RELIGIONS - ATTACK ON HINDUISM

The recent speech of a person who writes songs for films especially writing for set tunes and earning his living through that, published in a language daily and the clash with the majority community of believers of Sanathana Dharma and its pantheon of innumerable Gods had kindled the interest in me to think about what prompted the humans to worship and consequently this blog.

The earth was a single mass of land surrounded on all sides by large water body.  Over a period of time the large landmass separated and started floating about in the water to settle down separated by large water bodies. The human in-habitation possibly took place before the separation of the landmass into different areas or continents as we know today.  Hence the people living in different parts of the single land mass, it is believed, got separated into different parts of the earth as the parts were separated by large bodies of water which made it difficult for them to cross to mingle with one another.  However, there were sets of people who were separated only by long distances between their settlements.  All these people settled on the banks of the various rivers.  There were people settled on the banks of river Jordan, river Tigris, river Amazon, rivers Sindhu, Ganga and Yamuna and their tributaries; on the banks of the Yellow river.  These people settlements enriched their life with the water from the rivers, the produce from the land, catch from the rivers and the land.  Generally these settlements were separated from each other either by large bodies of water or long distances which made it difficult for them to meet and greet each other.  Hence the civilizations developed on these rivers banks and started having their own distinctive styles and living standards and styles.  However, there are certain similarities among these various civilizations as for the worship of the Gods were concerned. Most of these civilizations started worshiping the  nature and its various forms like, Sun, Moon, Stars, Rain, Thunder, Lightning etc.

When they started worshiping these natural elements and phenomena, they started believing that there is a higher energy which guides their fate and happening of the natural phenomena.  So a few persons who became the leaders of such groups of men started exploring the areas they were living.  They spread the word among the people that a higher force spoke to them and directed them to make their living in a particular way.  These leaders of men became Oracles over a period of time and what they said became a law to be followed by all the others.    These men used different forms of props to divine the teachings of the higher force.  A group of men used the bones and a few others used just water.  Water ablution and propitiation of the higher energy forms (later called as Gods) with water became a part of the cultures in different parts of the earth.  Bones were used mostly in China for such purposes.  In a few other civilizations, making human like forms in wood and using them became the practice.  And in a few other civilizations using just pebbles became the practice. In most of the religious books of almost all the religions there are indications that a few evolved persons were able to divine from some higher being.  These came to be known as teachings of these evolved humans over a period of time.  For obtaining this knowledge, these evolved humans went in solitude to caves, hill tops, forests and difficult terrains not easily accessible to many. This search for solitude itself set them apart from others.

The drawings in caves, implements excavated in several areas of ancient civilizations confirm the above practices that obtained among various settlements of people of ancient.  They also confirm the theory that the humans were together in a large landmass at one point of time and got separated due to the shifting of the earth plates. The excavations and the drawings are more or less similar in most of the excavations which confirm that the belief system was almost the same across the globe. Be that as it may, the practices gave way among the humans to worship different Gods which were mostly primitive in nature to start with.  Slowly these settlements started improving the style of worship and divining the worship by the Oracles among these settlements.  These Oracles multiplled over a period of time and started informing the others of what they had divined from the higher form. 

Though with the advent of Christianity and Islam most of the pagan rituals associated with the ancient worship has totally got obliterated from most parts of the earth, the advent of Budhism which started as an offshoot of the Sanathana Dharma that is being followed in India, the ancient religions in parts of far east, China and Japan became extinct.  The one place where the ancient religious practices are more or less practiced to-date without much change is India.  The practices of Sanathana Dharma that is being followed in the country has withstood the onslaught of time and many invaders professing faith in other religions.  Most of the people believe in different forms of Gods and the concept of re-birth.  There is a higher philosophy which determines that there is something beyond what a human mind can comprehend and directs the happening in the lives of the people.  Most of the teachings of the faith, like Vedas, Upanishads etc were divined by highly evolved humans of those times and are still being followed in one form or other. Many others like Sri Shankara, Sri,Ramanuja, Sri Madhava followed and took the philosophy to higher pedestal and wrote commentaries and new writings on these earlier divinations.  There were many highly evolved humans among the people who were singing in praise of the God form they believed in, like Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Karthikeya etc., and teaching to other humans the songs that they divined.

One such highly evolved human was Sri Andal who from her early childhood was brought up in a very pious household with total surrender to the God form of Vishnu. Therefore, she became a highly evolved human who could visualize the God form in her own-self as a reflection and sung in praise of Him.  The atmosphere created in the house was such that she yearned for getting relieved of the cycle of birth and death and wanted to join her chosen God in union of marriage and absolved of re-birth.  Her poems in Tiruppavai and Nachchiar Thirumozhi bring out this in great depth.  She achieved her life's ambition of becoming one with the God like a camphor left open in the air evaporating leaving no trail.  

The lives of such great persons can be understood only by people who aspire for a better after-life and getting relieved of the cycle of birth and death and also those who have un-assailable faith in the principles of the religion but not by those who have ambition only for making large quantities of money, all material things, and name and fame in the present life with absolutely no faith whatsoever in the tenets of religion or the God forms. Some of my learned friends may counter that there were people who questioned the concept of God even in ancient times (they may quote the dialogue between Lord Rama and Sarvaka).  But even those people who did not believe in the concept of the God forms, had faith in the religious tenets.  Here what we had witnessed in the recent past, is that there is a non-stop attack on all the religious practices of the Sanathana Dharma and its God forms. Most such attackers do not believe in the Sanathana Dharma and its teachings but have faith in other religions and also befuddle the public retaining their Hindu names.