The History and Religion of Hinduism

Hinduism isn't really a religion, nor is it a way of life, because you can really call it "a" anything because of the multiplicity of beliefs held within the umbrella term "Hinduism" to make it as distinct as chalk and Edammer. Nevertheless, in this video I'm going to delve into what we mean by Hinduism, the traditional religion of Indians for around 4,000 years, making it one of the oldest continuous religious traditions on the planet. We're going to look at the early history of Hinduism, the Aryan Migration/Invasion and the fusion of their culture with the indigenous Indians already living in the Indus Valley resulting in the writing of the Vedas and the RIgvedic period of Hinduism, before exploring the great philosophical changes attested in the Upanishads as a result of the increased sedenterisation of the new North Indian culture. From here I'll segway into some of the philosophical teachings about ultimate reality, with Advaita Vedanta, Vishisht Advaita and Samkhya Dualism as well as a few of the other Hindu Astika before returning to the historical aspect of the story by analysing the prominence of Smrti and Srti texts such as the Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita and the wider Mahabarata in connection to their importance for the Bhakti movement that flourished during the Classical Age of Hinduism, bringing with it the increased Brahminisation of the religion. This in turn of course led to the Sramanic movements that spawned Buddhism and Jainism, both still followed by millions worldwide, before exploring the spread of Hinduism outside of the Indian subcontinent in a Medieval context into Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, SIngapore, Laos, Vietnam, and many of the Indonesian Islands and parts of the Philippines. Anyway, it's a long one and I hope you all enjoy it!

Music Used:
Heroes - CO.AG:
Cambodian Odyssey - Kevin MacLeod
Eastern Thought - Kevin MacLeod
Himalayan Atmosphere - Kevin MacLeod
Opium - Kevin MacLeod
Floating Cities - Kevin MacLeod
Silver Flame - Kevin MacLeod
Ever Mindful - Kevin MacLeod
Crossing the Chasm - Kevin MacLeod
Lost Frontier - Kevin MacLeod
NIghtdreams - Kevin MacLeod
Past the Edge - Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

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#India #Hinduism #Dharma

[historywithhilbert]

Hi everyone thank you so much for tuning in today! If this video seems little old that's because I actually made it around 4 years ago but never got round to uploading it! Unfortunately my laptop gave up the ghost last week so I've had to go back into the archives to find something worthy of uploading. Hopefully there'll be a new video up on Friday as well. Enjoy the rest of your week!

[Max-pkuc]

i love how when he says indo-european words and names, i as a Lithuanian can understand most of them because they are very similair to our language. I think a video on Lithuania would be fascinating and finding out why they barely changed over thousand of years from their ancestors. examples of words which are similair: Devas-Dievas, Agnis-Ugnis, Koros-Karas, Kory-Karys. all these words mean the same in both languages and barely changed over the past thousand years

[Literarydilettante]

Parvati is actually the wife of Shiva, and Durga and Kali are her various manifestations/moods. The consort of Vishnu is Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and good fortune.

[PatSen]

Hi Hilbert,
Congratulations for attempting to tackle Hinduism. Its an onerous task, a brave task. More so because the west uses Abrahamic lenses to make sense of it and thus ties itself in knots. Pedants like me are likely to swoop in with unkind words to point that out. Alas, that has not changed significantly since the days of Max Muller. While I'm glad to see you take it up, I must confess to being a tad disappointed. You probably chose those trite old resources that see the world only though Judeao-Christian constructs. Even picking up a Diana Eck book would've given you a better handle. I'll point to the biggest errors (from my limited point of view) below. Apologies if some of it comes across as censorious.

