... advance from the south and not from the north. These theories have not only been suggested & widely approved but are gaining upon the general mind. Alone in all this overthrow the European account of Vedic religion & Vedic civilisation remains as yet intact & unchallenged by any serious questioning. Even in the minds of the Indian people, with their ancient reverence for Veda, the Europeans have effected... has never yet been given for the problems they raise. The present essays are merely intended to raise the subject, not to exhaust it, to offer suggestions, not to establish them. The theory of Vedic religion which I shall suggest in these pages, can only be substantiated if it is supported by a clear, full, simple, natural and harmonious rendering of the Veda standing on a sound philological basis... rati, raya, rayi, uti, vahni etc,—an almost endless list,—are used so persistently because they expressed shades of meaning & fine psychological distinctions of great practical importance to the Vedic religion, that the Vedic gods were intelligently worshipped Page 31 & the hymns intelligently constructed to express not incoherent poetical ideas but well-connected spiritual experiences,—then ...
... life. But even on the external, the Vedic religion spoke of the highest Truth, Right, Law of which the gods were the guardians, of the necessity of a true knowledge and larger inner living according to this Truth and Right, as also of the home of immortality to which the soul of man could ascend by the power of truth and right being. In addition, the Vedic religion provided sufficient ground to draw... still known, the Veda, the Book of Knowledge. Only in the light of this esoteric sense can we understand the full flowering of the Vedic religion in the Upanishads and in the long later developments of Indian spiritual seeking and experience. The inner Vedic religion attributes psychic significance to the godheads in the cosmos. It conceives of a hierarchical order of the worlds, and an ascending... guidance, 'secret words' - ninya vacamsi — seer wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer' - kavyani kavaye nivacana. ² It is, however, true that there was an external aspect of the Vedic religion and this aspect took its foundation on the mind of the physical man and provided means, symbols, rites, figures which were drawn from the most external things, such as heaven and earth, sun and ...
... in the external side, the Vedic religion spoke of a highest Truth, Right, Law of which the gods were the guardians, of the necessity of a true knowledge and the larger inner living according to this Truth and Right, and of home of immortality to which the soul of Page 82 man could ascend by the power of truth and of right being. In addition, the Vedic religion provided sufficient ground... still known, the Veda, the Book of Knowledge. Only in the light of this esoteric sense can we understand the full flowering of the Vedic religion in the Upanishads and in the long later development of Indian spiritual seeking and experience. The inner Vedic religion attributes psychic significance to the godheads in the cosmos. It conceives of a hierarchical order of worlds, and an ascending stair... the ages, and it is this tradition which is seen as a source of Indian civilization, its religion, its philosophy, its culture. It is, however, true that there was an external aspect of the Vedic religion and this aspect took its foundation on the mind of the physical man and provided means, symbols, rites, figures which were drawn from the most external things, such as heaven and earth, sun and ...
... bright or dark or confused figures that there is here some divine Multitude or else mighty Infinite, one, manifold and mysterious, which takes these forms and manifests itself in these motions. The Vedic religion took this natural sense and feeling of the physical man; it used the conceptions to which they gave birth, and it sought to lead him through them to the psychic and spiritual truths of his own... single or multiple that guides, sustains and directs his life, and he calls to it for help and support in the desires and difficulties and distresses and struggles of his human existence. 1 The Vedic religion accepted also the form in which early man everywhere expressed his sense of the relation between himself and the godheads of Nature; it adopted as its central symbol the act and ritual of a physical... between the individual and the universal powers of the cosmos which covertly supports all the process of life and develops the action of Nature. But even in its external or exoteric side the Vedic religion did not limit itself to this acceptance and regulation of the first Page 199 religious notions of the natural physical mind of man. The Vedic Rishis gave a psychic function to the godheads ...
... questions with any authority. But on the general question our views are known. Aryaism is not an independent religion. It is avowedly an Page 403 attempt to revive the Vedic religion in its pristine purity. The Vedic religion is a national religion, and it embraces in its scope all the various activities of the national life. Swami Dayananda as a restorer of Vedicism included the theory of politics... scope and revealed the intensely national character of the Hindu religion and morality. His work was avowedly a work of national regeneration. In dealing with the theory of politics as based on the Vedic religion he had naturally to include the truth that independence is the true and normal condition of a nation and all lapse into subjection must be a sin and degeneration, temporary in its nature. No man ...
