Describe the salient features of Hinduism. The best answer will get the branilist and I will also follow that person Don't Cheat from the Internet or...... you know
Answers
Answer:
Hinduism is an Indian religion and dharma, or way of life.[note 1][note 2] It is the world's third-largest religion with over 1.25 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global population, known as Hindus.[web 1][web 2] The word Hindu is an exonym,[1][2] and while Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world,[note 3] many practitioners refer to their religion as Sanātana Dharma, "the eternal way" which refers to the idea that its origins lie beyond human history, as revealed in the Hindu texts.[3][4][5][6][note 4] Another, though less fitting,[7] self-designation is Vaidika dharma,[8][9][10][11] the 'dharma related to the Vedas.'[web 3]
Hinduism includes a range of philosophies, and is linked by shared concepts, recognisable rituals, cosmology, pilgrimage to sacred sites and shared textual resources that discuss theology, philosophy, mythology, Vedic yajna, Yoga, agamic rituals, and temple building, among other topics.[12] Hinduism prescribes the eternal duties, such as honesty, refraining from injuring living beings (ahimsa), patience, forbearance, self-restraint, and compassion, among others.[web 4][13] Prominent themes in Hindu beliefs include the four Puruṣārthas, the proper goals or aims of human life; namely, Dharma (ethics/duties), Artha (prosperity/work), Kama (desires/passions) and Moksha (liberation/freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth/salvation),[14][15] as well as karma (action, intent and consequences) and Saṃsāra (cycle of death and rebirth).[16][17]
Hindu practices include rituals such as puja (worship) and recitations, japa, meditation (dhyana), family-oriented rites of passage, annual festivals, and occasional pilgrimages. Along with the practice of various Yogas, some Hindus leave their social world and material possessions and engage in lifelong Sannyasa (monasticism) in order to achieve Moksha.[18]
Hindu texts are classified into Śruti ("heard") and Smṛti ("remembered"), the major scriptures of which are the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Āgamas.[19][16] There are six āstika schools of Hindu philosophy, who recognise the authority of the Vedas, namely Sankhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta.[20][21][22]
While the Puranic chronology presents a geneaology of thousands of years, starting with the Vedic rishis, scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion[note 5] or synthesis[23][note 6] of Brahmanical orthopraxy[note 7] with various Indian cultures,[24][note 8] having diverse roots and no specific founder.[26] This Hindu synthesis emerged after the Vedic period, between ca. 500–200 BCE and c. 300 CE, in the period of the Second Urbanisation and the early classical period of Hinduism, when the Epics and the first Puranas were composed. It flourished in the medieval period, with the decline of Buddhism in India.
Currently, the four largest denominations of Hinduism are the Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism and Smartism. Sources of authority and eternal truths in the Hindu texts play an important role, but there is also a strong Hindu tradition of questioning authority in order to deepen the understanding of these truths and to further develop the tradition. Hinduism is the most widely professed faith in India, Nepal and Mauritius. Significant numbers of Hindu communities are found in Southeast Asia including in Bali, Indonesia, the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Oceania, Africa, and other regions.
Explanation:
Please make me the brainlist
Explanation:
Only one aspect of Hinduism is common for all the different variants: the varna hierarchy. This is my personal account of why I rejected this discriminatory religion.
Ankur Betageri
18 November 2014
Ghandi statue Nickerie, Surniname.
Ian Mackenzie/Flickr. Some rights reserved. A statue of Ghandi in Nickerie, Suriname.
“True joy and happiness lie in the simple enjoyment of what is good and not in the kind of false pride that enjoys happiness because others are excluded from it. Anyone who thinks that he is happy because his situation is better than other people’s or because he is happier and more fortunate than they, knows nothing of true happiness and joy, and the pleasure he derives from his attitude is either plain silly or spiteful and malicious. For example, a person’s true joy and felicity lie solely in his wisdom and knowledge of truth, not in being wiser than others or in others’ being without knowledge of truth, since this does not increase his own wisdom which is his true felicity. Anyone therefore who takes pleasure in that way is enjoying another’s misfortune, and to that extent is envious and malign, and does not know true wisdom or the peace of the true life.”
–Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, p.43
If Hinduism were just another religion packaged with superstitions without any bearing on people living in today’s globalised world then there wouldn’t be a need for people like me—people who actively condemn Hinduism and scream for atheism from the rooftops. But contrary to the ideologically manufactured popular notion, Hinduism is a harmful religion. Like all religions it functions on an economy of hatred. But instead of directing the hatred solely at the outsider like in Islam, or inward, at oneself and all of humanity, like in Christianity, hatred in Hinduism is graded according to a hierarchy defined by birth. Hatred is directed at all caste-members except the Brahmins.
The intricate evolution of Hinduism
If there is one thing that is common to pan-Indian “Hinduism” (the nineteenth century name for the post-Vedic religion Brahmanism), it is the varna-hierarchy. In the varna hierarchy there are two poles: one of purity and one of pollution – which makes people worthy and contemptible. This worthiness and unworthiness is distributed in the hierarchy. The top-most varna is considered the most worthy and the bottom-most the most unworthy. Distribution of worth and non-worth is decided by one’s karma in past lives and supported by the theory of transmigration of souls. No matter how much the Hindus deny the practice of caste discrimination in their faith, the foundation of Hinduism is inherently discriminatory and full of hostilities. Hinduism, or Brahminism, in its essence I would argue, is pure caste-hatred.
Though Brahmins claim the Vedas as their holy texts, the religion that we find in the Vedas themselves has little to do with contemporary Brahminism. In fact, the religion that we find in the oldest of the Vedas, the Rig Veda, which scholars classify as Early Vedism, is the very anti-thesis of Brahminism, what with its celebration of beef-eating, gambling, drinking and sexual orgies. The religion that has clear resemblance to contemporary Brahminism was largely consolidated in the post-Vedic age called the ‘Brahmana period’. In its earliest form, Brahminism was a ritualistic religion with the priestly caste of Brahmins wielding supreme power over the masses by claiming magical and supernatural powers for their rituals. The three gunas of sattva (goodness), rajas (passion) and tamas (darkness), hierarchically distributed among worthy and non-worthy varnas, formed its central tenet. But Brahminism, due to its Brahmin-supremacist and discriminatory practices, lost its appeal among the masses and was replaced with the more egalitarian religions of Buddhism and Jainism sometime in fifth century BCE. By second century BCE, Buddhism, as the state religion of King Ashoka, was influential in a geographical area larger than present-day India. It was quite significant on a pan-Indian level until the seventh century AD, when the religion was violently uprooted and destroyed by Adi Shankara and his followers. Adi Shankara re-instituted Brahminism as a pan-Indian religion by building mutts in four strategic parts of the country. Nonetheless, this ultra Brahmin-supremacist version of Brahminism lost popularity in the eleventh century and was reinvented as Bhagavatism. The new drastically changed Bhagavatism became a popular sect in which the blue God, Krishna, was portrayed as an apocalyptic deity with qualities of a super-God. Brahmanism, never a monotheistic religion, now broke into mutually antago