Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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Extract 3: N. Smart, ‘Hinduism’
Taken from: A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by P. Quinn, C.
T aliaferro and P. Draper, (Blac kwell, 2010), Part I, Chapter 1 Hinduism, pp. 7-14
The Hindu tradition is important for the philosophy of religion from a number of
angles. First , t here is t he int rinsic int erest of a non-West ern t radition, given that
the philosophy of religion is often treated in suc h a Western way. I shall therefore
begin with a general introduc tion to the intellec tual history of Hinduism. Sec ond,
there are interesting notions of God as refrac ted through so many gods and
goddesses in Hindu mythology, ritual, and piety. Third, there are various notions
suc h as karma and reinc arnation, and c onc epts of the self, whic h differ from
Western ones, together with the difference in epistemology, which can create
interesting and fruitful areas of disc ussion. Fourth, there are debates with other
sc hools, mainly the Buddhists, whic h are suggestive for Western sc holars. Fifth, the
modern Hindu philosophic al revival, espec ially t hrough Vivekananda and
Radhakrishna n, and in its c laim that all religions point t o t he same goal, meet s wit h
c ert ain rec ent philosophers of religion, not ably John Hic k.
First , t hen, a brief hist ory and desc ript ion of t he Hindu t radit ion. Hinduism is so
t o speak a t radit ion (or c ollec t ion of t hem) by induc t ion. It does not , like Islam,
emanate from a single sourc e, the Qur’an.... Though it has admittedly anc ient roots,
suc h as the Indus Valley c ivilization, the Vedic hymns, anc ient tribal myths, and so
forth, it was only about the third century CE that it came together into anything like
the shape which we identify as Hindu. For example there are key ideas and
sourc es, and inst it ut ions, whic h c ome t oget her t hus relat ively lat e: belief in
reinc arnation, karma, the great epic s (the Mahabharata and the Ramayana), the
va st expanse of the cosmos and its periodic sleep and recovery, devotion to such
great gods as Siva and Vishnu, the emerging c lass and c aste system, the aphoristic
summaries or sutras relat ing t o t he beginnings of philosophic al sc hools, t emple
worship, statues inc arnating the gods, the worship of the Goddess, gurus, yoga,
austerity, the prac tic e of pilgrima ge, sac red c ows, the dominanc e of brahmins, and
so on. T his wonderful amalgam c ame t o c harac t erize Hinduis m as a loosely knit
system — mainly by c ont rast with c ontemporary Buddhis m.... From the eleventh
c ent ury onwards t he c ont rast was c hiefly wit h Islam, wit h it s relat ively aust ere
theism, while Buddhism, partly under pressure from Islam (for its monasteries were
vulnerable to alien rule), faded away. Meanwhile various import ant philosophies or
theologies were formulated, above all those of Sankara (8–9th c entury), Ramanuja
(11th c entury) and Madhva (13th century). These were systems known as Vedanta
(the End or Purport of the Vedas or Sac red Revelation). Other Hindu sc hools (as
opposed to Buddhist, Jain, Materialist, etc) included Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya,
Vaisesika, and Mimamsa, and various Saiva schools (dedicated, that is, to the god
Siva).
The oldest Hindu texts are the Vedic hymns. They c enter on various deities,
suc h as Indra, Agni, Varuna, Dyauspitr, and so on. There is in the hymns a
tendenc y to think of them essentially as the same — a theme also found in modern
Hinduism. Also, a degree of henotheism is in evidence, namely, treating a god
addressed in a given hymn as the god: this has its analogue in the later Hindu
motif of treating Vishnu and Siva as alternative representations of the One. In the
period of the main Upanisads, dating from about the fifth to the sec ond c entury
BCE, two main trends emerge. One is the search for the esoteric or true meaning of