Thursday, July 4, 2013
by Densy Jon
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Darshan and Hindu Veneration of Images

                    Darshan and Hindu Veneration of Images 


               Darshan (also spelled Darsan) is an important aspect of Hindu worship. It refers to viewing an image of a deity. "A Hindu goes to a temple" writes historian Daniel Boorstin, "not to worship" but rather for darshan Darsan is a two-way flow of vision. While the devotee sees his god, so too the god sees the devotee, and the two make contact through their eyes. In the building of a new temple.


             The importance given darshan can be appreciated by the attention that is sometimes lavished on images that are worshiped. In large temples where there are a large number of attendants, the image is woken up in the morning and washed, fed and prepared with flowers and incense before it is placed on its throne in the shrine room.





by Densy Jon
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Hindu Worship

                                               Hindu Worship

        Hindu worship encompasses a broad range of activities, including even dance and drama. How sublime is Hindu philosophy and Hindu mode of worship! It does not stop or end with worship of idol alone. Hindu religious customs, beliefs and the gods people worship can often vary greatly from place to place and even from caste to caste in one locality. Even so Hindus generally observe broadly similar rules regarding food, marriages and burial.Hindus are theoretically obliged to perform the "Five Great Sacrifices" three times a day but few of them other than devout, old-fashion Brahmins actually do. They consist of 
1) the worship of Brahma by reciting the Vedic verses
 2) the worship of gods with burnt offering
 3) the worship of living spirits by offering food to animals and insects, and scattering grain in four direction, the center, in the air and on household utensil
 4) the offering of hospitality to members of one castes 
5) the giving of offering to one’s ancestors. Good Hindus are also expected to give their ancestors a rice ball on the first new moon day of every month and periodically give offerings to the household spirit that lives in the northeast corner of the house.

Puja
           Many Hindus begin their day at home by making an offering on their family altar. Offerings are often the central acts of devotion performed at temples, ceremonies and festivals They are often performed as much out of self or family interest for help passing an examination, the birth a boy, success in business or good health for a sick loved one as an act of devotion to a god.
Temple Worship

            People who acts as officials at temples, conducting or assisting on worship, are known as a pujari or priests. Their main duty is to act as intermediaries between the worshipers and god. These priests are supposed to be Brahmins—members of the highest ranking caste group that have traditionally been priests. Brahmin wear the sacred thread. They have traditionally been the final judge of purity and caretakers of temples. Only they could enter the inner sanctuaries of temples and invoke the deities there for a puja.

Sri Swamiji in the puja temple



         Technically Hindus are supposed to be assisted by a Brahmin priests when performing rituals or ceremonies, but most simple ceremonies such as making offerings, are done without one. A variety of intermediary priests, holy men and teachers perform and assist with rituals. Brahmin have traditionally have not performed rituals for lower castes anyway. In rural areas local headmen often preside over rituals.) Similar obligations are required in a Hindu’s lifetime. There are some forty sacramental rites ( cascaras ) which an orthodox high-class Hindu is expected to perform or have performed on his behalf at various stages of his life. Many of these rarely take place. Most of them are very ancient in origin and feature sacraments and rites thought be similar to those performed in ancient Greece and Rome. 


Wednesday, July 3, 2013
by Densy Jon
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The Indus River Valley Civilization

                                       The Indus River Valley Civilization
     
       In 1921, archaeologist’s uncovered evidence of an ancient civilization along the Indus River, which today runs through northwest India into Pakistan. The so-called Indus Valley civilization (also known as the "Harappa civilization" for one of its chief cities) is thought to have originated as early as 7000 BC and to have reached is height between 2300 to 2000 BC, at which point it encompassed over 750,000 square miles and traded with Mesopotamia. The Indus Valley people were most likely Dravidians, who may have been pushed down into south India when the Aryans, with their more advanced military technology, commenced their migrations to India around 2,000 BCE. Though the Indus Valley script remains undeciphered down to the present day, the numerous seals discovered during the excavations, as well as statuary and pottery, not to mention the ruins of numerous Indus Valley cities, have enabled scholars to construct a reasonably plausible account of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Indus River Valley Civilization
        The Indus Valley civilization raises a great many, largely unresolved, questions. Why did this civilization, considering its sophistication, not spread beyond the Indus Valley? In general, the area where the Indus valley cities developed is arid, and one can surmise that urban development took place along a river that flew through a virtual desert. The Indus Valley people did not develop agriculture on any large scale, and consequently did not have to clear away a heavy growth of forest. Nor did they have the technology for that, since they were confined to using bronze or stone implements. They did not practice canal irrigation and did not have the heavy plough.

Indus River 

         Most significantly, under what circumstances did the Indus Valley cities undergo a decline? The first attacks on outlying villages by Aryans appear to have taken place around 2,000 BCE near Baluchistan, and of the major cities, at least Harappa was quite likely over-run by the Aryans. In the Rig Veda there is mention of a Vedic war god, Indra, destroying some forts and citadels, which could have included Harappa and some other Indus Valley cities. The conventional historical narrative speaks of a cataclysmic blow that struck the Indus Valley Civilization around 1,600 BCE, but that would not explain why settlements at a distance of several hundred miles from each other were all eradicated. The most compelling historical narrative still suggests that the demise and eventual disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization, which owed something to internal decline, nonetheless was facilitated by the arrival in India of the Aryans.

