The Origins of Hinduism

 The origins of Hinduism are very difficult to pin down. It claims no identifiable founder and no specific historical origin event - Hinduism claims to be timeless and without beginning.

Hinduism is an extremely diverse set of practices; its a very modern idea to conceive it as a single, distinct faith. Many Hindus did not feel any compulsion to unify their traditions or define common ground to distinguish them from other faiths, that is, until these other faiths threatened to impose their own doctrines. The word "Hindu" is neither a Sanskrit word nor is found in any religious text, and is instead derived from a Persian word used to describe those who live beyond the Sindhu or Indus river. It was adopted by the British colonial administration in India to describe the various religious beliefs and practices of the India's population.

Hindu tradition has been widely unconcerned with recording fact and instead were interested in the spiritual significance of events. First hand records of Hindu history are relatively rare. Because of this, there is no clear divide between history and myth with much of the written narratives spanning many eras of time and planes of existence. There is no limit with regards to nation, race, or religion.

Chronology Of India

2500-1500 BCE Indus Valley Civilisation
1500-500 BCE Vedic Period and/or beginning with Aryan migration
500 BCE - 500 CE Classical Age
500-1200 CE Medieval Period
1200-1757 CE Muslim Period
1757-1947 CE British Period
1947-present Modern Independent Era

The Indus Valley Civilisation

There are two main competing discourses on the origins of Hinduism: the Indus Valley Civilisation and the Theory of Aryan Invasion.

The Indus Valley Civilisation (AKA the Harappan culture) was a Bronze Age culture from around 2500-1500 BCE. It was a highly advanced urban culture with a wealthy middle class and a centralised government. It featured detailed town planning with large populations, a sophisticated writing system, and strong functional sanitation. They made jewellery and game pieces, and toys for their children. Very little is known about the way people really lived due to the Indus Valley script not being translatable. While we do not know much about IVC religious beliefs, there is evidence to suggest a belief in life after death due to their complex, well-established system of burial.

3500 seals have been found and attributed to the IVC, as far afield as Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), Central Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula, indicating an extensive long-distance trading network. They are small square clay objects with a set of symbols along the top, featuring animals or mythical creatures, and holes for thread, suggesting they would be carried as necklaces. They are generally thought to be a script of the IVC language, as similar markings have been found on other objects like pots or notice boards. It is believed it was written from right to left, and then left to right, line by line. 400 symbols have been catalogued, but not deciphered due to the absence of an equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. It is believed to be related to trading transactions, indicating identity of traders, markers, or factories.

There is a seal referred to as a "Proto-Shiva" that resembles Shiva as Pasupathi, Lord of the Beasts. The body on the seal is three-faced, naked except for bangles and necklaces, and wears a headdress featuring horns and a plant-like object between them (fertility, suggests Shiva). The linking of it to Shiva was supported by John Marshall, who led the excavations, and from this he concluded that Saivism has a history of 5000 years, making it the longest living faith in the world. Yan Devinsky calls the posture a "yogic posture", suggesting Yoga was familiar to the IVC. It has been identified as Mulabandhasana, an incredibly difficult pose that Basham calls, "a posture quite impossible for the average westerner." Others have suggested its Agni, a Mother Goddess, a collection of animals, or a divine bull-man.

Many terracotta figures of feminine figures (some pregnant, some holding children) have been found in many homes, suggesting worship of a Mother goddess. These link to modern Hindu worship of the Mother goddess, the divine female power known as Shakti, and the worship of murtis in Bhakti Yoga.

Statues of penises of varying sizes have also been found. They are believed to be linked to fertility and also Shaivic practices. The Shiva Linga is a phallus that represents the male power of Shiva. In modern Hindu temples milk is poured over the stone penises to emphasise fertility. However, these phalluses could be linked to other cults.

In the 1920s, the cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa were excavated in modern-day Pakistan were unearthed by archaeologists. It is believed that invaders destroyed these cities and forced people to adopt the Arya culture. However, recent aerial photographs suggest that by this time, the IVC had already become extinct due to the drying of the river Sarasvati.

