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HINDUISM
(Part 1)
The Ancient Origins of Hinduism
Alden Bass
The word Hindu originated,
not as the name of a religion, but as a geographical marker. Hindu derives
from the Sanskrit word for river, sindhu, from which
the Indus River received its name. Sometime in the first
millennium B.C., the Persians, who were then South Asia’s
closest neighbors, mispronounced sindhu, and designated
the land around the Indus River as hindu. Over a thousand
years later, in A.D. 712, the Muslims invaded the Indus Valley.
To distinguish themselves, they called all non-Muslims hindus;
the name of the land became, by default, the name of the
people and their religion (Schoeps, 1966, p. 148). Christians,
upon entering Hindustan (as it was then called), committed
the same error of reduction. From their perspective, the
indigenous people were all idol-worshipping pagans, so they
christened the Indians gentoo, a derogatory synchronization
of “gentile” and “hindu.” Thus the name hindu originally
was given by outsiders to denote a geographic territory,
but through the encroachment of various other religious groups
it came to encompass all native religions in South East Asia.
As the history of its name demonstrates,
unity in Indian religion has been superimposed by outsiders,
first by the Muslims, then the Christians, and much later
by the British colonialists who through their censuses unintentionally
reified the South Asian peoples under that banner. It has
only been in the last couple of centuries that the Indian
people have embraced the name Hindu as their own, though
two Indians rarely use the word with the same meaning. Some
scholars suggest that it is more appropriate to speak of “Hinduisms” than
to risk giving off a false sense of unity.
The genesis of Hinduism is nearly
as elusive as its contemporary definition. Unlike Islam,
which began with Mohammed, or Judaism, which began with Moses,
Hinduism has no founder, nor any traditional time or place
of origin; it emerges from the jungle as a continually evolving
religious system. Scholars debate the primary source of what
would become the Hindu religion, though all agree that several
cultures had an influence. Basham, Buitenen, and Doniger
suggest that ancient Hinduism evolved from at least three
antecedents: “an early element common to most of the Indo-European
tribes; a later element held in common with the early Iranians;
and an element acquired in the Indian subcontinent itself ” (Basham,
et al., 1997). The oldest of these influences are the symbols
and deities indigenous to the Indus valley, part of the ancient
and abstruse Dravidian culture. Archaeologists date this
magnificent society to the third millennium B.C., making
it one of the oldest known civilizations. This early date
also places the religion of the Indus over a thousand years
before the writing of the Old Testament, in the time of the
Patriarchal Age. If the archaeologists’ dating is correct,
the Indus civilization was established soon after the Tower
of Babel incident. The archaeological sites along the Indus
have revealed many terra-cotta figures resembling gods and
goddesses in the Vedic literature, some of which are still
worshipped. Though religious figurines abound, temples inexplicably
are absent from the Indus cities. Because the Indus valley
script has yet to be deciphered, much of the Dravidian culture
and religion remains a mystery.
The Christian must ask how the
Hindu religion fits into the biblical narrative. Islam grew
out of Judaism and Christianity, and Buddhism derived from
Hinduism; Hinduism is the only major religion lacking an
adequate explanation as to its origin. No substantial texts
exist beyond 1000 B.C., and the texts after 1000 do not contain
narrative. The earliest of these is the Rig Veda, which is
nothing but a collection of praise hymns to the gods rather
than the record of a people as in the Bible. Unlike western
cultures, which tend to view time as a linear progression,
the eastern religions generally reckon time to be cyclical.
As a result, they emphasize the eternal over the transient
and historical. Scholars are able to piece together the earliest
Indian religion only through archaeology, clues in the later
texts, and by extrapolating from existing traditions. Using
these same resources, Christian scholars can reinterpret
the available data so that the Hindu religion fits into a
biblical scheme of world history. Reconstructing the ancient
history of any civilization is tentative, however, and all
such projects are educated speculations at best.
Bible believers would expect
all civilizations to post-date the universal Flood, which
destroyed every human save the family of Noah (Genesis 7).
The peoples that sprang from Noah’s sons then spread over
the Earth, though the Bible is silent as to when and how.
Though it is possible that some colonies were established,
the text indicates that most of the people stayed together
in the land of Shinar (Genesis 11:2), where they began construction
on that fateful tower. The hubris of Noah’s descendents kindled
the wrath of God, Who, after He had confused their languages, “He
scattered them abroad over the face of all the Earth” (Genesis
11:9). Josephus wrote that “each colony took possession of
that land which they lighted upon and unto which God led
them; so that the whole continent was filled with them, both
the inland and maritime countries” (Antiquities I.v.1).
From this point the Old Testament records the history of
the children of Abraham; the events of the rest of the world
can be known only through secular history. We must try to
trace the origin of Hinduism back to an original belief in
the true God—a belief passed down from the progeny of Noah.
In a passage particularly descriptive of the Indian religion,
Paul argues that the ancient Gentiles knew God, but they
did not “retain their knowledge of God,” instead changing “the
glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible
man—birds and four-footed animals and creeping things” (Romans
1:28,23).
