Whatever moving thing there is in the moving
world.
With this renounced, thou mayest enjoy…
The “Īśā Upaniśad”
When one embarks on an examination of the data set classified under the rubric “Hinduism,” one is confronted with the recurrent challenge of drawing broad descriptive hypotheses without slipping into a mis-representative reductionism. That which is classified as “Hinduism” consists of a staggeringly complex range of contemporarily manifested and historically/longitudinally evidenced socio-cultural “product,” consisting of encoded ideas and demonstrated cultic practices. Hinduism represents a genus of quantifiable religiosity exhibited by Homo religiosus for over four thousand years. The religiosity classifiable under the rubric “Hinduism” is quantifiable through normative ideas, archived in written text, through historically and contemporarily observable cultic practice, through the testimony of those who practice the religiosity, and through other examples of socio-cultural product (e.g., art and architecture). For religious studies purposes, normative religious sensibilities and ideas have been encoded historically and contemporarily through a robust range of written texts, comprised of various genres (from the mythopoeic fragments, through mythopoetic hymns, through 555 short philosophical treatises called sūtras—the sūtras are attempts to systematize the more primary teachings of the Upaniśads which are the last sections of four primary Vedic texts). Some of these texts are normative because they have been understood in relation to the cultus as sacred (e.g., the Rg Veda, which encodes fundamental normative religious concepts in hymn/verse form for Vedic Hinduism). The primary, authoritative universal orientatio of Hinduism, encoded through the textual record, is given the Sanskrit designation śruti; whereas, the secondary commentary through which interpretation of śruti is communicated is called smrti in Sanskrit (Sanskrit is the language of the Indo-Aryans—the term comes from the cognate “Sanskrita,” connoting “refined, polished, well-wrought, perfect”). The history of Hindu religious ideas has been broken down into epochs or periods by scholars, roughly reflecting the type of religious literature dominant in a particular timeframe: the Vedic Period (c. 2500 B.C.E.-600 B.C.E)) named for the primary Vedic texts or the Vedas (pronounced as “Veds”), which are the recorded utterances that allow people to control the self and the world around (Eastern Philosophy, Part II); the Epic Period (c. 500 B.C.E. – 200 C.E.) marked by the renowned epics The Mahabharata and TheRāmāyana; the Sutra Period (roughly around the first centuries of the Common Era) marked by classic Vedanta texts, such as the Yoga Sūtra; and the Scholastic Period (spanning from the Sutra Period through the 17th century C.E.) marked by scholarly interpretations of the Sutras. According to Dr. Julius Lipner from Cambridge University, though, Hinduism has always been understood as a function of an oral tradition (Sanskrit is primarily an oral language); traditional Hinduism has always operated cultically with an evidenced suspicion towards the written medium since it has been believed that writing somehow lessens the potency of the spoken word (Eastern Philosophy, Part II). Nevertheless, the extant primary texts transmitting normative Hindu ideas, in conjunction with primary creedal statements (a creed is a statement of orientational “belief”) have become quantifiable socio-cultural “products” through which something of Hindu religiosity—the distinct or sui generis religious consciousness—can be accessed.
An important stipulation that must be understood when one embarks upon
any kind of examination of Hinduism—whether through a diachronic or synchronic
approach—is that the rubric “Hinduism” is an immensely capacious classificatory
term, describing a broad range of phenomena evidenced from the past and
empirically quantifiable in the contemporary world. As
However, when one scrutinizes the data set, particularly in terms of examining secondary source material (the work of religious studies scholarship past and present, for example), one can make some more general or discursive statements about Hinduism as such, which can function as the combinatorial elements of a more “global” framework for examining the sui generis attributes of the data set as well the isomorphic patterns that can be adduced as representative of the data set. These more general statements about Hinduism are as follows:
As in the cases of the examinations of Traditional Native American Religion and African Traditional Religion, the study of Hinduism poses a challenging line of inquiry, compounded by the presence of both primary and derivative text sources that in some contexts function as normative sacred sources for the cultus in other contexts sources that shape the cultus but cannot be considered sacredly normative. The examination of Hinduism raises a fundamental question for religious studies as such—how much do the normative ideas encoded textually shape the fundamental orientation that is the religious cultus (again, the religiosity as practiced by Homo religious)? That is, in terms of Hinduism, how much can one understand of Hinduism as a historically practiced and contemporarily practiced religion based upon a scrutiny of the normative ideas encoded in sacred primary and derivative texts? As a minimum, one who studies religion is limited to the quantifiable data set of socio-cultural “product” that re-presents the interior psycho-spiritual orientation. But one must scrutinize the gamut of empirically quantifiable or measurable socio-cultural “product” in order even to approximate the fullness of the religious sensibility or consciousness in a robust, non-reductive manner.
