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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 historical Vedic religion, also called Vedicism or Vedism, and sometimes ancient Hinduism or Vedic Hinduism, [a] constituted the religious ideas and practices prevalent amongst some of the Indo-Aryan peoples of the northwest Indian subcontinent (Punjab and the western Ganges plain) during the Vedic period (c. 1500–500 BCE).
Lorenzen traces the emergence of a "family resemblance", and what he calls as "beginnings of medieval and modern Hinduism" taking shape, at c. 300–600 CE, with the development of the early Puranas, and continuities with the earlier Vedic religion. [134]
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 historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear. [67] [73] Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it may have developed post-8th century CE after the Muslim invasions and medieval Hindu–Muslim wars.
The Upanishads (/ ʊ ˈ p ʌ n ɪ ʃ ə d z /; [1] Sanskrit: उपनिषद्, IAST: Upaniṣad, pronounced [ˈʊpɐnɪʂɐd]) 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.
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 Bhakti movement of Hinduism saw two ways of imaging the nature of the divine : Nirguna and Saguna. [98] Nirguna Brahman was the concept of the ultimate reality as formless and without attributes or quality. [99] Saguna Brahman, in contrast, was envisioned and developed as with form, attributes and quality. [99]