Hinduism highlights

In the Indo river valley, in the north-west of India, an ancient Dravidian society flourishes probably in the fourth millennia BC. It was both agricultural and urban, with great cities as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. It may have worshiped a mother-goddess. Its representations of God are a man with four arms, signifying symbolically that God was more powerful than the human being. God was sometimes called iruven, “the one who is” or “the one who exists”. God was also called “the one with goat horns” (symbol of strength) or “the one with fish eyes”, indicating his omniscience or knowledge of everything at all times (since fishes can never close their eyes). God is worshipped, feared and loved.

This Dravidian society suffers a crisis around 1700 BC. In the middle of the second millennium BC it receives an Aryan invasion. Aryans were of tribal tradition, pastoral and patriarchal, with Sanskrit as their language. They brought with them their gods (devas), predominantly male, the importance of each one varying in time: Dyaus (equivalent of Zeus and Jupiter), Varuna (god of the night firmament, creator of the Earth and the Sun and protector of the sacred royalty; it is a god remote to the world, containing the terrible creative strength, sometimes beneficial, sometimes destructive; it is the god with more moral characteristics, punishing sins and forgiving the repentant; equivalent to Jewish Yahweh and Greek Uranus), Mitra (the brilliant god of the day firmament, the sun god; always welcoming and good, of incorruptible justice, close to humans), Indra (god of war, storm and thunder), Agni (fire god, igneous in Latin, the intermediary of sacrifices and offerings consumed up to heaven), Soma (god of plants)...

They also brought with them their Sanskrit sacred texts, the Vedas (hymns for liturgical ritual sacrifices), which were later compiled by a wise man designed as Veda-Vyasa (the compiler of the Vedas). They gather in four groups: Rig Veda (Veda of the hymns), Sama Veda (Veda of the melodies), Yahur Veda (Veda of the formula for the sacrifice), and Atharva Veda (Veda of the Atharvan magicians, formulas and enchantments for everyday life).

Aryan society was divided in four groups (varna): brahmins (devoted to study and worship), kshatriyas (warriors), vaishyas (traders, artisans, bureaucrats, land owners) and sudras (peasants and servants). The Dravid population was included in this last group. A fifth group appeared, the dalit (devoted to despised tasks like garbage gathering or transportation of dead people), with those expelled from the other groups and those who were neither Aryans nor Dravids. Those groups are known as “casts”, and the dalit as “untouchables” or “pariah”.

In this context Brahmanism (a special aspect of the Vedic religion) consolidates in India, in coexistence with the popular ancient religious traditions, more local in nature. Brahmanism, traditionally linked to the warrior sectors, is later weakened with the raising importance of traders, as well as by the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism (both questioning the traditional Brahmanist sacrifices). But Brahmanism manages to maintain its influence as a transmitter of culture and education in Sanskrit. Buddhism and Jainism appear in the sixth century BC in confrontation with Brahmanism and they follow their own way.

Jainism underlines that the whole of the Universe is full of individual souls that do not only live in humans but in all living creatures (animals, plants). Those souls try to liberate themselves from the body where they are locked, and Jainism teaches the way to proceed for this liberation to take place. Central to it is the notion of ahimsa (“not to wound”, to avoid violence towards any living being), which implies opposition to the animal sacrifices typical of the Vedic tradition. Violence loads the soul with karma, which has to be dissolved through ascetics, meditation and good behavior. This leads to strict vegetarianism, since eating plants instead of animals reduces the degree of possibility of damaging activities. It also led to avoid the practice of agriculture, to avoid damaging the little animals living in the ground; which made the Jains to be mainly traders and, later on, industry promoters. They practice austerity in a higher degree than Buddhism: fast, bodily mortifications (nudism, exposure to cold and heath). Its monks and nuns have to observe five rules: not to kill, not to lie, not to steal, practice chastity and renounce to the pleasures coming from external things. Their main referent is Vardhamana Jnatiputra (549-477 BC), often designed as Mahavira (“great man” or “great hero”) or Jina (“victorious”). Tradition presents him as someone that, after the death of his parents, left his wife and children to become an ambulant ascetic during thirteen years; then he abandoned his clothes and submitted to twelve more years of severe penitence, until he reached the knowledge of the essence of existence. His disciples gathered in two kinds: the svetambaras (“dressed in white”) and the digambaras (“dressed in air”, naked).

