95
Hinduism is not just a
faith. It is the union of
reason and intuition that
cannot be defined but is
only to be experienced.
Radhakrishnan, The
Bhagavad-GitaBy performing rituals in the
prescribed way, Hindus believe that
they are aligning themselves with
the rational ordering of the world and
becoming at one with it. The images
and actions are richly symbolic.
order, or dharma, a person may
be required to perform rituals and
make offerings to the gods (a form of
sacrifice) that are thought necessary
to maintain the sense of order.
Hindu ideas of time
Hindu thought sees time as cyclical,
with the universe already having
moved through three great cycles.
Each of these is said to have taken
millions of years; each coming
into being and then passing away.
Thinking of time as cyclical
has an important consequence for
religious thought. In the Western,
linear, concept of time it is possible
to think of everything as simply
the product of something else that
preceded it (the law of cause and
effect), and it is therefore natural to
wonder how the world began. This
starting point is the only stage at
which linear theories of time require
some kind of input from outside the
world itself: something has to have
been responsible for setting the
great train of cause and effect in
motion at the beginning of time.
Conversely, in Hindu thought,
the ever-turning cycles of time
are contrasted with an eternal
and unchanging reality called
Brahman, which exists in and
through everything. Worldly time
runs in cycles, but Brahman is
timeless, the central force that keeps
the cycles moving; it is the eternal
reality that stands behind the
process of creation and destruction
that characterizes the world of
human experience.
If the great cycles of time are
utterly dependent upon a timeless
reality, then the right ordering of
this changing world depends on
awareness of that reality. This
logic gives rise to the idea that
one of the aims of religion is to
understand and maintain the
right ordering of the world.Religious ritual and order
From perhaps as early as 1700 BCE,
and continuing over the next few
hundred years, there was a gradual
influx of Aryan people from Central
Asia into India. They brought
with them their pantheon of gods,
together with ideas that had
parallels with those of the Ancient
Greeks. The Aryans integrated
themselves into the Indus Valley
civilization of northern India, an
ancient society known to have had
its own religious traditions. There
is strong evidence to suggest ritual
bathing and worship of a great
mother goddess (p.100); other
artifacts found include cremation
urns and a seal depicting a horned,
cross-legged deity.
What took place was not a
sudden or overwhelming change,
but an intermingling of cultures.
In terms of religion, what emerged
was a tradition of sacrificial
worship and ritual that found
expression in the hymns of the first
great collection of Hindu sacred
literature, the Vedas. Within this ❯❯See also: Making sense of the world 20–23 ■ Sacrifice and blood offerings 40–45 ■ Man and the cosmos 48–49
■ Beliefs for new societies 56–57 ■ The ultimate reality 102–105
HINDUISM