Hinduism

About 1.2 billion people are Hindus, most of them in India and Nepal. It is the world’s third-largest religion.

The word “Hindu” came from outsiders: Persians used it for the people beyond the Indus river. Followers often call their tradition Sanatana Dharma, the eternal law or way.

Within it are many schools, gods and practices. This episode follows how they grew, layer by layer.

Long before the Vedas, the Indus valley held one of the world’s first urban civilisations, with planned cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, brick drains and a great public bath.

Some see in its seals hints of later Hindu practice: ritual bathing, a figure seated in a yogic posture, sacred animals.

But the Indus script has never been deciphered, so its religion remains a mystery. The cities declined after about 1900 BC, probably as rivers shifted and the climate dried.

From about 1500 BC, people speaking an early form of Sanskrit lived in the Punjab. Most linguists and geneticists think their language came with migrations from Central Asia; some Indian scholars argue for an origin within India. The question is debated.

Their priests composed the Rigveda, over a thousand hymns to gods like Agni, god of fire, Indra, the warrior, and Soma, the sacred drink. For centuries it was passed on by memory alone.

Religion centred on the yajna, the fire sacrifice performed by Brahmin priests. A late hymn describes society in four orders, the varnas, the root of the later caste system.

As iron tools opened the forests of the Ganges plain, new kingdoms, cities and trade grew. Old village rituals no longer answered all of people’s questions.

In forest retreats, teachers composed the Upanishads. They taught that behind the world is one ultimate reality, Brahman, and that the true self, atman, is one with it.

They developed the ideas of samsara, the cycle of rebirth; karma, the moral law of action; and moksha, liberation. These ideas were shared by the Buddha and Mahavira, who appeared in the same world (Episode 06).

Two great epics took shape: the Mahabharata, with its battle at Kurukshetra, and the Ramayana, the story of Rama of Ayodhya. Inside the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna’s teaching on duty and devotion.

Law books set out dharma: duties by caste, stage of life and gender. Vishnu, Shiva and the Goddess, Devi, became the great gods, with the old Vedic gods in lesser roles.

In place of the fire sacrifice, people worshipped images of the gods in temples and homes, with offerings of flowers, food and light: puja. The first stone temples were built in the Gupta age, around the 5th century.

From the 6th century, Tamil poet-saints in the south, the Alvars devoted to Vishnu and the Nayanars to Shiva, sang that loving devotion, bhakti, was open to anyone, whatever their caste or sex.

In the 8th century, the philosopher Shankara taught Advaita Vedanta, the oneness of self and Brahman, and founded monasteries across India.

Bhakti spread north. Poets like Kabir and Mirabai in the 15th and 16th centuries wrote in everyday languages, and devotion to Rama and Krishna became the heart of popular Hinduism.

From the early centuries AD, traders, Brahmins and ideas from India reached Southeast Asia. Local rulers adopted Sanskrit names, Hindu gods and the idea of the divine king.

Great temples followed: Prambanan in Java in the 9th century, and Angkor Wat, built for Vishnu in the 12th. Champa in Vietnam worshipped Shiva for a thousand years.

Later most of the region became Buddhist or Muslim, but Bali remains Hindu today. In Thailand, Brahmins still serve at royal ceremonies, and the Ramakien retells the Ramayana.

From 1206, much of India was ruled by Muslim dynasties, the Delhi Sultanate and then the Mughals. Hindu and Muslim traditions both clashed and mixed.

The British, ruling India from the 18th century, used “Hinduism” as a single name for the many traditions they met, and Hindu reformers began to present it as one world religion.

Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1828; the Arya Samaj called for a return to the Vedas in 1875. In 1893 Swami Vivekananda spoke at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, introducing Vedanta to the West.

India’s constitution of 1950 abolished untouchability and guarantees freedom of religion. Caste still shapes many lives, and the struggle against caste discrimination continues.

Hindu festivals like Diwali and Holi are celebrated around the world, and yoga and meditation, rooted in Indian traditions, are practised by millions of people of every faith.

The place of Hindu identity in Indian national life is a lively political debate today.

Hinduism grew by adding, not replacing: Vedic hymns are still chanted at weddings, beside temple puja, yoga and devotion to many gods.

Next: Zoroastrianism, from Iran, the faith of the Persian kings, and one of the first to teach of a single good god.