. According to Pollock, Indian society was traditionalized and Sanskriticized in an Orientalist way. (Pollock 1994, 96–97.) I would go far as to dare to call this a Brahmanical crisis of Indian studies, a phenomenon were the elitist Brahmanic view in a minority – although it is a rather influential view – is accepted as a sort of ”core Indianness” and essential to Indian Hinduism. Obviously, this kind of division to “upper” and “lower” cult ures in a society is quite universal. However, in India the Vedic literature and other so called official holy texts of Hinduism are surprisingly unfamiliar to many Hindus, many of them not having even heard of them. For example, Maloney (1975) studied Brahmanic Hinduism and its relation to ”folk” Hinduism, and noted that many concepts (like karma and dharma) that have been considered as essential to Indian Hinduism have been either ignored or interpreted totally differently among the representatives of lower castes in India.

Jouhki:

As throughout the history of Western Orientalism, the East has been praised for its ancient texts, the appraisal of the ancient has had the unfortunate implication of undermining the value of contemporary Oriental cultures (see e.g. Clarke 1997, 191). In the academic discipline studying India, particularly the contemporary Indian peasant was seen as disconnected from the valuable ancient traditions. If there were any valuable knowledge left, the ”advanced castes” had the ”correct knowledge.” Hence, the simple folk wisdom and folk Hinduism were not worthy of study to most Orientalists. If the orientalists were to study contemporary India, a distinctively different and significantly more fascinating subject of scholarly interest was the philosophical Brahmanical Hinduism that was thought to best reflect the ancient Vedic world-view. (Marshall 1970, 43 in Lele 1994, 58.)

Nicholson:

[T]he Orientalists' primary living interlocutors were Brahmin pundits, who themselves had a particular understanding of their own intellectual traditions and who did their best to portray themselves as essential to any Orientalist project to govern according to native customs and laws. They were also eager to give these Western scholars of Indian philosophy what they wanted, specifically to point them to the types of texts that would confirm the European stereotype of Indians as quietistic, impractical idealists who doubted or denied the very existence of the physical world. It is in this way that vedanta, especially the "idealist" Advaita Vedanta, gained its modern reputation as the essence of the Indian mind.

Doniger - "Brahmin imaginary"

Doniger:

It is often convenient to speak of a Brahmin-oriented quasi-orthodoxy (or ortho-praxy [...]), which we might call the Brahmin imaginary or the idealized system of class and life stage (varna-ashrama-dharma). but whatever we call this constructed center, it is, like the empty center in the Zen diagram of Hinduisms, simply an imaginary point around which we orient all the actual Hindus who accept or oppose it; it is what Indian logicians call the straw man (purva paksha), against whom argues. The actual beliefs and practices of Hindus - renunciation, devotion, sacrifice, and so amny more - are peripheries that the imaginary Brahmin center cannot hold.

Neo-Vedanta

Main articles: Neo-Vedanta, Hindu nationalism, and Hindu reform movements

Since the 19th century, under the influence of western colonialism and Indology, the popular understanding of Hinduism has been dominated by neo-Vedanta, in which mysticism, Aryan origins and the unity of Hinduism have been emphasised.

With the onset of the British Raj, the colonialisation of India by the British, there also started a Hindu renaissance in the 19th century, which profoundly changed the understanding of Hinduism in both India and the west. Western orientalist searched for the "essence" of the Indian religions, discerning this in the Vedas, and meanwhile creating the notion of "Hinduism" as a unified body of religious praxis and the popular picture of 'mystical India'. This idea of a Vedic essence was taken over by the Hindu reformers, together with the ideas of Universalism and Perennialism, the idea that all religions share a common mystic ground. The Brahmo Samaj, who was supported for a while by the Unitarian Church, played an essential role in the introduction and spread of this new understanding of Hinduism. Vedanta came to be regarded as the essence of Hinduism, and Advaita Vedanta came to be regarded as "then paradigmatic example of the mystical nature of the Hindu religion".

A major proponent in the popularisation of this Universalist and Perennialist interpretation of Advaita Vedanta was Vivekananda, who played a major role in the revival of Hinduism, and the spread of Advaita Vedanta to the west via the Ramakrishna Mission. His interpretation of Advaita Vedanta has been called "Neo-Vedanta". The popular understanding of Hinduism has been dominated by this neo-Vedanta, in which mysticism, Aryan origins and the unity of Hinduism have been emphasised. These notions served well for the Hindu nationalists, who further popularised this notion of Advaita Vedanta as the pinnacle of Indian religions. It "provided an opportunity for the construction of a nationalist ideology that could unite HIndus in their struggle against colonial oppression".