... Sun-world, seat of this illumination, home of the gods, foundation and seat of the Truth, was the achievement of the early Fathers, pûrve pitarah , and of the seven Angiras Rishis who founded the Vedic religion. The solar gods, children of Infinity, Adityah, were born in the Truth and the Truth was their home, but they descended into the lower planes and had in each plane their appropriate functions,... mystification, that there is no sign of it in the Veda unless we choose to read it into the primitive mythology, that it Page 679 is not justified by the history of religion or of the Vedic religion, that it was a refinement impossible to an ancient and barbaric mind. None of these objections can really stand. The Mysteries in Egypt and Greece and elsewhere were of a very ancient standing... psychical to physical functions; but the latter in some instances gave place to the less external significance. I have given the example of Helios replaced in later times by Apollo. Just so in the Vedic religion Surya undoubtedly becomes a god of inner light, the famous Gayatri verse and its esoteric interpretation are there to prove it as well as the constant appeal of the Upanishads to Vedic riks or ...
... to the Christian era and the violence of the subsequent revolt against it, has been fixed in our minds by Buddhistic ideas as a result of the most formidable & damaging attack which the ancient Vedic religion had ever to endure. On the other side, the Vedantic sense of Veda is supported by the highest authorities we have, the Gita & the Upanishads, & evidenced even by the tradition that seems to deny... The substance of modern philological discovery about the Vedas consists, first, in the picture of an Aryan civilisation introduced by northern invaders and, secondly, in the interpretation of the Vedic religion as a worship of Nature-powers & Vedic myths as allegorical legends of sun & moon & star & the visible phenomena of Nature. The latter generalisation rests partly on new philological renderings... entirely new point of departure. Possibly Sayana is right and the Vedas are only the hymn-book of a barbarous & meaningless mythological ritual. Possibly, the European theory is more correct and the Vedic religion & myth was of the character of a materialistic Nature worship & the metaphorical, poetical & wholly fanciful personification of heavenly bodies & forces of physical Nature. But neither of these ...
... & development of the old Sanscrit tongue for a standard of interpretation and the connection of thought in the hymns for a guide to their meaning. I have arrived as a result at a theory of the Vedic religion, of which this book is intended to give some initial indications. I put aside at the beginning the common assumption that since religion started from the fears & desires of savages a record... India. An original community or a general diffusion is at least possible. The double aspect of exoteric practice and esoteric symbolism may have already been a fundamental characteristic of the Vedic religion. Is it entirely without significance that to the Vedic mind men were essentially manu, thinkers, the original father of the race was the first Thinker, and the Vedic poets in the idea of their ...
... GURU Nay, if you seek the interpretation of your religion from Christians, atheists and agnostics, you will hear more wonderful things than that. What do you think of Charvak's interpretation of Vedic religion as neither pantheistic nor polytheistic but a plutotheistic invention of the Brahmins? An European or his disciple in scholarship can no more enter into the spirit of the Veda than the wind can... other hand the same man worshipped different nature-forces, but each in its turn as the Lord of the Universe, then is this Pantheism, pure and simple. And this was indeed the outer aspect of the Vedic religion; but when the seers of the Veda left their altars to sit in meditation, they perceived that Brahman was neither the Visvadevas nor the synthesis of the Visvadevas but something other than they; ...
... were to cleanse mud-stained feet with mud. Here we see the same trend of revolt against an ancient and universal religious practice as that which destroyed in India the sacrificial system of the Vedic religion,—although Buddha's great impulse of compassion was absent from the mind of Heraclitus: pity could never have become a powerful motive among the old Mediterranean races. But the language of Heraclitus... figured in the stone that the prayer is offered. It is noticeable that in his conception of the gods he is kin to the old Vedic seers, though not at all a religious mystic in his temperament. The Vedic religion seems to have excluded physical images and it was the protestant movements of Jainism and Buddhism which either introduced or at least popularised and made general the worship of images in India ...
