Hinduism Sacred Text
Hinduism is a very complex and intricate henotheistic religion. It is mainly practiced in India and came before all the other religions in India. The most important sacred text of Hinduism is called the Vedas. It consists of four Veda texts in which the other texts of Hinduism are based around. Hindus base their lives around the four goals. Hindus divide their scripture into two categories: Shruti and Smriti. The Shruti is the primary revelation which has no human or divine author but has been passed on by Rishi's, which are ancient holy men that first heard the sound of truth (Van Voorst). They started to pass down these sounds of truths orally to the high and superior families. The Shruti consists of the Vedas which are four Veda
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texts, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. The Shruti has been fixed for over two thousand years (Van Voorst). Smriti is not considered holy in the same way as the Shruti. The Smriti has a human origin. The Smirti is "what is remembered". The role of Smriti is to bring out the meaning of Shruti and apply it to the more modern times of Hinduism. It consists of the Sutras, the Epics, the Ramayana, the Puranas, and law codes. The canon of Smriti is still open and has a very strong influence on the Hindu Religion and Indian culture .
The four Veda texts are the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda (Van Voorst).
The Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Sama Veda are used for sacrifices while the Atharva Veda is different from the first three in that it does not relate to the sacrifice. The first Veda has 1,028 hymns divided into ten books. The hymns are addressed to a single god or goddess (Van Voorst) which a priest will sing loudly during a sacrifice to attract that specific god's attention to the sacrifice. The Rig-Veda also contains the stories of creation. There are two different creation stories in this Veda. They are viewed in more of a philosophical way than mythological (Van Voorst). The first of the creation stories said that there was no existence of night and day and just water. The powers came from the other powers and gods that existed. The second creation story begins with a soul alone in the shape of a person. The soul was speaking of how lonely it felt and wanted a second person. It made his self fall into two, who became husband and wife. Then they bore children and humans were created. After that they turned into every animal and every insect and every being on earth and mated to make more of them. Everything was created by humans (Van
Voorst). The next two Vedas follow up on the Rig Veda. The second Veda contains instructions for the priests who actually perform the sacrifices. The third Veda takes the mantras, which are words and phrases that get repeated during the sacrifices and praise from the Rig Veda and set to music to be sung during the sacrifice. These three Vedas: the Rig, Yajur and Sama are known as the "threefold Veda" (Van Voorst) which reflects the religious life of the priestly group. The last Veda, Atharva Veda has 731 hymns divided into twenty books and consists of mostly spells, curses and charms. It reflects the everyday religious life of ordinary people (Van Voorst). The next sacred texts are the Brahmanas. They are commentaries on each Veda text. They discuss the meaning of mantras and specify how to perform certain sacrificial actions and describe the impact the sacrifices have on the eternal world . Their main purpose is to act as a guideline for what is the proper use of the material in the Vedas. They present sacrifice as the power that strengthens the gods, keeps the universe intact and brings blessing to the sacrificer (Van Voorst). The Brahmanas is on sacrifice itself, not the gods. Sacrifice is the power that generates the universe and keeps it going. The final form of the Shruti is the Upanishads. The Upanishads are collections from different teachers about the philosophical way of life taken over a long period of time. Their emphasis is on self denial as a way to find religious truth which is called asceticism. The rituals and sacrifices of the Vedas and Brahmanas are not as important in the Upanishads. The Upanishads mainly deal with finding the eternal One, called Brahman, which is the absolute spiritual reality that lies in and behind all the visible elements and beings of this physical world, while it relates to the Atman, which is the eternal Self at the center of every human (Van Voorst). The two main epics of the Smriti are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The Mahabharata is the longest epic in the world. It is about five Pandava brothers who are sons of a king whose kingdom lies on the southern side of the Himalayas. The oldest brother gambles away the kingdom and his brothers in a dice game and the rest of the story is about the struggles and battles of the brothers to gain back their kingdom. One of the brothers has doubts about killing his cousins and at that point he is engaged in a discussion about performing one's duty and about the paths to a better life . This discussion is referred to as the Bhagavad Gita which forms the basis of Hinduism which includes strengthening worship and devotion (Van Voorst). The Ramayana is the Story of Rama in which Prince Rama was exiled and his wife Sita chooses to accompany him but she then gets kidnapped by the demon Ravana, but Rama was restored to his kingdom and his wife with the help of the monkey-god. Each of the main figures in the story represents an ideal type of devotion . The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are both fictional but have a way of teaching the rules and goals if Hinduism. There are eighteen Puranas. The Puranas are similar to the epics in that that are addressed to the ordinary person. Some speak of the three main gods of Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti. Their themes are creation, re-creation, origins of the gods and sages, and dynastic histories . Some of them are about showing devotion to a specific god. They tend to emphasize two points of bhakti, which is devotion to a god, and dharma, which is doing one's personal and social duty. The final part of Smriti is the manuals of dharma or the law codes which are also called Dharma-Shastras (Van Voorst). The law codes came together in schools of Hinduism and then became formed into a serious of that eventually formed the basis of Hindu law . The laws consist of caste, life stages, diet, government and other matters. The most important dharma manual is the Laws of Manu which is composed of 12 books. The main concern of Manu is the operation of the four-caste system and its influence on Hindu life. The two things that define a practicing Hindu are the acceptance of the Vedas and following caste duty . The caste system is the social organization in India. When the Aryans moved into the northwest of India they imposed a caste system to organize the new society. They put together a caste system, otherwise known as four Varnas. The purpose of the caste system was to separate the Aryans from the people that lived in the northwest of India before them. The four castes are Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. The Brahmins are the highest caste, consisting of priests and religious officials. The Kshatriyas are rulers and warriors. The Vaishyas are farmers, merchants, traders, and craftsmen. The lowest caste is Shudra which consists of servants of upper castes and peasants. People are born into the caste of their parents and one cannot change which varna they are in during their lifetime. The varnas assigned occupations and also separates the members of the different varnas by different levels of purity . The higher the Varna means the higher level of purity the people in that Varna must maintain. The males in the top three varnas are considered to be "twice-born". This means that the Vedas only apply to them. The "twice-born" males go through an initiation when they reach maturity. This is referred to as a re-birth. It is not a re birth into a certain caste but they are reborn as a Hindu. The Shudras cannot perform any of the Vedic religion and they have their own priests and religious rites. The fulfilling the requirement of their caste is considered to be one of the Four Goals of Hinduism . The four goals of life are separated into things that make life better and things that make life bad. The three positive goals are Dharma, Artha, and Kama and the life-negating goal is Moksha (Van Voorst). Dharma is the practice of virtue which is living an ethical and ritually correct life. Different caste members have to reach a different type of dharma, because it coincides with whatever is appropriate with a specific caste member and how high they are in the caste system. Artha is achieving success in both wealth and power. Kama is pleasure and it deals with aesthetic pleasure of all kinds such as art, music, dance, poetry and sex . Kama should be done in a virtuous manner though. The goal which one believes that life is bad is called Moksha. This is when somebody's life is not pleasant and they want to die without being reborn. In order to do this they have to give up their religion and their household and everything about their life and they must come to the understanding that atman and Brahman are one and the same . The four goals of life coincide with the four stages of life. Just like the first three goals of life, they are the stages that are positive about life, and of course only apply to the top three varnas. The first stage is when a young man becomes a student. He is expected to live and study with a teacher, called a guru, for several years. After he enters his teenage years he spends most of his maturing time studying. Different varnas require different levels of studying. For example, if that young man was a Brahmin, the highest class, that would mean he would have to study and memorize big portions of the Vedas and other texts, along with the various rituals. The next stage in life is the householder in which the man gets a wife and has children and establishes a job or becomes a member of the community. The third stage of life is retirement in which he and his wife reach old age and their son has a family that is ready to take over the leadership of the household. Then they start to think about their coming death and their rebirth and they also may choose to become hermits and withdraw from society. The fourth stage is the stage that coincides with the fourth goal of life and realizing that atman and Brahman are one and the same . Brahman is the creator god, while Atman is the eternal self at the center of every human (Van Voorst). Brahman lies in all created objects, including human beings. This is stating that all gods, goddesses, humans, animals and other beings are united together as one divine being. The soul of each individual person, the atman, is really also Brahman, the entirety of creation. Hindus believe in a Supreme Being. The plurality of gods is looked at as divine creations of that one being . There are many other important gods and goddesses. One is Agni, who is the god of fire and the sacred fire itself. Agni is worshipped in the daily rituals of each Hindu home. There are three other main gods, the "trinity": Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Hinduism is a very unique religion in that it can be perceived as the mother of some religions. Buddhism and Jainism came after Hinduism while taking some of Hinduisms beliefs and practices. Judaism is also like Hinduism in that way. Christianity and Islam branched out from Judaism and took on some of Judaism's beliefs and practices. Although they both may be the "mother" of some religions, they have very little in common. Judaism