Mohenjo-Daro boats a "Great Bath". It is 12x7x2.4 metres made of baked bricks lined with bitumen to hold water. It was not used for personal hygiene, as everyone had access to washing at home, making its use a mystery. It is generally thought to be a host for religious ritual. Some archaeologists have suggested it was surrounded by small rooms and was the centre of a fertility religion that practiced hierogamy. After visiting the sacred prostitutes, the pool would serve for ritual bathing. It has links to modern Hindu practices of River worship, much like the bathing in the Ganges today to wash away sin and gain positive karma.

The Aryans, Vedic Practices, and Invasion

The Aryans were a militaristic, nomadic, pastoral people originally coming from Northern Europe via Iran. They first settled in the Punjab (North India) before gradually spreading southward, dominating northern India. They called themselves Arya, meaning 'noble ones' to contrast themselves from the "snub nosed, thick lipped, dark skinned, phallus worshippers" of the Indus Valley. They are widely thought to have brought the Iron Age to India, as well as being illiterate, meaning their scriptures, the Vedas, were passed and distributed orally in Sanskrit.

They worshiped a goddess Indra, referred to as "the smasher of cities". Because of their pastoral lifestyle, they had a veneration of cows that they brought to India. 

Vedic religion also brought the Varna/Caste system, which was a strict social hierarchy used to maintain the Aryan's difference with their subjugated peoples, they referred to as Drayus/Dasas meaning "servant" in Sanskrit. This is rooted in the creation myth of the Purusha Sukta (cosmic man) in the Rig Veda, in which a giant man splits into the four castes.

There is little archaeological evidence suggesting violent invasion. There is no fire damage or mass graves. Burial customs in Northern India remain the same before and after their arrival, and the landscape, flora, and fauna of the written Rig Veda are very distinctly Indian. It suggests a gradual cultural integration, rather than a brutal introduction or colonial rampage. For modern geopolitical reasons, it makes sense that British archaeologists would immediately assume all cultural integration was violently colonial.

Orthodox Hindus who believe their tradition is unbroken and timeless tend to argue that the Aryas were an indigenous population and that India is the seat of civilisation. Most discourse favouring an Aryan Invasion tend to be Euro-Centric as a result of bias from European Scholars who see Hindu tradition as too complex to have originated in Asia.

Links between IVC, Vedic Hinduism, and Modern Hinduism

QUOTE BANK!!

Flood: "Although there is an emphasis on personal spirituality, Hinduism's history is closely linked with social and political developments such as the rise and all of different kingdoms and empires."

Hiltebeitel: "Nearly all efforts of interpreting Indus Valley religion have centred discussion around the Proto-Shiva figure."

Doniger: "we cannot know. It does not mean that the Indus images are the source of the Hindu images, or that they had the same meaning."

Samuel: "the evidence for yogic/Tantric practices is so dependent on reading later practices into the material that is of little or no use for constructing any kind of history of such practices."

Flood: "There may be continuities between the Indus Valley Civilisation and later Hinduism as suggested by the apparent emphasis on ritual bathing, sacrifice, and goddess worship. but ritual purity, sacrifice and an emphasis on fertility are common to other ancient religions."

Jamison: truth about origins "may never be known in an objective sense."

Jamison: "Without a Rosetta Stone, the Indus scripts may never be translated, and without the insight that they could give us into the world of ancient history, all we have are competing discourses.

Flood: "Wherever the Aryans originated, whether their culture was a development of indigenous cultures or whether they migrated from elsewhere, our knowledge of their social structure, their mythologies, and, above all, their ritual comes from their self-representation in their Sanskrit texts, the Vedas."

Bamshad: "The upper castes are more similar to Europeans than to Asians; and upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are lower castes."

Rig Veda: "snub nosed, thick lipped, dark skinned, phallus worshippers"

Childe: "India confronts Egypt and Babylonia by the 3rd millennium with a thoroughly individual and independent civilisation of her own."