Hindi the mother of all modern religions

A proponent of AIT? Hmmmm..you see this is where I like to disagree. There are a lot out there who would accept AIT since it is generally accepted by most academic scholars as representation of the general consensus in the international academic world.

For fear of hijacking this thread, I shall make this concise.

I firmly believe that there was no Aryan invasion. Aryans migrated westward from India not the otherway around. Which also explains the latterday cultural and linguistic similarities of Indians and Iranians.

Should you wish to further discuss we can talk more of this in another thread.

Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic Scholarship

[edit on 23-11-2004 by aryaputhra]

Originally posted by The Astral City
Again your theory is just conjecture.

Originally posted by aryaputhra
That is what makes it THEORY. A theory when supported with factual evidence, is no longer a 'theory'; it becomes - A FACT.

I'm sorry, but THAT is what makes it a hypothesis. It does not become a theory until it has stood up to rigorous testing, much in the same way that evolution is a theory. It is not a proven fact, but it has stood up to much evidence contrary to what it states.
All that aside, I am personally, no offense to any Hindu people, in favour of Mesopotamia being the beginning of one set of beliefs, the Celtic, Germanic tribes being responsible for another, and finally the Eastern mythos, Hindu being the trunk of that tree.

[edited quote codes -nygdan]



[edit on 29-12-2005 by Nygdan]

The above shows that I cannot use quotes properly. To clarify, the first quote was from one person, the second from aryaputhra, and the major body of text was my opinion. Also, I realised that I neglected the isolated aboriginal peoples of each undiscovered continent. I seriously doubt that the Hindu religion had an affect on the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Native Americans, and the Aboriginals of Australia.

Hinduism is the source of Babylonian mystical thought and....Hinduism. The thesis of the Hebrews stealing Canaanite religion and then calling it Judaism has been as discredited as the thesis of Christianity stealing from Mithraism and calling it Christianity. FINIS.


Read this by the way, all pagan religion stems from the cult of Nimrod. It's fairly easy to draw everything together:

www.biblebelievers.com...

[edit on 28-12-2005 by Nakash]

Ok then, you have seriously piqued my interest. How do you explain the native religions of Australia and the Americas? Are these long lost branches of Hinduism, or are they remnants of even earlier religions, from which Hinduism may have sprang?

Paganism (and that includes the modern Papist incarnation of which that book is in part subject) are traces of Nimrod's pre-diluvian worship. The Negasila, Tammuz... Read that book, all pagan practices can come from either two sources:

-Golden Bough thesis that the human brain is somehow "wired" to perpetually repeat certain archetypes. (I reject this explanation).

-All pagan religion has a primordial basis. (Real explanation)

Nimrod was the first "Antichrist", his attempt to unify Humanity together had an extremely strong and potent effect upon the development of "religion" (In fact Babel was simply a huge center for occult study so it is to be expected).


[edit on 28-12-2005 by Nakash]

While it cannot be proven currently, and quite possibly never will, your hyposthesis has merits, and has given me much food for thought. Nonetheless, I do not believe that it is correct. It sounds too much like grasping at straws, saying that there has to be some mother of all religions. It's like the unifying theory of everything in science, in which they are trying to discover one grand rule which makes the universe tick. You've tried ot find one great common ancestor.

Although a follower of the vedic religion myself. I do not believe it is the mother of all religions. This is because looking at the complexity of the religion, it seems only logical to conclude that it has to evolve from a simpler primitive form. Nature Worship. That is the mother of all religions.

Call it paganism, shamanism what you will but that is what the Vedic religion evolved from.

This Vedic religion is what was later split into Zoroastrianism & Hinduism (so called) and the rest as they say is history

Originally posted by BlackandWhite
in favour of Mesopotamia being the beginning of one set of beliefs, the Celtic, Germanic tribes being responsible for another

There is some evidence that some germanic tribes have a religion related to hinduism or the old vedic religion, in that there is a hindu god or somesuch called "Mannu" and there is at least one german tribe that claims descent from "Mani". Apparently there is more similarity in the two myths also.

