INDUISMO. — This is the common designation for those religions of medieval and modern India that arose from the fusion of popular, Aryan and non-Aryan beliefs and forms of worship with orthodox Brahmanism. Several causes contributed to this religious syncretism, among which should be remembered the military expansion toward the east and south, which brought the Aryans into contact with new and numerous aboriginal tribes, and the foreign invasions of northern India, which produced that mingling of races, customs, and religious and philosophical doctrines from which a new civilization, known as Neo-Brahmanic, emerged. It would not be far from the truth to assign to this slow transformation a period extending from the first centuries of the Christian era to 1500.
SUMMARY:
I. Brahmanism and I
II. Vaishnavism
III. Shaivism
IV. Shaktism
V. Deistic sects.I. BRAHMANISM AND HINDUISM
The contribution of Brahmanism to the formation of Hinduism is evident in the dogmatics of the Hindu religions, which, while differing in their forms and often in the object of worship, all acknowledge an absolute and eternal cosmic principle that retains the character, if not the name, of the ancient Brahman (v.); for the most part they admit the supernatural origin of the Veda (v.) and share the belief in the transmigration of souls through the effect of karman (v.) until liberation is attained (v. MOKSA).As for respect for the caste system, it was so deeply rooted in the Indian consciousness that even when the founders of new religions proclaimed the path of salvation open to all castes, they meant religious, not social, equality. In practice, social inequalities were accepted and justified by the argument that they were the effect of karman, of merit or demerit acquired in a previous existence.
Not all the divinities of the Vedic Pantheon passed into Hinduism. Agni, Varuna, Indra, Sūrya, Vāyu, Soma, and Yama are found there, associated with the god of wealth Kubera, already mentioned in the Atharvaveda, VIII, 10, 28, and made guardians of the world. But Indra is no longer the god of battles; the task of destroying the demons is now entrusted to Viṣṇu, his faithful ally in the victorious struggle against Vṛtra (RV, I, 32; VIII, 100). Viṣṇu and Śiva, the ancient Rudra, who had secondary importance in the R̥gveda, acquire in Hinduism primacy over all the other gods, and both are identified by their worshippers with the Supreme Cosmic Principle. Hence the attempt, inspired by monotheistic tendencies, to associate the two divinities in a unitary conception, personified in Hari-Hara, a synonym for Viṣṇu-Śiva, which appears for the first time in the Harivamīa, or “Genealogy of Hari,” an appendix to the Mahābhārata. Subsequently, apparently around the fifth or sixth century A.D., the dyad becomes a triad: Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Śiva, and represents another attempt to compose into unity the threefold manifestation of divine power, creative in the form of Brahmā, and respectively preservative and destructive in that of Viṣṇu and Śiva (Mahābhārata, III, 256, 35). But the attempted unification of the three gods (Harivamīa, st. 10662) was not respected in practice, because primacy was attributed to Viṣṇu or Śiva according to the sectarian preferences of the devotees of one or the other divinity. The Śivaites believe that the triad is the manifestation of Śiva in his three forms of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Bhava (another personification of Śiva), while the Viṣṇuites who follow Vallabha Ācārya (15th century) assert the same of Kṛṣṇa (an incarnation of Viṣṇu), trimūrti, or threefold form, in the triad Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Śiva. As for Brahmā, his importance in the triad was always secondary. The episode in the Harivamīa (chs. 184–90) in which he acts as mediator in the conflict between Śiva and Viṣṇu, proclaiming their unity, corresponds well to the role assigned to him in the triad, namely, that of linking the two greater divinities.
The differing importance of the three gods in Hinduism excludes any relationship, even merely analogical, between the triad and the Trinity of Catholic theology, formed of three Persons whom dogma defines as equal, although distinct. Moreover, the attempt to reduce the gods of the Vedic Pantheon to three, the perfect number, predates Christianity by several centuries. The idea of the threefold manifestation of a single God goes back to the R̥gveda (ca. 2000 B.C.), Agni (v.) as one and threefold: celestial (the sun), atmospheric (lightning), and terrestrial (fire). In the first books of the Śatapatha-brāhmaṇa (ca. 1000 B.C.), various triads are proposed, until Sūrya, Vāyu, and Agni are defined as the hearts—that is, the innermost essence—of all the gods (IX, 1, 1, 23). But this triad is merely the threefold manifestation of Agni (VI, 7, 4, 4), and Agni is Prajñpati (VI, 8, 1, 4), the “father of creatures,” the god of priestly speculation, who, since he was not linked, like fire, to any natural substratum, was better suited to represent the cosmic principle. These precedents rule out the idea that the Trinitarian conception of the divine prevailing in Hinduism was inspired by Christianity.
