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INTRODUCTION TO HINDUISM

The Hindu tradition is rooted in the Vedic Age, the period in Indian history that extends from about 1500 B.C. to 600 B.C. Although this long expanse of time was marked by great religious and social changes, and conditions differed widely throughout the subcontinent, the Age had a unity and style that sets it apart. Chronologically, it was defined on the one side by the disappearance of the ancient Harappa culture and the coming of the Aryan peoples; on the other, by the establishment in the sixth century of important kingdoms in North India. From that time to the present, organized political life has existed in the area. Culturally, the designation "Vedic" indicates the dominant cultural and religious influence of India-the creation of a body of literature, the Vedas, which has served to undergrid every aspect of the civilization.

The Vedic Age was a time of fusion of different cultures and traditions, concerning the exact origins of which we know little, but whose existence is apparent in the richness and complexities-as well as the contradictions-of the Hindu way of life. One source that almost certainly contributed to this cultural amalgam was the great civilization that centered on the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. The physical remains of this extraordinary culture were only discovered in the twentieth century; its existence till then had not even been guessed at. It endured for nearly a thousand years, covering much of the northwest India with elaborately organized commercial and administrative system. Many aspects of later Hinduism - the god Shiva, for example - appear to have had prototypes in the Indus Valley civilization. Another source of the cultural heritage was widely scattered peoples who spoke Dravidian languages, the modern representatives of which are Tamil and Telugu. It is possible that these peoples were closely related, either ethnically or in terms of cultural influence, with the Indus Valley civilization. Probably such features of popular Hinduism as zoomorphic deities, the use of animals to symbolize the supernatural, were Dravidian in origin, as may have been such important concepts of Indian thought as the belief in transmigration. The third great source of cultural ideas and practices was the people who migrated into northwest India in the first half of the second millennium B.C. These were the people known as Aryans, although the word indicates linguistic affinities, rather than race. Their religious and social concepts, as well as their language, were similar to those of the peoples who migrated westward to Europe.

While not all chief features of the Hindu tradition can be traced to the Aryans, nevertheless it was they who imposed a distinctive order and character upon the Vedic Age. The evidence of this influence - and the great unifying feature of the period - is a vast body of literature, one of the most magnificent acheivments of the human spirit in any place or time. Collectively refered to as the Veda, it is these writings that provide the root for the later growth of the Hindu tradition.

The Veda is not a book in the ordinary sense, nor even a collection of books, like the Bible. It is, rather, the name given to the extremely diverse materials composed over a period of a thousand years by a priestly class. As such, it exhibits changes and developments within the general structure of the society but it has a unity imposed by a common and continuing concern with the religious ritual.

This vast corpus of scripture can be classified under four headings that indicate both content, and, very roughly, the chronological development of the materials. First of all are the Samhitas, collections of hymns used in the ritual. There are four of these collections: Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda. The Riga Veda, the oldest and most important of these, consists of about one thousand hymns of varying length, some of which may have been written before the Aryans had entered India, while others were written hundreds of years afterwards. Many of the hymns were created by the priests for specific needs of the ritual services that were the heart of the Vedic religion, but even those that are from the most ancient strata of the tradition are products of careful literary craftsmanship. They are not, then, the spiritual outpouring of the heart of primitive man at the dawn of history, as has sometimes been suggested; they are the achievement of a highly developed religious system. The Yajur Veda and the Sama Veda are essential technical texts and formulae used in the ritual, and are based in large part on the Rig Veda. The Atharva Veda is different from the other three, consisting largely of spells and incantations. While it is the latest of the Samhitas to receive its definitive form, it contains material that is very ancient, and, since it is less concerned with the ritual and more with the problems of ordinary life, provides many insights into the thinking of the people.

The second class of Vedic literature, the Brahmanas are interpretations in prose of the meaning of the ritual acts of the older Samhitas. The interpretations frequently take the form of fanciful allegories, with great dependence on supposed etymological derivations of important words, but they provide an indication of the way in which an attempt was made to bring the past into relationship with changing patterns of thought and social life. Within the tradition itself, they fulfilled the valuable function of maintaining the continuity of essential belief and practice, for even though the Brahmanas represented different schools and sects, they all acknowledged the authority of the older texts. A third category of the Veda, the Aranyakas, or "Forest Books," treated the details of the rituals of the former collections as symbols of hidden truths. The Upanishads, the fourth category, are outgrowths of the Aranyaka literature, but they display a great freedom of speculation in the discussion of the symbolic meanings of the old ritual. In subsequent Indian thought, the Upanishads have a dominant place and quite outshadow the more ancient texts.

This Vedic literature - Samita, Bramana, Aranyaka, and Upanishad - was handed down orally, a fact which probably explains such characteristic features as repetition and the use of set modes of expression. Even after the invention of writing the Veda was transmitted orally, probably reflecting the enormous emphasis in the tradition on the sanctity of the spoken word. This emphasis meant that great care was taken to see that the text was correctly memorized, and for this reason there is great uniformity in the texts throughout the ages.

Taken together, the four categories of Vedic literature comprise what is accepted by all Hindus as authoritative scripture; indeed, one of the few additions comprehensive enough to include all Hindus is that they are the people who accept the Veda as normative for religious faith and practice. There are, as we shall see, other classes of scripture, but the Veda is unique. It is shruti, "what is heard," or revealed; another great class of scripture is called smriti, "what is remembered," or tradition. For the orthodox, the Veda is eternal, and not the product of human minds. Yet it is not like the Bible or the Koran; it is the record of the truth as it was "discovered" by the great rishis, or saints, of ancient time rather than a revelation from God. What is enjoined within the system is not belief in the teachings so much as an attempt to reduplicate the spiritual experiences of these saints; the argument is that they have found truth, and that this can be verified through a repetition of their disciplines. Two important points should be noted. One is that, despite the assertion of the absolute thruth of the Veda, different interpretations could exist within the framework of orthodoxy because of the variety of ideas within the literature itself. The other is that while the scripture of Hinduism is the Veda, the religion of the people of the Vedic Age was not Hinduism. That is, while Hinduism indubitably has its roots in the Vedic literature, the term "Hinduism" cannot be appropriately applied to the religion of the period. Many scholars prefer the word "Brahmanism" for the ancient religious tradition.

Since few artifacts have survivedthat can with certainty be identified with the Vedic age, our knowledge of the social organization and life of the people is based wholly on religious and literary texts, with consequent limitations imposed by their field of concern. They give, nonetheless, a reasonably clear picture of the general outlines of the society. In the earliest period, society is wholly agricultural and pastoral, with an emphasis on stockbreeding. Clans, not kingdoms, were the basic political unit; a tribal chief's main function was to be a leader in time of war. By the end of the Vedic period the Aryans had extended their control from the original homeland in the Panjab to the gangetic Plain in the region of the modern Benares. The tribal system was replaced by numerous small kingdoms with permanent capitals, and the king became an hereditary ruler through succession from his father, although not necessarily through primogeniture.

The religion of the Vedic people is the subject of an enormous literature; more than almost any other aspect of the life of ancient India, it has attracted great attention since it first became known to the west in the late eighteenth century. This interest was aroused partly by the great antiquity of the surviving religious texts, which gives them a very special place in the history of religion. There are few religious concepts and practices that are not touched upon in some way in the Vedic literature. Beyond this, they are the fundamental sources for the understanding of future developments in both Indian history and religion. As such they have been recognized in modern times as the great glory of the Indian tradition. But above all, the records of the Vedic Age are interesting in themselves as expressions of the aspirations and achievements of the human spirit.