Creation and consolidation

Muesse:

Once created, this conception became widely influential, governing the way not only westerners but also many Hindus thought about Indian religion. Indian adoptation of the idea of Hinduism meant that, to some degree, Hindus relied on Europeans to tell them what Hinduism was. For instance, before the eighteenth century, only a small number of upper-caste Indians had much acquaintance with the Vedas, the Upanishads, or even the Bhagavad Gita, some of the most important texts in Indian history. But when these texts were translated by Europeans and heralded as Hindu scripture, other upper-caste Hindus became aware of these books for the first time and accpeted them as the sacred sources of their religion. With these texts in hand, they began to take pride in the historically ancient but newly identified Hinduism - at least as they believed these books presented it.

Muesse:

In an important step toward solidifying the concept, some Hindus began to present to western audiences an interpretation of Hinduism that was substantially informed by the British construction. The foremost symbol of this act was the renowned appearance of Swami Vivekananda at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions]] in Chicago. In his keynote address to this assembly of representatives of religions from around the world, Vivekananda declared Hinduism to be "the mother of religions", the faith that taught universal tolerance and acceptance to the world. Following his warmly received speech, Vivekananda subsequently toured the United States and England, teaching a particular Hindu tradition - Advaita Vedanta - as the authentic form of Hinduism. Advaita Vedanta fit the western expectation of a religion very well: it was a systematic exposition of ideas about the one god. Vivekananda was so succesfull that many westerners - as well as Hindus - accepted his interpretation as the expression of genuine Hinduism. Vivekananda's view did in fact describe a genuine form of Hinduism, but in presenting it as the essence of Hinduism, he neglected the great diversity of Hinduism, omitting those aspects of the ancient traditions that western audiences might have found less attractive. Nevertheless, Hindu intellectuals who adopted this negotiated, homegenized conception of Hindusim became its global representatives, teaching to the West a version of indigenous Indian religion that was substantially articulated by westerners.

Rinehart:

The hegemony of neo-Vedanta was achieved by a long, circuitous, and ultimately international pathway. That pathway featured local attempts by colonized intellectuals to defend Hindu culture from Eurocentric and Christian denunciation; with time it featured the attempt to transform the previously embattled worldview of Vedanta into a kind of aggressive missionary message. In figures such as Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan we witness Vedanta traveling to the West, were it nourished the spiritual hunger of Europeans and Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century (a hunger with its own fascinating history). During its sojourn in the West, Vedanta was in turn nourished with both financial support and the increased intellectual prestige that came from being associated with the like sof Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood. Some would argus that it was, in fact, this refashioning of Vedanta in the West that allowed it to assume a veneer of genuine "Indianness" that it might not otherwise have had. Returning to India under the banner of India's spiritual wisdom, Vedanta could be compared to pizza - an "authentic" Italian meal created in America (bharati 1970). Thus Vedanta's international prestige helped further cement its position of cultural leadership in India.

Rinehart:

Thanks to the persuasive writings of men like Rammohan Roy and Radhakrishnan, the charisma of Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, the imprimatur of Western Romantic fascination from Arthur Schopenhauer through Paul Deussen, the energetic agency of movements like the Ramakrishnan Math and Mission, and the quasi-official status granted by government patronage and the continual publication of books on Hindu spirituality, Vedanta rules unchallenged as the "essential" worldview of Hinduism.

The pizza-effect

Main article: Pizza effect

http://kashuradab.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/the-pizza-effect-in-indian-philosophy/

"religious experience: Wilber, the Atman-project; response by Rajiv Malhotra

Radhakrishnan

• Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta Door Paul Hacker [7]
• Jivanmukti in Transformation: Embodied Liberation in Advaita and Neo-Vedanta Door Andrew O. Fort [8]
• Murty, K. Satchidananda; Vohra, Ashok (1990), Radhakrishnan: His Life and Ideas, SUNY Press

