While most Hindus worship Brahman (the creator), Shiva (the destroyer), Vishnu (the preserver), and the goddess Shaktri (or one of her popular forms), they also worship a pantheon of other minor deities, their incarnations, spouses or progeny. As well, many Hindus mix their belief systems to the point where today we have Hindus who worship Krishna or Kali, not giving the least concern to Buddha. On the other hand we have Hindus (who follow the way of religious devotion), who worship Buddha and couldn't care less about Krishna or Kali.

The ultimate authority for all Hindus is the Vedas. The Vedas, including the Brahmanas and the Upanishads, are regarded as revealed canon (shruti, "what has been heard [from the gods]"), and no syllable can be changed. The actual content of this canon, however, is unknown to most Hindus. The oldest of the four Vedas is the Rig-Veda, which was composed in an ancient form of the Sanskrit language in northwest India. This text, probably composed between 1300 and 1000 BC and consisting of 1028 hymns to a pantheon of gods, has been memorized syllable by syllable and preserved orally to the present day.

While the Vedas are the basis of authority of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita is Hinduism's most widely read and cherished literary work. It is basically a dialogue between Krishna and the charioteer of Arjuna who refused to kill his own relatives in battle.

Hindus believe that the universe is a great, enclosed sphere within which are numerous concentric heavens, hells, oceans, and continents, with India at the center. They believe that time is both degenerative - going from the golden age, or Krita Yuga, through two intermediate periods of decreasing goodness, to the present age, or Kali Yuga - and cyclic. At the end of each Kali Yuga, the universe is destroyed by fire and flood, and a new golden age begins. Human life, too, is cyclic. After death, the soul leaves the body and is reborn in the body of another person, animal, vegetable, or mineral. The precise quality of the new birth is determined by the accumulated merit and demerit that result from all the actions, or karma, that the soul has committed in its past life or lives. All Hindus believe that karma accrues in this way; many also believe, however, that it can be counteracted by expiations and rituals, by "working out" through punishment or reward, and by achieving release (moksha) from the entire process of samsara through the renunciation of all worldly desires.

So it seems then, that Hinduism is a multiplicity of cults and sects that are related in some way to a "high tradition". While this "high tradition" influences and shapes Hinduism, the tradition itself is a product of the absorption of tribal gods, rituals and philosophies. The situation is like that of an observer standing on a mountain and looking over a large area of land: the terrain changes, and it is easy to see the difference from far away. But if the observer has to enter the terrain and walk across it, it may be difficult to determine when he has left the forest and entered the steppes, all he knows is that there are fewer trees than a few hours ago. Such is the definition of Hinduism - it's edges are somewhat frayed.

© Copyright 1997
Bethany World Prayer Center
This article (which first appeared in "Frontiers Focus" Vol 1 #3, and is used by permission),
may be copied and distributed without obtaining permission
as long as it is not altered, bound, published
or used for profit purposes.

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