differs from Hinduism in many ways. One big difference is the fact that Judaism is a monotheistic religion. The entire religion is based around one God. Judaism also has sacred texts, but instead of holy men hearing sounds of truth, Judaism is based around prophets. The name for the Jewish bible is called the Tanakh which has three sections: The Torah, Nevi'im and Kethuvim. The Torah is the most important of the three because it is the written law of God. This is the teachings or the laws of Judaism. The Torah consists of 5 books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Genesis explains the story of Adam and Eve, Exodus is when Moses escapes Egypt and receives the covenant, Leviticus is when the people receive God's instructions for worship and purity, Numbers relates to how the people wandered in the wilderness until they were ready to enter the promise land and Deuteronomy is when the people get the laws a second time and Moses warns them not to serve other gods. The books of Judaism are more about the stories of how the religion came together and the people of religion and that is how the people will learn the way to live a good Jewish life, rather than the Hinduism's sacred text in which directly guide ones life with instructions and things of that nature. The epics of Hinduism, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, can be compared to the Torah in that they use stories to portray what the rules and regulations should be. The creation stories are very different in Judaism than in Hinduism. In one of the Hindu creation stories, everything was made by humans. In Judaism, everything was made by God, but a certain amount of power was given to the humans to look over everything that God has created. In the first Hindu story, the powers of the gods made the earth, just as in the first creation story of Judaism, God created the earth by word alone. In the second creation story, God was active in the creation of the world, God was directly involved. Both of the creation stories show that God is both Transcendent and Immanent. The way of life for a Hindu is very complex, and the main components of the religion are following the Vedas and following the caste duty, while also going through the four stages of life and achieving the four goals of life. There are two major parts of Judaism: ethical monotheism and justice. Jews wanted to keep the covenant and the only way to break it is to worship other gods besides Yahweh, and justice to the oppressed and to the poor. For Jewish people, carrying around the Torah and reading, studying, and learning from it are the basic requirement of being a Jew. Judaism also does not believe in rebirths but does believe that there is some punishment after death, such as purgatory to repent for the sins one has made during ones lifetime. In Hinduism, if you do not follow the duties of the specific caste or follow the Vedas, when you are reincarnated you will be reincarnated into a lower caste, or even an animal or an insect. There are so many different religions with so many different beliefs. Although they might not have much in common, without Hinduism and Judaism, four other main religions would not be in existence today. They set the standards of how other religions should be, and they also opened up doors for different opportunities of different religions to become.
texts, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. The Shruti has been fixed for over two thousand years (Van Voorst). Smriti is not considered holy in the same way as the Shruti. The Smriti has a human origin. The Smirti is "what is remembered". The role of Smriti is to bring out the meaning of Shruti and apply it to the more modern times of Hinduism. It consists of the Sutras, the Epics, the Ramayana, the Puranas, and law codes. The canon of Smriti is still open and has a very strong influence on the Hindu Religion and Indian culture .
The four Veda texts are the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda (Van Voorst).
The Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Sama Veda are used for sacrifices while the Atharva Veda is different from the first three in that it does not relate to the sacrifice. The first Veda has 1,028 hymns divided into ten books. The hymns are addressed to a single god or goddess (Van Voorst) which a priest will sing loudly during a sacrifice to attract that specific god's attention to the sacrifice. The Rig-Veda also contains the stories of creation. There are two different creation stories in this Veda. They are viewed in more of a philosophical way than mythological (Van Voorst). The first of the creation stories said that there was no existence of night and day and just water. The powers came from the other powers and gods that existed. The second creation story begins with a soul alone in the shape of a person. The soul was speaking of how lonely it felt and wanted a second person. It made his self fall into two, who became husband and wife. Then they bore children and humans were created. After that they turned into every animal and every insect and every being on earth and mated to make more of them. Everything was created by humans (Van