The seventh and sixth centuries BC the Vedas are complemented by the Upanishads (Katha, Mundaka, Taittiriyaka, Brihadaranyaka, Svetasvara, Prasna). Instead of emphasizing the cult, they focus on ideas and symbolic thought; they underline the importance of ascetics, which generate "spiritual warmth" (tapas); transmigration reappears. Upanishad means “to sit attentively at the feet of”, referring to a master (rishi); it has also been interpreted as "esoteric teaching", "secret instruction". The fifth century BC brings the famous Bhagavad Gita ("song of the blessed"), Chapter 23:40 of a huge literary epic poem, the Mahabharata, religious and literary landmark together with the Ramayana.

Popular traditions converged to a devotional approach (bhakti), validated by the Brahmins. Already at the time of Chandragupta (340-298 BC), founder of the Mauryan dynasty in the kingdom of Magadha, there are witnesses of the worship to the god Vasudeva (one of those witnesses was Megasthenes, Seleucid ambassador to the court of Pataliputra, the capital of the Magadha kingdom). During the Sungai dynasty (183 - 71 BC), another Greek ambassador, Heliodorus, also expresses his devotion to Vasudeva. The Brahmins seek to formalize and universalize these cults, joining Vasudeva and other gods to Vishnu (originally a secondary solar deity in the Rig-Veda), the cult to which grows in importance.

Towards the end of the pre-Christian era crystallizes a Brahmanism trinity (trimurti) of gods: Brahma, the creator of the world, the creative force; Vishnu, who preserves and protects; and Shiva, who destroys and renews. Brahma is represented with four faces because he sees in all directions. Vishnu is dark blue as night, as space extending towards everywhere; he is represented with four arms: one hand holds the lotus flower of purity, two hold his weapons and another one a sea horn to be played at the beginning and the end of battles. Shiva is often represented as a dancer with many arms and legs as the permanent movement of the dance of life; he is the god of love and grace, of fertility and procreation, the merciful god that takes care of all lives; he maintains the world in existence with his yogic meditation, but he has also a sinister side, as god of the storm and of destruction, having then as domains the battlefield and the cemetery. The three gods are represented by the letters A, U and M, thus forming the sacred sound “aum” (or “om”), symbolically considered as the initial sound of the Universe from which all was created.

Brahma

Vishnu

Shiva

Three mother-goddesses (shakti, primordial cosmic energy) are associated with these gods: Saravasti, goddess of learning, consort of Brahma; Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu, also called Shri, goddess of wealth, love, prosperity (both material and spiritual), happiness, health, fortune, and the incarnation of beauty, and Parvati, responsible of the creation and agent of all change, consort of Shiva (also called Durga, Kali and other denominations).

Soon associated with the worship of Vishnu is the worship of Krishna (“the one who attracts"), a demi-god, protector of cattle, of which there are already references when the Greeks invaded northern India in the fourth century BC (they compared Krishna with Hercules). Krishna happens to be regarded as an avatar, a human manifestation (avatara, literally "descent", “the one who comes down”) of Vishnu. Another relevant avatar is Rama. Maybe avataras have some relation, whether directly or through Buddhism, with the figure of the Zoroastrian savior (saoshyant), coming to defeat the forces of evil.