The intersting thing is that the greek pagan religion seems like its very strongly related to the religion of the peoples of asia minor, and that religion is very similar to the religions of sumer and syria and what not.

Hinduism, from what I have heard, is also very similar to the ancient egyptian religion, and that also ties into the sumerian/syrian/asia minor religions.


But just to show how complicated the topic is, "Hindi" certainly isn't the mother of any religion, since "Hindi" is a language. Hinduism is the modern religion practiced in lots of India, but of course this is somewhat different from the really really ancient religion that is often called the "Vedic" religion. And since vedic/hinduism isn't organized into a church likesay Catholicism or even Orthodox Christianity, there is a really wide variety involved.

I seriously doubt that the Hindu religion had an affect on the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Native Americans, and the Aboriginals of Australia.

Actually there have been some connections found between the religious/mythic practices of some of these peoples. Its rather intereting, and Joseph Campbell covers a lot of it nicely though he's not, I beleive, accepted as a scholar or authority on the matter. We can find, for example, the myth of the immolated king in the sudan, and across a wide belt of the earth through the middle east, the coasts and south of india, and into the indonesian and polynesian islands. I wouldn't think that Hinduism spread from india into africa and the islands, and at an early stage too. Notice that that 'belt' can be explained by the migration of man out of africa to these regions too.

Nakash
Hinduism is the source of Babylonian mystical thought and....

Upon what do you base this? Hinduism probably didn't even exist at the time. I would say that there is an interesting possiblity that the people of the cities of Harrapan might have been a semitic peoples (I think that they are at least hypothesized to be connected, linguistically, to the 'elamo-semitic' family of languages), and that if they are then we might have a basis for a common/related religion in sumer and india. But, agian, I don't see why that would be Hinduism, and I don't see why it would necessarily have spread from harrapan to sumer, especially considering that sumer is much older.

The thesis of the Hebrews stealing Canaanite religion and then calling it Judaism has been as discredited

No it hasn't. Indeed, there are some good correlations between the religions practiced by the hebrews and their leaders and the canannites. Solomon set up cult idols to gods in addition to yahweh in his temple, for example, and in some texts apparently Yahweh and Asherah are worshipped as a divine couple. The other elements are successively excluded from the texts and its thought that this is the action of reforming, monotheistically minded writers.

all pagan religion stems from the cult of Nimrod

What did you find convincing from that page? The idea that pagan religions all stem from mythical/legendary nimrod is quite a claim and doesn't jive with the evidence.

are traces of Nimrod's pre-diluvian worship. T

There was no great global flood.

Incorrect Nygdan (let me correct myself on something though- Nimrod's worship was POST-Diluvian, I for some reason confuse this period with sections of the bible referring to pre-diluvian events).

Now:

-Hinduism in it's modern form obviously is quite different from it's original form which either coexisted or gave rise to Babylonian mysticism, however the key components are all there- the eternal return, the destruction and reformation of a world by a single deity, the belief that deity reincarnates periodically for certain tasks, the "Yamar" (cognate of Ymir in the Northern realms) in which destruction and birth are held as one in an eternal cycle (a key concept found in nearly every pagan cult), the belief in purgatory, the belief in works as a source of atonement, as well as many amazing linguistic links which indicate a common source or special relationship.

-The theis of the Hebrews stealing Canaanite religion has been thoroughly discredited for several reasons. Here's a little summary:

taken from: phoenicia.org...

The Plan

The Hypothesis
A group of nominal Jews and agnostic Israeli archaeologists (inspired by Israel Finkelstein, chairman of the Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv University, who, with archaeology historian and journalist Neil Asher Silberman, published a book called "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Text.") introduced to the forum an idea which, in short, claims that the Hebrews were never enslaves in Egypt and there was no Exodus to the "Promised Land". Further, they claimed that the Hebrews were actually Canaanite and that Judaism was a product of ideas borrowed from Canaanite faith systems along with an imported but adapted concept of one god. That is the heretic Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton's concept of monotheism that dismissed all Egyptian deities in favor of a single god, the sun god Ra.