Perennialism

Main article: Perennial philosophy

According to Radhakrishnan, there is not only an underlying "divine unity" from the seers of the Upanishads up to modern Hindus like Tagore and Gandhi, but also "an essential commonality between philosophical and religious traditions from widely disparate cultures." This is also a major theme in the works of Rene Guenon, the Theosophical Society, and the contemporay popularity of eastern religions in modern spirituality. Since the 1970's, the Perennialist position has been criticised for its essentialism. Social-constructionists give an alternative approach to religious experience, in which such "experiences" are seen as being determined and mediated by cultural determants. But Rinehart also points out that "perennialist claims notwithstanding, modern Hindu thought is a product of history", which "has been worked out and expressed in a variety of historical contexts over the preceding two hundreds years." This is also true for Radhakrishan, who was educated by missionaries and, like other noe-Vedantins used the prevalent western understanding of India and its culture to present an alternative to the western critique.

Elevation of Advaita Vedanta

Nicholson:

The earliest European scholars had a need for a means to classify the bewildering variety of philosophical doctrines and texts they found in Indian archives. They naturally sought out and privileged Sanskrit texts that would allow them to establish models for classification. In particular, the Indian doxographies of the medieval period suited their needs. These texts, frequently written by Advaita vedantins, tended to hierarchize philosophical schools, and these hierarchies likewise influenced the the opinions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars in the West [...] [O]ne doxography in particular, the fourteenth-century Sarvadarsanasamgraha (Compendium of All Philosophical Systems) stood out among all others for its influence in medieval India and modern Europe. This led to the elevation of Advaita Vedanta above all other schools, especially in the writings of Paul Deussen and A.E. Gough.

Nicholson:

[T]he hegemonic narrative established in the nineteenth century of Advaita Vedanta as the essence and culmination of Indian philosophical systems has drowned out competing narratives, especially at the popular level of appreciation for Indian philosophy.

Smarta Tradition

Main article: Smarta Tradition

Neo-Vedanta seems to be connected to the Smarta Tradition. Shankara was a Smarta, just like Radhakrishnan. In modern times Smarta-views have been highly influential in both the Indian and western understanding of Hinduism. According to iskcon.org,

Many Hindus may not strictly identify themselves as Smartas but, by adhering to Advaita Vedanta as a foundation for non-sectarianism, are indirect followers.

Vivekananda is also mentioned as being a Smarta:

The Smārtas perspective dominates the view of Hinduism in the West because of the influence of eminent Smārtins like Swami Vivekananda.

Vaitheespara notes the adherence of the Smartha Brahmans to "the pan-Indian Sanskrit-brahmanical tradition":

The emerging pan-Indian nationalism was clearly founded upon a number of cultural movements that, for the most part, reimagined an 'Aryo-centric', neo-brahmanical vision of India, which provided the 'ideology' for this hegemonic project. In the Tamil region, such a vision and ideology was closely associated with the Tamil Brahmans and, especially, the Smartha Brahmans who were considered the strongest adherents of the pan-Indian Sanskrit-Brahmanical tradition.

Philosophical position of Neo-Vedanta

According to Anil Sooklal, Vivekananda's neo-Advaita reconciles "reconciles Dvaita or dualism and Advaita or non-dualism":

Sankara's Vedanta is known as Advaita or non-dualism, pure and simple. Hence it is sometimes referred to as Kevala-Advaita or unqualified monism. It may also be called abstract monism in so far as Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, is, according to it, devoid of all qualities and distinctions, nirguna and nirvisesa [...] The Neo-Vedanta is also Advaitic inasmuch as it holds that Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, is one without a second, elwmevadvitiyam. But as distinguished from the traditional Advaita of Sankara, it is a synthetic Vedanta which reconciles Dvaita or dualism and Advaita or non-dualism and also other theories of reality. In this sense it may also be called concrete monism in so far as it holds that Brahman is both qualified, saguna and qualityless, nirguna (Chatterjee, 1963 : 260).

Inclusivism and Universalism

Richard King notes that Neo-Vedanta has a specific understanding of Indian religions:

The inclusivist appropriation of other traditions, so characteristic of neo-Vedanta ideology, appears ont three basic levels. First, it is apparent in the suggestion that the (Advaita) Vedanta philosophy of Sankara (c. eight century CE) constitutes the central philosophy of Hinduism. Second, in an Indian context, neo-Vedanta philosophy subsumes Buddhist philosophies in terms of its own Vedantic ideology. The Buddha becomes a member of the Vedanta tradition, merely attempting to reform it from within. Finally, at a global level, neo-Vedanta colonizes the religious traditions of the world by arguing for the centrality of a non-dualistic position as the philosophia perennis underlying all cultural differences.

