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The history of Hinduism covers a wide variety of related religious traditions native to the Indian subcontinent. [1] It overlaps or coincides with the development of religion in the Indian subcontinent since the Iron Age, with some of its traditions tracing back to prehistoric religions such as those of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation.
Since the 19th century, Indian modernists have re-asserted the 'Aryan origins' of Hinduism, "purifying" Hinduism from its Tantric elements [157] and elevating the Vedic elements. Hindu modernists like Vivekananda see the Vedas as the laws of the spiritual world, which would still exist even if they were not revealed to the sages.
The Vedic culture developed in India in 1500 BCE and 500 BCE. [6] After this period, the Vedic religion merged with local traditions and the renouncer traditions, resulting in the emergence of Hinduism, [7] which has had a profound impact on India's history, culture and philosophy.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Hinduism: Hinduism – predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent . [ 1 ] Its followers are called Hindus , who refer to it as Sanātana Dharma [ 2 ] ( Sanskrit : सनातनधर्मः , lit.
Indian-origin religions Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, [4] are all based on the concepts of dharma and karma. Ahimsa, the philosophy of nonviolence, is an important aspect of native Indian faiths whose most well-known proponent was Shri Mahatma Gandhi, who used civil disobedience to unite India during the Indian independence movement – this philosophy further inspired Martin ...
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.
In Indian historian DN Jha's essay "Looking for a Hindu identity", he writes: "No Indians described themselves as Hindus before the fourteenth century" and that "The British borrowed the word 'Hindu' from India, gave it a new meaning and significance, [and] reimported it into India as a reified phenomenon called Hinduism."
The documented history of Indian religions begins with the historical Vedic religion, the religious practices of the early Indo-Aryans, which were collected and later redacted into the Samhitas (usually known as the Vedas), four canonical collections of hymns or mantras composed in archaic Sanskrit.