1.
Hinduism
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Hinduism is a religion, or a way of life, found most notably in India and Nepal. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some practitioners and scholars refer to it as Sanātana Dharma, scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no founder. This Hindu synthesis started to develop between 500 BCE and 300 CE following the Vedic period, although Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, it is linked by shared concepts, recognisable rituals, cosmology, shared textual resources, and pilgrimage to sacred sites. Hindu texts are classified into Shruti and Smriti and these texts discuss theology, philosophy, mythology, Vedic yajna, Yoga, agamic rituals, and temple building, among other topics. Major scriptures include the Vedas and Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, prominent themes in Hindu beliefs include the four Puruṣārthas, the proper goals or aims of human life, namely Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, karma, samsara, and the various Yogas. Hindu practices include such as puja and recitations, meditation, family-oriented rites of passage, annual festivals. Some Hindus leave their world and material possessions, then engage in lifelong Sannyasa to achieve Moksha. Hinduism prescribes the eternal duties, such as honesty, refraining from injuring living beings, patience, forbearance, self-restraint, Hinduism is the worlds third largest religion, with over one billion followers or 15% of the global population, known as Hindus. The majority of Hindus reside in India, Nepal, Mauritius, the Caribbean, the word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan/Sanskrit word Sindhu, the Indo-Aryan name for the Indus River in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. The term Hindu in these ancient records is a geographical term, the Arabic term al-Hind referred to the people who live across the River Indus. This Arabic term was taken from the pre-Islamic Persian term Hindū. By the 13th century, Hindustan emerged as an alternative name of India. It was only towards the end of the 18th century that European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus. The term Hinduism, then spelled Hindooism, was introduced into the English language in the 18th-century to denote the religious, philosophical, because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, arriving at a comprehensive definition is difficult. The religion defies our desire to define and categorize it, Hinduism has been variously defined as a religion, a religious tradition, a set of religious beliefs, and a way of life. From a Western lexical standpoint, Hinduism like other faiths is appropriately referred to as a religion, in India the term dharma is preferred, which is broader than the western term religion. Hindu traditionalists prefer to call it Sanatana Dharma, the study of India and its cultures and religions, and the definition of Hinduism, has been shaped by the interests of colonialism and by Western notions of religion. Since the 1990s, those influences and its outcomes have been the topic of debate among scholars of Hinduism, Hinduism as it is commonly known can be subdivided into a number of major currents
2.
Upanishads
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The Upanishads are a collection of ancient Sanskrit texts that contain some of the central philosophical concepts of Hinduism, some of which are shared with Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Early Upanishads are considered by Hindus as part of their scriptures that discuss the nature of ultimate reality, the Upanishads are commonly referred to as Vedānta, variously interpreted to mean either the last chapters, parts of the Veda or the object, the highest purpose of the Veda. The concepts of Brahman and Ātman are central ideas in all the Upanishads, the Upanishads are the foundation of Hindu philosophical thought and its diverse traditions. Of the Vedic corpus, they alone are known. More than 200 Upanishads are known, of which the first dozen or so are the oldest and most important and are referred to as the principal or main Upanishads. The mukhya Upanishads are found mostly in the part of the Brahmanas and Aranyakas and were, for centuries, memorized by each generation. The early Upanishads all predate the Common Era, five of them in all likelihood pre-Buddhist, of the remainder, some 95 Upanishads are part of the Muktika canon, composed from about the last centuries of 1st-millennium BCE through about 15th-century CE. New Upanishads, beyond the 108 in the Muktika canon, continued to be composed through the modern and modern era. Along with the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahmasutra, the mukhya Upanishads provide a foundation for the later schools of Vedanta, among them. With the translation of the Upanishads in the early 19th century they started to attract attention from a western audience. Arthur Schopenhauer was deeply impressed by the Upanishads and called it the production of the highest human wisdom, modern era Indologists have discussed the similarities between the fundamental concepts in the Upanishads and major western philosophers. The Sanskrit term Upaniṣad translates to sitting down near, referring to the student sitting down near the teacher while receiving esoteric knowledge, monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary adds that, According to native authorities Upanishad means setting to rest ignorance by revealing the knowledge of the supreme spirit. Adi Shankara explains in his commentary on the Kaṭha and Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that the word means Ātmavidyā, other dictionary meanings include esoteric doctrine and secret doctrine. The word appears in the verses of many Upanishads, such as the verse of the 13th volume in first chapter of the Chandogya Upanishad. The authorship of most Upanishads is uncertain and unknown, Radhakrishnan states, almost all the early literature of India was anonymous, we do not know the names of the authors of the Upanishads. The Vedic texts themselves assert that they were created by Rishis, after inspired creativity. Women, such as Maitreyi and Gargi participate in the dialogues and are credited in the early Upanishads. There are exceptions to the tradition of the Upanishads and other Vedic literature
3.