Indus River
         Indus River, Tibetan and Sanskrit Sindhu, Sindhi Sindhu, or Mehran,  great trans-Himalayan river of South Asia. It is one of the longest rivers in the world, with a length of some 1,800 miles (2,900 km). Its total drainage area is about 450,000 square miles (1,165,000 square km), of which 175,000 square miles (453,000 square km) lie in the Himalayan ranges and foothills and the rest in the semiarid plains of Pakistan. The river’s annual flow is about 272 billion cubic yards (207 billion cubic metres) twice that of the Nile River and three times that of the Tigris.




by Densy Jon
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The People And Culture Of India

                          The People And Culture Of India

        Each of the religions of the world has its own culture, with many customs, traditions and refined qualities. The Hindu culture is a culture of love, respect, honoring others and humbling one's own ego so that the inner nature, which is naturally pure and modest, will shine forth. There is no belief system to the Hindu way of life. You can believe in God or not. Individuals can work out their own way to salvation. If there are five people in your family, each one can worship a god of their choice, or not worship and still be a good Hindu. The Hindu culture is rooted in the spiritual ethos of each individual working towards ultimate liberation as the fundamental goal in life.


Hindu Culture

       In the East, spirituality and religion were never an organised process. Organisation was only to the extent of making spirituality available to everybody - not for conquest. A farmer worshipped his plough, a fisherman worshipped his boat; people worshipped whatever aspect of life they related to most, and that was perfectly fine. Essentially, in the East, religion is about you, it is not about God. Religion is about your liberation. God is just one more stepping stone that you can use or skip towards your ultimate liberation. The essential purpose of the God-belief is to create reverence in a person. What you worship is not important. It is not about liking something or disliking it. The object of reverence is irrelevant. If you make reverence the quality of your life, then you become far more receptive to life. Life will happen to you in bigger ways.

          Some of the recent criticism of our mission here at Nirmukta has come from Hindu apologists admonishing the writers for treating Hinduism as a religion. The often encountered claim is that Hinduism is not a religion in the same sense as the other faiths, because of various reasons that the apologists deem are unique to Hinduism alone. This propaganda has been pursued so vigorously by the apologists that it has become a mantra to be used as a shield against criticism. Millions of educated Hindus are taught these talking points, often ideas derived from some insignificant truism miscast into a vast theory of cultural significance. Such “special pleading” is a mark of all religions, asking to be considered unique and special. To begin, let us first look at some of the general qualities of religions.


by Densy Jon
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The Controversial Aryans

                                      The Controversial Aryans

The Indus Valley culture began to decline around 1800 BC, due possibly to flooding or drought. Until recently, it was held that the Aryans (an Indo-European culture whose name comes from the Sanskrit for "noble" invaded India and Iran at this time. According to this hypothesis, both the Sanskrit language and the Vedic religion foundational to Hinduism is attributable to the Aryans and their descendants. The original inhabitants of the Indus Valley are thought to have had a Dravidian language and culture, which became subordinate to that of the invading peoples.

Proponents of this hypothesis point to similarities between Zoroastrianism (the ancient religion of Iran) and the Vedic religion of ancient India, as well as similar finds in ancient cemeteries in modern-day India and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In addition, no trace of horses or chariots has been found in the remains of the Indus Valley culture, but was central to Aryan military and ritual life. Since the 1980s, this "Aryan Invasion" hypothesis has been strongly challenged as a myth propagated by colonial scholars who sought to reinforce the idea that anything valuable in India must have come from elsewhere. Critics of the hypothesis note that there is lack of evidence of any conquest, among other historical and archaeological problems.
One alternative hypothesis is explained as follows:

Between about 2000 and 1500 BCE not an invasion but a continuing spread of Indo-Aryan speakers occurred, carrying them much farther into India, to the east and south, and coinciding with a growing cultural interaction between the native population and the new arrivals. From these processes a new cultural synthesis emerged, giving rise by the end of the 2nd millennium to the conscious expressions of Aryan ethnicity found in the Rig-Veda, particularly in the later hymns.

 The 19th-century Aryan Invasion theory has generally been abandoned as inaccurate, but most scholars do not reject the notion of some outside influence on the Indus Valley civilization. For many, it is a political issue as well as a historical one, with the original theory is regarded as racist and offensive. 

Tuesday, July 2, 2013
by Densy Jon
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History Of Hinduism

                                                History Of Hinduism

           Hinduism is unique among the world religions in that it has no founder or date of origin. While most major religions derive from new ideas taught by a charismatic leader, Hinduism is simply the religion of the people of India, which has gradually developed over four thousand years.
Hindu Gods

            The origins and authors of its sacred texts are largely unknown. Although today's Hinduism differs significantly from earlier forms of Indian religion, Hinduism's roots date back as far as 2000 BC, making it one of the oldest surviving religions. Because of its great age, the early history of Hinduism is unclear. The most ancient writings have yet to be deciphered, so for the earliest periods scholars must rely on educated guesses based on archaeology and the study of contemporary texts.


          In the last few decades, the history of India's religion has also become a matter of political controversy. The history of any nation (or individual) is an important part of its self-identity, and this is especially true of India, which so recently gained independence after centuries of colonial rule. The controversy over India's history centers on the origin of the Aryan culture. In time, the Aryas settled twelve small kingdoms along the Ganges River plain in northern India. The Aryas were ancestors of the present day Hindus. 
  


by Densy Jon
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Definition Of Hindusim

                                                        Definition Of Hinduism
     
   A diverse body of religion, philosophy, and cultural practice native to and predominant in India, characterized by a belief in reincarnation and a supreme being of many forms and natures, by the view that opposing theories are aspects of one eternal truth, and by a desire for liberation from earthly evils.

      Hinduism consists of many diverse traditions and has no single founder. According to some scholars, Hinduism is not exactly a religion. Also known to practitioners as Sanatana Dharma, which means everlasting or eternal religion / truth / rule, Hinduism can best be defined as a way of life based on the teachings of ancient sages and scriptures like the Vedas and Upanishads. The word 'Dharma' connotes "that which supports the universe" and effectively means any path of spiritual discipline which leads to God.