Controversies apart, irrespective of their origin and pedigree, the fact remains that the Aryans had built in India a wonderful civilization, perhaps the greatest human civilization on earth with noble principles, and extremely rich in art, culture, religion, science and literature.
During the Vedic Period (1500-500 BCE), in a distant corner of the Punjab, among the Ashrams of deep forests, the Rishis composed the language of Sanskrit, which became the mother of all the Indian languages (except Tamil) and all other Indo-Aryan and IndoEuropean languages, especially German.
By 600 BCE, the four Vedas were completed as well as the Brahmanas, Aranyaks and the older Upanishads. With the advent of second Urbanization (the first one was of the Harappans), the Indo-Aryans spread out in hundreds of Janapads and 16 Mahajanapads (republics) all over the Indus Valley and the Gangetic plains ~ from SaptaSindhu (Punjab and Sind) to the Bengal delta.
The Rishis (sages) who were inspired poets and seers had been prolific writers producing marvellous works on a variety of subjects categorized under Shruti (Vedas, Sanghita, Brahmanas, Aranyaks and the Upanishads); Smriti (Law books ~ Manusmriti, Puranas, Chandi, the Epics ~ the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Gita); Darshana (Texts of six Philosophical schools); and Tantras(Agama and Nigama). The religious texts and laws created during the Vedic period laid the foundation of the Vedic religion, later known as ‘Hinduism’.
But to refer to the Vedic religion as Hinduism would be a gross misrepresentation because the word Hindu (derived from Sindhu) never existed during the Vedic period and even later till the 13th century when the Delhi Sultans and the Mughals started calling the sub-continent Hindustan.
The word Hindu was first coined by the Persian King Darius in 516 BCE, meaning people living beyond the river Sindhu (Indus), after he annexed Sind.
The Persian Hindush became Al-Hind and Hindstan in Arabia and in Greece, it became Indica or India (Herodotus used it in 440 BCE); the British started using the name of the sub-continent as India from the 17th century. The word was never meant to denote any religion, only the territory beyond the Indus.
Even today, in many Islamic countries, Hindu means people of Hindustan of all religions and Indian Muslims are also known as Hindu Muslims.
In India, Hinduism as a religion encompassing all the Indian-origin religions and sects was first used by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1830 but defined later, even by the Supreme Court of India, ‘as a way of life’ rather than a rigid code of religious practices of a particular group.
The Vedic religion based on Dharma and Rta (or Satya) didn’t have any nomenclature and was known as Sanatana Dharma (the Eternal Dharma having no beginning, no end) or Vaidika Dharma (Vedic Religion) or Manava Dharmasashtra (the Religion of Man). According to the Vedic religion, the four goals of life were: Artha (to earn and acquire earthly possessions for living); Kama (to raise a family and children); Dharma (to perform duties and responsibilities with righteousness) and Moksha (to be detached from the family bonds and seek salvation). Therefore, the four stages or phases of Aryan life, from the kings to the commoners, had been:
I. Brahmacharya (the stage of celibacy and learning as a student); II. Grahasthya (the stage of a householder and leading a family life); III. Banaprstha (leading a retired life, preferably in the forest as a hermit after discharging family duties); and IV. Sanyas (to seek salvation or liberation from all bonds – stage of a monk or ascetic).
An important social development took place during the post Vedic period when Janapads (states with kingship) were established and agriculture and trade flourished. The kingdoms required labourers to conduct agriculture, traders for trading goods and articles, warriors to protect the State against aggression and priests and teachers to preside over the places of learning and the religious places and conduct religious ceremonies.
This led to the creation of the Varna Pratha or the Castesystem, a unique formal stratification of society not to be found in any society of the world.
The Indo-Aryan society was divided into four classes based on the colour, calibre and valour ~ (I) Brahman (Priests, teachers and men of learning); (II) Kshatriya (warriors, kings and administrators); (III) Vaishya (merchants and traders) and (IV) Shudra (artisans, farmers, labourers and others).
The new social system, a functional and economic division not based on heredity and not restricting mobility had been a bold and unique experiment of social engineering and was introduced with all good intentions but gradually degenerated into a rigid hereditary caste-system with no inter-caste mobility. This became the worst nightmare and curse for Indo-Aryan society for centuries till Swami Dayanand, Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda came into the picture to totally discard it. Lord Krishna said in the Gita (Chapter 4, Text 13): “I have created four varnas based on quality and work.” So it was only division of duties, work and labour.