... 65,2. Griffith 405 has "Asuras of Gods" and the note: "the high or ruling Gods of all the deities". Hale 406 discusses the locution: 401.P. 228. 402.P. 229. 403. Asura in Early Vedic Religion (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1986), p. 41. Parpola lists this book in his Bibliography, p. 269. 404. Op. cit., p. 148, col. 1. 405. Ibid., p. 367, col. 1. 406. Op. cit. , p. 42... applying simultaneously to the same being, he notes: 471 This verse should make one very suspicious of any theory that maintains that devas and asuras were two different divine groups in early Vedic religion. It should also make one suspicious of a theory which says that a being can be either a deva or an asura at different times depending on his actions at the time. Rudra is referred to here at one ...
... (aśvah), they are called sapta vānīh, the seven Words of the creative Vak - Speech, the expressive power of Aditi..." 9 And when we come to Aditī we reach one of the greatest conceptions of the Vedic religion. For, above all goddesses and above all gods stands Aditi, the infinite Consciousness and Force, Mother of every god whom the Rigveda throws into relief and who even in that relief points back... character of the post-Rigvedic Shiva. He refers to "a current opinion among many scholars that Shiva was a later conception borrowed from the Dravidians and represents a partial conquest of the Vedic religion by the indigenous culture it had invaded" 29 . After labelling this conception as an error, he tells us of Rudra: "He is named the Mighty One of Heaven, but... this violent and mighty Rudra ...
... characterised as a degradation of the Vedic religion, but they might conceivably be described, not in the essence, for that remains always the same, but in the outward movement, as an extension and advance. Image worship and temple cult and profuse ceremony, to whatever superstition or externalism their misuse may lead, are not necessarily a degradation. The Vedic religion had no need of images, for the physical ...
... remarkable how much his work in the public domain depended on his inward apprehension of his spiritual provenance. He effected reforms in Hindu society because he had a non-sectarian view of his Vedic religion. In 181.4 he started the Atmiya Sabha which was a forerunner of the Brahmo Samaj, founded in 1828. These social and religious activities were to run parallel to the political regeneration he attempted... whose inner life reflected nation-building activity. In 1875 he established the Arya Samaj in Bombay and the Samaj spread to other parts of the country. His Satyarth Prakash is a defence of Vedic religion and is based on his philosophic interpretation of the Vedas. Dayanand accepted caste but deplored its modification. He did not accept caste as birth oriented. Instead he stressed moral character ...
... cannot see how this argument involves a regressus ad infinitum except in so far as the whole idea of evolution and progressive causality lies open to that objection. As to the origins of the Vedic religion, that is a question which cannot be solved at present for lack of data. It does not follow that it had no origins or in other words that humanity was not prepared by a progressive spiritual experience... the ritualistic materialism of the Vedas." From both premiss and conclusion I have dissented and I have finally described, not only the Upanishads, but all later forms, as a development from the Vedic religion and not a revolt against its tenets. Our Indian doctrine avoids the difficulty in another way, by interpreting the Veda as a book of ritual hymns and revering it as a book of knowledge. It puts ...
... long century by European Vedic scholarship. What is the main positive issue in this matter? An interpretation of Veda must stand or fall by its central conception Page 669 of the Vedic religion and the amount of support given to it by the intrinsic evidence of the Veda itself. Here Dayananda's view is quite clear, its foundation inexpugnable. The Vedic hymns are chanted to the One Deity ...
... such a pronounced physical character. If then these storm-gods can be shown to have a psychological character and symbolism, then there can be no farther doubt about the profounder sense of the Vedic religion and ritual. Finally, if Vritra and his associated demons, Shushna, Namuchi and the rest appear when closely scrutinised to be Dasyus in the spiritual sense and if the meaning of the heavenly waters ...
... a scientific certainty and firm intellectual basis which has hitherto been lacking. Dayananda has given the clue to the linguistic secret of the Rishis and reemphasised one central idea of the Vedic religion, the idea of the One Being with the Devas expressing in numerous names and forms the many-sidedness of His unity. With so much help from the intermediate past we may yet succeed in reconstituting ...