With the above
in mind, then, one can isolate and identify some of the more salient features of
the religiosity classifiable as “Hinduism,” drawn forth from scrutiny of the
primary socio-cultural “product” re-pesentative of this religiosity as well as
drawn forth from scrutiny of derivative scholarly studies of the primary
dataset. Again, the ideal in this
line of inquiry is to identify truly isomorphic patterns evidenced through the
dataset that robustly and accurately represent the sui generis elements
of the data set. What follows are
the salient features evidenced through the data set that function as
approximators in establishing what is essential in that which has been
historically and contemporarily classified as “Hindu” or
“Hinduism.”
RELIGIOUS COSMOLOGY (AS DEDUCIBLE FROM PRIMARY AND DERIVATIVE IDEAS ENCODED TEXTUALLY AND FROM THE “PRODUCT” CONSTITUTIVE OF THE CULTUS)
Key Tropes/Metaphors/Motifs/Principles:
· The “Path” trope (Marga in Sanskrit)
· Karma (A Sanskrit term derivative from a cognate that means “to act”): the great orienting metaphysical principle in Hinduism
· Dharma (A Sanskrit word translatable into English as roughly “the code of right behavior or conduct” for Homo religiosus)
· Ātman/Brahman: Atman is translatable into English as “world soul,” and likened to “salt dissolved in water” in the Chandayoga Upaniśad. All elements of the empirically observable phenomenal world are individuations of Atman. Atman is considered to be an ultimate metaphysical principle in Hinduism. Atman is the ultimate in Hindu religious philosophy, which is accessible introspectively. Brahman is another term re-presenting the ultimate; for some interpreters, it is an ultimate, identical with the Atman, but Atman that is accessible objectively through the empirical world of phenomena (Radhakrishnan and Moore 38). For some Hindu religious scholars, i.e., Śamkara (c. 788-820 C.E.), whose commentary on the Vedanta Sutra has shaped Hindu metaphysics ever since, Ātman and Brahman are identical: Brahman is the unifying principle behind all the observable individuated difference in the world. In some Hindu religious cosmologies, Brahman even becomes a kind of personalized deity (again, the system highlighted by Ramanuja), and the Hindu cultic life—the cultus—is a function of “paying attention to” the orienting horizon of Brahman through devotion (Bhakti in Sanskrit). One primary text containing the revelation of this more theistic (again, theos is a Greek term connoting “God” in English—a more personalized sense of the Somewhat/Something Other) notion of Brahman is the Bhagavad Gītā (“The Song of God”) which is part of the epic Mahābhārata: “Lord on whom everything is strung like pearls on a thread.” (Bhagavad Gītā, VII, 7). The goal of human being in general, then, is to see through the differentiated world of empirical phenomena into the more primary and ultimate unity of Brahman (before and beyond individuation—even the individuation that is a single human being—is Brahman. Human individuality is but a temporary punctuation of the continuum that is Brahman or the “world soul”)
· Anatman (“Not Atman”) is the world of empirical, individuated phenomena: a world of Maya or the “no-thing-ness”/illusion of this empirical world
· Samsāra is the “whirlpool” of time in the empirical field that keeps entities trapped in the time field—the Maya field
· Moksha connotes “liberation” or “emancipation” in Sanskrit: the term re-presents the ultimate “horizon” for the Hindu cultus and the religious life of the Hindu individual. Moksha entails the transcendence of individuality, the transcendence of anatman and maya and the dissolution into Atman/Brahman. For some Hindus, Moksha is reachable in this existence; for other Hindus, Moksha is only reachable after a continual series of deaths and rebirths: Moksha is truly an ultimate “horizon,” framing the entire cycle of lives, deaths, and rebirths. In this sense of the term, Moksha is the final rebirth, the final dissolution of individuation and mystical merging with Atman/Brahman.
