Hinduism

HINDUISM
History and Development of the Religion
Presently the world total for Hindus stands at one billion, just over 16% of the population. Most remain in India, the saveplace of this belief system, where they make up 80% of the people; the rest hail from Nepal, Bhutan and Indonesia.

British colonial officials in the mid-nineteenth century coined the term Hinduism as a convenient indite for a complex of numerous holinesss with many features in common. The natives do non readily apply the label to themselves and yield no concept of non-Hindu. Unlike other world religions, this congeries has no single historical founder, no unified system of belief, no single doctrine of salvation, no centralized authority, no organize missionary program. It is the most ancient of world religions.

A hypothesis popular about 1900 but so far not supported by the archaeology attributes the origin of the religion to invaders called Aryans, who entered from the northwest, wherefore took and settled the northern plain of the Ganges River between 1500 and gibibyte BCE. With them came their religious literature, known as the Vedas, and their language Sanskrit (refined, purified), which has been the prestige speech of Hindu scholarship and writings ever since.



Sacred texts and fables, eighteen in particular named the puranas or ancient stories, mixed religion with history for centuries. No outside references or accounts anchor these tales in absolute time until the extensive descriptions penned by Megasthenes, the ambassador at an Indian royal court in 302-290 BCE for Seleuceus, erstwhile popular under Alexander the Great. The Aryans could just as well have originated inside India. Some suspect the proposed foreign origin for the Aryans served as a colonial ploy to dampen native self-esteem.

In the sixth century BCE intellectual ferment led to the birth of two reform sects, Jainism and Buddhism, that themselves catalyzed the development of their parent religion, Hinduism....If you want to bestow a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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