... y or possibility is laboriously justified or brilliantly supported. It is on the basis of a purely conjectural translation of the Vedas that Europe presents us with these brilliant pictures of Vedic religion, Vedic society, Vedic civilisation which we so eagerly accept and unquestioningly reproduce. For we take them as the form of an unquestionable truth; in reality, they are no more than brilliantly ...
... effort of feeble human nature is to Vedanta only the first imperfect manifestation of the divine self in humanity. Vedanta embraces, harmonizes and yet overtops and exceeds all other moralities; as Vedic religion is the eternal and universal religion, so is Vedic ethics the eternal and universal morality. Esha dharmah sanâtanah. Page 284 II. Ethics in Primitive Society. Every system of ethics ...
... from sin, O Sun, speakest today to Mitra and Varuna, that may we speak and abide in the Godhead dear to thee, O Aditi, and thee, O Aryaman." And in the Gayatri, the chosen formula of the ancient Vedic religion, the supreme light of the godhead Surya Savitri is invoked as the object of our desire, the deity who shall give his luminous impulsion to all our thoughts. Surya Savitri, the Creator; for the ...
... Aryan invasion from the north, an invasion of a Dravidian India of which the Indians themselves had no memory or tradition and of which there is no record in their epic or classical literature. The Vedic religion was in this account only a worship of Nature-Gods full of solar myths and consecrated by sacrifices and a sacrificial liturgy primitive enough in its ideas and contents, and it is these barbaric ...
... organisations must either progress or degenerate but can in no case maintain themselves unchanged against the attack of Time. Buddhism has come and gone and the Hindu still professes to belong to the Vedic religion held and practised by his Aryan forefathers; he calls his creed the Aryan dharma, Page 135 the eternal religion. It is only when we look close that we see the magnitude of the illusion ...
... duty was always on the cards and several tribes might have made it. On the other hand, the life without the direct presence of Brāhmanas and Śramanas might lead to a complete deviation from the Vedic religion. In the area between India and Persia this deviation could have been towards no alternative religion except the Mazdean. So the Yonas, unlike their companions, may have been totally Mazdeanized ...
... the idea that this exaggeration...was actually the whole of Indian thought and sentiment or the one undisputed governing idea of the culture. Nothing could be more false and inaccurate. The early Vedic religion did not deny, but laid a full emphasis on life. The Upanishads did not deny life, but held that the world is a manifestation of the Eternal, of Brahman, all here is Brahman, all is in the Spirit ...
... the Vedic Yoga Is it possible to arrive at some precision in regard to the actual processes and methods of yoga, particularly when the Vedic texts are voluminous and also because ritualism of Vedic religion and esoteric knowledge of the psychological principles and methods of yogic realizations are intertwined in the language in which the Vedic texts are composed? Fortunately, Sri Aurobindo has written ...
... greater room to the actions and movements of the Gods. Here, again, the Vedic Vishnu is a natural precursor and sufficient origin of the Puranic Narayana, Preserver and Lord of Love. In the Vedic religion, ritualistic sacrifice occupied the central place. In the Puranic tradition, the Vedic sacrifice persisted only in broken and lessening fragments. The house of fire was replaced by the temple ...
... scientific certainty and firm intellectual basis which has hitherto been lacking. Dayananda has given the clue to the linguistic secret of the Rishis and re-emphasised one central idea of the Vedic religion, the idea of the One Being with the Devas expressing in numerous names and forms the many-sidedness of His unity."² Psychological Theory of the Vedic Interpretation The psychological ...
... bring larger and larger sections of people, larger and larger gradations of people into the realm of experience of the secrets which were originally reserved only for the initiates. The outer Vedic religion had behind it an esoteric synthesis of Yoga which had discovered the presence and operation of a number of godheads who were still cosmic expressions of the One Supreme, — ekam sad viprā bahudhā ...
