Hinduism Is and What it Is Difficult

¶ … Hinduism Is and What it Is Difficult to Reconstruct a Historical Chronology of Its Development It is a fairly simple matter to identify the precise point of origin of many of the world's major religions; for example, the origins of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam can be historically placed with some degree of accuracy because of the known historical personages associated with their creation (Zaehner 1307).

By sharp contrast, the origins of the world's most ancient religions such as Hinduism and Judaism have largely been lost in the mists of time, but this has not impacted the popularity of this religion today or the efforts of researchers to shed more light on their origins (Kelkar & Vaishnav 24). To this end, a brief overview of Hinduism is provided below, followed by an assessment of why it is particularly difficult to reconstruct a historical chronology of its development.

A summary of the research and salient findings will be provided in the conclusion. Review and Discussion What Is Hinduism? In his essay on Hinduism, R.C. Zaehner (1970) says that, "Hindu' is a Persian word and it means simply 'Indian.'. The Indians themselves, however, never refer to their religion as the 'Indian' religion, rather they call it the Sanatana Dharma, the 'eternal dharma,' distinguishing it thereby from all other religions, which have known founders and are therefore rooted in history" (1307).

The reference to "eternal dharma" is an allusion to the concept that the religion's origins lie beyond human history, and its truths have been divinely revealed (shruti) and handed down through the ages to the present day in the most ancient of the world's scriptures, the Veda (Knott 5).

Although Hinduism is a polytheistic religion, Zaehner suggests that it is also, at least in some sense, a monotheistic religion as well because the numerous gods have long been recognized to be mere reflections of the guiding principle of Hinduism, which may appear to its practitioners as a personal god (1307).

While descriptions of Hinduism tend to vary from book to book and author to author, the common theme that emerges from the literature is that Hinduism is a religion of love, and that for devout Hindus, the Veda is revealed and does not originate at a particular time in history but is eternal and of divine origin (Knott 8). Why Is It Difficult to Reconstruct a Historical Chronology of Hinduism's Development? According to Zaehner, Hinduism has no known founder and is regarded by its practitioners as having existed for all time (1308).

The written history of Hinduism, though, only began in India about 1500 BC.; while the religion's literature has been traced to just before 1000 BC, evidence of Hinduism's earlier antecedents has been extrapolated from archaeology, comparative philology, and comparative religion (Doniger & Smith 217). In his book, The Sacred Thread: Hinduism in Its Continuity and Diversity, J.L. Brockington (1981) reports that the origins of Hinduism are truly ancient and predate its extant written records by millennia, but its earliest written records are codified in the four Vedas.

"The religion exemplified by these collections of ritual hymns was brought into India by the Aryans who began to settle in North India some time between 1500 and 1000 B.C.," Brockington says, "but in their present form they were clearly composed over a long span of time" (7). The oldest datable writing is the R-igveda, which has been attributed to around 1,200 B.C. (Brockington 7) and 1,000 BC (Doniger & Smith 227) by virtue of its language and its clear association with the reformed Iranian religion prior to 1,000 B.C.

that is recorded in the Avesta. The next Vedas are the S-maveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda; Brockington adds that the content of the Vedas was also developed over a long period of.