In the religious thought that was developing in India it was crucial to see the identity between what is behind the exterior world and what is behind the human being: Brahman (the supreme reality without form, the omnipresent absolute) is the same than Atman (the divine dimension within each person; breath, spirit, being). To perceive this identity one has to be prepared by a spiritual master or guru. To perceive this identity is a source of spiritual liberation (moksha: liberation of the chain of reincarnations, complete realization, emancipation, release, salvation), and breaks the transmigration chain. This identity is graphically expressed with the words “tat twam asi”: you (Atman) are also this (Brahman), words that appear in the Shandongya Upanishad at the end of a comparison of Brahman to salt dissolved in water (which cannot be seen but impregnates it and gives it taste), made by guru Aruni to his son.

“Everything is truly Brahman. He is mind and life, he is light and truth, he is the infinite space.

Greater than Earth, greater than the atmosphere, greater than the sky, greater than all the worlds, lives in my heart. It embraces all the universe and, silently, it is Love towards everything. It is my Atman, this one is Brahman”.

Shandongya Upanishad

An important role is played by the trilogy of inseparable essences inherent to the True Being: "Sat-cit-ananda" ("existence-conscience-joy"), in other words “interior experience of truth – awakening of the conscience - beatitude or supreme happiness”. Humanity, the universe and the divinity form a unit; a conscience of this unity can be reached, we can see and experience it; this conscience generates joy and liberty.

The access to this conscience, that we can call wisdom, can follow four compatible ways, through which the union with the divinity can be reached, thus overcoming the stadium of multiplicity (maya): 1) knowledge, made of reasoning and discernment; 2) love, devotion, feeling; 3) uninterested action; and 4) physic-mental experimentation. They are four yoga (“way of union”), different and complementary, four ways to try to overcome, to go beyond, what hides truth. So we will speak of the knowledge yoga (to use the mind to deepen in the search for understanding, leaving aside the ego-centered concerns, jnana yoga), the yoga of devotion (love and deliverance to truth and not to our interests, bhakti yoga), the yoga of action (to make things that bring wisdom and detach from one’s own interests, karma yoga), and the yoga of attention (concentration in breath and the body movements or postures, observation of life, raja yoga or ashtanga yoga).

1) The way of knowledge goes through a first stage of learning ideas and concepts, a second stage of prolonged and intense reflection so that these ideas and concepts can become alive, operational in oneself, and a third stage of distance from the thinking subject, of displacement of one’s identity towards its perdurable part, thinking of oneself in third person, as someone out of us.

The way of knowledge is the shorter one but also the tougher one...

2) The way of love tries to channel towards the divinity the love that is inside every human heart. While in the way of knowledge the divinity has a more impersonal or transpersonal character, an infinite with which we end up identifying or unifying ourselves, in the way of love the divinity has a more personal character, and is more differentiated from the human being looking for him: God is “other”, different. The aspiration is not to identify with him, but contemplate and venerate him. This bhakti approach is magnificently expressed in a significant classical Hinduism prayer:

“Can water drink itself?

Can trees taste the fruits they produce?

The one adoring God has to be other than Him,

since only in this way will he be able to know the joyful love to God;

because if he says tan God and him are one same person,

this joy, this love, will immediately vanish.

Do not pray anymore for the total unity with God;

Where would the beauty be if the gem and the crimping were one?

Warmth and shade are two,

If they were not, were would be the consolation of warmth?

Mother and son are two,

If they were not, where would love be?

When, after being separate, they get together,

What a joy mother and child feel!

Where would joy be if the two of them were one?

Accordingly, do not pray anymore for the total unity with God."

That this God be personalized (instead of being a pure and infinite being) becomes indispensable. And the goal is to love this God with devotion, really love him, as a living experience (not only as a mental idea), and reach the stage of loving him beyond anything else, and love him with no purpose, not as a means to obtain anything. To do this a great deal of symbols, images and rituals are used, that are not finalities in themselves but elements through which the mind can “undertake the flight”. It is significant this invocation used by priests when beginning the rituals:

“Oh God, forgive three sins born from my human limitations: you are everywhere, but I revere you here; you have no shape, buy I revere you in these shapes; you do not need praise, but I offer you these prayers and salutes. God, forgive three sins born from my human limitations.”

