Hello dear listeners, and welcome to episode 2 of the Religions of the World podcast. I’m your host Yuguan Xing.
This is the first episode on Hinduism. It is one of the oldest institutionalized religions in the world, and it’s still thriving today. As of now, there are around 1.2 billion Hindus in the world, which is 15% of the world’s population, that’s at the 3rd place after Christianity at 31% and Islam at 23%. However, different from Christianity and Islam, which both have believers spread wide across the world, Hinduism is very much localized in the Indian subcontinent, especially in two countries, India and Nepal. Most followers either reside in one of these two countries, or are part of a diaspora from the region. A lot of people of south Asian ancestry are not Hindus themselves, but still carry names that are distinctively Hindu, and I’m sure that you’ll recognize many terms that I’m going to introduce in this podcast, maybe from the name of a friend!
A quick disclaimer, I unfortunately do not know Hindi, Sanskrit, or any of the Indian languages, so I will be using an anglicized pronunciation whenever I mention a term. This is merely due to the limit in my linguistic ability, so please do not be offended if you speak the languages, and notice that my pronunciation is different from how it’s supposed to sound. Considering the limitation of the audio format, I am going to spell out some important terms, so that you can mentally visualize them to strengthen your memory.
There’s one thing that I need to mention before moving forward. The word “hinduism” is an umbrella term that covers many, many different schools of thoughts and belief systems. And as seen in all major religions, it has many layers and facets. It has a very large component of folk tradition. It has an authority dictating which thoughts and behaviors are acceptable and which are not. And another part of it is just deep philosophical investigations. There are some common themes and elements that underlie each of these parts, but they are also drastically different from one another. If you think some of the topics I talk about sound a little disconnected from the others, and you find it hard to form a bigger picture of what Hinduism is about, don’t worry, because that’s just the way it is. Hinduism is not a monolithic religion. I like to think of Hinduism as the sum of everything people believe, or live by, in the Indian subcontinent.
In fact you’ll see that Hinduism doesn’t really fit into the western definition of a religion. It’s not only about worshipping one, or many, transcendent beings. It also tells you what kind of life you should live, what kind of society should people build, so on and so forth. In Hinduism, separation of the religious realm from the secular realm is much less clear than in, say, Christianity.
To make this point clear, let’s introduce one of the central concepts of Hinduism, the concept of dharma. The English word religion does not have a perfect counterpart in Hindi, but dharma is as close as it gets. It is very hard to explain what dharma is, since it can have very different meanings depending on the time period in history, or the context in which you’re speaking. It can mean the laws of the universe, it can mean how an individual should behave to support the cosmic orders, it can also mean a person’s obligation to themselves, their family, and the society. It would not be an overstatement to say that if you understand dharma, you will understand Hinduism. The concept of dharma will show up again and again in our discussions, so please keep the word in mind.
We can trace the history of Hinduism back to a large collection of ancient text known as the Vedas. It’s plural because it consists of four parts, each one a Veda, which roughly means “knowledge” in Sanskrit, the language that the Vedas were composed in. I used the word “composed in”, instead of “written in”, because for thousands of years the Vedas were not written down, but passed down from generation to generation as an oral tradition, before they were finally recorded in text form.
I want to digress a little bit and talk about the language Sanskrit. It often gives people this impression of being archaic, mysterious, and distant. But it’s actually a close relative to most European languages. They all belong to the same linguistic family called the Indo-European languages, and a lot of vocabulary in Sanskrit actually originate from the same sources with their counterparts, in, say, Latin. For example, the number 2 is dve in Sanskrit, and duo in Latin. Number 7 is sapta in Sanskrit, and septem in Latin. The word “snake”, or “serpent” is sarpa in Sanskrit, and serpentem in Latin. There are so many more of these examples. These are not coincidences. Instead, scholars believe that these languages have a common ancestor that we call Proto-Indo-European language. There is no way that we can know what Proto-Indo-European was like exactly, since it was spoken at a time way earlier than any writing system was invented, which means that we don’t have any record of it. However linguists are able to reconstruct it to some degree using languages that we do have records of, such as Sanskrit and Latin. Sanskrit went on to give birth to modern Indian languages such as Hindi, Marathi and Bengali. Latin, on the other hand, became the root for languages such as Italian, French and Spanish. Today a person from Mumbai and another person from Florence might not be able to understand each other, but traces of a lost era of brotherhood still flows from their tongues. I find that idea fascinating.
