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Unlike the Western religions, Hinduism does not have an easily identifiable beginning. Although records of its early history are not available, Hinduism dates back at least three thousand years in the subcontinent of India. However, within Hinduism there is a great diversity of practice and belief so that it is difficult to identify a distinctive essence. Hinduism contains many traditions that share distinctive characteristics such that they are identifiable as members of the same cultural family. Some traditions share more of these characteristics, making them more strongly Hindu. Over the centuries one such characteristic has been the practice of caste distinctions. Another is seeing Hinduism as a religious way of life that in one way or another reaches back to scriptures, the oldest of which is the Veda.

Historical origins

The term Hindu derives from the Indus River in the northwest part of the Indian subcontinent. Flowing some three thousand kilometers from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea, the Indus served as a natural boundary for those attempting to enter India through the passes of the Hindu Kush. During the period 1500 to 1000 B.C.E., people known as the Aryans, who may have come through these mountain passes, began to dominant the Indus River area of northwest India. Their view of the world was described in the Veda, spoken and written in the Sanskrit language. In the oldest portion of the Vedas, called the Rg samhita, there are references to a river called the Sindhu, which may have been the Indus. By association, the word Sindhu seems also to have been used to refer to the people who lived in the Indus valley. The later term Hindu seems to have derived from Sindhu.

From the earliest historical times, military invasions and trade have flowed through the mountain passes of the northwest, such as the Khyber. Those who invaded India from the Mediterranean area (e.g., the Persian Darius I and Alexander of Macedon) used the term Hindu to refer to those who lived on or beyond the Sindhu River boundary. Over the centuries the term Hindu has increasingly been used to refer to those Indians who share some connection with the Veda as a basis for their way of life. Within the Vedic scriptures are found the overarching concepts of caste, karma, and rebirth that knit together the many diverse Hindu groups. Karma is the idea that each action or thought leaves behind a seed or memory trace that predisposes one to a similar action or thought in the future. These karmic traces, stored up in one's unconscious, as it were, originated not only in this life but also from previous lives, and cause one to be reborn in a future life. This cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is held to be beginningless (anandi) and is seemingly endless. However, for those wishing to escape from this cycle of rebirth, the Hindu scriptures offer three general paths or disciplines (Yogas) by which release may be realized: the paths of knowledge, work, and devotion. In orthodox or Brahmanical Hinduism, the source of these paths, and indeed of all knowledge, including science, is said to be the Vedic scriptures.

Cosmology and the concept of God

In the Hindu view, the whole of the universe is held to have existed beginninglessly as a series of cycles of creation going backward into time infinitely. Although the Hindu scripture is spoken anew at the start of each cycle of creation, what is spoken is identical with the scripture that had been spoken in all previous cycles. The very idea of an absolute point of beginning for either creation or the scripture is not present in Hindu thought. A close parallel to this Hindu notion of the eternal presence of scripture is found in the Western idea of the Logos, especially as expressed in the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (1:1). The rsis or seers, identified as speakers of particular Vedas, are understood to be channels through which the divine word passes to make itself available to humans at the start of each creation cycle. The same rsis are said to speak the same Vedas in each cycle of creation, and the very language in which the Vedas are spoken, Sanskrit, is itself held to be divine.

This view of the Vedas and Sanskrit as being divine had important implications for the traditional Hindu understanding of all forms of knowledge, including science. The rsi's initial mystical vision is of Brahman's consciousness, God's omniscient knowledge. This unitary vision is broken down and spoken as the words and sentences of the Veda so that through this revelation people will be enabled to realize release. In addition to this ultimate spiritual goal, the Veda, as the authoritative speaking of divine omniscience, contains in seed form the fundamental knowledge of all the disciplines—the arts, medicine, and science. This is why the Grammarian philosophers of India argue that correct word use (following Sanskrit rules) is essential for science for two reasons. First, it is essential because only when language is spoken and heard correctly will the seeds of scientific ideas inherent in the Veda be able to manifest themselves. Second, correct word use is essential in formulating and communicating scientific knowledge so that it does not become confused but is clearly conveyed.

Such thinking lies behind the traditional Hindu notion that all knowledge, including science, comes from and through the Vedas. It is just this kind of thinking that anchors the claim of the modern Hindu reformer Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) that science and religion are complementary, cross-validating, and are both based on experience of the same Brahman. Just as science is based on the empirical experience of the outer world (whose essence is Brahman) so also religious knowledge arises from the direct experience of the Vedic word; at base both are experiences of the same ultimate reality.

See also KARMA

HAROLD COWARD