It has to be kept in mind that a symbol (like the divinities with multiple arms showing the versatility and potency of the divine power, frequent in India) can be more significant than a whole treaty of theology. And that a myth can point to depths that the intellect can hardly indicate. It is the symbols, myths and rituals that move the human heart, not the prescriptions nor the logical reasoning; it is them which have the capacity to take thought and emotion from superficiality to depth, from worldly distractions to divinity. As Huston Smith, to whom we follow in these considerations, says: “When singing praises to God, when praying to God with total devotion, when meditating on the majesty and the glory of God, when reading the scriptures about God, when considering the whole universe as a work of God, we move our affection towards God.” Each representation of the divinity points to something “beyond”, and none exhausts the real nature of God. From here comes the opportunity of having a great number of representations of the divinity. Anyway, although it is true that all representations point equally to the divinity, it seems appropriate that everyone chooses one of them as the one with which he identifies the most (the ixta of everyone, the form of the divinity we adopt as the main one).

The way of love is the most widespread and popular...

3) In the way of action, of work, of labor, the key is the attitude from which things are done: whether they are done for one’s own profit or not. In the first option, every action reinforces our ego and isolates ourselves from the divinity; in the second one, the ego is weakened and so are the barriers separating us from the divinity. The goal is to reach uninterested action, which has a sense by itself and not for its results; it will no longer be evaluated according to its success or failure, the gain or loss, the pleasure or the pain. When this disposition is reached, concentration and calm can be maintained in the midst of the greatest agitation. Action is taken, and taken diligently, fully, without laziness or reserves, bringing in all the effort, but without being emotionally submitted to the results of the task.

4) The way of physic-mental experimentation considers that there are physical exercises and mental exercises that can take us closer to the divinity. The West has often mistrusted the way of personal experience, considering that it cannot be a sufficient proof of truth, but India has a different point of view. It proceeds through voluntary introversion, trying to reach the deepest part of psychical energy. The Yoga-sutra of Patanjali (II century BC) present an integral vision of this yoga, labeled as raja yoga. It considers it as a development of the aptitude to direct the mind exclusively towards an object and maintain this direction with no distraction. To reach this aptitude one needs a "practice" (to have reached through the corresponding exercises the capacity to make the proper or precise effort to reach and sustain the state of yoga), as well as a "detachment" (absence of aspirations or purposes from the senses and the mind, a kind of relativizing distance allowing us to see everything out of serenity, including ourselves and our impulses). This process generates a deep understanding of the object to which we address ourselves, an understanding that generates joy.

This process of in depth understanding, of reach of mental clarity, can be disturbed by nine possible interruptions: illness, mental blocking, doubts, lack of prevision, tiredness, excess of complacence, illusions on one’s own mental state, lack of perseverance and regression. These interruptions are manifested through four symptoms: mental unrest, negative thought, incapacity to be comfortable in different body postures and difficulty to control one’s own breathing.

This yoga tries to reduce our physical and mental impurities so that we can reach clarity of perception. The notion of "purification" is important, and explains, for instance, why one has to eat correctly (eat the appropriate things) or stop smoking. In order to purify ourselves, yoga wants to be useful in overcoming five kinds of obstacles: the improper understandings, value confusions, excessive attachment – to that which we believe can bring us happiness -, irrational aversions - normally resulting from experienced pains – and the feeling of insecurity – the anxiety in front of the future.

We should distinguish in ourselves eight relevant components in the process of exploration and clarification, which are at the same time the eight steps of the process:

1) Yama: Our attitudes towards what surrounds us, which have to include: a) respect towards all living beings, and in particular towards the innocent, the ones having problems or that are in a worse situation than us; b) proper communication through language, writings, gestures and actions; c) the overcome of greediness, or capacity to resist the desire of what is not ours d) moderation in all our actions; e) abandonment of avarice or capacity to only accept which is appropriate.

In other words, abstention from injury, lies, theft, sensuality and greed.