Voorst). The next two Vedas follow up on the Rig Veda. The second Veda contains instructions for the priests who actually perform the sacrifices. The third Veda takes the mantras, which are words and phrases that get repeated during the sacrifices and praise from the Rig Veda and set to music to be sung during the sacrifice. These three Vedas: the Rig, Yajur and Sama are known as the "threefold Veda" (Van Voorst) which reflects the religious life of the priestly group. The last Veda, Atharva Veda has 731 hymns divided into twenty books and consists of mostly spells, curses and charms. It reflects the everyday religious life of ordinary people (Van Voorst). The next sacred texts are the Brahmanas. They are commentaries on each Veda text. They discuss the meaning of mantras and specify how to perform certain sacrificial actions and describe the impact the sacrifices have on the eternal world . Their main purpose is to act as a guideline for what is the proper use of the material in the Vedas. They present sacrifice as the power that strengthens the gods, keeps the universe intact and brings blessing to the sacrificer (Van Voorst). The Brahmanas is on sacrifice itself, not the gods. Sacrifice is the power that generates the universe and keeps it going. The final form of the Shruti is the Upanishads. The Upanishads are collections from different teachers about the philosophical way of life taken over a long period of time. Their emphasis is on self denial as a way to find religious truth which is called asceticism. The rituals and sacrifices of the Vedas and Brahmanas are not as important in the Upanishads. The Upanishads mainly deal with finding the eternal One, called Brahman, which is the absolute spiritual reality that lies in and behind all the visible elements and beings of this physical world, while it relates to the Atman, which is the eternal Self at the center of every human (Van Voorst). The two main epics of the Smriti are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The Mahabharata is the longest epic in the world. It is about five Pandava brothers who are sons of a king whose kingdom lies on the southern side of the Himalayas. The oldest brother gambles away the kingdom and his brothers in a dice game and the rest of the story is about the struggles and battles of the brothers to gain back their kingdom. One of the brothers has doubts about killing his cousins and at that point he is engaged in a discussion about performing one's duty and about the paths to a better life . This discussion is referred to as the Bhagavad Gita which forms the basis of Hinduism which includes strengthening worship and devotion (Van Voorst). The Ramayana is the Story of Rama in which Prince Rama was exiled and his wife Sita chooses to accompany him but she then gets kidnapped by the demon Ravana, but Rama was restored to his kingdom and his wife with the help of the monkey-god. Each of the main figures in the story represents an ideal type of devotion . The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are both fictional but have a way of teaching the rules and goals if Hinduism. There are eighteen Puranas. The Puranas are similar to the epics in that that are addressed to the ordinary person. Some speak of the three main gods of Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti. Their themes are creation, re-creation, origins of the gods and sages, and dynastic histories . Some of them are about showing devotion to a specific god. They tend to emphasize two points of bhakti, which is devotion to a god, and dharma, which is doing one's personal and social duty. The final part of Smriti is the manuals of dharma or the law codes which are also called Dharma-Shastras (Van Voorst). The law codes came together in schools of Hinduism and then became formed into a serious of that eventually formed the basis of Hindu law . The laws consist of caste, life stages, diet, government and other matters. The most important dharma manual is the Laws of Manu which is composed of 12 books. The main concern of Manu is the operation of the four-caste system and its influence on Hindu life. The two things that define a practicing Hindu are the acceptance of the Vedas and following caste duty . The caste system is the social organization in India. When the Aryans moved into the northwest of India they imposed a caste system to organize the new society. They put together a caste system, otherwise known as four Varnas. The purpose of the caste system was to separate the Aryans from the people that lived in the northwest of India before them. The four castes are Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. The Brahmins are the highest caste, consisting of priests and religious officials. The Kshatriyas are rulers and warriors. The Vaishyas are farmers, merchants, traders, and craftsmen. The lowest caste is Shudra which consists of servants of upper castes and peasants. People are born into the caste of their parents and one cannot change which varna they are in during their lifetime. The varnas assigned occupations and also separates the members of the different varnas by different levels of purity . The higher the Varna means the higher level of purity the people in that Varna must maintain. The males in the top three varnas are considered to be "twice-born". This means that the Vedas only apply to them. The "twice-born" males go through an initiation when they reach maturity. This is referred to as a re-birth. It is not a re birth into a certain caste but they are reborn as a Hindu. The Shudras cannot perform any of the Vedic religion and they have their own priests and religious rites. The fulfilling the requirement of their caste is considered to be one of the Four Goals of Hinduism . The four goals of life are separated into things that make life better and things that make life bad. The three positive goals are Dharma, Artha, and Kama and the life-negating goal is Moksha (Van Voorst). Dharma is the practice of virtue which is living an ethical and ritually correct life. Different caste members have to reach a different type of dharma, because it coincides with whatever is appropriate with a specific caste member and how high they are in the caste system. Artha is achieving success in both wealth and power. Kama is pleasure and it deals with aesthetic pleasure of all kinds such as art, music, dance, poetry and sex . Kama should be done in a virtuous manner though. The goal which one believes that life is bad is called Moksha. This is when somebody's life is not pleasant and they want to die without being reborn. In order to do this they have to give up their religion and their