· Nirvana is a Sanskrit term signifying a still-point in the “whirlpool” of Samsāra. Nirvana is understood as a center point of orientation in the flux or chaos of samsāra, the time and existence field marking the empirical, phenomenal world
· Yoga (believed to be derivative from the Sanskrit cognate Yaj, connoting “to join” or “to contemplate” in English) entails specific modes of “contemplation” that facilitate the transcendence of the empirical, phenomenal domain of maya and samsara and the intermittent dissolution into or merging with the Atman/Brahman field. There are several modes of yoga—ritual practices—established through the primary and derivative texts of Hinduism (the Bhagavad Gītā—part of the epic Mahābhārata—for example, and the Yoga Sūtra jali) that facilitate theattributed to a figure named Patan transcendence of the samsāra/māya field and the mystical merging with the Atman/Brahman ultimate; these modes are in no ways mutually exclusive:
o Hatha Yoga : Yoga of the body (the mode of Yoga that has “caught on” in the Western world)
o Raja Yoga: Yoga of the psyche: a kind of ritualized psychic control
o ana YogaJn: Yoga that involves the cognitive or rational faculties (a more philosophical mode of yoga)
o Bhakti Yoga: Yoga of the devotional life or devotion (always entailing an object of devotion—something to be devoted to, e.g., the more personalized figure of Brahman, Vishnu, or Śiva)
o Karma or Karmic Yoga: Yoga of work: a willing, activist for of Hinduism
RELIGIOUSLY DEFINED SOCIO-CULTURAL ARCHITECTONICS
(AN ARCHITECTONIC IS A PRIMARY SCHEMA OR SCHEMATIC THAT DETERMINES THE
STRUCTURE OF DERIVATIVE “DETERMINANTS” OR APPLICATIONS)
Four Socio-Cultural Divisions or Varnas (the Varnas are promulgated primarily in The Code of Manu, scribed circa the beginning of the Christian Era; the Varnas eventually became the strata of what is called a caste society):
· Brahamana: Intellectuals
· Kshatriya: Warriors
· Vaisyu: Merchants, Traders, Artisans
· Sudhras: Farmers
Two Religious Doctrines Defining the Individual-Social Order of Existence:
· AŚRAMS (Quarters or stages of life):
o Bramacari: Celibate Student
o Grhastha: Householder
o Vana Prastha: Hermit
o Sannyasi: Renunciate
Four Goals in the Religiously Oriented Hindu Life (Pusarthas in Sanskrit, revealed through the epic Mahābhārata)—What should Homo religiosus, an religiously oriented Hindu, do? :
· Dharma: leading a moral life according to the code of right conduct—righteous living
· Artha: enjoying material wealth
·
·
Mokśa: seeking liberation (the ultimate horizon
of existence, which governs and balances dharma, artha,
THE VEDAS (SOME ASSERT THE HINDUISM IS A VEDIC RELIGION):
· The Rg Veda: “Knowledge of the sacred lore,” comprised of over one thousand hymns
· The Yajur Veda: “Knowledge of rites,” comprised of material communicating the ritual parameters for properly oriented sacrifice—sacrificial rites (most scholars assert the Pre-Aryan and Aryan religiosity was originally a entailed a fundamentally sacrificial cultus)
· The Sama Veda: Samhita or “knowledge of chants,” comprised of a collection of verses and hymns to be recited in the context of sacrificial rites
· Atharva Veda: “Knowledge given by the sage Atharva,” comprised of rituals and prayers to the numinous entities or divinities representative of the Pre-Aryan and Aryan cultus. These rituals and prayers are to be used at home and include spells and incantations to ward off evil
Each Vedic text is comprised of four essential parts
o Mantras: hymns to the divinities
o Brahamanas: guidelines for karmic practices as ritual action
o Aranyakas: “Forest Treatises,” which entail materials for living a hermitic life in religious pursuit
o Upaniśads: philosophical treatises for the life of devotion (bhakti yoga) and the life of cognitive contemplation (ana yogajn). The Vedanta represent later interpretive commentaries on the Upaniśads connected with the four Vedic sources
THE EPICS (Largely comprised of Ithasa or the divine histories of kings who are models of dharma.)