Bhagavad Gita
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The Bhagavad Gita, often referred to as simply the Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture in Sanskrit that is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. The Gita is set in a framework of a dialogue between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Lord Krishna. Inserted in this appeal to kshatriya dharma is a dialogue, between diverging attitudes concerning methods toward the attainment of liberation. The Bhagavad Gita was exposed to the world through Sanjaya, who senses and cognises all the events of the battlefield, Sanjaya is Dhritarashtras advisor and also his charioteer. The Bhagavad Gita presents a synthesis of the concept of Dharma, theistic bhakti, the ideals of moksha through jnana, bhakti, karma. Numerous commentaries have been written on the Bhagavad Gita with widely differing views on the essentials, the setting of the Gita in a battlefield has been interpreted as an allegory for the ethical and moral struggles of the human life. The Bhagavad Gitas call for selfless action inspired many leaders of the Indian independence movement including Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi referred to the Gita as his spiritual dictionary. The epic Mahabharata is traditionally ascribed to the Sage Vyasa, the Bhagavad Gita, theories on the date of composition of the Gita vary considerably. Scholars accept dates from the century to the second century BCE as the probable range. Professor Jeaneane Fowler, in her commentary on the Gita, considers second century BCE to be the date of composition. It is estimated that the text probably reached something of a form by the early Gupta period. The actual dates of composition of the Gita remain unresolved, there is no reference to the Bhagavad Gita in Buddhist literature, the Tripitaka. The Buddha refers to 3 Vedas rather than 4 Vedas, as per general perception in many dialogues, so, there is doubt about whether the Bhagavad Gita was widely known about during the lifetime of Gautama Buddha. Due to its presence in the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita is classified as a Smriti text or that which is remembered. The smriti texts of the period between 200 BCE and 100 CE belong to the emerging Hindu Synthesis, proclaiming the authority of the Vedas while integrating various Indian traditions and religions. Acceptance of the Vedas became a criterion for defining Hinduism over and against the heterodoxies. The so-called Hindu Synthesis emerged during the early Classical period of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita is the sealing achievement of this Hindu Synthesis, incorporating various religious traditions. According to Hiltebeitel, Bhakti forms an ingredient of this synthesis
4.
Puranas
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The word Puranas literally means ancient, old, and it is a vast genre of Indian literature about a wide range of topics, particularly myths, legends and other traditional lore. Composed primarily in Sanskrit, but also in languages, several of these texts are named after major Hindu deities such as Vishnu, Shiva. The Puranas genre of literature is found in both Hinduism and Jainism, the content is highly inconsistent across the Puranas, and each Purana has survived in numerous manuscripts which are themselves inconsistent. The Hindu Puranas are anonymous texts and likely the work of authors over the centuries, in contrast, most Jaina Puranas can be dated. There are 18 Maha Puranas and 18 Upa Puranas, with over 400,000 verses, the first versions of the various Puranas were likely composed between the 3rd- and 10th-century CE. The Puranas do not enjoy the authority of a scripture in Hinduism and they have been influential in the Hindu culture, inspiring major national and regional annual festivals of Hinduism. The religious practices included in them are considered Vaidika, because they do not preach initiation into Tantra, the Bhagavata Purana has been among the most celebrated and popular text in the Puranic genre, and is of non-dualistic tenor. The Puranic literature wove with the Bhakti movement in India, vyasa, the narrator of the Mahabharata, is hagiographically credited as the compiler of the Puranas. The date of the production of the written texts does not define the date of origin of the Puranas and they existed in an oral form before being written down, and were incrementally modified well into the 16th century. An early occurrence of the term purana is found in the Chandogya Upanishad, translated by Patrick Olivelle as the corpus of histories, importantly, the most famous form of itihāsapurāṇaṃ is the Mahabharata. The term also appears in the Atharvaveda 11.7.24, the extant Puranas, states Coburn, are not identical to the original Puranas. In the 19th century, F. E. Pargiter believed the original Purana may date to the time of the redaction of the Vedas. Wendy Doniger, based on her study of indologists, assigns approximate dates to the various Puranas and she dates Markandeya Purana to c.250 CE, Matsya Purana to c. 250–500 CE, Vayu Purana to c.350 CE, Harivamsa and Vishnu Purana to c.450 CE, 350–950 CE, Vamana Purana to c. 450–900 CE, Kurma Purana to c, 550–850 CE, and Linga Purana to c. Of the many texts designated Puranas the most important are the Mahāpurāṇas or the major Puranas and these are said to be eighteen in number, divided into three groups of six, though they are not always counted in the same way. The difference between Upapuranas and Mahapuranas has been explained by Rajendra Hazra as, a Mahapurana is well known, the Upapuranas are eighteen in number, with disagreement as to which canonical titles belong in that list of eighteen. The Ganesha and Mudgala Puranas are devoted to Ganesha, the Devi-Bhagavata Purana, which extols the goddess Durga, has become a basic text for Devi worshipers
5.
