Hinduism

HINDUISM - the everlasting teaching

THE WORLD
Hinduism is one of the world’s oldest religions and the third largest after Christianity and Islam. It is estimated that over 13 per cent of the world’s population is Hindu, over 850 million people. The majority live in India, where 82 per cent of the population is Hindu. Every area has its own customs, religious rituals and practices.

SWEDEN
There have been Hindus in Sweden since the end of the Second World War. The first came as immigrants in 1944. Hinduism is one of the country’s more anonymous religions, despite the fact that today there are around 8,000 Hindus in Sweden. Most are from India, South East Asia and East Africa. Many are Indians who moved from Uganda. There are Hindu temples in Mariestad, Jönköping, Enskede and Sollentuna. The Hare Krishna movement has temples in many locations throughout the country.

MALMÖ
Malmö doesn’t have a Hindu temple: it’s not known how many Hindus live in the city but it is said to be quite a small group.

FOUNDER
Hinduism is so old that no one really knows when it started. It is a matter of when certain of the existing domestic Indian religious traditions began to be called Hinduism. There is no clear beginning, no hierarchy, no joint theology or organisation. There are articles of faith and practices which include all Hindus. However, the variations can be huge. Many areas have local deities. The religion that is practised in one town can differ in many ways from that in another town.
Hinduism’s birth

Most researchers claim that around 1,500 years before our calendar (BC and AD) nomads settled in and around the Indus Valley. They were fair-skinned and called themselves arya (Aryans), the noble. These fair-skinned Aryans came to dominate in Northern, while the darker Dravids dominated in the South. The Aryans’ religion gradually developed into Hinduism.

Umbrella term
The religion is closely allied with Indian traditions; the word “hindu" is associated with “hind", an old Persian word for India. This occurred around 1,200 AD when the invading Muslim wanted to differentiate the Indian people’s faith from their own. The Iranian language Farsi has a lot in common with Sanskrit. There is a strong historical connection between Hinduism and the ancient Iranian religion Zoroastrism. But the term Hinduism was first coined by British authors during the colonial era. It was a way of describing the whole of Indian civilisation, a kind of umbrella term.

The missing prophet and creed
Hinduism is quite simply the Indian people’s religion. It has neither a founder nor common doctrines, even if many rituals are common amongst the majority of Hindus. More importance is laid on how one lives rather than how one thinks. Today’s Hinduism is a mix of all the different races, ethnic groups and cultures that have lived in the Indian peninsula for more than 3,000 years. Some of the elements of Hinduism can be traced to the Indus culture, which arose some 5,000 years ago.

Secular society
Hinduism is not a state religion. The Indian state is secular, where religion and politics are separate. What passes for personal religion is about the big and small traditions. The small are the popular, verbal pieties out in the villages. The big traditions are practiced by high-caste Hindus versed in holy writings. The differences between the popular and the official religion lie in the interpretation rather than the goals. Neither is primarily practiced in temples.

The concept of God
Hinduism hasn’t got one god or goddess for the whole of humanity. But there is a single divinity, a truth, for all beings. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t gods: there are many, both male and female.

Nevertheless, behind this lies the divine reality that Hindus call Brahman (the universe’s foundation, the cosmic nature). In many people’s comprehension this hasn’t a fixed appearance or form. The Highest Brahman can not be described in word but is called “It". Brahman is lord over all beings and is worshipped in meditation. Meditation (dhyana) is a type of worship (upansana).

Indian gods can have multiple arms and heads. Many homes have an altar with a family god in the niche. It is woken every morning with song and incense, stroked and offered food. In the evening, the lights and incense are taken away, bells are rung and the god is laid to rest.

Cyclical course of events
The two most worshipped gods are Vishnu and Shiva. Together with the god Brahma (which is not the same as Brahman) they form a trinity: Brahma makes the world, Vishnu holds it upright and Shiva destroys it. Their three-fold work corresponds to the world’s rhythm. The creation goes in cycles. There is neither a beginning nor an end. The beginning is an end and the end is a new beginning.

The elephant god Ganesha is the first born son of Shiva and his wife, Parvati. It is said that upon returning to his heavenly home after long absence, Shiva saw a stranger by his door and cut their head off. When Parvati turned up she realised that Shiva had killed his own son. In a desperate attempt to put things right Shiva cut the head off a passing elephant and set it on his son’s shoulders. Since then Ganesha has had an elephant’s head. He is the god of wisdom and removes obstacles.

RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS
Hinduism’ symbol is the OM, signifying that which humans cannot imagine, namely Brahman, the world’s divine originator. 