It is not known why and how this rigid and bad caste system spread throughout the subcontinent and engulfed the society everywhere. This is a matter of surprise because the ‘argumentative Indian’ does not accept anything easily. It is the rigidity of the caste-system and Brahmanism’s excessive rituality and overbearing dominance that led to the Sramana movement, a reformist movement for social equality spearheaded by two great sons of India ~ Mahavira and Gautama Buddha. They rebelled against the caste system and Brahmanism of the Sanatana Dharma and established a religious order for a classless egalitarian society based on non-violence, harmony and peace not only among the humans but also with the animals and the environment. The later Vedic period, also known as the Epic Age saw the composition of the greatest epics of the world ~ the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and also the Gita and the Upanishads.
It is believed that the epics were not written in one go but were compiled and completed by many people over 2-3 centuries.
The significance of these two epics has been that, more than the Vedas and the Upanishads, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, with hundreds of editions and versions in various Indian languages have been the greatest unifying factor in the country.
There is hardly any family in India that has not read or heard the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata and imbibed their values. In addition, Sanskrit, the Devbhasha (language of the gods) still remains the language of priests and the original Vedic mantras are still chanted in the temples and on all religious occasions throughout the country.
After the Vedic and the Epic periods, the focus of Indo-Aryan civilization shifted from the North-West of the sub-continent to the Magadha region in the East (present day Bihar), which became the cradle of Indian civilization for the next millennium with the rise of the Maurya Empire and the Gupta Empire.
The second urbanization (600-200 BCE) witnessed the creation of 16 Mahajanapads (oligarchic republics) which were responsible for the wide dissemination of the values of Vedic religion, the language of Sanskrit, the stories of the epics and also the rise of Brahmanism.
During 600 ~ 500 BCE, two revolutionary events ~ the birth of Jainism and Buddhism and the Sramana Movement ~ took place as a protest against the Vedic religion characterized by excessive Aryan rituals, animal sacrifice, the caste-system and the overbearing dominance of Brahmanism. The twenty-fourth Tirthankara Mahavira (549-477 BCE) formalized Jainism by setting five precepts for Jain monks ~ ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truth), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (chastity), and aparigraha (non-possessiveness). The Jains were also required to adopt a lacto-vegetarian life style, the first of its kind in the world.
The origin of Jainism goes back to Muni Rishabhadeva whose birth perhaps predates the Vedic period as proved by the fact that the twenty-third Tirthankara, Parshanatha who lived in the 9th century BCE (872-772) had been accepted by scholars as a historical figure.
That way, Jainism has been the oldest and noblest of all religions of the world preaching non-violence even to animals, insects and plants, love, peace, asceticism and lacto-vegetarianism. The monumental statue of Jain Rishi Gommateshwara (Bahubali) in Sravanbelagola in Karnataka is a testimony to the spread of Jainism throughout India. Gautama Buddha (563-483 BCE), a contemporary of Lord Mahavira, had been another progenitor of the Sramana movement protesting against Brahmanism, rituals and the caste-system.
It appears Buddha was influenced by the Jain principles of non-violence and social equality but rejected asceticism of the Jain Munis. His preaching of Ashtamarg or the Middle Path principles, eschewing of all Vedic rituals and his four simple advices for everybody ~ don’t kill, don’t steal, refrain from intoxicants and refrain from sexual misconduct (respect for women) ~ touched the inner chord of the rulers as well as the commoners.
Therefore, unlike Jainism which was exclusive, Buddhism was promoted and propagated in a big way by the kings of the Mauryan Empire (mainly by Ashoka) and of the Kushan Empire (mainly by Kanishka). Buddhism united the entire sub-continent and also brought the whole of Asia under the umbrella of this humanistic and socialistic religion. One caveat here ~ both Jainism and Buddhism originated as part of the Sramana movement, a reformation movement of the Sanatana Dharma and were never meant to be separate religions by their founders.
It is only after the British came to India that they started treating them as separate religions. Moreover, Buddha had been accepted as the incarnation of the Ninth Avatar of Vishnu.
The Constitution of India has also included Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism within the Hindu fold.