Rinehart:

Though neo-Hindu authors prefer the idiom of tolerance to that of inclusivism, it is clear that what is advocated is less a secular view of toleration than a theological scheme for subsuming religious difference under the aegis of of Vedantic truth. Thus Radhakrishnan's view of experience as the core of religious truth effectively leads to harmony only when and if other relgions are willing to assume a position under the umbrella of Vedanta. We might even say that the theme of neo-Hindu tolerance provided the Hindu not simply with a means to claiming the right to stand alongside the other world religions, but with a strategy for promoting Hinduism as the ultimate form of religion itself.

Neo-Vedanta and Indian nationalism

Main articles: Hindu nationalism, Hindu politics, and Hindutva

Vedanta came to be regarded as the essence of Hinduism, and Advaita Vedanta came to be regarded as "then paradigmatic example of the mystical nature of the Hindu religion". These notions served well for the Hindu nationalists, who further popularised this notion of Advaita Vedanta as the pinnacle of Indian religions. It "provided an opportunity for the construction of a nationalist ideology that could unite HIndus in their struggle against colonial oppression".

Nationalism

Hindu Imperialism

• swami Dharma Theerta, History of Hindu Imperialism

Chauduri, in Smith:

I had better confess that all Hindus are traditionally imperialists ...

Indian nationalism

Jouhki:

Anglo-Saxon Indo-Orientalism has been adopted by indigenous Indians to be used in nationalist discourse.

Jouhki:

Romantic – Orientalist ideas of Indianness have been adapted to the self-identities of Indians. This seems to be partly due to the British educational system but also to the prestige that British ideas have held among the Indian gentility and academic elite. Ideas like Vedic times as the golden age, spiritual India, caste-centricity and Hinduism as one religion (or sort of superreligion or poetic universal life-philosophy) were, at least to some extent, Orientalist inventions and more or less as such largely accepted by educated Indians and/or reworked to serve Indian nationalism.

Jouhki:

An impossible pure origin is something the reactionary forces of indigenous revivalism use and long for to obtain meaning for its contemporary being. Bhatnagar claims that this uncritical and politically suspect ideology is especially dangerous in the Indian context where the plural and secular identity has had to give way to a Hindu identity that has its imagined source in the Vedic times. (Bhatnagar 1986, 5.)
The essentialism, and the concept of a religiously/spiritually unique India that goes well together with it has become part of Indian nationalistic politics where all group differences are seen as dangerous separatisms. In contemporary India, a political group (e.g. a labor union) is in dire straits to constitute itself on the basis of shared interest without others thinking the interests are only a disguise for religious, caste or sectarian interests. ”This essentialization and somaticization of group differences” claim Breckenridge and van der Veer (1994, 12), ”is probably the most damaging part of the orientalist bequest to postcolonial politics.”

Flood:

Eventually 'Hindu' became virtually equivalent to an 'Indian' who was not a Muslim, Sikh, Jain or Christian, thereby encompassing a range of religious beliefs and practices. The '-ism' was added to 'Hindu' in around 1830 to denote the culture and religion of the high-caste Brahmans in contrast to other religions, and the term was soon appropriated by Indians themselves in the context of establishing a national identity opposed to colonialism, though the term 'Hindu' was used in Sanskrit and Bengali hagiographic texts in contrast to 'Yavana' or Muslim, as early as the sixteenth century.

Jouhki:

Although the Orient in general and India in particular have been thought to have degenerated from glorious ancientness, there is also the simultaneous view of India having remained essentially same as always. The myth of never-changing India is long-lived (even in present-day depictions of India) and has been adopted not only by Europeans but also by nationalist Indians (who also adopted many other Orientalist views). Even Prime Minister Nehru had stated that India has been able to absorb external influences and remain essentially the same for ages. This theme of an unchanging and absorbing India has been repeated throughout the twentieth century in scholarly and popular literature in the West and in India.

Rosen:

Parenthetically, traditionalists moved a step forward in 2002, when a new name was given to the Indus Valley Civilization, mentioned above - a gesture indicating that the earlier dates for Vedic compilation were becoming more acceptable. This new name was "Sindhu Sarasvati Civilization," and it can now be found in most Indian schoolbooks. The Sanskritized "Sindhu," rather than the Western "Indus," and the addition of "Saraswati," an ancient river central to Hinduism's sacred geography, suggest that the Indus Valley Civilization was originally part of Vedic culture. This is an attempt by traditionalists to deny the validity of the Aryan Invasion Theory.