1. Just because Hinduism does not have the one book-one prophet-one god-one truth construct of the Abrahamic religions makes it not be a religion? Makes it a 'way of life'? Why does a religion need to be defined that way only? Its a narrow Abrahamic view of religion that Hinduism, or what we call Sanatana Dharma, does not follow.
2. Vedas, upanishads, vedantas, brahmanas, aranyakas and itihasas all fall under the 'Astik' category of Sanatana Dharma. It simply means that they all accept the primacy of the vedas. The six schools of philosophy that you listed fall under the astika label. Those that do not accept the vedas belong to the 'nastika' category. And these include Jainism, Buddhism, Ajivikas and Charvaks. Incidentally, All of these reject the idea of God.
3. Interestingly, of the six schools of philosophy, two (nyaya and vaisheshika) also reject the idea of god. Even Sankhya is almost wholly non-theistic and only introduces the idea of a personal god in the end. Btw, Vaisheshika is not the atomism of Descartes, but more of Democritus'. Similarly Mimansa (or accurately, 'purva mimansa'), is really the explanation and contextualisation of the vedic rituals with no reference to ethics at all. Thus, Orthopraxy is too wide a term to use. Vedanta (or 'uttara mimansa') is the explanation of vedic philosophy including elements of 'ethics' which is called 'Dharma'. The three essentials for all six Astika schools are: to believe in infinite lives and infinite rebirths; to believe in the karmic cycle; and to believe that time is cyclical (and not linear). The presence of atman (loosely equated to soul) is not accepted by all six schools. Jains and Buddhists also believe in reincarnation. You ought to have mentioned this. This is the essential difference with Abrahamic beliefs that have one life, no karmic cycle but the idea of good and evil; and linear time.
4. Karma or the karmic cycle is not Thats the Biblical understanding of it imposed by eurocentric scholars of the 18th century. True, Karma is the law of consequences, however the effect of 'good' deeds is not necessarily 'good'. The law of karma says that an action will have consequences, and the consequences will be based on actions in past lives and present life, and actions of other people involved in those actions. Thus, essentially unknowable. Thus, instead of attempting to unravel it, its best to follow ones dharma based on the role one is playing at the time the action is done. Thus a king at court is doing his rajdharma, but at home with his family is expected to do grihadharma, etc. Etc. Most of Bhagvata Gita is Krishna explaining this to Arjuna. Of course, later on in Mahabharata, Arjuna forgets all this and is reminded again by Krishna in another Gita (song) which is actually longer than Bhagvata Gita. The famous story of Garuda and the songbird was told specifically to understand this concept of unknowable consequences of actions. Also, the birth of Krishna has a particularly grisly karmic narrative that points towards the complexity and unknowability of karmic cycles. So I wish you'd got hold of the non-pop version of karma. Alas!
5. Asura word simply means those who did not get the nectar of immortality. They are not villians or evil, as mentioned in western texts. They have the same father as the devas. There is no equivalent of demon, devil or evil in hinduism. There is no sin or non-sin. The europeans did not have a framework to fit the concepts of paap, punya, asura, danav, daitya, yaksha, rakshasa, swarga, naraka, patala, vaikuntha, etc. They force-fitted the ideas they were familiar with, hence this enormous disconnect in understanding Sanatana.
6. Caste is a word created by the British ( from Portuguese, methinks). In India the society is divided by Jaati (vocations. Thus I am a doctor, a vaidya). The Purusha Sukta explains the 'varna' system that was later expounded by Manu in his Manusmriti (literally, 'the recollections of Manu'). It was just one of the scores of smritis in existence. The British chose to use it as a principal reference for their surveys. They also started doing surveys based on religion and not jaati. Even today in India, one may be hindu, muslim, sikh or christian, but belong to the same jaati. Dalits also can be from any of these religions. Thus an 'untouchable' is not necessarily a hindu; she/he can be christian, muslim, buddhist or sikh. Btw, most of the 'untouchables' (mehtars) in Pakistan are christian.
7. The Sankhya construct of 'purusha' and 'prakriti' (you truly butchered this word, hehehehe. It was delightful to hear you trip over it), is pivotal in understanding present day hinduism. Purusha is Sanskrit for 'man' and here means the self. While Prakriti is Sanskrit for 'nature' and here means exactly that, and thus is female because purusha is 'male'. Prakriti is deified through the goddess. Thus the pantheon of male gods who one can seek blessings and favours from by gifting flowers, foods, incense and milk; and the (usually fierce) goddess, who must be propitiated through blood and sacrifice. You do mention animal sacrifices in Rigveda, however there are only ten Apri verses in all of Ridveda, thus indicating ten instances of animal sacrifice. The 'yagya' was loosely translated as fire-sacrifice by victorian orientalists.
8. The attritional relationship between Hinduism and Shramana schools, be it the monastic orders in hinduism itself or Jainism and Buddhism, is basically because Hinduism gave primacy to the householder and his worldview, whereas Shramana gave primacy to the denouncer of the householder, i.e. the ascetic/monk. It was a cultural war, and in the land where it was born, Buddhism was rooted out around 1500 years ago. Jainism exists. And Neo-buddhism defined in political terms by Dr. Ambedkar, exists mainly in the 'dalit' classes. Classical Buddhism exists only as Vajrayana school up in the Himalayas amidst Tibetan and other quasi-tantric traditions.
9. Hinduism is not necessarily theistic, as I've mentioned above. In fact it has the largest corpus of atheistic writings in the world despite the total destruction of ajivika texts by Emperor Ashoka and later on, the destruction of all the university libraries of Takshashila, Nalanda, Odantapuri, Vikramshila, Shardapeeth and Varanasi by Muslim invaders in 800-1000 CE. Another odd fact is that despite this wanton destruction, the existing religious and philosophical texts are twice that of all ancient Latin and Greek texts put together (refer to commentaries of Diana Eck, Micheal Shulman and Wendy Doniger). Yet we do hear often from mainly western academics that 'india has mostly an oral tradition'. Odd. Im sure you must have come across this statement too. However one needs to understand the concept behind shruti and smriti to grapple with it. You do mention it in passing but don't go into details.

