Evaluating origins, the Gita and the authority of texts

Overview

Recall questions on vedic Aryan or Indus Valley origins, Hinduism as a colonial construct, Krishna and Arjuna, the competing paths to liberation, and the standing of the Vedas.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Give the case that Hinduism begins with the vedic Aryans rather than with the Indus Valley.

   Model answer

   The Vedas are the earliest Hindu scripture and the acknowledged root of later authority, their language is the ancestor of Sanskrit, and fire sacrifice, the deities named in the hymns and the sacred thread all descend from them, whereas nothing from the Indus sites can be shown to be Hindu.

2. 2

   Give the case that the roots of Hinduism lie in the Indus Valley civilisation.

   Model answer

   Ritual bathing, a seated figure that may be an early Shiva, female figurines that may be goddess images, and the sacred status of the pipal tree and the bull all point forward to later Hindu practice that the vedic hymns do not explain.

3. 3

   Why has the origins controversy proved so hard to settle?

   Model answer

   The Indus script is undeciphered, the linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence has to be weighed against one another, and the question carries political weight in modern India, where an indigenous origin is claimed as a matter of national identity.

4. 4

   Give the argument that Hinduism is a modern construct rather than a single ancient religion.

   Model answer

   The word is a nineteenth-century coinage from a Persian geographical term, there is no founder, creed or single scripture, and scholars such as Frits Staal have argued that colonial administration and the census imposed one label on many distinct traditions.

5. 5

   Give the argument against treating Hinduism as a colonial invention.

   Model answer

   David Lorenzen argues that a shared Hindu self-description formed several centuries before British rule, in contrast with Islam, and that shared texts, deities, pilgrimage sites and the idea of Sanatana Dharma give the tradition a real unity that the name merely records.

6. 6

   Give the case that modern Hinduism is continuous with vedic and Indus traditions.

   Model answer

   Fire ritual still encircles the Hindu wedding, mantras from the Rig Veda are still recited, purification by water is still required before worship, and Sanskrit remains the language of ritual.

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