Knott:

Most of the eightteenth and early nineteenth-century scholars (we often refer to them as 'orientalists' who first undertook the translation of Sanskrit texts and the reconstruction of the Aryan past were also British administrators. In this capacity, they needed to acquire a good understanding of Hindu culture and traditions in order to help in the establishment of British colonial rule in India. Inspired by what they learned about the similarities between Sanskrit and European languages and about the Aryan people described in the Sanskrit texts, some of them drew conclusions about the common origins of Indo-European societies and cultures. The romantic view which they put forward was appealing to some people in Europe and India because it suggested a common descent from noble (Aryan) origins. With its roots in early Western scholarship, it was this view, of a great Aryan race and civilization, that later became popular with Hindi nationalists. The leaders of a late nineteenth-century Hindu movement called the Arya Samaj were among the first to look back to such a golden age and to claim a continuous, unified history for selected Hindu beliefs, values and practices from that time. What had originally been a colonial scholarly perspective was taken up by this and other groups whose religious and political views it matched.

Rinehart:

In Vedantic inclusivism, neo-Hinduism reaches its zenith; but it is an ascent which is marred by what has had to be surpressed along the way. Put simply: "If ... the hidden goal or centre or essence of all religions is the Vedanta which primarily constitutes the spiritual unity of Hinduism, then all religions are in a way included in Hinduism" (Hacker 1978, 601). Though neo-Hindu authors prefer the idiom of tolerance to that of inclusivism, it is clear that what is advocated is less a secular view of toleration than a theological scheme for subsuing religious difference under the aegis of Vedantic truth. Thus Radhakrishnan's view of experience as the core of religious truth effectively leads to harmony only when and if other religions are willing to assume aposition under the umbrella of Vedanta. We might even say that the theme of neo-Hindu tolerance provided the Hindu not simply with a means for claiming the right to stand alongside the other world religions, but with a strategy for promoting Hinduism as the ultimate form of religion itself. Viewed in these terms, the darker side of neo-Hindu tolerance is not hard to see. What becomes of Muslim beliefs, Christian creeds, or Buddhist visions of truth when these are reduced to a core experience isdentified in terms of Vedanta?

To pursue the genealogy of neo-Hindu thought to its conclusion, logically and historically, is thus to run head on into the problem of the hidden communal agenda at the heart of modern Hinduism's message of tolerance. Scholars have long noted the degree to which the nationalist movement became increasingly inflected by the tones of Hindu religiosity after the advent of such figures as Mahatma Gandhi (one of Hacker's representative neo-Hindus). Although noone would accuse the polymorphously religious Gandhi of being an agent of Hindu self-assertion, what we encounter in the neo-Hindu discource is the unintended consequence of the initial moves made by thinkers like Rammohan Roy and Vivekananda. For all the efforts made by the post-independence goverment of India to promote the ideal of equality toward all religions (sarvadharma samabhava), including the intentional use of the varied religious symbolism of the subcontinent - to those non-Hindus outside the corridors of power, it remains difficult to ignore modern India's Hindu veneer. The hegemony of Vedanta, its obvious leadership role in modern Indian culture, cannot be denied. And it is this hegemony that recent nationalist groups such as the RSS and the VHP are eager to steer into ever more strident pleas for equating India with Hinduism.

In the current Hindutva movements, we encounter the unfortunate political ramifications of Radhakrishnan's mystical reduction of Hinduism to Vedanta. Though Radhakrishnan would never have made the claim, it is now being made: You are welcome in India, provided you're prepared to affirm your Hinduness. And here is where the theme of hegemony once again becomes relevant: Those advancing the politicized agenda of Hindutva are those who have gained leadership power in today's India - the middle-class, urbanized, free-market Hindus who are the force behind movements to promote Hinduism as the national religion of India. To identify this group and its socioeconomic profile is to remind ourselves that there are factors other than theology and philosophy at work in the "saffron wave" of militant Hinduism today (Hansen 1999). More detailed discussion of the genealogy of Hindutva would require a careful consideration of such issues as the implementation and legacy of colonial policies, the history of modern Indian politics, and India's struggle to achieve civil society in the post-colonial context.