The holy sound OM is the eternal syllable, which is recited or sung before and after prayers. Saying or intoning the syllable OM, even silently, is a form of meditation. There are many interpretations of what OM stands for.

The mark on the forehead
The coloured mark that Hindus often bear on the forehead can have different meanings and is called tilaka, bottu, bindiya or bindi. Certain marks are symbols of piety and show that the person in question belongs to a certain of branch of Hinduism. A spot can also symbolise the third eye, the eye that sees within, towards God. Women sometimes wear a red spot as a sign that they are married.

The holy cow and vegetarianism
The cow is the living symbol of Mother Earth and her rich gifts to humanity. To keep a cow is an act of a reverence: even cow’s urine is regarded as holy. Many Hindus, especially those of high-caste, are vegetarian, but even those who eat meat as a rule abstain from eating beef.

HOLY BOOKS
The Veda-texts, Bhagavad-Gita and Upanishad are some of Hinduism’s many holy books, written in Sanskrit. According to them, Brahman is everywhere and everything.
The Veda-texts are Hinduism’s oldest holy texts. They comprise a set of different texts from different times. According to Hindu tradition, they were revealed to holy men in ancient times. Most researchers claim that the Veda-texts descend from the time 1200 to 800. One of the oldest books is the Rigveda. It contains prayers that were used in sacrificial rituals.

Bhagavad-Gita (Sanskrit for "The Lord’s Song") is a poem in Sanskrit from the Mahabharata. It has particularly large significance in modern Hinduism. Bhagavad-Gita consists of a dialogue between the god Krishna and Prince Arjuna immediately before a big battle. In the dialogue Krishna convinces the prince to struggle unselfishly and with spiritual wisdom, an ideal called karma-yoga (yoga of deeds), and to surrender himself to God (bhakti-yoga, yoga of surrender). Most Hindus have never read Bhagavadgita and don’t know what is in it. Neither do Hindus as a whole have a special book as their “bible".

The Upanishads are special philosophical- religious texts for faithful Hindus. The word upanishad means “sit down near", which in a figurative sense means teaching or consecration in the highest mysteries. Several hundred texts bear the name upanishad but only a dozen or so are counted in the canon in most Hindu traditions. These texts probably originate from 800 to 700 BC and lay the ground for much of the philosophical thought in India.
The content of the Upanishads is characterised to a certain extent by a reaction to and reinterpretation of the Vedist religion. The ideal that came forward is liberation from the world (moksha) and uniting with the divinity thought of as the innermost self (brahman).

“You cannot see the Seer of seeing. You cannot hear the Hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. He is your Self, which is in everything; every else other than this is suffering." From Brihadaranyaka-upanishad 3.4.2

Ramayana and Mahabharata
The two big stories, Ramayana and Mahabharata, depict Rama’s and Krishna’s life on earth, i.e. the god Vishnu in human form.

Ramayana (Sanskrit for The Story of Rama) is an Indian epic from around 200 BC. The work consists - in different editions - of between 24,000 and 43,000 stanzas of 16 syllables each. Ramayana tells of Rama, who together with his brother was an incarnation of the god Vishnu, and his adventures. Deprived of his throne Rama allied himself with the monkey-king Sugriva and General Hanuman. Finally Rama prevailed and took back his throne.

Mahabharata is an ancient Indian mythological epic in 18 parts, written in Sanskrit, and is the story of the Bharata clan, whose leader is thought to have been the king who founded Bhāratavarsha, another name for India. In its complete form, the epic consists of around 100,000 verses. The work is thought to have come from an older work called Jaya ("conquest") with much uncertainty on its date of origin. Probably the story originally descended from events that happened during centuries earlier than our calendar reckoning. The central story in the work is the inter-clan strife between the blood-related Kaurava, the families’ senior section, and Pandava, the younger section, about power over the Kuru clan’s kingdom Hastinapura. This struggle culminated in the battle of Kurukshetra, where the Pandavas were the victors. 

Krishna - the god Vishnu’s eighth avatar depicted in the colourful story Mahabharata. Vishnu was convinced to descend to Earth as Krishna, when demons kept vanquishing the gods. Many avatars are wholly or partly in animal form.

Stories of gods
Hindu holy texts are full of the adventures of the many gods and heroes. The books are mostly written in Sanskrit, Hinduism’s holy language claimed to have been created by the gods. Sanskrit today is almost exclusively a written language. But most of India’s 15 official languages, with the exception of English, are influenced by Sanskrit. The alphabet has 46 letters. The words pita and mata means father and mother.