... of pronunciation has remained so uniform in the country and if the tradition has remained so powerful, it is because of the degree of perfection that was achieved in respect of Shikshā. The Vedic religion involves complex ritualistic Karmakānda (system of prescribed acts and sacrifices). A detailed understanding of this Karmakānda became necessary in due course of time, and this gave rise to a vast ...
... place to a new pantheon who assumed larger cosmic functions. Nowadays, as has been shown by Sri Aurobindo in his book The Secret of the Veda, a factor of main importance and understanding of Vedic religion is that, like in so many cultures of the ancient world Egyptian, Chaldean or Greek, to name a few — a double aspect of exoteric* practice and esoteric** symbolism has been one of its fundamental ...
... The tendency towards an exclusive stress is already at work on this level and it is the perception of this truth that lies behind the term henotheism used by European scholars to describe the Vedic Religion. The next stage of devolution is the Mind proper. There or perhaps even before, on the lower reaches of the Overmind, the gods have become all quite separate,-self – centred, each bounded in ...
... are inferior to Indra and Agni. It has even become a current opinion among many scholars that Shiva was a later conception borrowed from the Dravidians and represents a partial conquest of the Vedic religion by the indigenous culture it had invaded. These errors arise inevitably as part of the total misunderstanding of Vedic thought for which the old Brahmanic ritualism is responsible and to which ...
... negating life was actually the whole of Indian thought and sentiment or the one undisputed governing idea of the culture. Nothing could be more false and Page 239 inaccurate. The early Vedic religion did not deny, but laid a full emphasis on life. The Upanishads did not deny life, but held that the world is a manifestation of the Eternal, of Brahman, all here is Brahman, all is in the Spirit ...
... so-called Aryans and Dravidians as one homogeneous race, - or in a previous development, of which the records have either been lost or are to be found in the Veda itself... As to the origins of the Vedic religion, that is a question which cannot be solved at present for lack of data. It does not follow that it had no origins or in other words that humanity was not prepared by a progressive spiritual experience ...
... Varanasi, 1971). Gupta, "Two Urbanizations in India: a side study in their social structure", in Puratattva no. 7 (1974) [cited by S. Asthana]. Hale, Wash Edward, Asura in Early Vedic Religion (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1986). Page 437 Hastings, James ed., Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics Vol. I (T. & T. Clarke, Edinburgh, 1925). Herodotus, The ...
... demand the same fidelity and scrupulousness in the interpreter as in the original he interprets. There is obviously a constant relation between the different notions and cherished terms of the Vedic religion; incoherence and uncertainty in the interpretation will prove, not that the face evidence of the Veda is misleading, but simply that the interpreter has failed to discover the right relations. ...
... If this were all, the explanation of the part taken by the Angiras Rishis in the finding of the Cows, would be simple and superficial enough; they would be the Ancestors, the founders of the Vedic religion, partially deified by their descendants and continually associated with the gods whether in the winning back of the Dawn and the Sun out of the long Arctic night or in the conquest of the Light ...
... seems to me often more correct than the conjectural scholarship of the Europeans. But there is an even more important truth than the high moral and spiritual significance of the Vedic gods and the Vedic religion which results to my mind from a more careful & unbiassed study of the Rigveda. We shall find that the moral functions assigned to these gods are Page 327 arranged not on a haphazard ...
... the light, power and joy of an infinite existence. 7 Ordinary religion is a sacrifice to partial godheads other than the integral Divinity. The Gita takes its direct examples from the old Vedic religion on its exoteric side as it had then developed; it describes this outward worship as a sacrifice to other godheads, anya-devatāḥ , to the gods, or to the divinised Ancestors, or to elemental powers ...
... synthesis of multiple affiliations. It expresses the characteristic genius of India and hence Hinduism and Indianism came to be looked upon as synonymous terms. And the same could be defined also as Vedic religion and culture, for its invariable basis – the bed-rock on which it stood firm and erect – was the Vedas, the Knowledge seen by the sages. But there had already-risen a voice of dissidence and di ...
... prescribed procedures that are to be observed in those sacrifices. In this sense, the Veda is considered to be a book of religion, the prescriptions of which are binding on the adherents of the Vedic religion and which are to be scrupulously followed in the performance of rituals, ceremonies and prescribed acts. It cannot be denied that such a view of the Veda can be confirmed in the light of the vast ...