Doniger:

Hindus nowadays are diverse in their attitude to their own diversity, which inspires pride in some, anxiety in others. In particular, it provokes anxiety in those Hindus who are sometimes called Hindu nationalists, or the Hindu right, or right-wing Hindus, or the Hindutva ("Hinduness") faction, or, more approximately, Hindu fundamentalists; they are against Muslims, Christians, and the Wrong Sort of Hindus. Their most powerful political organisation is the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), with its militant branch, the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), but they are also involved in groups such as Hindu Human Rights, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad).

Hindutva

• http://books.google.nl/books?id=zqkBNr4U7cwC&printsec=frontcover&hl=nl#v=onepage&q&f=false
• http://www.savarkar.org/content/pdfs/en/essentials_of_hindutva.v001.pdf

Religious pluralism

• Panicker 2006
• Coward, Modern Indian Responses to Religious Pluralism
• Jefferey D. Long, Developing a Genuine Hindu Religious Pluralism (personal essay)
• Margaret Chatterjee, Reflections on Religious Pluralism in the Indian Context
• Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity: Religious Pluralism Revisited
• stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Religious Diversity (Pluralism)

Communalism

Main articles: Communalism and Communalism (South Asia)

• India: Communalism, anti-conversion and religious freedom
• Achin Vainak, Reflections on Communalism and Nationalism in India
• Achin Vainak, The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity, and Secularization
• Harsh Kapoor, Resources Against Communalism and Religious Fundamentalism in India
• Sekine Yasumasa, Religion and Politics in Contemporary India. The Complexities of Secularism and Communalism
• David C. Scott, Viewpoint: Religious Fundamentalism and Pluralism in India

Hindu revivalism and Indian identities

With the onset of British colonialism, select groups of Indians developed responses to the British dominance and the British critique of Hinduism. The Brahmo Samaj strived towards mono-theism, while no longer regarding the Vedas as sole religious authority. The Brahmo Samaj had a strong influence on the Neo-Vedanta of Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Radhakrishnan and Gandhi. They strived toward a modernized, humanistic Hinduism with an open eye for societal problems and needs. Other groups, like teh Arya Samaj, strived toward a revival of Vedic authority. In this context, various responses toward Jainism developed.

Hindu exclusivism - Dayanand Saraswati and the Arya Samaj

The Arya Samaj "teaches that the Vedic religion is the only true religion revealed by God for all." The Arya Samaj was founded by Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883), who "was the solitary champion of Vedic authority and infallibility". His "magnus upos" contains the basic teachings of Dayanand and the Arya Samaj. It contains "Dayananda's bitter criticisms of the major non-Vedic religions of Indian origins." In the Satyarth Prakash he writes that he regarded Jainism as "the most dreadful religion", and that Jains are "possessed of defective and childish understanding."

Hindu inclusivism - Hindutva and "Dharmic religions"

In modern times, the orthodox measure of the primacy of the Vedas has been has been joint with the 'grand narrative' of Vedic origins of Hinduism. The exclusion of Jainism and Buddhism excludes a substantial part of India's cultural and religious history from the asserttion of a strong and positive Hindu identity. Hindutva-ideology solves this problem by taking recourse to the notion of Hindutva, "Hinduness", which includes Jainism and Buddhism. A recent strategy, exemplified by Rajiv Malhotra, is the use of the term dhamma as a common denominator, which also includes Jainism and Buddhism.

Counter-responses

See also: Breaking India

Dravidian (Tamil) nationalism

In response to the dominant Brahmanic narrative of Hinduism's origins, Tamil nationalists developed a concurring narrative.

King:

The universalistic claims of such ideologies as neo-Vedanta occlude the cultural and historical particularity of such movements. In other words, such claims suppress the fact that they derive from a particular community with a particular agenda at a particular time in a particular cultural space. In the case of neo-Vedanta, for instance, we find a largely middleclass, Western-educated élite responding to European colonial hegemony in a manner that reflects the influences of a Christian and nationalistic agenda. To accept the universalistic claims of such groups to represent all Hindus in toto is to fail to grasp the heterogeneous nature of Indian (and indeed human) religiosity in general, and to ignore the historical particularity and ‘group-tied’ nature of such ideologies.