OK, that’s enough about languages. Back to the Vedas. I already told you that the Vedas consist of four parts, each one an individual Veda. Their names are Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda. You don’t have to remember the names of all of them, but please remember Rigveda, since it is the oldest among the four. The majority of it was probably composed by around 1500 BCE. That’s about 800 years earlier than the oldest part of the Hebrew bible. Moving forward, let’s use the Rigveda, which is, again, the oldest among the four Vedas, as an example to give you a sense of what the Vedas are like.
Rigveda is further divided into 4 parts. The first part is called the Samhita. It literally means “collection”, or “putting together”, and is considered the core part of the Rigveda. Sometimes when people say “Rigveda”, they are just referring to the Samhita part. We’re going to focus on this part of the Vedas in this episode.
The samhita is mostly hymns dedicated to various deities. Two of the most prominent ones are Indra and Agni. Indra is hailed as having the highest status among the gods mentioned in the Rigveda. He is ranked at the top if we do a tally of the number of hymns dedicated to each of the deities. He has immense power, and is considered “King of the Gods” in the Veda. You’ll recognize Indra from Hindu iconography as a humanoid being riding on the back of an elephant, holding a club shaped weapon, called the Vajra. Indra is the god of thunder, rain and the heavens. The attributes assigned to him are very similar to those of the Greek god Zeus, or the nordic god Thor, who are also gods of thunder. The similarities don't stop there. In each of the three mythologies, there is always an episode about the thunder god battling a serpentine creature. In Greek mythology Zeus fought and defeated Typhon, who attempted to overthrow him. In nordic mythology, Thor fought the world serpent Jörmungandr and both of them died in the battle. Indra, the Vedic thunder god, killed a serpent, or dragon, depending on different descriptions, named Vritra, who was blocking the rivers. By killing Vritra, Indra brought fertility and nourishment to the world.
Scholars today don’t think that this parallel in narratives of these mythologies is merely a coincidence. Earlier we talked about a Proto-Indo-European language, which is considered the ancestor of most European and south Asian languages. Similar to that, academia also hypothesized the existence of a Proto-Indo-European mythology, which is the mythology of the ancient people who spoke the Proto-Indo-European language, and is the common ancestor of Greek, Nordic, and Vedic mythologies. According to this theory, maybe Indra, Zeus, and Thor can all be traced back to a common Proto-Indo-European weather god called Perkwunos. Thunder and lightning certainly had a very special meaning for the ancient human beings. On the one hand, the massive discharge of energy is an unstoppable force of destruction, and the sight and sound of it strike fear into anyone observing it, even today. Mankind learned to control fire, water and many other natural elements very early on, but only quite recently learned how to harness electricity, so the overwhelming power of thunder would surely have left humanity in its infancy in awe and a transcendental terror. On the other hand, lightning would also lead to raining down of oxidized nitrogen on the soil, contributing to its fertility. So we can see that there is a duality in thunder and lightning: it is responsible for both destruction and regeneration, both malevolent and benevolent, horrifying and loveable at the same time. The distinction of good and evil, as we humans understand them, loses its meaning at this level. This viewpoint of the divine is very different from the Christian portrayal of God as omnibenevolent, but is actually quite common among world religions. We will surely revisit this topic again and again. Before we move on, let me read to you excerpts from the most famous hymn dedicated to Indra, known as the Indra Sukta. The word “sukta” roughly translates to “hymn”. So “Indra Sukta” literally means “Hymn to Indra”. OK, here we go. This is the first verse of the Indra Sukta:
I will declare the manly deeds of Indra, the first that he achieved, the thunder-wielder. He slew the dragon, then disclosed the waters, and cleft the channels of the mountain torrents.
The meaning of this verse is quite obvious. It tells us that Indra is a thunder god, and that he killed the dragon, or serpent that was blocking the waters, as we already talked about.
The hymn goes on to give a detailed description of the battle between Indra and Vritra the dragon, but let’s skip over that part for now, and look at the last verse:
Indra is King of all that moves and moves not, of creatures tame and horned, the thunder-wielder. Over all living men he rules as sovereign, containing all as spokes within the felly.
Felly is another way of saying felloe, which means the outer rim of a wheel. Here it can be understood as the border of the realm of existence. The sentence “Over all living men he rules as sovereign, containing all as spokes within the felly” is essentially saying that Indra rules over everything that exists.