2) Niyama: Our attitudes towards ourselves, which have to include: a) cleaning, in other words, to keep our body and our environment clean; b) content, or faculty of feeling well with what one has and has not; c) suppression of impurities in our physic and mental organism by practicing correct habitudes of sleeping, exercise, nutrition, work and relaxation; d) studying and evaluating our progress in this field; e) venerating a superior intelligence or acceptation of our limitations in front of God, the Omniscient.

In short, cleaning, complacence, self control, study and contemplation of the divinity.

3) Asana: Reaching that the body does not distract the mind in the process, placing oneself in an intermediate corporal stadium between lack of comfort, that irritates and disturbs, and the relaxation that makes sleepy; between standing, that makes tired, and lying, that makes asleep. This is done through the asana, precise positions of the body that bring balance and tranquility, like seating correctly.

In other words, the practice of physical exercises in which attention and relaxation, effort and comfort, have to be in a fair balance.

4) Pranayama: The practice of breathing exercises (pranayama), which try to reach the conscious and deliberate regulation of breathing, so that breathing does not distract the mind in the process.

5) Pratyahara: To move attention from the outside to the inside, closing the doors of perception, immerging in the inner contemplation, so that the person can be alone with its mind.

In other words, the control of the senses.

6) Dharana: To reach concentration: to quiet one’s own mind, which spontaneously does not tend neither to calm down nor to obey (a Hindu metaphor says that the mind is like a monkey that is crazy, drunk, with Huntington’s disease and stung by a bee...), until reaching a stage in which the mind can focus at length on an object to explore it in depth, without losing the awareness of itself.

In other words, the capacity to orientate the mind.

7) Dhyana: The capacity to establish interactions with what we try to understand, to the point of reaching the dissolution of duality: conscience identifies so much with the object of perception that it forgets about itself and about the differentiation between it and the object.

8) Samadhi: The complete integration with the object of our understanding when it is the divinity leads to reach the state of samadhi: absorption of the human mind in the divinity. The mind keeps thinking, but in nothing in particular (the differentiating shapes have vanished); the mind is not “in white”, it “sees the invisible”.

The four ways (knowledge, love, action and experimentation) take to a kind of knowledge that goes beyond the knowledge of the rational mind: it raises to the depths, simultaneously dark and enlightened, of what is usually called the mystic conscience, since the object of knowledge is the divinity, the ineffable, that of which it is not possible to speak, the one having no name, the one “in front of which all words go back” (Shankara). But at the same time the use of words and concepts cannot be avoided, sole tools at the reach of our mind, knowing that words and concepts do not take us to the end of the way, but they can point us towards the right direction, give us the correct orientation. This is what happens with the term brahman and its three main attributes, sat, cit and ananda. With them it is said that God is being, conscience and joy, but they are not literal descriptions of divinity, they are only terms that tell us in which direction we have to orientate our search: towards the plenitude of being, and not towards “nothing”; towards the plenitude of conscience, and not towards unanimated matter; towards the joyous ecstasies, and not towards anguish. Because although God cannot be identified even with the trilogy “being, conscience and joy”, humans need concrete and representative images in order to find significations with a certain consistence. It is difficult to conceive, and still more to feel motivated, by things very far away from direct experience. God has no attributes, but it is easier to think about it with attributes, in a personal conception (brahman Saguna) than without, in a transpersonal conception (brahman Nirguna). Shankara will represent this second option, Ramanuja the first one; and Ramakrishna will consider that both points of view are equally correct.

It is also significant of the tradition from India the consideration of the existence of the "subtle body”: there is a subtle energy parallel and in connection with the functioning of the physical body. This subtle energy or prana would circulate through subtle conducts or nadis. There are three main nadis, parallel to the vertebral column: ida, which follows the left side of the vertebral column, basically of a yin nature; pingala, following the right side, basically yang, and sushumna, which goes in between the other two.

Also following the vertebral column or backbone, in the subtle body there are seven relevant points, seven centers cumulating energy, which correspond with points of the physical body, and are associated with psychological traits, natural elements, numbers, etc. They are the well known chakras:

1) muladhara, at the base of the column, the basic centre, the root, represented by a square or a lotus with four petals. Its element is the earth.