Bhagavata Purana
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The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is one of Hinduisms eighteen great Puranas. Composed in Sanskrit and available in almost all Indian languages, it promotes bhakti to Krishna integrating themes from the Advaita philosophy of Adi Shankara. The Bhagavata Purana, like other puranas, discusses a range of topics including cosmology, genealogy, geography, mythology, legend, music, dance, yoga. As it begins, the forces of evil have won a war between the benevolent devas and evil asuras and now rule the universe, the Bhagavata Purana is a revered text in Vaishnavism, a Hindu tradition that reveres Vishnu. The text presents a form of religion that competes with that of the Vedas, wherein bhakti ultimately leads to self-knowledge, liberation and bliss. However the Bhagavata Purana asserts that the nature and outer form of Krishna is identical to the Vedas. An oft-quoted verse is used by some Krishna sects to assert that the text itself is Krishna in literary form, the date of composition is probably between the eighth and the tenth century CE, but may be as early as the 6th century CE. Manuscripts survive in numerous inconsistent versions revised through the 18th century creating various recensions both in the languages and across different Indian languages. The text consists of twelve books totalling 332 chapters and between 16,000 and 18,000 verses depending on the recension, the tenth book, with about 4,000 verses, has been the most popular and widely studied. Bhagavata means devoted to, follower of Bhagavat – the sacred, an alternative interpretation of Bhagavata is devotees of the Adorable One. Bhagavata Purana therefore means Ancient Tales of Followers of the Lord, the Bhagavata is widely recognized as the best-known and most influential of the Puranas and, along with the Itihasa and other puranas, is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Veda. It is the source of popular stories of Krishnas childhood told for centuries on the Indian subcontinent. The Bhagavata declares itself the essence of all the Upanishads and derivative Smritis, One who has enjoyed the nectar of its rasa never has any desire for anything else. In northern and western India the Bhagavata Purana has influenced the Hari Bhakti Vilasa, the text complements the Pancharatra Agama texts of Vaishnavism. While the text focuses on Krishna Lord Narayana himself appears and explains how Brahma, the Bhagavata Purana is also significant in asserting that Yoga practice is a form of Bhakti. The Bhagavata Purana, in verse 2.9.32, modern scholarship dates its composition to between 500 CE to 1000 CE, but most likely between 800 and 1000 CE. A version of the text existed no later than 1030 CE, within this range, scholars such as R. C. Postmodern scholars have suggested alternate theories, the Puranas are a type of traditional Hindu texts that took form during the medieval period, often both informed by earlier material and undergoing later interpolations
6.
Ramayana
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The Ramayana is an ancient Indian epic poem which narrates the struggle of the divine prince Rama to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana. Along with the Mahabharata, it forms the Sanskrit Itihasa, the Ramayana is one of the largest ancient epics in world literature. It consists of nearly 24,000 verses, divided into seven Kandas, in Hindu tradition, it is considered to be the adi-kavya. It depicts the duties of relationships, portraying characters like the ideal father, the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife. The Ramayana was an important influence on later Sanskrit poetry and Hindu life, like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is not just a story, it presents the teachings of ancient Hindu sages in narrative allegory, interspersing philosophical and ethical elements. The name Ramayana is a compound of the name Rāma and ayana. According to Hindu tradition—and according to the Ramayana itself—the epic belongs to the genre of itihasa like Mahabharata, the definition of itihāsa is a narrative of past events which includes teachings on the goals of human life. According to Hindu tradition, Ramayana takes place during a period of known as Treta Yuga. In its extant form, Valmikis Ramayana is a poem of some 24,000 verses. The text survives in several thousand partial and complete manuscripts, the oldest of which is a manuscript found in Nepal. A Times of India report dated 18 December 2015 informs about discovery of a 6th-century manuscript of the Ramayana at the Asiatic Society library, the Ramayana text has several regional renderings, recensions and subrecensions. Goldman differentiates two major regional recensions, the northern and the southern, scholar Romesh Chunder Dutt writes that the Ramayana, like the Mahabharata, is a growth of centuries, but the main story is more distinctly the creation of one mind. There has been discussion as to whether the first and the last chapters of Valmikis Ramayana were composed by the original author. Most Hindus still believe they are parts of the book, in spite of some style differences. Some cultural evidence, such as the presence of sati in Mahabharata but not in the body of Ramayana. By tradition, the text belongs to the Treta Yuga, second of the four eons of Hindu chronology, Rama is said to have been born in the Treta yuga to king Dasharatha in the Ikshvaku dynasty. The names of the characters are all known in late Vedic literature, however, nowhere in the surviving Vedic poetry is there a story similar to the Ramayana of Valmiki. Also, in the epic Mahabharata, there is a version of Ramayana known as Ramopakhyana and this version is depicted as a narration to Yudhishthira
