Oooooommmm!  That's the powerful Sanskrit word inside the circle above.  In this unit, we will review religion in ancient India; the Vedas; the great epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; the ways of action, knowledge, and devotion; and modern Hinduism.  This review relates especially to chapters 1-7 of Patrick S. Bresnan, Awakening:  An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 2007).

    In all my review programs, key names are red, key concepts are blue, key places and groups are green, and key dates and festivals are pink.  You can study for a test most effectively by going through the program a couple of times before the test.  The material is not new; it is already in your textbook and class notes.  I hope this summary is helpful for you! 

    If we could go back to some of the most ancient religions in the world, what would we hope to find?  Would people in those times be asking the same questions that we ask today?  Yes!  We human beings haven't really changed that much, even over thousands of years.  What I hope to share with you in this course is a glimpse into the variety of answers which people of Asia have given to the questions that we Americans also ask.  We'll see how much we have in common with Asian people, and we'll see how our answers differ too.  

    For starters:  Does the universe have meaning, purpose, order?

    If you answered that question Yes:  Many people in India in the 1000's B.C.E. would agree with you.  They worshipped the god Varuna, who was a personification of the sky.  Varuna was concerned with establishing rita, cosmic order, throughout nature and human society.  Our word "ritual" comes from this Sanskrit term.  People prayed to Varuna with rituals to bring rainfall or to seek his forgiveness for their sin.  Even though the world at times seemed to be filled with chaos and evil, they knew that Varuna was the universal ruler, guiding everything through his divine providence.

    If you answered that question No:  Many people in India in the 1000's B.C.E. would agree with you.  They worshipped the god Shiva, who was unpredictable just as life is unpredictable.  At times Shiva would send disease or even death; at other times he would be the divine physician, soothing and healing.  People composed hymns of praise to Shiva, acknowledging his greatness, but they also feared the randomness of nature.  Why would an accident strike down a person in the prime of life, or a dread disease attack a person whose whole life breathed goodness?  Life has no easy answers.  The best we can hope for is to have God on our side; we have no chance of discerning any patterns of meaning in the universe.  That was the viewpoint of many people in ancient India.

    We call the earliest period of Indian religion the Vedic Age, because it is represented by the most ancient Hindu scriptures known as the Vedas.  Vedic religion was very family-oriented.  Instead of depending on temples and priests, Vedic people had in their own homes a symbolic representation of the basic principle which could relate the world of the gods to the world of human beings. 

    What was this mediator between gods and people?   Here's a hint:  in the sky, it was manifested as the sun; in the atmosphere, it was manifested as lightning.  But the mediating power could also be a part of family rituals in the home.  Yes, the hearth fire which cooked the family's food, warmed their home, and chased away the darkness, could also take a portion of each meal up to the realm of the gods. 

    The family fire was personified as the god Agni, from whose name we get our word "ignite."  No priest was needed; the head of the household could seek Agni's aid.  For as food and drink were burned by Agni, they conveyed nourishment to the deities, who in turn would bring well-being to the family.  Thus we see Martin Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers thousands of years before Luther, during the Vedic Age in India!

    Another Vedic deity was, like Agni, actually the personification of forces of nature.  It was called Soma, and it was identified with the rain and with life-giving forces of many kinds.  Soma was also a liquid which was drunk as part of the sacrificial offerings.  We don't know what it was made from; we are unsure whether it was intoxicating or hallucinogenic.  A remnant of the ancient role of soma can be found in a drink known as haoma, which is used in Zoroastrian rituals in Bombay, India, still today.  But it doesn't appear to be the same as the soma of Vedic times. 

    One particular person was especially fond of soma.  Who was he?

    Not Welch -- he was a devout Methodist, who developed the Welch's Grape Juice company to provide communion "wine" for Methodists, Baptists, and other denominations that use nonalcoholic grape juice in the Lord's Supper. 

    The one devoted to soma was Indra, who began drinking soma while he was still a baby.  It gave him the strength to slay dragons and rescue damsels in distress.  What else do we know about Indra?  He was probably originally a heroic king among the Aryans, the warriors who settled in the Indus River Valley.  When he was deified, his earthly exploits were transported to heaven, and he was seen as providing the monsoons -- the life-giving rainstorms that were and are still so important for India.