PLACE FOR WORSHIP
In the Vedist religion people prayed independently, often by a holy fire. Later, Hindus began to pray to gods in temples.
A Hindu temple can, amongst other names, be called a mandir (Hindi) or a kovil (Tamil). Temples are claimed to be the gods’ earthly abode. The root meaning of mandir is ’house’.
Temples are built according to a system of religious law, mystic tales, astrology and astronomy. Certain temples are like a map across the universe.

"Think of me, be devoted to me, worship me, revere me!"
Krishna in Bhagavadgita 9:34

Without shoes
There is no demand upon Hindu to go to a temple to pray but many do so. When Hindus go into the temple they take off their shoes and wash their feet.

Gifts to the gods
There are often pictures of different gods. There is also a little bell: when Hindus come to the temple they ring the bell to show that they come to offer up and pray. Visitors often take flowers, rice and sweet things with them for the gods and goddesses. The gifts are usually given back to the worshippers.

The daily devotion
Hinduism is an individual and family-based religion, and the daily devotion, puja, can take place in the home just as well as in a temple. Many families set aside a room for worship, while others set up an altar or holy picture in a corner.
Some Hindus claim that reverence for all living beings demands that they be vegetarian; but a few make animal sacrifice in the temples. The religious duties at home vary according to caste.

Rituals
Fire and water are used for cleaning. Furthermore, there are sacrificial gifts of food, incense, flowers and paint (for adornment) and camphor which lights up and gives a characteristic smell.

Priests
A priest can extend the holy services by reciting Veda-texts. Sometimes there are also religious singers accompanied by instruments such as cymbals. But the holy services in the temples are not proper assemblies of worship. This is individual, so the rituals in the home are as important as those in the temple.

Hindu pilgrimage
For a Hindu a pilgrimage can be a way of giving thanks for what he or she has received in life. Cleansing of the soul from sin or misdeeds can also be a goal. This is achieved by bathing in one of India’s many holy rivers. The pilgrimage is often a happy event, where one wears new clothes, eats good food, meets friends and visits well known places. During the pilgrimage one should nevertheless be quite aesthetic, e.g. be shaven headed, sleep on the ground and abstain from sexual intercourse.

Holy river
One of the most important religious sites is the River Ganges, which is thought to have heavenly origins. Along several kilometres of the river’s banks there are stairs called ghats. The pilgrims descend into the water via these stairs. By certain stairs one can light funeral pyres. The corpse is dipped in the water before it is placed on the pyre. Traditionally, the eldest son lights the fire. After the cremation the ashes are thrown in to the holy water. In this way one hopes that the dead will be freed from reincarnation.

Clean and dirty
The waters of the River Ganges are a symbol for life without end. Hundreds of thousands of people assemble daily on the shore, drink the water and do ritual bathing. Pilgrims come from all over India to bathe in this holy water because it is claimed to have cleansing powers, despite the fact that animal corpses and rubbish sometimes float by. The Ganges is heavily polluted where it flows through big cities, but not overall. Through this cleansing one hopes to avoid reincarnation.

Holy city
The city Varanasi (also known as Benares) by the Ganges is, according to certain views, India’s holiest city. There are thousands of temples there. The gold temple Kasi Vishwanatha is the best known with 800 kilos of gold covering the tower. But only Hindus have access. The Durga temple is also here, the monkey temple, overrun with monkeys. Millions do pilgrimage to Varanasi every year, as it is the place where many want to die. It is said that among others, Buddha himself came there to hold his first sermon.

Holy men
Some Hindus abstain from everything, from their home and all their possessions and become wandering beggars, aesthetic hermits or miracle workers. This means that they come nearer to God. Such a person is called a sadhu, a holy man. Those who worship the god Vishnu show this by two vertical stripes on the forehead, drawn with clay. Those who worship the god Shiva have three vertical stripes in ash. But also many others can bear these marks.

RIGHT AND WRONG - ETHICAL LAWS
Hinduisms ethic follows on from the concept of dharma, which is not universal but varies from person to person. There are certain virtuous ideas, e.g. the ideals of compassion, tolerance, self-control, truthfulness, honest, reverence for superiors and so forth. But a warrior must sometimes cast off compassion and so there is also another expression.

"One may not do to another that which is painful to ones self: these are the laws (of dharma) in short."
Mahabharata (13.114.8)

Hinduism says that is actions that shape character rather than the other way round.