There are more points, but its already long and unwieldy; and I'm not sure if you (or anyone else) will ever read it. So thats that then.

Congratulations, once again.
Cheers!
Pat

[daakuredpanda]

Many many errors but, I guess it must be extremely difficult for an outsider to study about all this thousands of years of history and philosophy. I think his attempt was honest. I'd say that is good enough.

To mention a few-



1. Shruti literally means "heard". It means origin unknown, very old, been heard from our forefathers. Sometimes it is said that these were revealed knowledge that the ancient seers realized it during meditation.


2. Smriti does mean "remembered" but not like mugged up. Infact hinduism was an oral tradition and it is the Shruti texts that are prominently recited and mugged up. Smriti texts less so. Smriti means as in we remember these texts, their origin and history is later so we know when they came into being, but, older Shruti texts are extreemely old and archaic and they were probably already passed down and heard from forefathers for many many generation during the compilation of the vedas in 1500 BC.


3. Generally south is more shaiv and north is more vaishnav and east is more shakti but its not like you said. There are extreemely prominent Shaiv tradition in the North as well. Kashi, one of the most important shaiv places is in the north while South also has an extreemely prominent Vaishnav tradition. Madhavacharya, a very important vaishnav saint was south indian. People worship all gods/regional gods/family gods/even no gods without much distinction. If there is a temple nearby, you'd probably visit it irrespective of your tradition or the deity.


4. Animal Sacrifice -> Maybe early people did animal sacrifice but "Sacrifice" in the translations does not always mean animal sacrifice. Those sacrifice functions have not stopped and continue to this day. They are called "Havan". A sacrificial fire is burnt and things like rice and clarified butter and coconut are ceremoniously put into it with chanting. This is how the said "sacrifice" was done during vedic times and is still done in the same way today. Even the same things/tools are used-> eg copper/bronze utensils and wooden tools etc that were used during the bronze age. In translation it is written as a "sacrifice", idk why, but there is no animal sacrifice.

There are a lot of these kinds of errors. "Parvati" is not the wife of Vishnu as mentioned. Wife of Vishnu is actually Laxmi mata. Also, all female goddess are considered the incarnation of the same Shakti and in Shaktism, the supreme being is considered a sorta feminine entity as in it sorta "gave birth" to the world, so the creation or taking care is considered as kinda feminine attributes.


