God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World by Stephen Prothero Page B
Authors: Stephen Prothero
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holy man, still alive in movies and television commercials (and reinforced by books on Hinduism that focus on the mystical experiences of elites), drives the popular perception that Hinduism is an otherworldly path of self-denial in which simple sadhus trade in jobs and families for lives of meditation, yoga, celibacy, and other austerities. And this is how Hinduism began over 2,500 years ago—as an elite tradition of ascetics seeking to solve the problem of samsara through wisdom. But today Hinduism is far less exotic—a popular tradition of ordinary fathers, mothers, and children seeking moksha through nothing more extraordinary than love.
Indus Valley Civilization
Religions are often described as trees with roots, trunks, and branches. But geology rather than botany is Hinduism’s metaphorical home ground. Imagine the Hindu tradition as layer upon layer of rocks of various sorts stacked on top of one another. In some places antediluvian granite pokes up to the surface, but in other places those ancient rocks are buried under the lava of relatively recent volcanic eruptions.
The most ancient layer in Hinduism’s geology is Indus Valley civilization, a proto-Hindu culture that provides the barest glimpses of Hinduism as it is practiced today. The second layer is Vedic religion, a karma yoga path that takes its name from ancient ritual manuals called the Vedas. Next comes philosophical Hinduism, a jnana yoga path of wandering renouncers and their scriptures, the Upanishads. The fourth layer is devotional Hinduism, the bhakti yoga of the Hindu epics, a story-driven path tailor-made not for priests or holy men but for ordinary men and women for whom Hinduism is about inviting the grace and favor of the gods into everyday life. Modern Hinduism is the final layer. Here intellectuals from the nineteenth-century Hindu Renaissance and beyond struggle to bring Hinduism into conversation with Islam, Christianity, and the modern world.
Indus Valley civilization dates at least as early as 2500 to 1500 B.C.E. , making its architecture older than the pyramids and its cities earlier than Athens and Rome. Excavations conducted in the early 1920s at Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, both in present-day Pakistan, have shown that Indus Valley civilization supported a vast population that may have stretched from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea. We now know that this civilization was urban, technologically advanced, and literate. But because its script has not yet been deciphered, we do not know much about its religious beliefs and practices. As a result, it is unclear how much Indus Valley civilization contributed to Hinduism. Some find Hindu precursors in its art and architecture, which seem to provide evidence of ritual bathing and animal sacrifice. Might the figurines of full-hipped women unearthed by archaeologists be prototypes of Hindu goddesses? Might the images of a man in a yogalike posture surrounded by animals be a prototype of Shiva, who is worshipped today as both an ascetic and the Lord of Animals? Perhaps. But in the absence of a deciphered script that can explain how these figures were actually used, any connections remain speculative.
Vedic Religion
The second layer in the geology of Hinduism, Vedic religion, takes its name from the world’s oldest holy books, the Vedas (from the Sanskrit term veda , meaning “knowledge”). Hindus divide their many scriptures into two categories: sruti (“that which is heard,” or texts authored by divinity) and smrti (“that which is remembered,” or texts authored by human beings). The Vedas fall into the higher category of sruti. Regarded as eternal, these Sanskrit texts are said to have been revealed to human beings through rishis (seers) and then compiled by the sage Vyasa.
Like the term Torah in Judaism, which refers in a narrow sense to the five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers) and in a more expansive sense to the entire Hebrew Bible, the
Indus Valley Civilization
Religions are often described as trees with roots, trunks, and branches. But geology rather than botany is Hinduism’s metaphorical home ground. Imagine the Hindu tradition as layer upon layer of rocks of various sorts stacked on top of one another. In some places antediluvian granite pokes up to the surface, but in other places those ancient rocks are buried under the lava of relatively recent volcanic eruptions.
The most ancient layer in Hinduism’s geology is Indus Valley civilization, a proto-Hindu culture that provides the barest glimpses of Hinduism as it is practiced today. The second layer is Vedic religion, a karma yoga path that takes its name from ancient ritual manuals called the Vedas. Next comes philosophical Hinduism, a jnana yoga path of wandering renouncers and their scriptures, the Upanishads. The fourth layer is devotional Hinduism, the bhakti yoga of the Hindu epics, a story-driven path tailor-made not for priests or holy men but for ordinary men and women for whom Hinduism is about inviting the grace and favor of the gods into everyday life. Modern Hinduism is the final layer. Here intellectuals from the nineteenth-century Hindu Renaissance and beyond struggle to bring Hinduism into conversation with Islam, Christianity, and the modern world.
Indus Valley civilization dates at least as early as 2500 to 1500 B.C.E. , making its architecture older than the pyramids and its cities earlier than Athens and Rome. Excavations conducted in the early 1920s at Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, both in present-day Pakistan, have shown that Indus Valley civilization supported a vast population that may have stretched from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea. We now know that this civilization was urban, technologically advanced, and literate. But because its script has not yet been deciphered, we do not know much about its religious beliefs and practices. As a result, it is unclear how much Indus Valley civilization contributed to Hinduism. Some find Hindu precursors in its art and architecture, which seem to provide evidence of ritual bathing and animal sacrifice. Might the figurines of full-hipped women unearthed by archaeologists be prototypes of Hindu goddesses? Might the images of a man in a yogalike posture surrounded by animals be a prototype of Shiva, who is worshipped today as both an ascetic and the Lord of Animals? Perhaps. But in the absence of a deciphered script that can explain how these figures were actually used, any connections remain speculative.
Vedic Religion
The second layer in the geology of Hinduism, Vedic religion, takes its name from the world’s oldest holy books, the Vedas (from the Sanskrit term veda , meaning “knowledge”). Hindus divide their many scriptures into two categories: sruti (“that which is heard,” or texts authored by divinity) and smrti (“that which is remembered,” or texts authored by human beings). The Vedas fall into the higher category of sruti. Regarded as eternal, these Sanskrit texts are said to have been revealed to human beings through rishis (seers) and then compiled by the sage Vyasa.
Like the term Torah in Judaism, which refers in a narrow sense to the five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers) and in a more expansive sense to the entire Hebrew Bible, the
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