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The ancient Vedic religion lacked the belief in reincarnation and concepts such as Saṃsāra or Nirvana. It was a complex animistic religion with polytheistic and pantheistic aspects. Ancestor worship was an important, maybe the central component, of the ancient Vedic religion.
There were Vedic schools that believed in polytheism in which numerous gods had different natural functions, henotheistic beliefs where only one god was worshipped but others were thought to exist, monotheistic beliefs in a single god, agnosticism, and monistic beliefs where "there is an absolute reality that goes beyond the gods and that ...
The Vedic period, or the Vedic age (c. 1500 – c. 500 BCE), is the period in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of the history of India when the Vedic literature, including the Vedas (c. 1500 –900 BCE), was composed in the northern Indian subcontinent, between the end of the urban Indus Valley Civilisation and a second urbanisation, which began in the central Indo-Gangetic Plain c. 600 BCE.
The Upanishads (/ ʊ ˈ p ʌ n ɪ ʃ ə d z /; [1] Sanskrit: उपनिषद्, IAST: Upaniṣad, pronounced [ˈupɐniʂɐd]) are late Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit texts that "document the transition from the archaic ritualism of the Veda into new religious ideas and institutions" [2] and the emergence of the central religious concepts of Hinduism.
Vedic religion or Vedic Hinduism may refer to: Historical Vedic religion, the religion of the Indo-Aryans of northern India during the Vedic period; Hinduism, which developed out of the merger of Vedic religion with numerous local religious traditions; Śrauta, surviving conservative traditions within Hinduism
It is a synthesis of various strands of Indian religious thought, including the Vedic concept of dharma (duty, rightful action); samkhya-based yoga and jnana (knowledge); and bhakti (devotion). [8] [b] It holds a unique pan-Hindu influence as the most prominent sacred text and is a central text in Vedanta and the Vaishnava Hindu tradition.
According to Andrea Pinkney, "the social history and context of the Vedic texts are extremely distant from contemporary Hindu religious beliefs and practice", and the reverence for the Vedas in contemporary Hinduism illustrates the respect among the Hindus for their heritage. [145]
The saguṇa Brahman is endowed with attributes and represents the personal God of religion. Ramanuja, in formulating Vishishtadvaita Vedanta, rejects Nirguṇa – that the undifferentiated Absolute is inconceivable – and adopts a theistic interpretation of the Upanishads , accepting Brahman as Īśvara , the personal God who is the seat of ...