Hinduism

2007-03-14T16:21:54Z

Falcon451: /* References */

'''Hinduism''' is the fourth largest religion in the world<ref>The largest being Christianity, Islam, Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist, and Hinduism, in that order[http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html]</ref>. It can be called "the religion of India;" about 800 of the world's 1000 million Hindus live in India, and about 80 percent of Indians are Hindus.<ref>[http://www.censusindia.net/religiondata/Brief_analysis.pdf Census of India, religion data, brief analysis (PDF)]; "At the national level, of 1028 million population, 828 million (80.5 percent) have returned their religion as Hindus followed by 138 million (13.4 percent) as Muslims and 24 millions (2.3 percent) Christians. 19 million (1.9 percent) persons follow Sikh religion; 8 million (0.8 percent) are Buddhists and 4.2 million (0.4 percent) are Jains as per the 2001 Census. In addition to these, 6.6 million belong to ‘Other Religions and Persuasions’ including tribal religions which are not part of the six main religions stated above. About seven lakh (or 0.7 million) persons have not stated their
religion."</ref>

It dates back to the ancient days. Hindus believe in reincarnation and eventual unity with what is known as [[Brahman]] as well as respect for all life forms. Their holy writings are known as the [[Vedas]]. The goal of Hindus is to advance to higher caste in next life through "[[karma]]" and achieve unity with Brahma. Hinduism is a [[polytheistic]] religion containing hundreds of millions of Gods.

In 1966, the Supreme Court of India defined what Hinduism is for legal purposes:

1. Belief in the authority of the Vedas (an ancient hymns to the gods, written in Sanskrit). The oldest collection of hymns in the Vedas is the Rig Veda, which was written between 1800 and 1300 B.C. The greatest Veda hymn is the “Bhagavad Gita,” a section in the Mahabharata concerning life’s never-ending spiritual journey towards perfection, to be attained by adhering to a code of conduct. The Bhagavad Gita is a spiritual guide to life’s problems, like the parable in Christianity.

2. Spirit of tolerance and willingness to understand and respect an opponent’s view.

3. Belief in world rhythms: long periods of creation, maintenance and dissolution follow each other in endless succession.

4. Belief in reincarnation (rebirth) and pre-existence.

5. Belief that there are many ways to salvation.

6. Belief that the number of gods to be worshiped may be large, although some Hindus reject the worship of idols.

7. Unlike most other religions, Hinduism is not defined by a specific set of philosophical concepts.

For more on Hinduism, see [[World History Lecture Three]].

==References==
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[[Category:Religion]]

Contrary to popular belief, Hinduism is not a polytheistic religion. The Vedas, the primary Hindu holy scriptures states that there is only one God but can manifest in many forms. This is the reason why there are many deities. A common example used to explain this is that an individual can be called different names depending on the relationship has with another. A man can be a son to his parents, a nephew to his uncle, a father to his son, and a husband to his wife all at the same time. None of these different relationships suggest mutiple people but rather different aspects of one person. The same is applied to God in Hinduism, which has no form and is infinite. Hindus may call God, Paratman(Supreme Soul), Brahmana(Eternal Spirit), or Ishvara(Supreme Lord). Deities have various names but represent aspects of God that manifest in the world. For example Agni(fire, Divine spark), Vayu(wind, or breath which could mean life force, Indra(in mythology king of gods but also refers to the senses such as vision, hearing, touch, taste), Lakshmi(fortune).

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Hinduism