How Did The Influence Of Hinduism During The Vedic Era

“Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma ("eternal spiritual path") began about 4000 years ago in India. It was the religion of an ancient people known as the Aryans ("noble people") whose philosophy, religion, and customs are recorded in their sacred texts known as the Vedas” (United Religions). Vedas are written in the ancient language of India, called Sanskrit. Vedas means “knowledge” or “sacred lore.” The Vedas gives great intelligence about the variety of Gods from the Vedic period, 2000 to 500 BCE (Molloy,78).

The word Hindu has evolved from being the word the Persians used for the Indus River in 500 BC to the accepted name for the primary religion of India this name was originally given by foreign rulers and ultimately used by Europeans in the 1500's as the official name of the religion. History plays an important part of Hinduism because new developments reinterpret an update past practices rather than end them. The Hindu religion is broke down into three periods the Vedic period, the Upanishadic period, the classical period, and the devotional period.

The second trace of Hinduism is the Aryan or Indo-Europeans, who, was said, to enter the Indic subcontinent from the North-West in migratory waves. The Indo-European is associated with the Vedic period of Indian history, which were named after a series of book or text collectively known as the Vedas; written in Sanskrit, the ancient language used back then. The performance of ritual and the

Hinduism is a very broad term that encompasses a multitude of different backgrounds, traditions, beliefs, and practices. Hinduism, as we know it today, has gone through many changes. To fully understand how Hinduism became as it is currently, knowledge of its development over the course of history is essential. This paper will demonstrate the primary shifts of its central beliefs, practices, and goals between periods of Early Vedic, Late Vedic, and Classical Hinduism.

After reading the article, I think rituals have some basic structures of meaning, and there are number of ways to show that rituals are meaningful. In the following thesis I choose Hinduism as an example to show how rituals are meaningful, how it relates to the living context of the Indian people, how the Indians enact the Hindu rituals, and so on.

Moreover, the Vedas illustrate how much geography, culture, language, and politics were shaped by religion and how much Hinduism was shaped by it (BBC Religion Profile, Hinduism)

The core text of Hinduism is nestled into a larger work. The Mahabarata is a lengthy tale embedded with the basic principles of Hinduism. Within this work lies the Bhagavad Gita, a story surrounding the ups and downs of a family war involving Prince Arjuna. In the work, Arjuna has trouble coming to terms with the fact that he must battle against his relatives in order to solve the issue of which cousin is next in line to rule. The theme of war is extremely prevalent, and violence must be addressed by the main protagonists. Similarly, the core of Daoism lies within the Tao Te Ching, a book with eighty-one chapters discussing the philosophies of the Daoist sages. The idea of fighting according to Daoist sages and masters is despicable; it must be the absolute last resort if one cannot find a solution to any conflict. Within the Bhagavad Gita, war and fighting are expressed in a number of different ways, but Krishna explains to Arjuna that it is his dharma, or duty, to fight in this war against his family members. However, the opinion of war and fighting within the Tao Te Ching greatly differs from that of the Bhagavad Gita, as Daoist masters taught that fighting with force should be used only out of absolute necessity; it should not be something that one jumps to whenever conflict arises.

Over the course of the last few months, there has been a great deal taught on the three key questions. For each of the religions we’ve spoken of, there is a very detailed and specific path of answering these questions for each of the Eastern and Western traditions. We looked into Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Of these, there are only four that actually recognize a God. In Hinduism, the one is Brahman. For Judaism it is Yahweh, Christians look to God or Jesus for their lessons and praise them, and the Islamic praise Allah. In contrast, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism are all more philosophies than religions. None of these three praise a God, but they all stick to a different set of focused rules/ ideas to either become successful or to reach enlightenment. In this, I will further emphasis the three key questions based around the Western tradition of Hinduism and the Eastern tradition of Judaism. For each of these religions, there are a lot of differences between them, even things as simple as where they come from and what they worship.

