Namaste,
I think we can move on, but some recent comments which have been reiterated, “Yoga is older than Hinduism” is preventing us from moving on. As once again it is an attack on the Hindu religion of which the philosophy and practice of Yoga is essential. There is no Yoga without Hinduism and Hinduism without Yoga. This is a false dichotomy being created by Western people that nobody has ever heard before in the East. It seems the West are in the habit of creating false dichotomies. Nobody had ever heard in the East of the “Aryan/Dravidian” divide or “Vedic period and non Vedic period” of Indian history, until the West came along. This is an absolute fact and you can look it up. In the entire history of India and the history of India recorded by the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, nowhere are these Western fabrications mentioned. These are completely modern fictions created by the West for political purposes.
I want to say to my fellow Indians and Hindus why do you tolerate this? Is the West in a better position to tell us about our own history and heritage? Speaking for India we have almost 10,000 years of recorded history, we have hundreds(if not initially thousands) of texts discussing, explaining and detailing systems of Yoga, we were the first to have planned cities and sanitation, first to have universities, first to have hospitals, first to have industry, first to engage in deeps sea navigation and set up colonies and colonize many parts of the world, first to do philosophy, first to manufacture steel etc, and suddenly we are going to forget all this and listen to what the the new kid on the block - Western man has to say? I am not saying hate the Western civilisation, but do not tolerate such blatant attacks on your civilisation.
This statement is very patently absurd “Yoga is older than Hinduism” to any learned person, especially to an Indian person well versed in their history. Hinduism is a name given to a particular set of a stream of religious and spiritual traditions by the British which shared commonalities. They had rightlfully noted that although all these traditions seemed very diverse, worshipped different deities, had different rituals, had different scriptures and different mythologies, they shared the following characteristics:
- They all accepted the Vedas as their supreme authority
- They all accepted the Vedic doctrine of Self/Brahman and the goal of life as self-realization/union with the supreme
- They all accepted the law of karma and reincarnation
- They all taught similar cosmologies, psychology and metaphysics(Samkhya-Yoga-Vedanta)
- They all practiced some form of Yoga
Therefore because the British could identify that there was a common religion that pervaded this seemingly diverse range of religious and spiritual traditions, they gave this the name of “Hinduism” which literally means the common religion of the Indian people. As the word “Hindu” is a geographical identity and refers to people of the Indian subcontinent. Originally the British use to call the Indians, “Hindoos”
Now let us identify those different streams of traditions: There is Vaisnavism(most popular, approx 200 million Hindus are Vaishnavites) this is the tradition that worships Vishnu as their supreme entity and Krishna is their most popular form of Vishnu. Their most sacred scriptures are the Bhagvad Gita and the Bhagvat Purana. They have literally hundreds of other scriptures in this stream. Some of their most popular mantras from the Vedas are the Purusha Suktam and Narayana Suktam.
The second most popular is Shivaism(mostly popular in South India) this is the tradition that worships Shiva as the supreme entity. Their most sacred scriptures are the Agamas/Tantras because these are often presented as discourses where Shiva is speaking, and most of these are in the Tamil language. Amongst the Puranas, the Shiva Puranas are most popular. The Agamas/Tantras are a treasure trove on Yoga techniques and this is why Shiva is called the Lord of Yoga. Their most popular mantra from the Vedas is the Sri Rudram.
The third most popular stream is Shaktism and this is the tradition that worships the divine mother as the supreme entity. This is by far the most colourful of the traditions because the divine mother has as many popular forms: Durga, Kali, Amba, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Chandi and many others. They refer to many popular scriptures, again mostly agamas/tantras, such as Bhairavi tantra. In the Vedas the most popular mantras used are the Devi Suktam.
Finally there is Smartism which worships only the one supreme Brahman, the impersonal god but also allows its adhereants to choose from the 330 million gods their “ishta devata” which is basically saying you are allowed to symbolize the ultimate personal being in any form you want. This is by far the most philosophical of the traditions and its most popular scriptures are the Vedas, Upanishsds and Brahma Sutras.
Amongst these 4 main traditions there are many smaller traditions and sub traditions which makes Hinduism easily the most complex religion in the world. So when a foreinger first steps foot into India they are absolutely bewildered and it looks like there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of religions in India. So credit should be given to the British who recognised that underlying this diversity was a common thread and this was what they called Hinduism.
That common thread is the Vedic religion. If we trace back Hinduism to its core we find the Vedas beating at the heart of it. In the Vedas we find the entire universe of Hinduism already there present. All of the common deities of Hinduism are present in the Vedas, such as Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti. In other words Hinduism is the Vedic religion.
How old is the Vedic religion? Now based on all kinds of evidence presented we know the Vedic religion at the very least is approx 10,000 years old. This consists of texual evidence, astronomical evidence, archeological evidence. We also know, and this fact has already been confirmed that the earliest form of any kind of Yoga was being practiced by the Vedic people. There is no evidence of any other origin of Yoga. The first description of Yoga, its philosophy and practice is in the Vedas.
THEREFORE, as there is no other evidence of Yoga existing prior to the Vedas, the creators of Yoga are the Vedic people. Therefore Yoga is not something that is merely adopted by Hinduism, it verily originates from Hinduism. It is in fact what Hinduism really is at the core.
