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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.
The Bhagavad Gita (/ ˈ b ʌ ɡ ə v ə d ˈ ɡ iː t ɑː /; [1] Sanskrit: भगवद्गीता, IPA: [ˌbʱɐɡɐʋɐd ˈɡiːtɑː], romanized: bhagavad-gītā, lit. 'God's song'), [a] often referred to as the Gita (IAST: gītā), is a Hindu scripture, dated to the second or first century BCE, [7] which forms part of the epic Mahabharata.
[23] [page needed] Nevertheless, while "it is usually taught that the beginnings of historical Hinduism date from around the beginning of the Common Era," when "the key tendencies, the crucial elements that would be encompassed in Hindu traditions, collectively came together," [24] some scholars have come to view the term "Hinduism" as ...
The history of India up to (and including) the times of the Buddha, with his life generally placed into the 6th or 5th century BCE, is a subject of a major scholarly debate. The vast majority of historians in the Western world accept the theory of Aryan Migration with c. 1500-1200 BCE dates for the displacement of Indus civilization by Aryans ...
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.
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 word Hindu is an exonym, and while Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, it has also been described by the modern term Sanātana Dharma (lit. ' eternal dharma ') emphasizing its eternal nature. Another endonym for Hinduism is Vaidika Dharma (lit. ' Vedic dharma ').
The Puranic chronology, as narrated in the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and the Puranas, envisions a timeline of events related to Hinduism starting well before [weasel words] 3000 BCE. The word dharma is used here to mean religion similar to modern Indo-Aryan languages, rather than with its original Sanskrit