7.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
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The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali are 196 Indian sutras. The Yoga Sutras were compiled prior to 400 CE by Sage Patanjali, the text fell into obscurity for nearly 700 years from the 12th to 19th century, and made a comeback in late 19th century due to the efforts of Swami Vivekananda, the Theosophical Society and others. It gained prominence again as a classic in the 20th century. In the 20th century the western practitioners of yoga elevated the Yoga Sutras to a status it never knew previously, scholars consider the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali formulations as one of the foundations of classical Yoga philosophy of Hinduism. The Yoga Sūtras text is attributed to Patanjali, much confusion surrounds this Patañjali, because an author of the same name is credited to be the author of the classic text on Sanskrit grammar named Mahābhāṣya. Yet the two works in Sanskrit are completely different in subject matter, furthermore, before the time of Bhoja, no known text states that the authors were the same. Philipp A. Maas assesses Patañjalis Yogasutras date to be about 400 CE, based on tracing the commentaries on it published in the first millennium CE, Edwin Bryant, on the other hand, surveys the major commentators in his translation of the Yoga Sūtras. He observes that Most scholars date the text shortly after the turn of the Common Era, Bryant concludes that A number of scholars have dated the Yoga Sūtras as late as the fourth or fifth century C. E. but these arguments have all been challenged. Michele Desmarais summarizes a variety of dates assigned to Yogasutra, ranging from 500 BCE to 3rd century CE. She states the text may have composed at an earlier date given conflicting theories on how to date it. The Yoga Sutras are a composite of various traditions, the levels of samādhi taught in the text resemble the Buddhist jhanas. According to Feuerstein, the Yoga Sutras are a condensation of two different traditions, namely eight limb yoga and action yoga, the kriya yoga part is contained in chapter 1, chapter 2 sutra 1-27, chapter 3 except sutra 54, and chapter 4. The eight limb yoga is described in chapter 2 sutra 28-55, according to Maas, Patañjalis composition was entitled Pātañjalayogaśāstra and consisted of both Sūtras and Bhāṣya. Together the compilation of Patanjalis sutras and the Vyasabhasya, is called Pātañjalayogaśāstra, according to Maas, this means that the earliest commentary on the Yoga Sūtras, the Bhāṣya, that has commonly been ascribed to some unknown later author Vyāsa, was Patañjalis own work. Patañjali divided his Yoga Sutras into four chapters or books, containing in all 196 aphorisms, divided as follows, Samadhi refers to a blissful state where the yogi is absorbed into the One. Samadhi is the technique the yogin learns by which to dive into the depths of the mind to achieve Kaivalya. The author describes yoga and then the nature and the means to attaining samādhi and this chapter contains the famous definitional verse, Yogaś citta-vritti-nirodhaḥ. Sadhana is the Sanskrit word for practice or discipline, here the author outlines two forms of Yoga, Kriya Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga
8.
Mahabharata
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The Mahābhārata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. The Mahābhārata is a narrative of the Kurukṣetra War and the fates of the Kaurava. It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four goals of life or puruṣārtha, traditionally, the authorship of the Mahābhārata is attributed to Vyāsa. There have been attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, the text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period. The title may be translated as the tale of the Bhārata dynasty. According to the Mahābhārata itself, the tale is extended from a version of 24,000 verses called simply Bhārata. The Mahābhārata is the longest known epic poem and has described as the longest poem ever written. Its longest version consists of over 100,000 śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines, and long prose passages. About 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Rāmāyaṇa. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahābhārata in the context of civilization to that of the Bible, the works of Shakespeare. The epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyāsa, who is also a character in the epic. Vyāsa described it as being itihāsa and he also describes the Guru-shishya parampara, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times. The first section of the Mahābhārata states that it was Gaṇeśa who wrote down the text to Vyasas dictation, the epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. It is recited by the sage Vaiśampāyana, a disciple of Vyāsa, the text has been described by some early 20th-century western Indologists as unstructured and chaotic. Hermann Oldenberg supposed that the poem must once have carried an immense tragic force. Moritz Winternitz considered that only unpoetical theologists and clumsy scribes could have lumped the parts of disparate origin into an unordered whole, Research on the Mahābhārata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text. Some elements of the present Mahābhārata can be traced back to Vedic times, the background to the Mahābhārata suggests the origin of the epic occurs after the very early Vedic period and before the first Indian empire was to rise in the third century B. C
