Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Anirudh777 (talk | contribs) at 05:30, 16 June 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Hinduism Unassessed

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Hinduism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Hinduism on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HinduismWikipedia:WikiProject HinduismTemplate:WikiProject HinduismHinduism ??? This article has not yet received a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

I'd like to see a timeline/chronology of the various schools and branches of Vedic religion and Hindu philosophy. Many of these articles are devoid of any kind of historical dating.

Indian history is horribly difficult to date. The Indians never invented "history", and with the Puranic period at the latest, everything that was venerable was automatically dated tens or hundreds of thousand years, to the point that Indian records of dates became meaningless. Before we have external accounts (Indo-Greeks, Chinese Buddhist etc.), the safest bet is to date by linguistic criteria, c.f. Vedic Sanskrit. Even medieval India is difficult to date within one or two centuries or so. Of course there are scholarly accounts we should report, but there is very little certainty. For the purposes of this article, Vedic religion proper flourished between roughlt 1200 and 500 BC. After that, "Vedanta"; classical "Hinduism" and Puranas from the early Middle Ages. Arguments from Astronomy, or, worse, geology (Sarasvati), are usually worthless Hindutva red herrings, and at best circumstantial evidence (see the Pleiades reference in the Rigveda article ). dab (ᛏ) 09:14, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Dear Dbachmann - Although I appreciate the majority of your edits to this page, I feel the details you added regarding animal sacrifices and vegetarianism were a bit one-sided and incomplete. I don't mind both theories being mentioned if you like, but please don't remove the additional details which are how animal sacrifices are actually described in the Vedas & Puranas. Best Wishes --GourangaUK 09:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

"incomplete"? How does that excuse your *removals*? If you only added things, we could discuss the merits of your additions, and possibly salvage some points. The Puranas don't enter into it, this is the Vedic religion article. If you want to insinuate that "animals may not have been really killed" in Vedic sacrifices (not Vaishna, not Puranic, but Vedic), you'll have to bring on some rock-solid academic references. dab (ᛏ) 19:45, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Dear Dbachmann - I hardly removed anything. You don't know the exact details of the sacrifices from 2500 years ago. Any knowledge on them is somewhat speculative - the traditional view still held by followers of the Vedas is that they did not include actual animal killing. Where are your rock-solid academic references from 2500 years ago? At least give room for both opinions. I will not delete any valid additions you may wish to add --GourangaUK 08:58, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I am most open to giving room to the full spectrum of academic opinions on the historical religion. This is, academia speculating about the time 2500 years ago, not "academic references from 2500 years ago", of course. You are most welcome to hunt for your own opinion in Indological literature and quote that. It won't do, however, to gesture at "traditional views" without proper citation; obviously there are such traditional views. They have a very long article, over at Hinduism, no dispute about that. I have no doubt that there are academic attempts at proving "Rigvedic vegetarianism", however fringy; find that literature, and you'll be welcome to quote it as minority opinions. I will not, however, search for your references for you. dab (ᛏ) 17:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Why has someone removed my additions to this article?

Dbachmann

Why are you removing all my writings with referances? You seem to be some sort of fundamentalist bent on showing that Vedic religion is "dead" religion with only historical value. What is your problem?

you might be asked the same thing: Your additions are welcome, but by adding your views, you have removed perfectly valid parts of the article, leaving me with the choice either to revert you, or to invest a quarter of an hour to separate the valid parts of your edit. Please begin with either removing things, with justification, or adding things; if you do both at the same time, you risk being reverted wholesale. Also, you seem to misunderstand the scope of this article. This is not the article on Hinduism in general, it is the article about the religion in times of Vedic Sanskrit. Your statement of "Vedas consist of Samhitas, Braahmanas, Aaranyakas and Upanishads" is wrong; this is a list of shruti, which is not the same. The Vedas proper are just the four Vedas (RV, YV, AV, SV), both samhitapatha and padapatha. Vedic Sanskrit texts include the Brahmanas and a few (five or so) Upanishads, plus if you like some shrautasutras and grhyasutras (you are very welcome to add details about those, they are awfully underrepresented). That's it. Anything else goes on Hinduism and/or Shruti. If you are not interested in the historical stratification of Vedic texts, you may be more interested in editing these articles. I am no fundamentalist, I am just trying to keep this article on topic: its scope is historical, this doesn't have anything to do with 'value' at all (I shouldn't even have to point this out) dab (ᛏ) 08:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You say: "Also, you seem to misunderstand the scope of this article. This is not the article on Hinduism in general, it is the article about the religion in times of Vedic Sanskrit". Well, then it should be more properly titled "History of vedic religion". As long as the tile remains, my edits are perfectly valid. Also, I will give my justifications for removing in the future. Thanks for telling me.