Evidence for the historical digression
from the worship of Jehovah God to the worship of nature
and nature-gods is found in the ancient texts and myths of
South Asia. The earliest Hindu literature, the Rig Veda, speaks
often of “the Creator,” of “the One,” a Great God over all
the other gods. He is called Varuna, and is closely related
to the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazdā (“Wise Lord”) and
the Greek god Uranus (Ourania). Though an insignificant
sea god in the current pantheon, Varuna was a prominent god
in the ancient system, and the subject of many hymns in the Rig
Veda. Zwemer writes that Varuna is “the most impressive
of the Vedic gods. He is the prehistoric Sky-god whose nature
and attributes point to a very early monotheistic conception” (1945,
p. 86). This god is an ethical god, capable of great wrath
or merciful forgiveness of sins. Note this passage from the
Vedas:
I do not wish,
King Varuna,
To go down to the home of clay,
Be gracious, mighty lord, and spare.
Whatever wrong we men commit against the race
Of heavenly ones, O Varuna, whatever law
Of thine we here have broken through thoughtlessness,
For that transgression do not punish us, O god (Rig Veda VII.lxxxix.1-3).
Varuna is already on the decline
by the time the Vedas were committed to writing; Indra, a
warrior god, takes prominence in the later Vedic period.
Yet even then, Varuna is qualitatively different from Indra
and all the other gods that follow him in the Vedic literature;
he is less anthropomorphic and more majestic (cf. Zwemer,
p. 88). Other Hindu deities act like humans in the same way
as the Greek gods, yet Varuna is above that. It would seem
that this god embodies many of the qualities of Jehovah,
albeit diluted and removed by many hundreds of miles and
years.
The myths of ancient Hinduism
likewise contain echoes of the distant past similar of Genesis.
There are several different, though not exclusive, creation
myths in the Vedas (and even more in later literature), but
in one of the earliest writings, Indra is the maker of all. “Who
made firm the shaking earth, who brought to rest the mountains
when they were disturbed, who measured out the wide atmosphere,
who fixed the heaven, he, O folk, is Indra” (Rig Veda II.xii.2).
This version of creation by a personal god is more similar
to the Old Testament account than to later Hindu formulations.
Hammer remarks, “In the early creation myth Indra was seen
as the personal agent in creation, bringing existence out
of non-existence. In later speculation the ‘One God’, described
in personal terms, gives way to ‘That One’—the impersonal
force of creation” (1982, p. 175). As time passed and the
true God was forgotten, the creation myths became more fantastic,
involving giant snakes and four-mouthed gods growing out
of lotus flowers (Basham, et al., 1997).
In addition to the creation myths,
a story persists in the epic tradition (written between 300
B.C.-A.D. 300) of a great flood. It was so great that “there
was water everywhere and the waters covered the heaven and
the firmament also” (Mahabharata III.clxxxvi). The
hero of the story is Manu, who is analogous to Noah in the
Hebrew story. One day a fish approached Manu and asked him
for protection in exchange for a blessing (later tradition
identifies the fish as the god Vishnu). Manu helped the fish,
who gives him this warning:
The
time for the purging of this world is now ripe. Therefore
do I now explain what is good for thee! The mobile and immobile
divisions of the creation, those that have the power of locomotion,
and those that have it not, of all these the terrible doom
hath now approached. Thou shall build a strong massive
ark and have it furnished with a long rope. On that must
thou ascend, O great Muni, with the seven Rishis and take
with thee all the different seeds which were enumerated
by regenerate Brahmanas in days of yore, and separately and
carefully must thou preserve them therein (Mahabharata III.clxxxvi).
Manu alone survived the great
flood, and from him the world was repopulated. The connection
between the Hindu story and the Genesis account is strengthened
by etymological ties between the name “Noah” and “Manu” (Sage,
2004).
The evidence from India’s earliest
literary traditions reveals that Hinduism is a corruption
of true religion. Though for most of its existence Hinduism
has been an extremely pluralistic religion—being influenced
by several cultures originally, and later by surrounding
religions (Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity)—it appears
to have grown out of monotheism. The renowned Sanskritist
of Oxford, Max Müller, wrote: “There is a monotheism that
precedes the polytheism of the Veda; and even in the invocations
of the innumerable gods the remembrance of a God, one and
infinite, breaks through the mist of idolatrous phraseology
like the blue sky that is hidden by passing clouds” (as quoted
in Zwemer, p. 87).
REFERENCES
Basham, Arthur, J.A.B van Buitenen, and Wendy Doniger (1997), “Hinduism,” Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 20:519-558.
Hammer, Raymond (1982), “Roots: The Development of Hindu
Religion,” Eerdmans’ Handbook to the World’s Religions (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
Sage, Bengt (2004), “Noah and Human Etymology,” [On-line],
URL: http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-083.htm.
Schoeps, Hans-Jachim (1966), The Religions of Mankind (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday).
Zwemer, Samuel (1945), The Origin of Religion (New
York: Loizeaux Brothers).
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Press web site at:
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2579
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