2) svadhistana, related to the sexual organs and the instinctive impulses, represented by a lying growing moon – with the horns looking up - or a six petal lotus. Its element is water.

3) manipura, related to the belly and the nostril, with the physical life of eating and digestion, represented by an inverted triangle or a lotus of ten petals. Its element is fire.

4) anahata, related with the chest, the heart and the lungs, with feelings and emotions, represented by a six point star or a lotus of twelve petals. Its element is air.

5) vishuddha, related with the neck, the larynges, the pharynges and speech, with expression and communication, represented by a circle within an inverted triangle or a lotus of sixteen petals. Its element would be space.

6) ajna, related to the forehead, the mind and conscience, represented y a circle or a lotus of two petals. Its element would be mental energy.

7) sahasrara, related to the highest part of the head, with superior intuition, spiritual will and the transcendent world, represented by a triangle or a lotus of one thousand petals. Its element would be spiritual energy.

The systematized emergence of Hinduism does not seem to occur until the early Christian period, although it will not be fully formalized until the time of the Gupta dynasty (320-650 AD), the golden age of Hinduism (a term used by western people; Indians call it sanatana dharma, the eternal right way). It gathers new interpretations of the Veda but at the same time maintaining a strong link with them and their gods (something that Buddhism and Jainism did not do).

Indian religious thought is gathered in six orthodox schools (astika):

- Nyaya (with a scholastic belief in a personal god and an atomistic world)

- Vaisesika (also atomistic, concerned by the distinction between beings and individual objects)

- Sankhya (founded by Kapila around 600 b.C., based on a dualism between eternal spirits –purusha- and a primitive and active material substance -prakrini-; the human being is composed of a material part, prakrini, which forms a body capable of enclosing purusha or free soul, which can suffer the pains communicated to it by the material element; liberation consists in discovering that purusha is free and that the material existence is nothing but an apparent illusion, but the divine help is necessary to reach such liberation)

- Yoga (of which we have already talked at length)

- Mimamsa (“interior search” or exegesis, or old exegesis –Purvamimamsa-, of a polyteist ritualism and considering that Vedas exist since the eternity and that they identify with the Creating Word; it considers ethic actions as the force that determines the appearance of the world)

- Vedanta (or Uttara Mimamsa, “posterior or superior exegesis”, of a monist carácter, strongly linked to the Upanishad and spread by Sankara)


Worship focuses principally in Vishnu and Shiva. Also popular are Ganesh, son of Shiva and Parvati, represented with the head of an elephant, who helps humans to overcome obstacles, and Hanuman, assistant to Rama with the appearance of an ape.

In the medieval period (500-1500) Brahmins, often counselors of kings, coexist with popular devotion, which the Brahmins sought to incorporate into their schemes; popular devotion (bhakti) was less sensitive to cast division than the Brahmins. In South India, in the Tamil territory, there was in the seventh century a flowering of fervent popular devotion, somehow confronted with Buddhism. In this context appears the strong personality of philosopher Shankara (788-820), a Brahmin (Brahmana in Sanskrit) taking distances both in respect of Buddhism (although some aspects of his thought are considered the result of Buddhist influence, even if it is considered that Shankara’s thought favored the decline of Buddhism in India) and in respect of the devotional approach. He gave great importance to ascetics and the yogi development of the individual self as Brahman. Shankara considered that it is maya (the illusion that makes the one appear as a large number of separate and independent entities) which prevents humans from seeing that reality is one and indivisible, that everything is Brahman (the absolute impersonal); a position called advaita ("not two", a nuance of genius between "one" and "two") that will have a long projection in the philosophy of religion. Maya puts humans in search of pleasure, generating suffering and problems; ascetics and contemplation are the ways to go beyond maya and therefore are more important than devotion or rituals. Since reality is one and includes the truth that is inside humans, there is no place for love and devotion to God by the faithful, nor is justified the consciousness of separation between God and the human. Shankara promoted the monastic movement within Hinduism, which bloomed during this medieval period in India; Hindu monasteries, called mathas, also had social and educational activities. In parallel, temples (mandir) also took new importance; since the sixth century they are made of stone (formerly they were made of wood or clay, more degradable). As in Europe, in Medieval India a lot of temples were built, in the north resembling mountains, in the south as courts surrounded by a wall with sanctuaries spread around.