    These are just a few of the 33,333 gods of India.  But they give you an idea of the richness of the universe, as seen through the eyes of Indian people.  As you can guess, the multiplicity is simply overwhelming.  So it's not surprising that after a few hundred years, people began looking for some unifying principle, some Ultimate Reality that lay beyond the many different gods and goddesses who were worshipped.  Philosophers were at the forefront of the quest for Ultimate Reality. 

    About the time that Plato and Aristotle were speculating in Greece on the nature of reality, and the great prophets in Israel were sharing their visions of God, Indian philosophers were writing reflections in the form of dialogues, known as the Upanishads.  Their conclusion was that there is indeed an impersonal reality beyond the many different personal gods described in popular religion.  In the Upanishads, the name used for Ultimate Reality is not God, as in the Jewish and Christian religions -- that is a very personal name.  The Sanskrit word is instead radically impersonal. 

    The name for Ultimate Reality is Brahman.  Brahman is both transcendent (beyond all earthly appearances of reality) and immanent (present in everything, everywhere).  So Brahman is in you and me.  Brahman IS you and me!  Because we human beings see ourselves as persons, and not as an impersonal essence, many Hindus identify themselves not so much with Ultimate Reality as with a divine Person who embodies that Ultimate Reality, especially Vishnu or Shiva, whom we'll discuss more fully later..  

    If you want to know Ultimate Reality, you can find it in your essential Self.  That's really not so far from Christian teachings.  Think of Jesus' discussions in the Gospel of John, when he helps his disciples to understand that he is in the Father, and the Father in him.  It is also close to the Stoic doctrine of the divine logos, which is present throughout the universe and in each person. 

    Then your essential Self (atman in Sanskrit) must be pretty important!  Yes -- in fact, it is so important that it is reborn time and time again.  Even before you came into this course, I'll bet you had heard of the Sanskrit term for "rebirth" or "reincarnation":  karma.  Actually, karma means the causes and effects that are present throughout the universe in many ways.  Reincarnation is just one part of a natural process.  Whatever you do in life has consequences.  Not all those consequences can manifest themselves and get worked through in your present lifetime; some must carry over to future lives.  Karma is the mechanism for doing that.  It is purely impersonal and fair, with no intervention from the gods or demons.  You reap what you sow.

    The desired result in Hinduism is to escape the cycles of rebirth and to find salvation.  There are a number of ways to do that, which we'll discuss in a little.  First of all, you must live in accordance with your place in the world.  There are two ways in which your place is specifically identified:  your social group and your stage of life.  The word most commonly used for the social group is caste. 

    There are thousands of castes and subcastes in India.  But they are structured into four main groups:  the Brahmin caste, including priests and teachers; the Kshatriya, warriors and rulers; the Vaishya, farmers and business people; and the Shudra caste, servants of the other three castes.  Normally a person is born into a particular caste and subcaste; it is rare to move out of that particular "slot," even if one chooses a quite different profession or marries a person of a higher caste..  

    OK, so you've figured out your caste.  How about your stage of life?  That should be easy, since we studied the four main stages:  student, householder, forest-dweller, and ascetic.  Do you like athletics?  Do you enjoy watching or participating in varsity or intramural sports?  One of these four categories gets its name from a word meaning athlete.  Which one is it?

    Not the student stage, although we've had some very good student athletes at Emory & Henry.  Our teams have received lots of awards.  But the word student means "learner."

     Not the householder stage, although it takes a real "athlete" to take care of a family!  When you're married, you'll find out how much energy is needed to keep a family together, whether or not you have children.

    Not the stage of a forest dweller (retired person), although some of our faculty continue to play great tennis even after they retire.  But the word "retire" comes from medieval French meaning "withdraw," and that's not what an athlete does.

    The fourth stage, the time of a sanyasin, "ascetic," is linguistically related to athletics.  The Greek word askeo means to exercise, discipline oneself, train as an athlete.  An ascetic is one who has the kind of self-discipline which the greatest athletes also have.  Your textbook thus suggests that you don't have to wait till you're old to become a sanyasin or ascetic.  If you have the commitment to your goal, you can move toward salvation at any stage of life!

