Hinduism

It would be inappropriate to do a blog about India without speaking of its main religion, Hinduism. Hinduism dates from the Vedic civilization of India, which means 1 or 2 millennium BC. One of the important characteristics of this religion is that it doesn’t have a founder. Besides, Hindus people don’t recognize a religious authority. Nowadays, there are about 800 millions of believers in the world, which places Hinduism in the third position of the most practiced religions, after Christianism and Islam.

Etymologically, the term Hinduism comes from Indus, river that originates in Tibet and flows into the Arabian Sea. At the origin, Hinduism was the religion of the Idus country’s inhabitants.

When we get interested a little bit with Hinduism, we are really quickly submerged by the multitude of gods that owns the Hindu Pantheon. Polytheistic religion, you may think. However, when we look closer at it, this becomes less obvious. A lot of gods, yes, but which all come from a unique reality, Brahman. Brahman is the divine principle that is present in everything and everywhere. It’s the essence of the Hindu religion.

Hindu gods have a great importance for the believers, of course, and the wealth of the Hindu mythology is what made of Hinduism a colorful religion. But we’ll speak about the gods later.

One of the key principles of Hinduism is to consider soul as being eternal, going through cycles of births, deaths and rebirths that are called Samsara. Those cycles are determined by the good or bad aspects of our Karma, which we can define as being the consequences of our actions. The ultimate goal of a Hindu is to get free from Samsara, the freedom of his soul that is called Moksha.

This explains why the Indian society is deeply attached to the casts system. A person who is born in the lowest of without cast will live thinking she deserves this unenviable fate, because she did a bad karma in her previous life. But let’s talk about casts system later.

Thus, how to accomplish good karma in order to attain the freedom of our soul? Hindu people think that it is based on 3 main things:

By the worship, which means religious ceremonies and rites

By the knowledge, to know that Human is not an isolated entity, but he is apart of Brahman, the great All. This knowledge goes through yoga practicing.

Eventually, by the devotion, or love and obedience doomed to one or several gods.

Hinduism doesn’t have a sacred book like Coran or Bible but it has several sacred texts. The oldest are the Vedas, which means knowledge or wisdom. Each Veda is divided in three parts: the Mantras, which are hymns of praise to gods; the Brahmanas, which are guides of ritual practices; and the Upanishads that contain the religious truths and doctrines. We also find the Puranas, which trace the Hindu mythology. The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most important and the most read texts of Hindu literature. It is a dialogue between Krishna and the Prince Arjuna who asks to the god some advices to kill members of his family. There is also the Ramayana, epic saga of the god Rama, and the Mahabharata, telling the battle between the Kaurava and Pandava brothers.

According to Hinduism, there is Earth, world of the mortals. Above there is heaven, where live the devas, gods and deities, and in the inferior world live the asuras, the demons. Devas and asuras often come on Earth, and sometimes they even settle there. Those to races are fighting for millenniums. Indeed, by jealousy, asuras try to seize the heaven.

Regarding the cult, Hindu people are going to the temple or do the worship from home, in a little temple settled in the house. The Hindu temples can be dedicated to one or several gods, of which the statues are inside the temples.

5 elements are really important in Hinduism:

• Water, every morning the statues are washed. Thewater used becomes sacred and is throw on the believers as blessing.
• Cloth, once they have been bathed, the statues are dressed. A Hindu statue is never naked.
• Flowers, they are regularly given as offering.
• Air, which explains the presence of peacock feathers near to the deities. We can sometimes see a priest fanning the gods.
• Fire light up in a container that the priest spins around the statues and the faces of the faithful.

Hindus have a very particular relationship with their gods. Some consider them as friends or members of their family. It is common thing to go to the temple in order to discuss with a god, while giving him his favorite sweets.