Evolution of Hinduism and Hindu myths

Evolution of Hinduism and Hindu myths

 Murad Ali Baig

 

Ancient India was once a complex patchwork of thousands of tribes, local customs and languages. Many survive to this day as is evident from the existence of 22 official languages and 1,635 dialects (according to the 2011 census). These confirm India’s gigantic linguistic diversity and also reflect India’s huge variety in ethnic, religious and social traditions. Ethnologue, a comprehensive reference work cataloging all of the world’s known living languages, states that India has 454 living languages of which 447 are indigenous (and not based on Sanskrit). The continuing vestiges of these early tribal roots are also evident from the many thousands of ‘gotras’, or lineages that are part of India’s very complicated caste system. These gotras were the lineages believed to have descended from a single ancient ancestor.

 

Strictly speaking Hinduism is not a religion. Calling it a way of life is also far too simplistic. Originally the word Hindu was just a geographical expression covering all the people living beyond the river Indus (Sindhu) that had been the 19th province of the Persian king Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BCE. As the Persian’s could not pronounce the sound `S ‘and called it `H’, the word Sindhu became Hindu. So strictly speaking Hindu was a Persian word and a geographical expression with no religious significance and all the lands beyond the Indus thus became Hindustan.  

 

Though the word Hindu had been loosely used by the Mughals and British to describe all the many non-Muslim native people of India, the use of word Hindu to describe a religion is actually owed to the social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772 - 1833) who coined the word in 1826. So Hindu was a ‘catch-all’ phrase to embrace thousands of local religious traditions worshipping Vishnu, Shiv, Ram, Krishna, Ganesh, Hanuman, Durga, Kali, Lakshmi and a plethora of local and tribal deities.

 

Although most of the religious traditions of India had been diligently managed over the millennia by highly dedicated orders of Brahmins, there had been many sages but no prophets who had specifically laid down a distinct new system of belief. The religious tradition evolved continuously in response to challenges of economic and social change with many sages and writers appearing from time to time to give it new directions. Priests of every religion always try to make their followers believe that the religion taught by them is a timeless and immutable set of beliefs, rituals, chants and customs that have always been there and will always be there even if all religious traditions were actually in a state of continuous evolution with many traditions that had not existed in earlier times.

 

The main milestones were:

 

Tribal worship was the earliest form of religious practice in India with the worshipping of the spirits (‘jivas)’ that were believed to inhabit every mountain, river, tree, rock and other object. Animistic people living from the earliest times in remote forested areas of the world had no priests but shamans who would organize sacrifices, including blood sacrifices of animals, birds and even human beings to gain the blessings of these benign or malevolent spirits. These customs still survive in many parts of India.

 

Pre-Vedic religious traditions probably came next. According to some historians Shaivism and Jainism may have been the earliest formal religions in India with professional priests to manage them. The Sangham and Alvaar poetry of Tamil Nadu that probably predates the Rig Veda were collected in the early Puranas that were Sanskritized very much later. These show a rich tapestry of gods, goddesses and religious customs that were completely alien to the Vedas even though the Brahmin priests later tried to incorporate many popular concepts into their evolving Brahminism. These included reincarnation and non Vedic deities like Brahma, Shiva, Ganesh, Hanuman, Kubera and many goddesses like Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga that are not found in the Rig Veda. Vishnu is only briefly mentioned in the Rig Veda with just six inconsequential verses. The trinity of Shiv, Vishnu and Brahma may not therefore have been Vedic but from the pre–Vedic Puranas.

 

The Vedic Hindu tradition came next with completely new set of elemental gods of the sun, storms, earth, water, fire, etc., similar to the deities of several other nomadic people. The early Vedic texts had no concept of reincarnation and they worshipped deities like Indra, Nasatyas, Rudra and others that are no longer worshipped. Usha was the only female deity among thirty-three. They had full time Brahmin priests chanting Vedic hymns and performing sacrifices at fire altars with elaborate sacrifices and ceremonies. The philosophy of the Rig Veda was essentially an exchange of sacrifices for miraculous boons. The Samaveda and Yajurveda, added later, were essentially rearrangements of the verses of the Rig Veda with additional texts for rituals and worship and the Arthaveda came much later incorporating many Puranic concepts of astronomy, ayurveda, mathematics, yoga, science, etc. The Vedas were then elaborated into the Arayankas and Brahmanas and the philosophical core became the Upanishads.