May I also add that Solomon engaged in idol worship due to the influence of his many (pagan) wives, and that you get that information from a text you at the same time choose to ignore (the Bible).

Don't believe Nimrod ever existed ? Who built this then ?

www.livius.org...

That's right- Babel (or the Etemenanki Ziggurat) physically existed. It was built by none other than Nimrod, along with the more ancient Esagila (neither survived to our day). He and his wife (Semiramis) were worshipped in both those structures according to the Bible under the name Bel, When Nimrod was killed he according to legend came back from the dead (either as the Fish-God Dagon/ Oahnnes or as Tammuz through reincarnation). If you look very closely at ancient pagan doctrine the relationships never change (Bel, Zeus, Hadad, Dagon, Tammuz, Jupiter, are all names of a central deity worshipped a VERY long time ago in history, this deity is even now worshipped in Rome). That deity is Nimrod, the arch-heretic of ancient times, along with his wife, the "Queen of Heaven" Semiramis (why there are also many Ashtartes but they all link back to a central legend widely believed in the ancient world). The papacy is the modern incarnation of this cult.

Read this book, it put's it all together:

www.biblebelievers.com...

Also, there was no universal flood. The biblical flood is widely held to have been local (though quite extensive in it's damage).


[edit on 29-12-2005 by Nakash]

Mod Edit: to trim quote

[edit on 29-12-2005 by kinglizard]

Originally posted by The Astral City
Any anthropological or theological proof to this at all?

~Astral

Um, Astral... it's a religion. Proof would completely defy the entire purpose. None of the religions on this planet are willing to accept that their claims are highly improbable and in many cases completely impossible scientifically.

If it came anywhere within a country mile of truth, it would cease to be considered a religion.

Just to quash the rumors though- If there ever was a God, somebody must have killed him. Spirituality will do for you exactly what you make it do for you- not a bit more, not a bit less.

Originally posted by The Vagabond

Originally posted by The Astral City
Any anthropological or theological proof to this at all?

~Astral

Um, Astral... it's a religion. Proof would completely defy the entire purpose. None of the religions on this planet are willing to accept that their claims are highly improbable and in many cases completely impossible scientifically.

I believe that he meant proof that people spread these beliefs in the manner which Nakash contended. It was not asking whether the religions were true or not.

I understand that, however its really only a technicality. The basis of the Hindu belief that Hindu is the mother of all other religions is found in the religious epics of Hinduism, which claim a history dating back several million years.

Originally posted by Nakash
taken from: phoenicia.org...

What did you find convincing from that page? It didn't seem to offer anything of substance.

Don't believe Nimrod ever existed ? Who built this then ?

Why do you think it had to be nimrod? Why do you think that the pagan religions didn't exist until after this object was built?

from a text you at the same time choose to ignore (the Bible).

Are you prepared to have a discusison or make ridiculous assumptions about someone you know nothing about???

Solomon engaged in idol worship due to the influence of his many (pagan) wives

Perhaps you should try reading the bible:

Judges 3:5-7
The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 6 They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD; they forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

It wasn't just some influence of foreign wives of solomon, he, and his people, worshipped these gods. Also in Judges, Chapter 6 verse 25, God says to Gideon:

That same night the LORD said to him, "Take the second bull from your father's herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father's altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.

