People all over the world think that Hinduism is a Religion. As one peeps deeper into the annals of the religious history of India he finds Hinduism of today cannot be traced in the Vedic literature: ~
Supreme Court of India:~ Hinduism, as a religion, incorporates all forms of belief without mandating the selection or elimination of any one single belief,“ It is a religion that has no single founder, no single scripture, and no single set of teachings. It has been described as Santana Dharma, namely, eternal faith, as it is the collective wisdom and inspiration of the centuries that Hinduism seeks to preach and propagate,” ~Hinduism has no single founder or scripture: SC, The Times of India (Delhi) Dec 17, 2015
Hinduism is not a Vedic Religion or Santana Dharma. The Vedic Religion or Santana is not Hinduism. There is no direct ancestry Hinduism traceable in the Vedas, though it does have some influence on it.
Upon close examination we discover that the Vedic Religion or Sanatana was not present days Hinduism nor were the Vedic people Hindus, nor will the Hindus of today approve the replacement of the term ‘Hinduism’ with ‘Vedic Religion’.
Neither the name Hindu nor its major beliefs and practices existed in the Vedic times. To this, one must add the marginal place the Vedic Gods occupy in today’s Hindu pantheon.
Vedas themselves are not attractive to most of today’s Hindus as sacred texts. The Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, Puranas, and Manusmriti, may have more to do with the Hinduism of today than the Vedas.
As one goes deeper investigation into the annals of the religious history he realizes the fact that Hinduism as we know it today is of recent origin. He states: “Hinduism did not achieve its status as a coherent, though still baffling, religious complex until after the establishment of the British rule
In discussing the Vedic religion it is also to be remembered that in the course of history, many non-Vedic elements entered into the Vedic religion. The Vedantic freely borrowed elements from the culture and the society around them. Thus Hinduism is full of non-Vedic elements. The Vedic religion or Santana Dharma has nothing to do with present-day Hinduism and is full of diverse faiths, beliefs, castes, and creeds.
However, in as much as elements from the Vedas have influenced some aspects of Hinduism, it may be considered as one of the many factors influencing modern Hinduism. But by no means can it be maintained that Hinduism has its direct ancestry in the Vedic religion. Therefore, Hinduism of Vedic times is an imagined community.
Hinduism of today is of a much later origin, and a historical view of Indian religions would endorse a dichotomy between Vedic Religion or Sanatana Dharma and contemporary Hinduism.
Hinduism does not have a long ancestry as is often presumed or propagated by the Hindu ideologues. Historically, religions like Buddhism and Jainism can claim greater antiquity than the Hinduism of today.
Hinduism began to take a systematic form from the time of the south Indian Sage Sankara in the 8th century A.D. In this sense, he may be considered the ‘founder’ of Hinduism but it was not called Hinduism at that point in time
People in India think Hinduism is a religion and Santana Dharma is Hinduism. But it is not so. - Hinduism has drifted miles away from the Vedic faith so that the two seem to be two distinct faiths
Vedic Religion or Suntan Dharma deserves to be treated on its own as a distinct religion with its sacred texts, rites, rules of social life, beliefs, and practices without interlinking it with Hinduism.
Perhaps it is right to maintain that the Mimamsa School which is concerned with the investigation of the Vedic texts, their correct interpretation, and the meticulous performance of the Vedic rituals and ceremonies has preserved and defended a part of the heritage of the Vedic tradition.
The Vedanta school also may have received a part of the inspiration from the Vedas. For the rest of the Hindu philosophical schools and religious sects, the influence of the Vedas is nominal.
As one goes into annals of the religious history he finds:-
When we carefully examine the two faiths, it is not difficult to discover that there is no noticeable continuity of Hinduism from the Vedic religion or Santana Dharma. Hinduism of today cannot be traced in the Vedic literature.
Although the Vedas are revered as sacred texts, many people in India do not know what ‘belief in the Vedas’ means. In most cases, the acquaintance of the Hindus with the Vedas is limited to the few hymns that are recited in temples and household liturgies.