household and everything about their life and they must come to the understanding that atman and Brahman are one and the same . The four goals of life coincide with the four stages of life. Just like the first three goals of life, they are the stages that are positive about life, and of course only apply to the top three varnas. The first stage is when a young man becomes a student. He is expected to live and study with a teacher, called a guru, for several years. After he enters his teenage years he spends most of his maturing time studying. Different varnas require different levels of studying. For example, if that young man was a Brahmin, the highest class, that would mean he would have to study and memorize big portions of the Vedas and other texts, along with the various rituals. The next stage in life is the householder in which the man gets a wife and has children and establishes a job or becomes a member of the community. The third stage of life is retirement in which he and his wife reach old age and their son has a family that is ready to take over the leadership of the household. Then they start to think about their coming death and their rebirth and they also may choose to become hermits and withdraw from society. The fourth stage is the stage that coincides with the fourth goal of life and realizing that atman and Brahman are one and the same . Brahman is the creator god, while Atman is the eternal self at the center of every human (Van Voorst). Brahman lies in all created objects, including human beings. This is stating that all gods, goddesses, humans, animals and other beings are united together as one divine being. The soul of each individual person, the atman, is really also Brahman, the entirety of creation. Hindus believe in a Supreme Being. The plurality of gods is looked at as divine creations of that one being . There are many other important gods and goddesses. One is Agni, who is the god of fire and the sacred fire itself. Agni is worshipped in the daily rituals of each Hindu home. There are three other main gods, the "trinity": Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Hinduism is a very unique religion in that it can be perceived as the mother of some religions. Buddhism and Jainism came after Hinduism while taking some of Hinduisms beliefs and practices. Judaism is also like Hinduism in that way. Christianity and Islam branched out from Judaism and took on some of Judaism's beliefs and practices. Although they both may be the "mother" of some religions, they have very little in common. Judaism differs from Hinduism in many ways. One big difference is the fact that Judaism is a monotheistic religion. The entire religion is based around one God. Judaism also has sacred texts, but instead of holy men hearing sounds of truth, Judaism is based around prophets. The name for the Jewish bible is called the Tanakh which has three sections: The Torah, Nevi'im and Kethuvim. The Torah is the most important of the three because it is the written law of God. This is the teachings or the laws of Judaism. The Torah consists of 5 books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Genesis explains the story of Adam and Eve, Exodus is when Moses escapes Egypt and receives the covenant, Leviticus is when the people receive God's instructions for worship and purity, Numbers relates to how the people wandered in the wilderness until they were ready to enter the promise land and Deuteronomy is when the people get the laws a second time and Moses warns them not to serve other gods. The books of Judaism are more about the stories of how the religion came together and the people of religion and that is how the people will learn the way to live a good Jewish life, rather than the Hinduism's sacred text in which directly guide ones life with instructions and things of that nature. The epics of Hinduism, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, can be compared to the Torah in that they use stories to portray what the rules and regulations should be. The creation stories are very different in Judaism than in Hinduism. In one of the Hindu creation stories, everything was made by humans. In Judaism, everything was made by God, but a certain amount of power was given to the humans to look over everything that God has created. In the first Hindu story, the powers of the gods made the earth, just as in the first creation story of Judaism, God created the earth by word alone. In the second creation story, God was active in the creation of the world, God was directly involved. Both of the creation stories show that God is both Transcendent and Immanent. The way of life for a Hindu is very complex, and the main components of the religion are following the Vedas and following the caste duty, while also going through the four stages of life and achieving the four goals of life. There are two major parts of Judaism: ethical monotheism and justice. Jews wanted to keep the covenant and the only way to break it is to worship other gods besides Yahweh, and justice to the oppressed and to the poor. For Jewish people, carrying around the Torah and reading, studying, and learning from it are the basic requirement of being a Jew. Judaism also does not believe in rebirths but does believe that there is some punishment after death, such as purgatory to repent for the sins one has made during ones lifetime. In Hinduism, if you do not follow the duties of the specific caste or follow the Vedas, when you are reincarnated you will be reincarnated into a lower caste, or even an animal or an insect. There are so many different religions with so many different beliefs. Although they might not have much in common, without Hinduism and Judaism, four other main religions would not be in existence today. They set the standards of how other religions should be, and they also opened up doors for different opportunities of different religions to become.