Now that we have talked about the thunder god and King of gods Indra, let’s move onto another deity mentioned frequently in the Rigveda. His name is Agni, and he’s the god of fire. In fact the word “Agni” simply means “fire” in Sanskrit, and the word has the same origin with the latin word “ignis”, which in turn is the source for the English word “ignite”. Agni is often depicted in religious art as having two heads and four arms, riding on a ram, with fire coming out of his heads. There is no definitive answer as to what the two heads symbolize. Some say that they represent immortality, which is the absence of passage of time, and life, which has to occur within time. Others say that they illustrate the beneficent and malignant sides of his divine power. Either way, this is another example of people juxtaposing contradictory concepts in the same entity, which is possible because the divine exceeds the capability of human reasoning.
Now let me read you parts from the Agni Sukta, or, the hymn to Agni. This is actually the first hymn of the entire Rigveda Samhita.
I laud Agni, the chosen Priest, God, minister of sacrifice, the hotar, lavishest of wealth.
The word hotar refers to a Vedic priest. Skipping a few verses, it goes:
Agni, the perfect sacrifice which thou encompassest about verily goes to the gods.
May Agni, sapient minded priest, truthful, most gloriously great, the god, come hither with the gods.
You might be wondering, isn’t Agni a god? Why are these verses referring to him as a priest? In fact that’s exactly what makes Agni so special. Being a god himself, he’s also considered to be the messenger between our realm and the realm of the gods. In religious sacrifices conducted according to the Vedic tradition, called Yajnas, the focal point is always a sacred ceremonial fire, and people call the fire none other than Agni. Well of course, this is natural since as I mentioned before, the Sanskrit word for fire is just Agni. But people also identify the fire with the deity Agni, and hope that he will notify the gods of the dedication and devotion of the humans, so that the gods can grant us boons. In religious ceremonies, the priests are usually responsible for initiating communication between the humans and the gods, so I think it should be obvious that in a way, Agni is a priest himself, since he is also an intermediary between the gods and humans.
In addition to Indra and Agni, Rigveda also introduces us to many other gods, like Soma the moon god, Varuna the sea god, etc. But the name of Shiva, one of the most famous Hindu deities, was never mentioned. The name of Vishnu, the deity that has the largest number of worshippers among Hindus today, was mentioned, but his status was significantly lower than Indra and Agni. The worshipping of either Vishnu or Shiva as the supreme power of the universe was actually a later development.
As you can see, there are many, many gods introduced in the Vedas, and when people talk about Hinduism, they tend to label it as a polytheistic religion. But that’s not exactly the case. Remember that at the beginning of this episode I said that Hinduism is an umbrella term covering many different thoughts and traditions? Depending on who you ask, you will get a very different answer to the question “How many gods are there in Hinduism?”. Some believe there are many. Some believe there is only one, and some even reject the existence of a god at all! Well, at least in the stricter sense of the word God. And yet, all these people are Hindus! This amazing diversity in belief might be what fascinates me the most about Hinduism, and trying to make sense of what unifies these ideas and what differentiates them is a major goal of this podcast. But before branching out, let’s look at what the Vedas say about this. One verse from a hymn in the Rigveda Samhita goes like this:
They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, and he is heavenly nobly-winged Garutman. To what is one, sages give many a title. They call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.
Essentially, it is saying that there is only one supreme being, and the god of thunder Indra, god of fire Agni, god of sea Varuna, god of death Yama, so on and so forth, are simply different facets of it. When we’re trying to describe a different aspect of the nature of this one supreme being, we use a different name, but underneath all these names there is just one divine entity. When we look at this divine being while focusing on its immense power, we see Indra. When we look at the same being with the hope of getting good fortune in exchange for our offerings to it, we see Agni. But they are both manifestations of the same God. An ancient parable is helpful for understanding this: There are three blind men who don’t know what an elephant looks like. One day they run into an elephant, and want to figure out what it’s like by touching it. The first man touches the nose, and thinks “The elephant is like a snake”. The second touches an ear, and thinks “The elephant is like a big fan”. The third touches a leg, and thinks “The elephant is like a tree trunk”. In the Vedic view, we are like these blind men, and the one God is like the elephant. We cannot understand this god as it is, but we can know it from different perspectives like its manifestations as Indra or Agni.
And that’s a good spot to end this episode. We talked about the Vedas which is one of the oldest religious scriptures in the world. We focused on Rigveda, which is the oldest of the four Vedas, and spent most of our time discussing the samhita part of it. We became familiar with two gods, Indra the thunder god and Agni the fire god. Finally we briefly explored the view on God of the Vedas.
Thank you for listening. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, and leave a comment or rating. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, and I’ll see you next time!