Gideon's father wasn't married to Solomon's wives, he was an israelite, practicing the common religion of the israelites.
Also I Kings 3:3

Solomon showed his love for the LORD by walking according to the statutes of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

This is the old traditional way in which the gods were worshipped in this region. He wasn't going to these nature sanctuaries because of his wives. Also, recall that Solomon's Temple is built by the two Hirams, and that these guys are not monotheists, they are regular old pagans, and they built the temple in precisely the same way that they built their other Temples to their high gods. Solomon's Temple was a pagan temple in form, and in use, as it had idols to multiple gods.
Also, with respect to Solomon's wives, one of the important ones is a daughter of the Pharoah, but she isn't worshipping in the israelite temple of solomon, and she isn't worshiping the gods that solomon installs there, she is going to be worshipping the gods of her old country. Solomon is worshiping the gods of his land. Solomon marries other neighbhoring princesses, but this is early on in his rule, and he is going to these high holy hills and building this temple much later in his reign, iow, it has nothing to do with his wives.
Also, repeatedly the israelites put up altars to baal and asherahs in their sacred places, and occasionally reforming preists have the altars to baal torn down, but there isn't as much tearing down of the asherahs, rather the worship of asherah is persistent amoung the israelites, and the reformers are apparently strongly concerned with Baal as a rival to Yahweh, with Asherah worship being acceptable, like with the King Jehu, who tricks the preists of Baal into assembling for a meeting, and then kills them all. Then he destroys the Baal pillar in the temple, destroys the temple itself, and his followers defecate on the ruins of the temple to Baal. He does nothing to the temples and stands for Asherah. He

II Kings 10-:29-30
[...]he did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit—the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan. The LORD said to Jehu, "Because you have done well in accomplishing what is right in my eyes and have done to the house of Ahab all I had in mind to do, your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation.

Also, just because there is a tall structure in a city in sumer hardly means that the biblical story about the tower of babel and nimrod are at all true.

this deity is even now worshipped in Rome

Interesting, so you are saying that Jesus is no more than Nimrod? Odd thing to say.

www.biblebelievers.com...

What in the world did you find convincing from that?

OK, First Nygdan, I was obviously not calling Christ Baal (who Christ identified as Satan- Matthew 12:22-28, imagine the blasphemy ) I do have serious issues with the Papacy and it's version of Christianity though (not intolerance, I simply do not favour their destruction of my religion to make others feel comfy).

Now my first issue here is that your attempting to tell show that there was some form of intermingling between the Jews and the Canaanites. The truth is this was a crucial issue which had to be addressed repeatedly in Ancient times for the obvious reasons we discuss right now. Contact between the Hebrews and Canaan was regarded as a taboo by all patriarchs of the time and great measures were taken precisely to avoid any trojan horse attempt of the Canaanites to infiltrate Baal Hadad's worship into Judaism and then have the Canaanites claim that El was YHWH's "avatar" and Baal his good little (neglected) son. You see this was the strategy from the first and Elijah thankfully punished the traitor Ahab and Jezebel as they deserved (along with the child burning priests of Hadad). Of course Judaism has trojan horse Canaanite theology in it (What do you call the Kabbalah ? Who wrote the Talmud? ) but there was since the Time of Abraham a firm wall establishing Judaism as a completely different religion. From Abraham's time.

Check this out: (Genesis 24 1-6)

1
Abraham had now reached a ripe old age, and the LORD had blessed him in every way.
2
1 Abraham said to the senior servant of his household, who had charge of all his possessions: "Put your hand under my thigh,
3
and I will make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not procure a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I live,
4
but that you will go to my own land and to my kindred to get a wife for my son Isaac."
5
The servant asked him: "What if the woman is unwilling to follow me to this land? Should I then take your son back to the land from which you migrated?"
6
"Never take my son back there for any reason," Abraham told him.