You say:"The Vedas proper are just the four Vedas (RV, YV, AV, SV), both samhitapatha and padapatha. Vedic Sanskrit texts include the Brahmanas and a few (five or so) Upanishads. That's it". This is ridiculous. I request you to pick up any standard book on Vedic dharma and stop writing such nonsense. Vedas proper do not consist of "samhitapatha" and "padapatha" only. There are also Ghanapatha, Kramapatha and several pathas. But these, my friend, are ways of recitation. Vedic religion does not consider "vedas" as some books but more as an ancient oral tradition. "Five or so upanishads". This is the funniest thing i've heard in a while :)

glad I could brighten you day; I am however not talking about "paths", but about actual texts. RV samhitapatha and RV padapatha are actual, different, texts; I have yet to hear about a text called "Ghanapatha". These are, as you say, ways of reciting identical texts. There are 10-13 mukhya Upanishads. Not all of them qualify as Vedic, I won't argue about whethere there are four or five or six of them that do. Again, you mean something completely different, goto shruti. dab (ᛏ) 09:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Who said anything about "paths"? I am sorry, but you keep showing your complete ignorance on this topic. If you have any proper ideas about vedic traditions, history, beliefs and philosophy, do enlighten us here. Else, kindly allow those who are knowledgeable in these matters to do the editing of this page. I first of all came to this page seeing that much info contained herewith was and is questionable. As far as shruti is concerned, it is a synonym of the Vedas. Moreover, wikipedia is supposed to NPOV. So start brushing up your knowledge or admit you have a POV. Babub 09:25, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Dear Babub - please sign your comments with '4 x ~' to show the time-stamp. I am also of the opinion that Mr Bachman sometimes goes too far with the hard-line approach, maybe in this case also, but the article shouldn't go too far the other way either. Please can we all work towards a compromise, or have a number of views mentioned in the article? GourangaUK 08:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

GourangUK, Look at the below topic and give your opinion. I am going to wait for dbachmann's reply. If he is not responding I'll go ahead creating a seperate page for history of Vedic religion and a section for "controversy" on this particular page.Babub 08:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

this is the historical article. Babub himself says that he considers "Vedic religion" a synonym of Sanatana Dharma. Well, then click on the link, and improve that article rather than pestering this one. I am, of course, completely open to enlarge the "contemporary" section, with reference to Nambudiri traditions etc., no problem. dab (ᛏ) 09:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Dbachmann, You say "this is the historical article". If so, is the title proper? You seem to be playing with words here.You say "Well, then click on the link, and improve that article rather than pestering this one." There IS a certain reason for me to believe these two terms may be used in different contexts historically as the present religion practised by the hindus is markedly different from that described in the vedas.Babub 09:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Dear Mr Bachmann, it was your sentence "Vegetarianism, the practice now thought by many to be so characteristic of Hinduism, arose only in late or post-Vedic times" which you have now removed that I had a particular problem with. That Animal sacrifice is described in the Vedas is a fact which I therefore do not object to. That Vegetarianism is also promoted in the Vedas (and I'm sure there are verses in the Rig Veda somewhere if you wanted to look) is another fact which should not be minimised. As this page is entitled 'Vedic Religion' not 'The History of Vedic Religion' at least a pointer to sanatana dharma or some short description of it should be included in the page in my opinion.GourangaUK 09:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

that's as easy as a disambiguation notice, along the lines of "this article is about the religion contemporary to the Vedic Sanskrit corpus; for religions historically based on these, see Dharmic religion". I am very open to 'vegetarianism' verses in the Rigveda (as long as they are straightforward and not the result of some contorted hermeneutics). dab (ᛏ) 09:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Scope

Scope of this article: historical or present day traditions? I feel a new page on History of Vedic Religion should be started so that the present day traditions as well as beliefs and philosophy can be fit here.

