Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

The Ancient World: Extraordinary People in Extraordinary Societies

Ancient India Religion

Ancient India is the birthplace of three of the world’s major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The predominant religion is Hinduism, which is considered the oldest of the major world religions, and can be traced back to ancient India’s Vedic period in the first and second millennia bce.

——Background & History——

Religion in the Harappan culture

Little is known about the Harappan culture and religion, which is considered the earliest civilization on the ancient Indian subcontinent. Based on archeological discoveries, scholars believe that the Harappans worshipped many gods, the most important of which were a mother goddess and a horned fertility god. Some scholars believe that the Harappans already worshiped some of the gods that are part of modern Hinduism, particularly Shiva. Because the Harappans buried their dead with tools and pottery jars containing food, it is probable that they believed in some form of life after death.

Religion of the Vedic Period

The Indo-Aryan nomads who migrated into India around 1500 bce brought with them a religion that was closely related to that found in Iran and the Aegean during the same period. Almost everything scholars know about their religion—and the Vedic period of Indian history as a whole—comes from the four sacred texts known as the Vedas. Handed down orally through many generations by the priestly caste (known as Brahmans), the texts were written down sometime after 1500 bce. The oldest of the texts, the Rigveda, is a collection of more than 1,000 hymns performed by priests while making sacrifices to the gods. The later Vedas—the Yajurveda, the Samaveda, and the Atharvaveda—provide detailed instructions for making sacrifices, chanting hymns, and performing rituals.

The early Indo-Aryans worshiped a pantheon, or set, of gods similar to that of the ancient Greeks, with an emphasis on male deities associated with the heavens. They did not build temples or create images. Priests sang hymns of praise and burned animal sacrifices and other offerings to the gods on a simple square altar. Sacrifices were accompanied by an elaborate ritual meal to which the gods were invited.

Hinduism

Hinduism grew out of the older Vedic religion. The Vedas remained Hinduism’s primary scripture, but new religious texts, such as the Upanishads and the Brahmanas, were added to the canon. These new texts reformulated elements of Vedic faith to create a devotional faith centered on a relationship with a personal god. The Upanishads introduced the concepts of karma and reincarnation, while each of the Brahmanas is associated with one of the four Vedas.

Unlike the Vedic religion, Hinduism combined aspects of monotheism and polytheism, worshipping thousands of different gods and goddesses who were all aspects of the universal creator, Brahma. Most people devoted themselves to one deity, usually either Vishnu or Shiva, as well as an aspect of the mother goddess, Devi, in the form of the consort of the god. The main gods of the Vedic pantheon, such as Indra and Varuna, were reduced to the status of incarnations of the great gods of Hinduism.

In Vedic times, the priests performed the great sacrifices at the behest of the king. Under Hinduism, daily rituals performed for a personal god required the need for temples, and thus a related increase in power for the priestly class. Even the smallest village had a shrine and a priest, while temples at major religious centers could have hundreds of priests.

One change that would have enormous repercussions was the Hindu belief that the soul is reincarnated into a new body after death. The form the soul takes when it is reborn is based on its karma, which is the sum of its good and bad actions in its previous life. The concept of karma became one of the cornerstones of the caste system as a person’s social status was believed to be the result of actions in a prior life.

Buddhism

In the sixth century bce, Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha, or Enlightened One, by his followers, was born into a royal family in what is now Nepal. The privileged life of a prince sheltered him from the suffering of life. When he was twenty-nine, the young prince began to explore the countryside and discovered old age, illness, and death. Shocked, he left his wife and kingdom in order to search for enlightenment. For six years, Gautama wandered throughout northern India as an ascetic monk. Deciding that the rigors of asceticism were futile, he decided to meditate until he had solved the riddle of suffering. He meditated under a pipal tree for forty-nine days. At the end of the forty-nine days, he rose and preached his first sermon on the “Middle Way” between asceticism and worldliness to five ascetics who became his first followers. For the next forty-five years, the Buddha traveled through northern India teaching a new way that challenged the authority of the Brahmans and the inevitability of the cycle of rebirth based on karma and dharma.

The heart of the Buddha’s teaching were the Four Noble Truths:

Life is filled with suffering.

Suffering is the result of desire.

In order to overcome suffering, man must overcome desire.

Man can overcome desire by following the Eight-Fold path of right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right occupation, right effort, right contemplation, and right concentration.

The ultimate goal of Buddhism is that its followers escape the relentless wheel of reincarnation and achieve Nirvana, which is complete freedom from suffering. In the two centuries following the Buddha’s death, Buddhism developed into a religion with wealthy monastic communities and a large number of lay followers.

Jainism

Vardhamana Mahavira, who founded the Jain religion, was a close contemporary of the Buddha. Their stories are very similar. Born about 540 bce, Mahavira was also a prince who left his family and a life of privilege to seek salvation. After twelve years of wandering, he found his own enlightenment in extreme asceticism. Because he was able to conquer himself, his followers called him Jina, or conqueror. For roughly thirty years Mahavira taught his doctrine of austerity in north India, founding an order of naked monks. He died at the age of seventy-two at the end of a long period of fasting.

Jainism is similar to Buddhism in that its ultimate goal is to free the soul from the karmic cycle of reincarnation. Unlike Buddhism, the path to salvation comes through rigid self-denial and self-discipline that can only be obtained within monastic life. One of the most important doctrines in Jainism is ahimsa (non-violence). Jains believe that all living things have souls, even plants. As a result, it is wrong to kill anything.