Now I know you don't believe in Abraham;s existence, but this being a society of Pastors with a firm and fixed hierarchy, if the Patriarch said so than so be it. You claim Baal's priests were unfairly killed due to the competition he (Baal) was giving to YHWH's priests (which you will unfairly call EL or another figure head of the Babylonian system). I see something completely different- a whole society correcting a wrong turn it took after hearing a worthy prophet. Now think about it- why would a whole society suddenly decide their main deitywas bogus after a madman raved about it and tricked their leaders into being slaughtered? There would be a complete outrage. It does not seem logical to me that people can be so easily guided by despots to that point.
Also, if you read that brief snippet I gave you, you will see that my conclusion is corroborated by Historical documents- Canaanites were Canaanites developing in Phoenicia with good ol' Baal, and Jews were Jews developing right next to them with YHWH. Two distinct systems. It would seem logical that if Judaism was just Babylonian rubbish, that the two would sooner or later re-integrate. They did not. Now you have a point on the Hirams building the Temple, perhaps the Temple scroll could shed some light on this situation. Either way, the Hebrews were carried to Babylon for punishment and the Temple destroyed due to idol worship according to Biblical sources (It took 50-70 years to build the it, perhaps later sections were built by idol worshippers meriting it's destruction). Also, that structure I gave you is our so called Tower of Babel (it was built by Baal as a house for his Earthly visits according to the Babylonians which is obviously bogus, but since all we have are a few documents detailing what it used to be, and a certain Ruler claiming he destroyed it, it is quite difficult to see who actually built it. Which is Nimrod, the first human being who claimed to be a God, the prime heretic of his time and who set the foundations of Babylon as described in the Enuma Elish legend).

On a side not Nygdan, this is an interesting discussion (Kuddos to you) , but I will never acknowledge That Baal is YHWH's good little son who overcame his great father in a fight and stole the Earth for himself (now who does that remind you of ?) lest a lightning bolt strikes me for being a smart aleck blasphemer hehehe



[edit on 30-12-2005 by Nakash]

Originally posted by The Astral City
I'm a Philosophy of Religion major,
...
The big three Western Religions, Judiasm, Christianity and Islam

Islam and Judaism are not big religions in the West. The only big religion in the West is Christianity.

Originally posted by The Astral City
but it appears that most of the major religions generated locally, at least at first.

I disagree. There is some commonality among nearly every recorded religion worldwide, which indicates a single original source, modified locally after the fact. There are common themes that show up in religions worldwide, such as a virgin birth, which suggests a common astronomical root to all the known world religions. I can think of no other explanation as to why geographically disparate cultures would identify Virgo as a virgin or why a virgin birth is a common theme among world religions (yes, yes, we've all heard the apologetic response regarding Satan's tricks and the one true virgin birth of Jesus).

Interestingly, the end of the last ice age coincides with the winter solstice in virgo.

Well, it's not really an apologetics response, just taking Christiabity to the logical conclusion. Jude in fact mentions Satan moving Moses body (a dispute between Michael and Satan in which Michael was ordered to allow him to do the deed). We have found plenty of evidence for the Hebrews track to the promised land mentioned in scripture, but the settlements of the 30 year period are somewhat elusive (though the graves of several Patriarchs have been identified, notably Joseph). If there is a God supernatural explanations cannot be ruled out.

Are we talking about Hinduism as it is practiced today, or are we talking about its Vedic, nearly-pagan precursor?

I did a Google search for "history of Hinduism" and found this BBC article to contain what looked like pretty reliable information. It didn't grind any axes about Aryan invasions, for example.

Setting aside internal Hindu origin myths, and going by archaeological evidence, the first sign of Hindu practices (which does not mean full-fledged Hinduism as practiced today, but is connected to it) appears to be dated from around 3000 BCE; this would be the Mohenjo-Daro civilization along the Indus River. The similarities lie in religious bathing facilities for purification rites, and phallic symbols similar to the linga one can find associated with Shiva worship today.