See above: you are looking for the Sanatana Dharma (Vaidika Dharma, aka Hinduism) article. "Vedic" as used here refers to a historical (literary) period, beginning with the Rigveda and ending just before Panini. dab (ᛏ) 09:02, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Page move

I have moved the Vedic Religion page to History of Vedic religion page. In the latter page I have removed the "Pantheon" section coz I don't think it belongs in a history page. Babub 10:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted this. Don't waste your time and mine like this. Anything you are writing about already has perfectly established main articles, you are most welcome to add to these; edit warring over article titles is bad karma, and an unproductive waste of time. Don't start your career as a wikipedian with something so fruitless. I would be very grateful, otoh, if you could use your apparent expertise to improve on grhyasutra, shrautasutra, aranyaka, brahmana etc., all of these are articles that badly need extension: you can work on them and really add value to Misplaced Pages, or you can spend a couple of weeks edit warring here, with no net result whatsoever. Again, I am open to discussing conservative movements that survive today; you are also invited to clean up Nambudiri and do a summary of the Nambudiri article here, that would certainly be on topic. There is an awful lot of good faith encyclopedic work to be done here, I don't understand why people are so much into edit-warring over perfectly good articles rather than doing the badly needed extension jobs. dab (ᛏ) 10:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

"Again, I am open to discussing conservative movements that survive today" I'm getting the feeling these "discussions" with people like you won't take us anywhere as you'll just revert everything back. Anyway you should try doing this to the Judaism or Christianity articles saying these refer to "History of these religions" and not the religions! You people are exploiting the tolerant Hindus by behaving like this. Also you know of the Nambudiri tradition because they are the only ones who are academically documented. Apparently you want to be blind towards other surviving traditions until western scholars document them.Babub 13:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

now what do you want? either you claim that "Vedic religion" is equivalent to "Hinduism", then you should request that this is made a redirect or a disambiguation page: because there already is a Hinduism page, there is no reason to begin a second article on the same topic here. It is Misplaced Pages policy to have articles at their most common English title. Hinduism in English is referred to as "Hinduism", not as "Vedic religion". In academic usage, "Vedic" means "pre-500 BC Indo-Aryan", and this is the intended meaning here. You complained that this may be misleading, and got a disambiguation notice: case closed. And precisely, we only want information on Misplaced Pages that is academically documented, that's not my idea, that's policy. We don't care if 'western' scholars, Indian scholars, Japanese scholars, or Martian scholars document something, as long as the documentation is done in reputable Indological journals. Live with it or quit. dab (ᛏ) 14:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Vedic Naked truth : I smell a pro Aryan(hindu/nazi) bias

I Anirudh777 got carried away thinking wikipedia accepts user edits (which is wrong) and I added  :

" The mode of vedic worship was performance of sacrifices and chanting of hymns (see Vedic chant). The priests helped the common man in performing rituals. People prayed for abundance of children, cattle and wealth. Vedas have detailed mention of various rituals and chants for pleasing gods for different occasions by lighting a ritual fire (yajna) and sacrifice(bali). It seems more or less like african tribal ritual & witchcraft.( Modern science has concluded that Indian subcontinent was attached to africa in ancient times. Later on it drifted away and got attached to asian plate which created himalaya mountains due to a huge thrust and it is still moving north.) In yajna the priests consumed intoxicants in large quantities, called soma and sacrifice of animals(cow, horse etc.) and also sometimes human sacrifice (Purushamedha) was performed. It is possible that various gods and godesses mentioned in vedas were products of hallucinations due to consumption of intoxicants. Soma drink was made from crushed stalks of either cannabis plant or ephedra plant or both (cannabis,marijuana,hash,pot or bhang is as common as grass in Himalayas). The Himalayan hindu sadhus (monks) are known to consume intoxicants even in present times. "