    We've dealt with the four great castes and the four stages of life.  Now let's turn to the Final Four:  the goals of life, according to Hinduism. 

    The first of those four goals includes living in such a way that you fulfill your duties in the caste and stage in which you find yourself.  This goal is dharma, often translated "duty" or "virtue."  So the appropriate motto for this life goal would be Macte virtute!  The dharma for your caste and stage of life is spelled out thoroughly in the ancient law books, such as the Laws of Manu.  But your parents probably trained you carefully in dharma as you were growing up, so that you know what you should do in any situation.

    The second goal of life for Hindus is an intriguing one:  artha, "material success."  Hinduism may be the only religion in the world that actively encourages its followers to become as rich and powerful as possible.  This goal is especially important for people in the householder stage, but it applies to all castes.  People like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump may move directly to "Go" and collect 200 rupees!  Hindu law books give all kinds of guidance on how to be economically and politically successful.

    The third goal in life is kama, "pleasure."  Don't confuse it with karma, "reincarnation."  In Hindu art, how do you think kama is represented:  by a bunny, a horse, or a dance?

    Not by a bunny; you may be thinking of Hugh Hefner's Playboy bunny symbol.  So sari!  In India, a woman is seen as beautiful if she wears a sari -- many yards of delicate cloth wrapped around her, with no center fold.

    Not by a horse; the horse is a symbol of pleasure for great cowboys of the past, such as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Ronald Reagan.  In ancient India, Aryan cowboys like Indra used horses to race their chariots.  But the horse was a symbol of power, not pleasure.

    Kama includes the pleasure in all forms of aesthetic enjoyment:  art, music, poetry, drama, sex, and dance.  Like Dionysus for the Greeks, the god Shiva is the patron deity of the arts for Hindus.  He is often portrayed as Shiva Nataraja, "Lord of the Dance," dancing in a ring of fire.  By affirming pleasure as a basic goal of life, Hindus are also agreeing with a key Christian understanding of creation.  Genesis 1 states again and again that God saw his world as good.  God has given the whole world to human beings to enjoy, and Christians agree with Hindus that we should find pleasure in dancing, music, and the arts.  The Hindu Kama Sutra helps a married couple find pleasure in sexual fulfillment.  Remember that kama should be balanced with dharma and artha, so that the result is a harmonious lifestyle.

    In the preceding clusters of four, we found that the fourth of each list was different from the other three.  The Shudra caste includes the servants of the upper three castes.  The ascetic stage is not chronological like the other three stages of life, because a person may become a sanyasin at any time.  Likewise, the fourth goal is different from the other three goals.  Rather than being a way to live, it is a way to find salvation = release from life.  Do you remember the Sanskrit word for salvation?

    No, it's not jamocha  -- that's the delicious drink that you get at Arby's, along with a roast beef sandwich.  Can you guess how many rebirths you'd have to go through before attaining salvation, if you were guilty of being a cause of cow-killing?  As Bart Simpson would say, "Don't have a cow!"  Rather, the fourth goal of life, moksha, "salvation," means release from the otherwise endless cycle of rebirths.

    Salvation can be achieved by doing your very best to live according to the highest standards set for your caste and your stage in life.  But there's not just one way to salvation.  In fact, even before you came into this course, you had probably heard about the set of techniques which can be employed to help a person move toward salvation.  That self-disciplined approach which Hinduism has given to the world is yoga.  Yoga may include meditation, breath control, and a special diet. 

    A person who practices yoga is known as a yogi.  The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for example, taught the Beatles some of the elements of self-discipline.  Because of that, teachers from his school were popular in American colleges in the 1960's and 1970's.  A team came to Emory & Henry and instructed interested students and faculty in Transcendental Meditation, one branch of yoga.  Candidates were not required to become Hindus in order to learn how TM or other yogic techniques could be beneficial to them.