... the offering and drinking of the soma-wine. Page 5 (b) We may note that the Vedic sacrifice is symbolic in character, even though it may have also ritualistic significance for the Vedic religion. Just as in the Gita, — the word Yajna, sacrifice, is used in a symbolic sense for all action, whether internal or external, that is consecrated to the Gods or to the Supreme. Yajna in the ...
... synthesis of multiple affiliations. It expresses the characteristic genius of India and hence Hinduism and Indianism came to be looked upon as synonymous terms. And the same could be defined also as Vedic religion and culture, for its invariable basis—the bed-rock on which it stood firm and erect—was the Vedas, the Knowledge seen by the sages. But there had already risen a voice of dissidence and discord—that ...
... The tendency towards an exclusive stress is already at work on this level and it is the perception of this truth that lies behind the term henotheism used by European scholars to describe the Vedic Religion. The next stage of devolution is the Mind proper. There or perhaps even before, on the lower reaches of the Overmind, the gods have become all quite separate,—self-centred, each bounded in ...
... The tendency towards an exlcusive stress is already at work on this level and it is the perception of this truth that lies behind the term henotheism used by European scholars to describe the Vedic Religion. The next stage of devolution is the Mind proper. There or perhaps even before, on the lower reaches of the Overmind, the gods have become all quite separate,—self-centred, each bounded ...
... Absolute which is perceived as the denial of the temporal being. Lessons learnt from these extreme positions have been given their proper place and value. It must be stated that the early Vedic religion did not "deny life. Upanishads, too, did not deny life, but held that the world is a manifestation of the Eternal, of "Brahman. They declared that all here is Brahman, all is in the Spirit and ...
... synthesis of mutiple affiliations. It expresses the characteristic genius of India and hence Hinduism and Indianism came to be looked upon as synonymous terms. And the same could be defined also as Vedic religion and culture, for its invariable basis—the bed-rock on which it stood firm and erect—was the Vedas, the Knowledge seen by the sages. But there had already risen a voice of dissidence and discord—that ...
... assimilating new elements and even forces of a true culture did not strike him. The life of this bold genius was cut short at forty-eight as he was poisoned by his enemies while serving the cause of Vedic Religion. Sri Aurobindo has paid a glowing tribute to Swami Dayanand. Arya Samaj is the reformist religious organisation spread out not only in India but in many foreign countries. The Guru-Kula system ...
... It is a wonderfully apt phrase: 'the religion of the Dawn'. The Sun, Surya, Savitri—in his four differentiated forms, Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman and Bhaga—is no doubt central to the Vedic religion, but the human approach to them is through the gateway of the Dawn. Kazantzakis, on the other hand, begins with a Prologue to the Sun and concludes with a lament because the Sun has set. Thus the ...
... reason religions tend after a time to decay and perish. But in India the Vedic religions do not decay and perish; they change and are reborn. And they have this good fortune precisely because of the Vedic element in them. Their ritual, forms, worship, ceremonies, high days are not Vedic; even if they enshrine old Vedic ideas, they do it ignorantly and under a disguise; but all these religions have in... effect of these inward processes,—the reign of Vedic philosophies, the dominance of religions rich with the sap of the old Vedic spirit, the traditional teachings of particular Yogic schools, the theory & practice of the Guru-parampara. It would be as great a mistake to exaggerate as to belittle the importance of any of these aids in themselves. Vedic knowledge was rich, many-sided, elastic, flexible;... which they live; and always it is, in essence, a Vedic practice and a Vedic discipline. Religions think that they live by their dogmas, their sacred books, their ceremonies, but these are all aids and trappings; they live really by the men who practise them, by their clergy and mystics and much more by their mystics than by their clergy. So long as a religion has in its fold a sufficient number of souls ...