I got a message from Mr.Dbachmann to stop adding nonsense and ranting. And all my contribution was removed, rather I expected a notice - Neutrality of this article is doubtful. It appears that wikipedia is simply autocratic & self righteous.

Now let me elaborate. Four things were very common in vedic practices:

1. Lighting a sacrificial fire.
2. Chanting , invoking spiritual entities
3. Consuming intoxicants such as Soma (prepared from cannabis and/or ephedra stalks)
4. Sacrifice of animals, human etc.

As you may be knowing that all these were part of ancient religions such as African tribals(zulu etc) who danced around fire while their witchdoctors were invoking spirits, going into trance followed by sacrifice and even cannibalism. In Judaism , it was called burnt offering, OT mentions that for redemption of various sins various sacrifices were required such as of pigeons, sheep, goat, cow, bull etc. which Jewish temple priests performed in a sacrificial fire & blood of sacrificed animals was sprinkled on altar. In christianity the altar in churches is merely symbolic but it does exist as a remenant. Ancient Inca (south america) & yucatan civilization were having gruesome practices of human sacrifice to please spiritual entities such as severing of head & then extraction of beating heart as offering. In many parts of india , human sacrifice & canniballism continued as late as 1930s or 40s in remote areas such as south india(Kerala) and Northeast(Naga tribes). Any person can go and see in Nagaland & Tripura states many tribal houses decorate their entrance of house with a platform having human skulls on top as trophies even today. Nowadays the sacrificial practices in hinduism are symbolic only such as breaking a coconut as an alternative to human head(this is performed almost on every religious activity of some significance), human sacrifice of children in tantra(witchcraft) is still going on clandestinely although its unlawful.AtharvaVeda specifically mentions chants for destruction of enemy etc.various charms for various diseases , ailments and occasions. Vedic practices are considered undated by hindus, being timeless & going sice time immemorial.

Now regarding african connection. It is well known that india was a part of africa long time back & later on it moved away & joined asian plate creating himalaya mountains. Every Geology book mentions that. Many islands south of india have original ethnic tribes such as Jeravas inhabiting Andaman, Nicobar & Lakshdeep. These tribals look very much african with curly hair & dark skin & features peculiar to african tribes. If we dont accept this then , it is also known that human migration originally started from africa & moved to Iran, India, indonesia , australia etc. because all humans are homosepians with origin from africa. So it possible that early africans were barbaric, meat eating ( probably cannibals since they eliminated neanderthals). I think their spiritual practices , were what i mentioned earlier about jews, inca, etc.

I had added links from pages of wikipedia only such as : soma , Purushamedha , cannabis , ephedra and Yajna.

If it is thought that what i wrote is nonsense then in that case these pages also need to be removed by wikipedia. Can it be done?? The truth when covered up loses its sanctity. The Truth is a matter of fact and very much naked thats what i wrote.

Mr. Dbachman replied that what i wrote was very common & is already available. And human migration happened 100000 years back much later to separation of continents. But i say that the page appears to be heavily biased towards pro Vedic or pro Aryan attitude which can happen if it is written/edited by upper caste hindus or German Nazis influenced by Max Mueller. Upper caste hindus(called aryans) consider vedas to be the ultimate in spiritual knowledge & accept no criticism AT ALL.