The reaction of the devotional sectors towards Shankara was personified by Ramanuja (born in the mid-eleventh century, died in 1137), who sought to reconcile the tradition of the Upanishads (equivalence between Atman and Brahman) with bhakti devotionalism, which considers that humans can get absolution or salvation (moksha) through the devotion to God and through his grace. Ramanuja wrote an extensive commentary to the Bhagavad Gita. The followers of Ramanuja split in two schools: vadagalai (humans should have the initiative in the process of salvation, opening themselves to the grace of God) and tengalai (it is God who initiates the process, enveloping the human being with his grace; humans should only show their disposition to let them be caught). Tengalai is a little more popular and peasant oriented, and incorporates tamil language to its activities, while vadagalai is more faithful to Sanskrit.

In the twelfth century the lingayata cult appears, centered on the worship of Shiva, a strict vegetarianism, abstinence from alcohol, a virtuous life of hard work and sobriety, humility and kindness, the protection of their gurus, the defense of faith and daily worship, and the disapproval of cast distinctions within the lingayata community. It is possible that this movement was a result of the impact of Islam in India.

At the end of this medieval period the shakta worship boosted in India, focused on the veneration of the female consort of Shiva, called, as mentioned, Parvati, Durga, Kali and other names. For this movement, this goddess personifies the power of nature, of which humans are considered to depend. She creates only to destroy, and only creates because she destroys. She is fierce, hungry and full of violence, and can only be appeased by the sacrifice of living beings, including humans.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (in parallel with what happened in Europe) see the appearance of a wave of religious reform and revival in the context of Hinduism, which resulted in the construction and restoration of many temples and the set up of many groups, schools or cults that blended devotional fervor with social protest, one of which became Sikhism (sikh meaning “pupil”, “disciple”). Sikhism, one of the most attractive and dynamic fruits of Hinduism, would result from the confluence of three factors: this wave of religious reform and revival, the encounter between Hinduism and Islam taking place in the northern part of India, especially in the Punjab, and the personality of the poet, religious reformer and mystic Nanak (1469-1539). Guru Arjun (1563-1606) was also important in it: he gathered the hymns of his predecessors and his own hymns in the book Adi Granth and was a martyr by decision of the Mogul emperor, since he did not want to convert to Islam. Sikhism combines elements from both Hinduism and Islam, and it consolidated as a differentiated community, with its own holy book (the Guru Granth Sahib, which includes the Adi Granth), its own worship and its own succession of gurus, with ten main ones, the first one of which is Nanak and the last is Gobind Singh (1666-1708), whom around 1699 created the Khalsa or “community of the pure”. Accede to it those willing to fully commit to serving the others, studying the masters, daily meditation and a healthy diet with no meat and no drugs. They carry the five symbols of the “holy soldier”, just and compassionate: uncut hair (Kesh), a wood comb (Kangha), a steel bracelet (Kara), short trousers as underwear, for both men and women (Kachera) and a ritual daga (Kirpan). Among the Sikhs there is no cast distinction; they help each other and they help other people, disregarding their religion, race, political orientation, sex or cult; they do not cut their hair and they consider that to die fighting for the Sikh cause leads to paradise. Sikh temples are called gurdwara (“door of the guru”), where the Guru Granth Sahib is venerated and its hymns are sung; one of its spaces is the langar, where a meal is shared with all those wishing or needing it. The main denominations given to the divinity are Vahiguru (“great master”), Satguru (“true master”) and Akal Purakh (“the eternal one”).