 

Many beautiful Vedic hymns, rituals and forms of worship were to however become a part of Hindu worship that the Brahmins fostered. There is no certainty that these Arya tribes came to India from central Asia but the evolving Vedas show that they had settled for a long time on the upper Indus (Saraswati) and Yamuna areas from where their culture spread to other areas.

 

Buddhism may have been a milder modified form of Jainism shaped by philosopher kings like Kapil, Janak, Siddarth and Mahavira and these co-existed with the early Arya forms of worship. They did not believe in any supernatural cosmic creator able to grant miraculous boons but in reincarnation and the idea of Karma. Both Buddhists and Jains believed in peace, harmony and the sanctity of all forms of life. These were later incorporated into the evolving Hinduism.

 

The 18 Sanskrit Puranas (six each for Shiv, Vishnu and Brahma followed by 18 lesser Upa Puranas) appearing during the 1000-year post Vedic period of Buddhist supremacy and introduced an elaborated form of Hinduism with a multitude of deities and vastly elaborated beliefs and customs between the 3rd century BCE and the 7th century CE. There was a strong Brahminical revival after the 7th century that tried to assimilate many local customs. Shankaracharya (C 788 – 820 CE) led this revival that resulted in the obliteration of Buddhism in India. The Indian caste system only became widely practiced after Kuluka Bhatt wrote a commentary on the Manusmriti at this time.

 

Ram and Krishna were elevated from heroes of legend to `Man Gods’ only in the Mughal period and only now became objects of personal devotion in the manner of the Christian adoration of the very human Jesus so different to the impassive stone idols of earlier Hindu deities. Chaitanya (1436-1532 CE) and Goswami Tulsidas (1532-1623 CE) were mainly responsible for raising Krishna and Ram from mortal heroes to deities of worship. Several Bhakti devotional cults like Vedanta were now preached by individual sages who required no idols or places of worship.

 

It was the Krishna cult with its stories of a playful Krishna consorting with the gopis (milkmaids) of Vrindavan and their cows in the fifteenth century that was mainly responsible for making the cow an object of Hindu veneration in north India. During this period, many traditions from Jain asceticism were also adopted and vegetarianism became popular even though eating of meat and even beef had never been forbidden in the Vedas or any other Hindu scripture.

 

After the British gained control of India in the 19th century many educated Hindus became aware that they had little knowledge about their own history, culture and religion in what had been a predominantly Muslim country for six centuries. Nothing was known about Harappa or great kings like Ashoka. Many scriptures like the Vedas, the Upanishads or even the Bhagvat Gita, were mostly in the secret records of Brahmin pundits and were unknown to most people. The Rig Veda was extracted from a reluctant Brahmin in Benares by Coerdeveaux, a French Jesuit priest, in 1767 CE before becoming known for the first time to most Indians. Fifty-nine of the Upanishads and the Bhagvat Gita were translated into Persian by the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh around 1656. The Bhagvat Gita was later translated into English by Charles Wilkins in 1787.

 

When Hindus began to gain prominence in the British period there was a strong hankering for a unifying Hindu religion and Raja Ram Mohun Roy, in 1826 CE, began the first use of the word ‘Hindu’ to describe a religion instead of it being just a general label for all non-Muslim Indians. The word Hindu is not mentioned in any ancient India scripture. This new Hindu religion however needed a scripture comparable to a Bible or Quran and the Bhagvat Gita was judged by several scholars to be the best choice. The voluminous original texts of the Gita were compressed and edited by several philosophers like Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Tilak and others and Radhakrishnan’s version only appeared in 1948. Under the influence of European ethics and morality, a large number of casteist and obscurantist sections were deleted but its inspiring philosophical core was retained.

 

A new revivalist Hinduism began with the Indian freedom movement and several strident Hindu leaders tried to rewrite India’s religion, culture and history. As the history of the Harappans, Mauryas and Guptas began to emerge, Indians became aware of their great historic and literary heritage. There was a belief that Hindu greatness had been deliberately suppressed by hostile foreigners. Some even wanted to change Hinduism into an aggressive and evangelical religion like Islam and Christianity with angry intolerance.

 

Hinduism is not Hindutva and is also very much more than ‘a way of life’. It is a huge ocean of thought and customs with soaring spirituality, incredible superstitions, lofty philosophies and the most bizarre variety of customs, rituals and practices that are still in a process of change and evolution. Not surprisingly the many deities and their traditions resulted in a bewildering number of myths and made mythology almost sacred.

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