The Vedas as a body of scripture contains many contradictions and they are fragmentary. For Hindus, scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Puranas are more attractive and appealing than the Vedas.
The Gods and Goddesses they worship differ considerably from the Vedic ones. The collection of hymns called Vedas written in praise of certain deities by poets over several centuries does not seem to have much significance for the Hindus of today.
Hinduism is based on mythology or Puranas. All the Gods of Hinduism are Puranic Gods with form and attributes.
Vedic Gods like Indra, Varuna, Agni, Soma, and the like, whom the Vedic people worshipped, hardly have any significance in present-day Hinduism. The Gods and Goddesses important to the Hindus of today are Ram, Krishna, Kali, Ganesh, Hanuman, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and the respective consorts of the last three, namely, Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Shakti. None of these deities figured prominently in the Vedic pantheon and some of them are non-Vedic.
The major Gods of Hinduism like Vishnu and Shiva are non-Aryan in origin. Though they may have belonged to the Vedic tradition they played no major role in the Vedas.
The more important religious sects of Hinduism, like Vaishnavism, Saivism, and so on, did not have a Vedic origin but had come into existence in comparatively recent times.
The Vedic people worshippers did not use temples and idols as Hindus of today do. For them, the sacrificial rituals were more important than the temple or idol worship the major Hindu feasts of today are based on the epic feats of Rama and Krishna and the Puranic lore pertaining to Shiva and the Goddess.
Belief in reincarnation which is central to Hinduism of today is not attested to in the Vedas, though they hint at life after death. The doctrine of transmigration as elaborated in Hinduism has no place in the Vedic hymns. In the early Vedic literature, there is no express mention of the doctrine of transmigration. It is in the Upanishads that it appears for the first time.
The Rig Veda speaks of two paths for the souls of the deceased, namely, the path of the Gods (devayana) and the path of the fathers (pitriyana). Those who go by the former enjoy immortality and there is no return to physical life after that. The Vedic man longed for this state of life. Whereas those who go by the latter path, unite with the fathers and then return to earth, after having enjoyed the fruits of his deeds. Raja further states that in the entire Rig Veda ― consisting of about 10,500 verses ~ there is only one occasion where there is mention of a return to this world after death. What is implied here is that it cannot be taken as an important teaching of the Rig Veda.
The theory of Avatar (‘descend’) of Gods which is very important to modern Hinduism is non-Vedic.
“Significantly, the term Avatar […] is not found in the earlier Vedic texts, and is absent from the older Sanskrit glossaries”. The caste system which is so integral to Hinduism was also not practiced in the Vedic times. There is hardly any evidence of a rigid caste system in the Vedas. It is argued that the purushasukta hymn of the Rig Veda (X.90) which is often referred to give a religious sanction to the caste system was a later interpolation. The Vedas, however, speak of various classes of people, which appear to have been names of professions, and they were not hereditary.
The very concept of castes by birth, upper/lower castes, superior/inferior castes, outcastes, untouchables, Dalits, etc. are prohibited by Rigveda”.
Vedic Religion deserves to be treated on its own as a distinct religion with its sacred texts, rites, rules of social life, beliefs, and practices without interlinking it with modern Hinduism. Perhaps it is right to maintain that the Mimamsa school which is concerned with the investigation of the Vedic texts, their correct interpretation, and the meticulous performance of the Vedic rituals and ceremonies has preserved and defended a part of the heritage of the Vedic tradition. The Vedanta school also may have received a part of the inspiration from the Vedas. For the rest of the Hindu philosophical schools and religious sects, the influence of the Vedas is nominal.
Maharishi Dayananda Saraswati the founder of Arya Samaj was the first modern Indian thinker to emphasize the importance of ‘going back to the Vedas’ to bring about social reforms in Hindu society and to purify Hinduism of its many aberrations. the founder of Arya Samaj was the first modern Indian thinker to emphasize the importance of ‘going back to the Vedas’ to bring about social reforms in Hindu society and to purify Hinduism of its many aberrations. :~Santthosh Kumaar
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