No doubt - Aryan theory (vedic practices are in fact aryan practices) has caused much deterioration of human rights in India as well as in Germany. (I suspect it was borrowed from hinduism in Germany). In india Aryan theory is linked with caste system which created a slavery system causing misery, poverty, illiteracy & subjugation to more than a billion people (dalits) since a long time back which still exists in some form or the other even now (people still marry within their own caste & total no. of castes are approx. 8000 now ). In Germany, Aryan theory has done a similar thing called nazism, its consequences are well known. Therefore the naked truth is this that all vedic practices (of aryans) were barbaric & nothing but witchcraft similar to canniballistic tribal africans & need no praise rather deserve condemnation. Thank you. Anirudh

Dear Anirudh - I have often debated with Mr Dbachman over pages concerning Vedic religion etc... and can say with all honesty that he is definitely not pro-Aryan in his edits. I feel he always represents the strict western-historical and scholarly approach which although I do not always agree with, I do respect him for. Maybe some parts of your edits could be added without it sounding like a blatant attack on Vedic civilsation? Vedic civilisation also invented numbers (0-9) now known as 'arabic' text and had an advanced knowledge of astronomy and philosophy among many other achievements. Why give such emphasis to intoxicants and ritualistic sacrifice etc?GourangaUK 10:58, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear GourangaUK - Those who suffer caste system ( as i did ) , their heart burns all the time. Regarding achievements, it is same as trying to convince a jew about nazis scientific achievements.I consider that -- HINDUISM IS NAZISM --Anirudh777 09:16, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

See Godwin's law. You seem hardly capable of WP:NPOV with such a burning heart, but we have plenty of ardent Hindu chauvinists on Misplaced Pages, so maybe you could attempt to provide a counter-balance to those. Thanks for standing up for me, GUK, I know our first encounter was a bit harsh, that was also because of my being used to WP teeming with Hindutva editors, but I recognize debate with you can be fruitful. For reference's sake, the Hindus invented the numerals 1-9. The introduction of 0 and of decimal notation is very late (9th century), and it is unclear whether it is an Indian or a Persian invention. Hindu astronomy is a difficult term, often mixed with wild claims distilled from the Vedas without any real basis. Historical (Puranic) Hindu astronomy was very much indebted to the Greeks (the Hindus even adopted the Greek system of the Zodiac) dab (ᛏ) 09:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Well , I wish to add more. I stress about intoxicants , sacrifices and rituals. The vedic system & other ancient systems have it because religion is simply a matter of mind control (or mass hypnosis). The Practices i mentioned are specifically meant for that.

-- The fire is important because u cant make every body in an assembly smoke pot/ marijuana ,so u add it to fire for mass consumption. The scented intoxicating smoke made brains of people relaxed & receptive to commands by the priests.

-- Intoxicants by priests - to create an abnormal state of body & mind so that common people are influenced into believing that they (priests) are in a state of trance & communicating with spirits. BTW the same intoxicants(cannabis) are mixed with diluted milk/yogurt (called thandai)& distributed freely in every hindu temple every year on certain festivals (Mahashivratri etc.)

-- Long Chanting rituals also made people believe about communication with spirits as well for mass hypnotism acting as commands.

-- Sacrifices & sight of blood - to create an awe & a state of mass euphoria.

The net result of such practices was forming a social bond in order to benefit by mass deception <--- this is true hinduism.--Anirudh777 05:03, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Somebody ban this nutjob. All his edits are ridiculous and full of b.s. See all the pages he has edited here. What is the procedure to ban users? Babub 05:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I received a message from Mr Dbachmann stating that i will be blocked forever if i say that 'Hinduism is Nazism'. Well, First i bow down (to Mr. Dbachmann) & plead that i regret to hurt someone. But, I have not changed anything in the main article and everyone is free to express his views. Let everyone else know the differring point of views along with their arguements so that the general notion is critically scrutinized before being accepted as truth. Also i expect criticism from upper caste hindus ( as Mr. Babub did). Their job is muffle the voice of low caste down trodden , since thousands of years. Its nothing new. Mr. Dbachmann, i would like you & all others to read the articles on - Aryan & Helena Blavatsky alongwith their links. Thamk you. --Anirudh777 05:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

• Unassessed Hinduism articles
• Unknown-importance Hinduism articles