write a short essay on formation of hinduism
Answers
Explanation:
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.
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), as well as karma (action, intent and consequences) and Saṃsāra (cycle of death and rebirth).
Answer:
A short note on the short history of Hinduism
While it may be that the religious streams now grouped together under the rubric of Hinduism are ancient, the word 'Hindu' was not applied to them until relatively recently.
The word “Hindu” is now taken to mean a person who follows what is called the Hindu religion, or Hinduism. It was not always so.
In Sanskrit (as in the earlier Indo-Aryan), “sindhu” means a large body of water and its usage is applied to rivers and oceans. The word was turned into the proper name of the largest river in the region, now called the Indus. The terms “Hind” and “al Hind” came to be applied to the Indian sub-continent – the region across the river – by Persians and Arabs starting around the 6th century BCE. The geographic name was applied to ethnicity and culture also. It had nothing to do with religion until much later.
Proponents of the “Hindu” religion, in particular those who follow the ideology of Hindutva, claim that it is the world’s oldest. While it may be that the religious streams now grouped together under the rubric of Hinduism are ancient, the word “Hindu” was not applied to them until relatively recently by those who followed these religious streams or religions. In DN Jha’s essay “Looking for a Hindu identity”, he writes: “No Indians described themselves as Hindus before the fourteenth century” and “Hinduism was a creation of the colonial period and cannot lay claim to any great antiquity”.
In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus.
Jha continues: “The British borrowed the word ‘Hindu’ from India, gave it a new meaning and significance, [and] reimported it into India as a reified phenomenon called Hinduism.”