In South India this time of rebirth occurs within the liberal and tolerant kingdom of Vijayanagar (1336-1565), a kingdom that coexisted with a Syrian Christian community linked to the preaching of the Apostle Thomas (and therefore very old), and a Muslim community in Malabar established since the early days of Islam. To the north, where there was the Muslim sultanate of Delhi, it seems that the intense encounter with Islam and especially with Sufism was a trigger for much spiritual energy. A unique and significant figure in this regard is the poet Kabir (1440-1518), born in Varanasi, weaver by trade and for whom it is difficult to say whether he was Muslim or Hindu: "Oh God, whether you are Allah or Rama, I live under your name...". He used the vernacular languages instead of Sanskrit, typical of Brahmanism orthodoxy.

The next major step in the history of India is the Mughal Empire (1526-1858), a Muslim empire founded by Babur (or Babar) and the most significant ruler of which was King Akbar (1556-1605). Pious Muslim, open-minded, valued by the Jesuits, discussed by Orthodox sectors for his religious innovations, he married a Hindu princess who remained Hindu, and sought to improve relations between Muslims, Hindus and Christians in India. In the sixteenth century Portuguese Catholic priests also arrived in India, and in the seventeenth century the Jesuit Roberto de Nobili moved to Madura, in southern India.

Soon, however, the European presence in Asia will be stepping up to the height that marked the nineteenth century European colonization. The major religious cultures of Asia (Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam) suffered from this impact. Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), who lived during a harmonic pre-colonial time, prior to the uprising of 1857 against European colonialism, is a significant character: he tried to reconcile Hinduism and Western culture. He was a Bengali, had good knowledge of Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit, worked for the East India Company and, once retired, encouraged institutions providing access to English education for Bengali people. He advocated social reform and fought for the abolition of sati, the voluntary immolation of Hindu widows. He has been called the "Father of Modern India". In 1828 he founded the spiritual association "Brahmo Samaj", to which will belong Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905), father of Rabindranath Tagore and a defender of the preponderance of the Upanishads over the Vedas, and Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884), who advocated a greater rapprochement between Christianity and Hinduism until the influence of Ramakrishna led him away from Christianity. Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1883), from the area of Mumbai, advocated a renewed Hinduism but not through Western influence but through a return to the essence of the Vedic teaching; he started the "Arya Samaj" movement. This recovery of Hinduism and reaction against Occidentalism will be channeled in the second half of the nineteenth century by two great personalities, Ramakrishna (1834-1886), a Bengali Brahmin priest in the temple of Goddess Kali, devoted to asceticism and meditation, with a good knowledge of Christianity and Islam, and his disciple Vivekananda (1863-1902), who in 1893 had a major impact in the Parliament of World Religions held in Chicago.

The confrontation between Hinduism and the West, in this case also including the Islamic influence, will be accentuated by Tilak (1856-1920). Defender of a predominantly Hindu nation, he advocated a fight against external influences and generated tension with the Muslim community. In prison, he wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. He grounded political action, even violent one, in religion. The tension between Hindus and Muslims eventually lead to the partition between India and Pakistan after independence in 1947, and these community tensions are still present in the political life of India.

Great figures of twentieth century Hinduism will be the thinker, poet (1913 Nobel Prize in Literature) and teacher Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), and the father of India's independence movement and the non-violence movement, Mohendas Gandhi (1869-1948), called Mahatma, “the one with a big soul”. Gandhi studied in London, worked in South Africa and returned to India in 1915, in a context marked by the radicalism of Tilak. Gandhi also studied the Bhagavad Gita, but from a perspective influenced by the New Testament, Tolstoy and Ruskin. Dressed as a farmer, he lived very frugally to indicate the need to overcome the corruption brought by Western materialism and return to the simplicity of life and spiritual values. He defended the cause of the untouchables and the prohibition of alcohol. He became the undisputed moral leader of Hindu India. Since advocating a policy of conciliation toward Muslims, he was killed by Hindu nationalist radicals on January 30, 1948.