Dirks:

Later nationalist leaders used "Aryan" less as a racial term than as a gloss for ancient Indian religious tradition. Dayananda Saraswati, Vivekananda, Ranade, and Annie Besant all urged in one way or another that the Aryan faith, which had united the north and south in ancient times, be used once more to bring India together.
But in the Tamil country the theories of Aryanism, whether they linked or separated language and race, worked in most cases to do precisely the opposite.

Fosse:

From a nationalist point of view, it is clear that the concept of an Aryan-Dravidian divide is pernicious to the unity of the Hindu state, and an important aim for Hindutva and neo-Hindu scholarship is therefor to introduce a counter-narrative to the one presented by Western academic scholarship.

Dalit movement

Main articles: Dalit, Self-Respect Movement, and Dalit nationalism

Tables

Periodisation

Chronology of India
James Mill (1773–1836), in his The History of British India (1817), distinguished three phases in the history of India, namely Hindu, Muslim and British civilisations. This periodisation has been influential, but has also been criticised, for the misconceptions it has given rise to. Another influential periodisation is the division into "ancient, classical, mediaeval and modern periods".
World History	James Mill's Periodization	ACMM	Chronology of Indian History
Early Complex Societes (3500-2000 BCE)	?	Ancient India	Prehistoric Era Indus Valley Civilization
Ancient Civilisations (2000-500 BCE)	Hindu civilisations		Early Vedic Period (c. 1750–1200 BCE)
			Middle Vedic Period (from 1200 BCE)
			Late Vedic period (from 850 BCE)
Classical Civilisations (500 BCE-500 CE)			Second urbanisation Early empires (c. 600–200 BCE)
			Desintegration and regional states (c. 200 BCE – 300 CE)
		Classical India	"Golden Age" (Gupta Empire) (c. 320–650 CE)
Post-classical age (500-1000 CE)		Medieval India	Regional Indian kingdoms and Beginning of Islamic raids (c. 650–1100 CE)
Transregional nomadic empires (1000-1500 CE)	Muslim civilisations		Delhi Sultanate (north India) (1206–1526 CE) Vijayanagara Empire (south India) (1336–1646 CE)
Modern age (1500-present)		Modern India	Mughal empire (1526–1707)
	British civilisations		Maratha Empire British rule (c. 1750 CE – 1947)
	-		Independent India
Notes and references for table Notes Different periods are designated as "classical Hinduism": Smart calls the period between 1000 BCE and 100 CE "pre-classical". It's the formative period for the Upanishads and Brahmanism (Smart distinguishes "Brahmanism" from the Vedic religion, connecting "Brahmanism" with the Upanishads.), Jainism and Buddhism. For Smart, the "classical period" lasts from 100 to 1000 CE, and coincides with the flowering of "classical Hinduism" and the flowering and deterioration of Mahayana-buddhism in India. For Michaels, the period between 500 BCE and 200 BCE is a time of "Ascetic reformism", whereas the period between 200 BCE and 1100 CE is the time of "classical Hinduism", since there is "a turning point between the Vedic religion and Hindu religions". Muesse discerns a longer period of change, namely between 800 BCE and 200 BCE, which he calls the "Classical Period". According to Muesse, some of the fundamental concepts of Hinduism, namely karma, reincarnation and "personal enlightenment and transformation", which did not exist in the Vedic religion, developed in this time. References Sources Bentley, Jerry H. (1996), "Cross-Cultural Interaction and Periodization in World History", The American Historical Review. Vol. 101, No. 3 (Jun., 1996), pp. 749-770 Flood, Gavin D. (1996), An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press Khanna, Meenakshi (2007), Cultural History Of Medieval India, Berghahn Books Kulke, Hermann; Rothermund, Dietmar (2004), A History of India, Routledge Michaels, Axel (2004), Hinduism. Past and present, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press Misra, Amalendu (2004), Identity and Religion: Foundations of Anti-Islamism in India, SAGE Muesse, Mark William (2003), Great World Religions: Hinduism Muesse, Mark W. (2011), The Hindu Traditions: A Concise Introduction, Fortress Press Smart, Ninian (2003), Godsdiensten van de wereld (The World's religions), Kampen: Uitgeverij Kok Thapar, Romila (1977), A History of India. Volume One, Penguin Books

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miscellaneous

• http://ignca.nic.in/ls_03016.htm
• Swami Dharma Theerta, History of Hindu Imperialism

External links

• Robert Lindsay, Why Are Indians So Nutty and Hypersensitive About the Aryan Theory and Indo-European?