    Still another way to make progress toward salvation is bhakti, the way of devotion.  This approach is very personal.  You pour all of your spiritual energy into a devotional relationship with your chosen deity.  The problem, with so many deities in India, is:  which one?  Today most deities can be seen as somehow related to one of the two Great Gods:  Vishnu and Shiva.  Worshippers of Vishnu are called Vaishnavites, and worshippers of Shiva are called Shaivites.  While devotees don't deny the existence of other gods, they worship either Vishnu or Shiva as the Supreme Being.  Let's review each deity briefly.

    Perhaps the best way to discuss Vishnu is by mentioning his avataras, or "incarnations."  Whenever the world has needed his direct intervention because of a major crisis, Vishnu has taken on human or animal form.  The favorite stories of Vishnu's incarnations are in two great epics, which are told and dramatized throughout India. 

    The Mahabharata tells the story of many years of struggle between two tribes, the Pandavas (good guys) and the Kauravas (bad guys).  Eventually a major battle decides who will rule Great (maha) India (Bharata).  Right before the battle, Arjuna, the military leader of the Pandavas, has a long conversation with his chariot driver, Krishna, who is an incarnation of Vishnu.  This conversation, called the Bhagavad Gita, contains profound religious and philosophical insights.  It emphasizes bhakti, the way of devotion to Vishnu as the answer to life's questions and the best path to salvation.  The good guys win the war and live happily ever after, bringing peace to all of India.

    The other epic is the Ramayana.  It is a story of courage, high ideals, and commitment to another person regardless of the cost.  Princess Sita remains true to her husband, Prince Rama, even when her situation appears hopeless.  Rama rescues her from her evil abductor Ravana, and she passes public tests of her fidelity.  Devotion to Rama, who is an incarnation of Vishnu, symbolizes the worshipper's devotion to God.  

    Shiva, the other Great God today, does not have famous epics like the Mahabharata or the Ramayana.  Nor does he have personal incarnations.  Rather, he represents the mystery of life which always has in tension the masculine and feminine aspects.  When we come to China in our study, we'll also find this theme of balance between male and female as the basic set of forces in the universe. 

    The feminine aspect of Shiva is manifested as his wife, who is sometimes simply called Devi, "The Goddess," or Shakti, "Power." The Goddess plays a very important role in Shaivite worship.  She is known in several forms:

•  As Parvati, she has the sex appeal of Julia Roberts or Marilyn Monroe.
• Uma is the mother figure who nurtures and protects living beings.  One story suggests that the name Uma comes from her decision to try to get Shiva to marry her.  Her mother, who didn't think that Shiva would make a good husband, said "Uma!" (Oh, don't!)
• The Knoxville Zoo is very proud of its white tiger, which is also the favorite vehicle that Durga likes to ride.  She is a warrior, who slays enemies fiercely.  We could call her "Durga, the Warrior Princess"!
• As Kali, she is a terrifying, bloodthirsty goddess, representing disease and death.  It takes real courage to face her, because she embodies our worst fears.  The best we can hope for is to avoid her anger.  But by facing death, we grow in our own understanding of life!

    Our brief review of Hinduism should at least mention the most famous Hindu of the 1900's.  He was an outstanding lawyer, who fought for the equality of all people -- including those who were crushed by the caste system.  His inspiration came from the Bhagavad-Gita and from the Sermon on the Mount, and his life is still an inspiration to many people today.  Mohandas was his first name, but he was most commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi.  He was honored with the nickname, from maha, "great," + atman, "soul" or "self," that which is identified with Brahman, Ultimate Reality.  Gandhi's principles of nonviolent resistance and truth-force have been very important for civil rights leaders, ever since he used them so effectively.

    As we look back over Hinduism, we can see a religion that permeates all of life, from birth to death, for the individual and for society as a whole.  Like a great river, it has many currents and is ever changing.  For the people of India, the waters of this river are both purifying and life-giving.  I hope that you can now appreciate better this age-old religion!

    Comments and suggestions for this review are welcome.  If you like, you can send me e-mail: fkellogg@ehc.edu

To look at one of my other syllabi, go to my Home Page.

To review a different unit in this course, go directly to one of the following:

    Unit 2, Buddhism
    Unit 3, China
    Unit 4, Japan

If you prefer, you may return to the Emory & Henry College Home Page.

Last updated:  February 11, 2008