... Jainism and Buddhism developed as anti-Vedic religions, the conflicts between Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism manifested sharply; but even then these three religions absorbed each other, and by this absorption, they were enriched and even in the days of sharpest conflicts, the emphasis on praxis in all the three religions was equally shared by all these religions. Within Hinduism itself, the conflict... religious mind may oppose all pronounced or drastic change, still the core of Indian religion is a spiritual, not social discipline. Religions like Sikhism counted in the Vedic family although they broke down the old social tradition and invented a novel form. It is true that in all the four elements that constitute Indian religion, there are major and minor differences between adherents of various sects, schools... came to dominate in the process of reconciliation among religions was the spirit that declared that there are no true and false religions but rather that all religions are true in their own way and degree. As Swami Vivekananda declared with great emphasis, each religion is one of the thousand paths to the One Eternal. 40 All religions aim at relating human life or humanity to the page - ...
... Jainism and Buddhism developed as anti-Vedic religions, the conflicts between Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism manifested sharply; but even then these three religions absorbed each other, and by this absorption, they were enriched and even in the days of sharpest conflicts, the emphasis on praxis in all the three religions was equally shared by all these religions. Within Hinduism itself, the conflict... mind may oppose all pronounced or drastic change, still the core of Indian religion is a spiritual, not social discipline. Religions like Sikhism counted in the Vedic family although they broke down the old social tradition and invented a novel form. It is true that in all the four elements that constitute Indian religion, there are major and minor differences between adherents of various sects,... law of karma as understood in various religions is understood differently in different religions, and the significance of human action, even in those religions which do not believe in rebirth, is viewed differently. In the presence of these and many other differences among religions, the problem of conflict of religions seems to be impossible of solution. Religions, therefore, tend to be exclusive and ...
... footnote adds: "According to Greek evidence Chandragupta was a follower of the sacrificial religion." A little earlier he 1 quotes Strabo 2 on the four occasions when the king appeared in public, one of them being "to offer sacrifices". We cannot mistake the implication that Sandrocottus followed the Vedic Hindu religion and not Jainism. He could not have been Chandragupta Maurya. All in all, taking... Sandrocottus and Megasthenes. This epoch has economically all the signs of the golden age initiated by the Chandragupta who was the founder of the Imperial Guptas. The second closing theme is religion. Raychaudhuri 2 writes: "Jain tradition recorded in the Rājāvalīkatha avers that Chandragupta was a Jain and that, when a great famine occurred, he abdicated in favour of his son Simhasena and... Hoernle... [The Indian Antiquary, xxxi, pp. 59-60], after a critical study of all the Jain Pāttāvalīs, believes in the tradition..." There is no doubt that Chandragupta Maurya followed the Jain religion and no doubt also that, as Mookerji 4 tells us, even before the time of the Mauryas, "the atmosphere of Jainism had already penetrated into Pātaliputra" and "Jain influence was...predominant in ...
... Rigvedic age, 233, 243, 262, 263, 281 Rigvedic language, see Sanskrit, Rigvedic/Vedic Rigvedic religion (see also mysticism in the Rigveda), 208-9, 230, 255, 299-300, 308-9, 313-14, 352, 369-71, 395-9 Rigvedics/Vedics (see also Aryans, Rigvedic/Vedic), 156, 168, 192, 197, 208, 226, 240, 245, 255-8, 261, 282, 308, 311, 313, 314, 317-19... Veda, 165-6, 176, 246, 269, 409, 413 Vedic deities, 210, 412 Vedic geography, 163-4 Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, Macdonell & Keith, 192, 253, 288 Vedic language, 267, 269 Vedic literature, 166, 186, 212, 234, 245-6, 254, 299, 302, 306, 311, 370, 377 Vedics, see Aryans, Rigvedic/Vedic; Rigvedics/V edics Vendīdād, 270, 284, 286... Ravi (see also Paruṣṇī), 366 religion Aryan, 175-6, 269, 281 Avestan, 371 Dasa, 308-9 Harappān, 178 Indian, 175-7, 252 Indo-Aryan, 416 Indo-Iranian, 269, 400, 403, 419 Indo-European, 314 Iranian, 282, 314, 419 of Asuras, 366-7 Rigvedic/Vedic, 208-10, 230, 255, 299-300, 308, 309, 313-14 ...
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