Also, Bhakti movement came from the south and not from the Gupta empire. Northwest India/Afghanistan was hindu much before the Gupta period. It had one of the most famous ancient university -> Takshashila(taxila). Later the region also had Buddism schools. Later on Hindusm again sorta rebounded. Then came the muslims and Islam.

There were many many more errors, but I guess his spirit is correct. So, I appreciate his efforts.

[SR-mvmf]

1:45 as an Indian Hindu I need to correct your misinformation, Sanskrit is not only spoken by Brahmins. Sanskrit is not even a spoken language these days, it is a language for ritual and mantras in current days. Priests use Sanskrit mantras and these days priests just have to be trained in Sanskrit they need not necessarily be of the Brahmin caste. The system of caste itself undergoing a major change in India. Caste is not necessarily an indicator of your profession anymore. For example a Brahmin caste person can be a public servant, a lawyer or an engineer or dancer or actor or anything they choose to be (not restricted to being a priest)

[Komodo]

Hinduism: a religion so ancient that the language used to describe it changed sound while it remained the same.

[Crackdalf]

I always love how all your characters look mildly annoyed or confused with having to appear on screen

[utsavnp]

Finally a video about Ancient India by my favourite Historian YouTuber! Please do a series about Ancient India if it’s possible.

[kanhaibhatt]

The 'Perform your own duty imperfectly' is misinterpreted. Thats not related to the Caste System, as Krishn says in 4.13 that the Varns are divided according to qualities and actions. The above verse means that once you choose your varn, you must do your duty no matter what happens later on. Even if your life is in danger etc

[udayrathod]

41:45 In my opinion from what I understand is Geeta doesn't speak about caste by birth but about caste by skills. Caste came from Manu Smriti and after that things got massed up. Krishna dint fight in that war even though it was his dharma as kshatriya, but he just remained charioteer and spoke to Arjuna and guided him, performing dharma of a charioteer and a friend but not of the kshatriya.

[sealofapoorval]

Parvati is not Vishnu's wife, she's Shiva's wife

[PraveenJose]

Some corrections regarding Vedas, they weren't written in the Vedic period. Writing came to India later. Vedas were passed down through strict oral records and they meant to be passed down like this as they are categorized as sruti. It should be clarified that this wasn't a telephone game, it was extremely strict and tedious practice of memorization and learning. The reason that you can date the origin of Vedas so well is because how much it preserves the language of the early Vedic peoples. You can work backwards comparing like Prakit and other latter Indo-Aryan languages to Rig Vedic Sanksrit.
A good analogy to Westerners for understanding the oral tradition behind the Vedas is imagining the Homeric oral traditions of the Archaic Greek Age on steroids. Imagine create a caste of people(brahmins) to constantly maintain and preserve the oral literature for eons.

[VSM]

Dharma is a non translatable word in English.

[napoleonibonaparte]

Hilbert can always make a seemingly unrelated topic, related to the low countries and the Netherlands…

[mishapurser]

There are still parts of India that colloquially speak Sanskrit today, though I imagine it's varied quite a bit from the Vedic and Classical forms of Sanskrit we are more familiar with.

[Jobe-]

The ancient Egyptian religion is very similar in it’s philosophical beliefs. All of the gods were incarnations of each other and some animals were physical incarnations of gods e.g. all crocodiles being incarnations of Sobek and cows being incarnations of Hathor and/or the Opus Bull. And all of the gods were incarnations of a singular entity that transcended reality.

[Kallikukurinn]

In Icelandic the word for hostage is "gísl". Pretty amazing how close different languages can resemble one another. A blessing in disguise if you ask me, as it does help establishing some form of mutual understanding between different people.

[PakBallandSami]

indian history is very interesting to me because it is one of the first ever civilization the oldest religion and many i mean many empires so it is great to see you cover it thanks

[udayrathod]

Damn you got so many things correct. I dint expect this level of accuracy from a westerner. I can understand how much reading you would have to do to make such a detailed and nearly flawless explanation video about such difficult subject. #Respect