Basics of Hinduism

 Know your Dharma

Content Courtesy Mr.GaneshKalyan #ganeshamarkalam

 

Is there a single main book for Hinduism? That one thing anybody can read and get most of it?

I guess each of us will select one and may argue that is what everyone should read. Bhagavat Gita probably would be choice of many. Probably true. But interestingly, Hindus believe Brahman is present in every person. We believe anything we call “good” resides in these texts. This plurality is fundamental to our religion.

If you see the above pictorial, there are two broad sub-divisions/ classifications of the ancient texts – Shruti and Smriti. Before hierarchy of our scriptures and texts it is important to know that the core of these is developed through the “shruti”, “smriti” tradition. It simply means details are propagated by “that which is heard” – Shruti, and “that which is remembered” - Smriti. When Universe was born it occurred with a Big Bang. Imagine a huge ball of light accompanied by enormous sound an instant after that. The reverberating primal sound, Om is thus the origin of all Hindu scriptures (one school of thought) and ancient sages interpreted this into Vedas.

There are 4 Vedas, 13 Upanishads, 6 Vedangas, 18 Puranas, 24 Sastras and Sutras. It is believed that many more were there but were lost to us. Rig Veda, the oldest amongst Hindu scriptures is dated 1500BCE and its evident that someone or other has tried to preserve the tradition and carry forward these for posterity. We should be thankful for those people as the body of knowledge we have is still considered a fraction of what was original available.

The Vedas have four distinct content sections, namely:

·        Samhitas – Mantras and benediction;

·        Brahmanas – Rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices

·        Aranyakas – Commentary on samhitas

·        Upanishads – Meditation, Philosophy and spiritual knowledge. Upanishads have stayed and influenced our living. Some erudite scholars of later years expanded the Upanishads into Upasanas (ways of worship). There are 13 well-known Upanishads under the 4 Vedas. The Bhagavad Gita and the Agama Sastras are also considered to be equal to the Upanishads.

The six Vedangas deal with the entire process of transmitting knowledge flawlessly both with reference to the language, grammar and meaning

Next comes Puranas which cover a wide range of topics, particularly myths, legends and other traditional lore. The Puranas are categorised into 3 broad categories: Brahma puranas, Vaishnava Puranas and Shaiva puranas. Of these 18 exists today- Bhagavata, Shiva and Markandeya, Skanda Purana to name a few. I suppose at level of Puranas, common man starts to mingle easily with Vedic scriptures of our religion, things become easy to understand and interpret.

At a layer below in this hierarchy are epics or itihasa, Ramayana and Mahabharata, so well-known, popular. I had these as part of my school lessons. Even the novice must know something about these, the manner in which these two are intermingled with our life. In addition to providing many life lessons, these epics are colourful, fun and have a myriad of characters that can put Pixar to shame.

The Sasthras and Sutras come next. While there are quite a few, some 24 are well known. You can refer to things like Artha Sasthra, Kamasutra, Yoga sutra, Panchatantra, Divyaprabhandha in this context. Sastras are treatises about precepts and rules, Sutras are supplementary reading material on the subject, like Notes.

The term scriptures only refer to the first two layers, Vedas and Upanishads, but the rest falls under the broad category called Texts. Together these demonstrate the great deep thinking behind what we are as Hindus.

Here we have only referred to texts that are there in Sanskrit. There could be numerous texts by scholars in regional languages. The ancient Tirukkural written in Tamil by Thiruvalluvar is one such treasure of knowledge. Am sure there are many more gems across Bharat in various languages.

We are like standing in an ocean and if one wave can touch our feet, we should consider ourselves blessed.