"As one acts and lives, thus will one become: those who do good become good, those who do bad become bad; one becomes pious from benevolent deeds, evil by evils. Therefore a person is said to be formed by their wishes: as her wishes are, so her wishes become; as her wishes are, so she acts; as she acts, such she becomes.
Brihadaranyaka-upanishad (4.4.5)

Evil and good
A principal point in Hinduism is that one cannot reach brahman through deeds. Life moves forward through many existences, from birth to death and rebirth. If a person is good in life, this will be repaid through rebirth to a good life. Evil deeds lead to the soul being reborn as an animal or as a poor, unhappy being in the next life. A person who has been through the Highest Brahman is not born again to the world of ignorance.

"I have gone through many births [...] in order to protect the good and tolerant sinners. I appear before the court’s redress age after age"
Krishna in Bhagavadgita 4:5, 8

Salvation
The goal for a Hindu is to reach moksha, the salvation and be freed from rebirth. Karma is the total of the deeds we commit in one life. Our karma decides how our next life will be. Longing for liberation and freedom is spiritual and one emphasises liberation from the shackles of ignorance. It is ignorance that holds a person imprisoned in the cycles of birth-death-rebirth (samsara). Freedom is attained through knowledge, when one rightly understands reality and repudiates the transitory and illusory.

"Lead me non-existence to existence!
Lead me from dark to light!
Lead me from death to the undeath!"
from the Brihadaranyaka-upanish 1.3.28

According to most Hindus there are many ways to salvation and three are often cited:
1. The way of deeds - to perform correct religious rituals and duties unselfishly and as an offering to God.
2. The way of knowledge - to try to understand and experience the utmost meaning of life with the help of meditation.
3. The way of devotion - to try to reach association with the divine by surrendering oneself in some form to God.

Meditation
Yoga is a meditation technique used by certain Hindus in order to reach salvation and liberation from all desire and wishes.

The caste system
Traditionally Hindus are born into one of a large number of castes, of which most belong to one of four social classes:
1. Priests, called Brahmins, belong to the highest caste.
2. Nobility and warriors are the second caste.
3. Farmers, artisans and merchants are the third caste.
4. Servants and other workers are the fourth caste.

Way down the scale there are dalit - those who are sometimes wrongly called ‘untouchables’ or casteless.

Religious duties vary according to caste. This hierarchical societal structure is, according to the Veda-texts, right and proper in the divine order. By tradition, one eats different types of food, depending on caste. Many don’t eat beef, but there are no general rules.

In modern India, discrimination on the grounds of caste is forbidden and the low-caste are subject to positive action in education and appointment, but the caste system is still an integral part of Indian society.

Charismatic leader
Hinduism has, during the last hundred years, been changed by different reforms based on different trends of belief and sects. The Indian politician Mahatma Gandhi was no reformer but can in certain ways be considered as a spiritual leader. For him God was the truth and anti-violence the way to realise God.

"My life is my message"
Gandhi

Gandhi respected the Veda-tradition but wanted, in his interpretation of Hinduism, to take in “everything I know is the best in Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Zoroastrism".
He campaigned for political freedom and rejected the caste system. He wanted to improve conditions for the lowest caste who, he asserted, should be treated respectfully. Gandhi also campaigned for women’s rights in India.
"Men have regarded women as their instrument. But women should no longer be dolls or objects for gratification but rather companions in joint service with their men."
Mahatma Gandhi


Hinduism - summary

GOD
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Sarasvati, Kali, Lakshmi, Krishna, Rama and many others

FOUNDER
None

PLACE FOR WORSHIP
Temple, called mandir in Hindhi

PRIESTS
Priests lead puja, holy service in the temple

HOLY TEXTS
The Veda-texts, the Upanishads, Bhagavadgita and many others

IMPORTANT FESTIVALS
Diwali - Hindu new year in October-November, when one gives presents, lights lamps both inside and outside the house to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of luck and prosperity. The end of the monsoon season and the new planting season are also celebrated over several days.
Holi - spring’s zenith in February-March, dedicated to the god Krishna. Originally a fertility ceremony. Celebrated with a colourful dance party on the streets, where fires are lit and people throw coloured powders or water at each other.
Janmashtami - the god Krishna’s birthday in August. One fasts and waits up till midnight to welcome the child god with song and dance.
Maha Shivaratri - festival in February dedicated to the god Shiva. The god is said to dance a cosmic dance to both create and destroy the universe.

HOLY ANIMAL
The cow is a symbol for the Earth and life.

LIFE AFTER DEATH
Reincarnation (rebirth) - a living being’s inner self does not die with the body, but instead goes over to a new body, for example a person or animal.


Read more in:
Gavin Flood: An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge 1997
Hinduism, an introduction, Dharam Singh
Gods and Goddesses of India, New Delhi 2001