Like Buddhism, the Jain faith blossomed during the reign of the Mauryan emperors, gaining new lay followers and monastic communities. According to Jain legend, the founder of the Mauryan empire, Chandragupta Maurya, abdicated his throne toward the end of his life to become a Jain monk and died as a result of fasting.

—Cultural & Historical Impact—

The Role of Religion in Ancient India

Neither Sanskrit nor any of its vernacular dialects had a word that corresponds to the concept of religion as a separate part of life in ancient India. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all touched every aspect of life, from the daily life of a rural village to the most abstract theological principle. Religious laws determined what jobs a person could hold, whom he could marry, even what he could eat. According to the concepts of reincarnation, which were central to Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, an individual’s place in life was the result of his actions in a previous life. His place in the next life would depend on how well he completed the dharma appropriate to his caste and place in life.

—Cultural & Historical Impact—

Buddhism

During the reign of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, missionaries began to carry the teachings of the Buddha beyond the Indian subcontinent. By the first century ce, the faith was well established in the areas that became Sri Lanka, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Since the 1960s, Buddhism has attracted increasing numbers of Western followers as well. Today, Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in the world, with an estimated 350 million adherents.

Buddhism in India was threatened when Muslim raiders began to plunder north India, beginning about 1000 ce. Indian Buddhism was revived in 1956, when the dalit (untouchable) leader Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar and several thousand of his followers converted as a means of stepping outside the restrictions of the caste system. The Buddhist population of India, made up almost entirely of dalit converts, totals more than 5 million.

Hinduism & Jainism

The majority of Indians today still worship the gods of ancient Hinduism. Brahman priests recite the verse and hymns of the Rigveda. Hindus visit ancient shrines, temples, and holy sites as an act of pilgrimage. In spite of the fact that India’s constitution outlawed caste in 1948, caste-related issues continue to trouble Indian society and politics, particularly in matters of access to jobs and education.

Unlike Buddhism, Jainism never died out in India. Today there are several million Jains in India, mostly merchants and businessmen in the state of Gujarat. The Jain doctrine of non-violence was an important influence on Mahatma Gandhi, who grew up in Gujarat.

———Interesting Facts———

  • Because the doctrine of ahimsa, or non-violence, is a central element of the Jain religion, Jain monks and nuns take extreme measures to prevent themselves from accidentally taking life. They wear masks over their mouths, strain their water, and carry feather dusters to brush insects from the path as they walk.

  • Hinduism combined aspects of monotheism and polytheism, worshipping thousands of different gods and goddesses who were all aspects of the universal creator, Brahma.

  • The Buddha and Mahavira were only two of a number of heterodox religious leaders who challenged Hindu orthodoxy in the portion of north India that is now known as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar during the sixth century bce.

  • During the reign of Chandragupta Maurya, the Jain faith suffered a doctrinal schism over the question of monastic austerity and broke into two denominations. The reformers, known as white-clad monks, chose to wear simple white robes. The traditionalists, called sky-clad monks, continued to wear nothing.

  • Each major deity in the Hindu pantheon has many different forms or manifestations (avatars), each of which has a separate name and mythology. Thus Rama, the well-loved hero of the epic poem Ramayana, is also one of the ten avatars of Vishnu.

    ——Pamela D. Toler, PhD

————Bibliography————

1 

Basham, A. L. “Chapter VII. Religion: Cults, Doctrine, and Metaphysics.” In The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the coming of the Muslims. London: Picador, 2004. First published in 1954, Basham’s work is the classic text on ancient India.

2 

BBC-Religion and Ethics-Buddhism. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism. Accessed October, 2009. A good introduction to the history, beliefs and culture of Buddhism.

3 

BBC-Religion and Ethics-Hindism. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/ Accessed October, 2009. A good introduction to the history, beliefs and culture of Hinduism.

4 

BBC-Religion and Ethics-Jainism. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/jainism. Accessed October, 2009. A good introduction to the history, beliefs and culture of Jainism.

5 

Embree, Ainslee (ed.). Sources of Indian Tradition, Volume 1: From the Beginning to 1800. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. A combination of explanatory essays and original source material.

6 

Mitchell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. This broad introduction to the history and structure of Hindu temples includes an extensive discussion of the meaning of temple architecture within the context of Hindu theology.

7 

O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975. A selection of seventy-five important Hindu myths taken from a range of classical Indian sources.

————Works Cited————

8 

Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India: a Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the coming of the Muslims. Grove Press. 1959.

9 

Embree, Ainslee, ed. Sources of Indian Tradition. Volume 1 From the Beginning to 1800. New York. Columbia University Press. 1988

10 

Huntington, Susan L. The Art of Ancient India; Buddhist, Hindu, Jain. New York and Tokyo. Weather Hill. 1985

11 

McNeill, William H. and Jean W. Sedlar. Classical India. New York. Oxford University Press. 1969.

12 

Tammita-Delgoda, Sinharaja. A Traveller’s History of India. New York. Interlink Books. 1995

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Ancient India Religion." The Ancient World: Extraordinary People in Extraordinary Societies, edited by Shally-Jensen Michael, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CWEP_0193.
APA 7th
Ancient India Religion. The Ancient World: Extraordinary People in Extraordinary Societies, In S. Michael (Ed.), Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CWEP_0193.
CMOS 17th
"Ancient India Religion." The Ancient World: Extraordinary People in Extraordinary Societies, Edited by Shally-Jensen Michael. Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CWEP_0193.