Who Founded Hinduism ?
Founder of Hinduism is an institution of sages called Saptarshis. Just as we have Pope for Christianity today, Hinduism, from the beginning, had an institution of seven sages who were the patriarchs of the Vedic religion.
They very strictly guarded the Vedic body of knowledge, and the copy of the Vedas available to them was considered to be the final copy. They were considered as God’s manifestation on earth, and their word was the final authority in religious matters.
Any changes to the Vedas were needed to be approved by this elite group of sages. If the reasons were justified, they approved the changes and incorporated them into the Vedas. Otherwise, they rejected it and kept the Vedas intact without any contamination. From what appears, they were extremely strict about changes to the Vedas. Even to this day of Hinduism, a word in Veda is normally considered as the final authority to the literal T. And this faith in Vedas was built upon a tradition where the Vedas were very strictly and jealously guarded from any changes whatsoever, unless the change really justified it. Some super human justification was required to have them changed. Any changes, to the extent possible, were always added as appendages rather than their being incorporated into the Vedas. So we have Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads as appendages to the Vedas. As more and more philosophy developed, all of them got incorporated into this body as appendages.
It is this institution of seven sages who founded Hinduism by expending a large amount of effort over thousands of years in unifying a large number of traditions from across continents and civilizations into one universal religion of Hinduism that we see today. The Hindu trinity, the Hindu divine hierarchy, the Hindu festivals, and everything else that we see today was formulated by them. It is they who declared Ram and Krishna to be the incarnations of Vishnu. It is they who inserted Purusha Sukta, Narayana Sukta, and Sri Sukta into the Vedas - these hymns were initially not part of the Vedas.
The names of the Saptarshis carried over from one generation to the next. For example, if Kasyap dies, his son would take on the name of Kasyap and get inducted into the Saptarshis. Once in a while, for some reason, like one of the seven rishis dying without having any children, the names of one or more of the rishis changed, giving us a different set of SaptaRishis.
The religion got so excessively dependent on these sages that they started being considered as the representatives of the creator on earth. This slowly led to their deification and they started being mythicized. They were declared as the mind born sons of Brahma. Subsequently, they were equated with the most evolved light beings in the creation and the guardians of divine laws. Further deification of their attributes lead to the addition of more and more myths and halo around them. This sort of excessive mythicization finally lead to the relegation of this institution from the purview of the real world into the realm of mythology.
This institution got destroyed at the time of the three hundred year severe drought of 2200 BC. At that time, most of the Indians, devastated by the drought, left India for foreign shores, especially to European lands. Because of the severe suffering that people underwent because of the drought, people lost faith in a useless God who did not answer their prayers, leading to the death of the religion and the subequent rise of atheistic cults on the subcontinent. The institution of seven sages got destroyed in this religious upheaval, as a result of which, the origins of Hinduism have once and for all become lost in the dungeons of time.
Saptarshis founded Hinduism. Hinduism originated from their efforts.
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Hey, nice site you have here! Keep up the excellent work!
ReplyDeleteFreevi Neil Chandran
This is not true. There is no founder for Hinduism and you can not equate the seven Rishis to the Pope.
ReplyDeleteYour information seems very biased.
CKP
This is just a very small excerpt from the book - The book gives an extremely detailed view of the birth of Hinduism - it is the first ever book to show the precise way in which Hinduism was born. Please do not form your opinion just by reading the above post.
ReplyDeleteThanks
Prithviraj
Dear Prithviraj,
ReplyDeleteYou have done some fantastic work. Keep it up.
I dont agree with you. This is some one book knowledge you are talking about.
ReplyDeleteThough it is true that Hinduism is largely based on Vedas, some of the Hindu traditions are older than Vedas. E.g. Swastika was found in Indus valley civilization. Animal sacrifice is as old as neolithic age
ReplyDeleteThere s no founder of Hinduism ..Hinduism dates are impossible to get .........many ppl failed till date to find it out
ReplyDeleteHi Santosh
ReplyDeleteMany people have not been able to find out about the origins of Hinduism only because they have always been pre-occupied with issues not relevant to the origins of Hinduism. If you lost your ring in the pond, you need to search for in the pond; if you search for it under the tree, will you ever get it?
Most researchers who research into the origins of Hinduism immediately latch onto the so called synthesis of Aryan and Dravidian religions - they immediately declare:
"Ha! Vishnu is the God of Aryans, Siva is the God of Dravidians - and Hinduism is a synthesis of both the religions"
Even those who are not inclined to think much about the Aryan theory are also normally pre-occupied with the Vaishnavite and Saivite divide. Since this is a completely wrong view of origins of Hinduism, their research begins there and ends there itself.
The origins of Hinduism have nothing to do Aryan-Dravidian synthesis; Hinduism was a well formed religion even before any sysnthesis ever took place between the cultures of Aryans and Dravidians; or between Vaishnavism and Saivism.
The most important question regarding the origins of Hinduism is related to the structure of Vedas, the scriptures that are considered central to Hinduism. Vedas are nothing but compendium of hymns- they have hundreds and hundreds of hymns. However, only a handful of four or five hymns are relevant to general hinduism that is practiced. The rest of hundreds of hymns in Vedas are addressed to Indra, Vayu, Agni and other devas - gods that are not worshipped by Hindus. So given that Vedas do not seem to have much to do with Hinduism, why do Hindus consider Vedas to be central to Hinduism? How are Vedas related to Hinduism? What is the role of Vedas in the theology of Hinduism?
This is the most fundamental question that needs to be answered with regards to the origins of Hinduism. Once we understand the answer to this question in a proper manner, once we understand how Vedas are related to Hinduism and about how Vedas were used to control the religion by the sages of the past, that is when the story of the origins of Hinduism unravels itself. The story would then no longer appear mysterious but would look like an open book that is there for everyone to read.
Thanks
Prithviraj