Vedas are considered to be the oldest sacred texts which have been passed from generations to

According to Hinduism, Karma means “to act”, and it is the law of cause and effect. In Sanskrit terms, Karma refers to the choices we deliberately and consciously make in our lifetime that determines our fate in the next life after rebirth. The law of Karma follows the Newtonian principle of “every action produces an equal and opposite reaction”- so every time we think or actually do something, we are creating a cause, and in time we bear the corresponding effects of that cause, which determines what happens in samsara (the world), birth and reincarnation. It is the negative and positive actions of the “jivatman” (personality of the human being) that produces karma. In Hindu philosophy, Karma includes the activities of both the body and

Although we do not know the exact time that Hinduism began, it is believed to be over 4,000 years old. There have been overlapping civilizations in India that may have molded the religion into what it is now (Kinnard 1). Around 2,000 B.C.E., located near the great Indus River, the Indus Valley Civilization, who worshipped many goddesses, may have been the very beginning of the shaping of Hinduism. Near the end of the Indus Valley Civilization around 1,500 B.C.E., a new society surfaced in India. Believed to be brought by the central Asian Aryans, the Vedic religion began (Kinnard). The Aryans’ practices included the sacrifice of animals and other offerings to their gods into a sacred fire. The gods they worshipped were mainly gods of nature such as the fire god and the plant god (flood). This era was the time of the Vedas, which are scriptures describing rituals to please the gods (Kinnard). Later, around 1,000 B.C.E., priests called Brahmins began to reject the materialistic ways of the Vedic tradition and began to adopt practices

The concepts of God and the divine throughout different religions are both shockingly similar and vastly different. There are so many people in this world and each possess their own vision of who or what God is, as there were in the past. Medieval philosophy has provided us with so much fodder for religious debates, mostly revolving around God and the divine. The Hindus have been around for an estimated 5000 years, the Christians for 2000 and the Muslims formed about 600 years after that. These three religions have both related and diverse views of God.

1. I believe that people aren 't allowed to leave the caste they are born into because in this religion, they believe that all of your sins and good deeds from your former life are added up to place you in a caste for this life. So, with that being said, if someone leaves their caste it would be considered unfair.

In the year 3000 BCE the Indus River civilization was formed in the northwest of India (Indus River). This was the beginning of the long reign of Hinduism over the Indian peninsula. They were an advanced civilization having many artifacts architecturally especially bathhouses but the biggest thing they left behind was religious symbols and religious figures; They also set a precedent by having a mother goddess. Around 1800 BCE the Aryans a militant tribe from central Asia came into India and took over the Indus River civilization (Indus Valley Civilization). Also according to many scholars the belief of the collapse of the Indus River Valley Civilization wasn’t from an invasion by the Aryans but a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia along with a drought (Indus Valley Civilization).

Following the Dravidians, came in the band of invaders who called themselves Arya(Sinclair, 1884). It was during the 2nd millennium B.C. that these invaders made their way into India via north western borders of India (Emeneau, 1980)(Zograf, 1982). It is this language family that hold the highest position in the linguistic landscape of India. The Indo-Aryan family is a branch out of the Indo-European language family which made its way into the Indian soil (Zograf, 1982). The Aryan impact of the Aryan heritage can be seen substantially in the current Indian culture is a result of its invasion which had lasted for about 100 years (Zograf, 1982). It is during this phase of invasions that the Aryan family had brought into India not a single but rather a collection of related and different languages and dialect (Zograf, 1982). The beginning of the Aryan influence had started with the language India considers to be the language of their Hindu religion and that is the Vedic language (Zograf, 1982). The earliest form of Indian texts in which the religious poetries were written in was known as the Vedas (Zograf, 1982). Slowly came in the next phase of literary development and came in the language which is considered to be the root of all the Indo-Aryan languages, Sanskrit (Zograf, 1982). Sanskrit covered the whole of the Indo-Aryan linguistic domain (Zograf, 1982). Then as the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. came the middle stage of the Indo-Aryan