· Ramayana (“The Deeds of Rama”): a sacred epic chronicling the Ramarajya or “The Rule of Rama”
· The Mahābhārata (purported to be scribed by Vasya—this work is known as the “Fifth Veda”):
o Chronicles the struggle between the Kavrava’s and the Pandavas for the throne. The Pandavas emerge victorious with the help of Lord Krśna who is an incarnation or avatar or avatarana (avatara is the plural) of Vishnu, the “preserver” in the Aryan mythic pantheon
THE SŪTRAS (See above)
THE VEDANTA (See above)
PURANAS (Ancient Lore Constitutive of a More Popularized Hindu Religiosity)
· Theodicy: evil is regarded as “dirt in the wrong place”…people are not evil; they commit evil (Sharma 30)
· Trinitarian Doctrine (Trimurti):
o Brahma: Creator
o Viśnu: Preserver (Rama and Krsna are avatara or incarnations…”en-fleshments” of Viśnu
o Śiva (Rudra in earlier mythopoeic traditions): The Destroyer…The one who conducts salvation in a moment and salvation for eternity
· The devotional cult of Brahma never caught on
· Two specific Puranas that function as source material:
o Bhagavata Purana: the purana that deals with the early life of Krsna
o Markandeya Purana: the purana that deals with the feminine theology of Devi Mehamya (Devi is often translated into English as “goddess”).
· The more popularized Hinduism of the Puranas entails a religious cosmology that attests to ten avatara or incarnations (Rama; Buddha; Krsna; Kalki…)
TANTRAS (AGAMA): Sacred texts that deal with the cultic aspects of Hinduism
DARSANA LITERATURE: (Darsana can be translated as “intuition” in English: the Darsana Literature encodes the primary religious and philosophical ideas for what are termed the “Orthodox Schools” of Hinduism)
· Six acceptable schools of Hindu Darsana philosophy
o Nyaya: Logical Realism
o Vaise sika: Atomistic Pluralism
o Sankhya: Ontological Dualism
o Yoga: Meditative Self –Realism
o Mimamsa: Vedic Ritualism
o Vedanta: Philosophical system based on the Upaniśads
The Darsana schools all espouse a “Triple Canon” or three points of departure for their specific varieties of metaphysics: the Prasthana Traya in Sanskrit:
· Upaniśads
· The Brahma Sutra
· The Bhagavad Gītā
The abovementioned socio-cultural “product” through which a rather rudimentary understanding of Hinduism can be deduced is representative of a point of departure for such a line of inquiry. Again, due to the vastness and complexity of contemporarily manifested and historically evidenced socio-cultural “product”—particularly the rich archived textual tradition—striving to identify the “what” of normative Hinduism represents a task fraught with difficulties. Again, what is classified under the rubric “Hinduism” is a robust data set of socio-cultural “product” representative of over four thousand years of development (many scholars also argue that embedded in some of the more derivative “product” are residues of pre-Aryan religiosity and even proto-Indo-European religious sensibility). Thus, the examination of data set can yield access to religious sensibilities that orient Homo religious—those oriented in a religious orientation classifiable as “Hinduism”—in the contemporary epoch as well as yield access to more antecedent religious sensibilities/orientatio of an ancient past.
Eastern Philosophy, Part II. VHS. Kultur, 2002.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvapalli and Charles A. Moore, eds. A Source Book in Indian
Philosophy.
Sharma, Arvind. “Hinduism.” Our Religions. Arvind Sharma ed.
HarperCollins Publishers, 1993, 1-67.