The Vedas were written around 800 BCE. (For comparison, we have extant religious writings from Sumer before 2000 BCE, so in written form anyway those religious were older than Hinduism -- if that means anything.) A transformation occurred in the religion over the several centuries after the Vedas were written. The most important event in that transformation was probably the rise of Buddhism in the 5th century BCE. Buddhism was the state religion of India for a while. Asoka, a very famous ruler of the Mauryan empire, was a Buddhist. Most Indians are either Hindu or Muslim today, but it's beyond belief that Buddhist thought has not left its mark on today's Hinduism; indeed it's easy to see the similarities in the deep spiritual concepts of the two religions, however dissimilar they are on the surface. Both concern themselves with reincarnation, and with escape from the Wheel of Rebirth; both see the self and the world as illusion. In fact, it's hard to explain the resurgence of Hinduism and its recapture of India from Buddhism without the cooption by Hindus of many of the Buddhist features that led to Buddhism's rise in the first place. This surely transformed Hinduism as much as Christianity was transformed by absorbing and coopting Greco-Roman paganism. Although it's called Hinduism, and worships the old Vedic deities, this practice occurs around a spiritual core that is identifiably Buddhist, much as the Mahayana form of Buddhism practiced in Southeast Asia incorporates the pagan deities indigenous to that region around a Buddhist core.

So we can have several dates for the origin of Hinduism. The earliest goes back to about 3000 BCE. Another would be somewhere around 800 BCE, when the Vedas were written. A third would be in the 5th century BCE, after the Buddha. If we choose the earliest of these dates, Hinduism becomes the oldest of the so-called "great" religions. But I am quite confident that the religion practiced in Mohenjo-Daro was not identical to modern Hinduism.

Of the other "great" religions, obviously Buddhism arose from a society that worshiped the Vedic deities and was in that sense "Hindu." And it may well be (is likely, even) that Zoroaster was influenced by the Indian religion of his time; the cultural connections between Iran and India are clear. Remaining questions to be answered are:

1. To what extent was the religion of the Chaldeans, from which the earliest Jewish practices arose, influenced by Zoroaster?

2. To what extent was Taoism influenced by Buddhist missionaries?

3. To what extent did Buddhist thought influence Shinto?

If all three of these questions could be positively answered, then it might be asserted that the roots of modern Hinduism had an impact on the roots of all other modern "great" religions (since Confucianism was clearly influenced by Taoism, Christianity grew from Judaism, and Islam was born from Christian and Jewish roots).

But even that is not to say that modern Hinduism is the "mother of all religions." Modern Hinduism is still, itself, an offshoot.

Personally, I believe that there is a core of spiritual truth that cannot be expressed literally in words or symbols, lying at the heart of all religions. All religious thought as can be expressed in words or symbols is, at best, a metaphor for that core. That is as true of Hinduism as it is of all other religions.

Originally posted by Nakash
Well, it's not really an apologetics response, just taking Christiabity to the logical conclusion.

For those who claim that these other virgin birth stories that preceed Christianity were a trick of Satan who knew what was going to happen in advance, it certainly is an apologetic response, as no such thing is found in scripture, nor is it derivable from what is found in scripture.

Even worse though, it implies Satan knows the mind of god, as he knew in advance what god was planning regarding a virgin birth. The OT does not predict a virgin birth, that's a mistranslation.

No, it does not imply Satan knew the mind of God, it implied that God knew the mind of Satan and decided to use him as a tool for his own plans. Big difference. This is so misunderstood, Christianity does not have a Manichaen view of the world, you (and others of an atheistic bent) greatly offend me by claiming that. Satan is God's servant. Really. Yet he does his job best being an unwilling one. There have been several Angelic rebellions according to scripture, but scripture also teaches that these beings are too cunning to openly defy God (foolish), the so called "War of the Angels" was never a physical conflict, and those angels who openly disobeyed certain commands are now bound in the abyss according to the scriptures (ie: those who fathered the "Earth born" of Noah's days among the Canaanites). Also, a true physical conflict will occur in the end of times, but it will amount to nothing. Christianity is not some Manichaen ideology, this is often misunderstood.

[edit on 4-1-2006 by Nakash]