II. VIṢṆUISM
Unlike Śiva, who is venerated because he is feared, Viṣṇu is loved by his devotees for his benevolent assistance, which led him to incarnate himself several times in order to save humankind from some danger. Two of his incarnations, or avatāra (literally “descents,” from heaven to earth), are particularly important for the history of Viṣṇuism: the incarnation as Rāma, during the second cosmic age, to liberate Lanka from the tyranny of the demon Rāvaṇa, and the avatāra as Kṛṣṇa (v.) in the third age, in order to disseminate a doctrine of redemption founded on love (bhakti) for a single god.The gospel of Kṛṣṇaism is the Bhagavadgītā (v.), where Kṛṣṇa is called Viṣṇu twice (XI, 24; 30) and Vāsudeva four times (VII, 19; X, 37; XI, 50; XVIII, 74). This name is not, as was once believed, a patronymic; Vāsudeva was the name of a popular divinity with whom Kṛṣṇa came to be identified when divine essence was attributed to him. Once identified with Viṣṇu, the supreme deity, Kṛṣṇa was also identified by his devotees with other gods: Nārāyaṇa, the “alter ego” of Viṣṇu, Brahmā, Soma, Sūrya, Agni, and Yama (Mahābhārata, III, 13, 19). The cult of Vāsudeva was already widespread in northwestern India before the Christian era, as attested by inscriptions assigned to the second century B.C. The devotees of this god were called bhāgavata, from Bhagavat, “the blessed one,” an epithet of Vāsudeva. No date can be assigned to the identification of Kṛṣṇa with “the blessed one,” which must be later than the Christian era, since the oldest work dealing with the incarnation of Kṛṣṇa and the wonders of the divine child, the Harivamīa, belongs approximately to the third century A.D., while the Purāṇic legends are later still. The cult of the miraculous child was instituted by Vallabha Ācārya (1479–1530), founder of a religion that does not demand mortification of the senses from its followers, but only love (bhakti) and joy. These epicureans of Viṣṇuism, numerous among the wealthy merchants of Bombay and Gujarat, who maintain the sect’s sanctuaries and the guru, or teachers, who preside over them, make no sacrifice other than money. The sect has no temples open to the public; the sanctuary is attached to the teacher’s dwelling, where he treats the image of Kṛṣṇa as a living child: every day he bathes it, dresses it, offers it various kinds of food, and places it upon the throne, exposed to the veneration of the faithful together with Radhā, Kṛṣṇa’s favorite at the time of his youthful loves in Vṛndāvana. In northeastern India, the cult of Radhā and Kṛṣṇa was greatly advanced through the work of Caitanya (1485–1533), a contemporary of Vallabha. But whereas the latter attributed capital importance to ritual, Caitanya condemned the outward forms of worship, rejected caste divisions, and taught that fervent love for Kṛṣṇa and Radhā was sufficient to confer salvation. At the sect’s gatherings, Caitanya would heighten the fervor of his followers with passionate songs in praise of Hari (Viṣṇu), during which he himself or one of his disciples would sometimes fall into a swoon. This was regarded as a sign of special favor from the god. After his death, Caitanya was considered an incarnation of Hari, and temples were dedicated to him that remain pilgrimage destinations to this day.
Rāma is the national hero of India, already regarded as an incarnation of Viṣṇu in the first centuries of the Christian era, before being elevated to the honors of worship around the eleventh century. The Rāmāyaṇa, or “the deeds of Rāma,” by Vālmāki, and the Rāmācārimānas, or “the lake of the deeds of Rāma,” by Tulsidās, are the sacred books of Ramaism. The latter, written in Hindi, a dialect widely understood in continental India, has become the Bible of ninety million faithful. The fundamental principles of Ramaism, which is based on the philosophy of Rāmānuja (eleventh century), are common to all Ramaites, but the northerners differ from the southerners on the question of divine grace, from which temporal goods and mokṣa proceed. The followers of the “northern doctrine” (vaḍakala) believe that grace is granted by Rāma-Viṣṇu to those who render themselves worthy of it through the exercise of religious practices, whereas the adherents of the “southern doctrine” (tenkalai) regard grace as a gift spontaneously bestowed upon one who, distrustful of his own strength, seeks refuge in God and in his infinite mercy. To make their doctrine evident, the two sects resort to strange analogies. The northern Ramaites maintain that the man who clings to God, as a baby monkey clings to its mother in order to be carried to a safe place, is saved; the southerners compare the elect person to a kitten which, seized by its mother with her teeth, is carried to safety without any cooperation on its part.
III. ŚIVAISM. — Śiva is the successor of the Vedic Rudra, the evil god of disease and death, greeted, by euphemism, with the epithet “benevolent” (śiva) in one of the three hymns (X, 9a, 9) that the R̥penda devotes to him. When Rudra-Śiva began to be identified with other divinities of a malign character, such as Bhava and Śarva, personifications of the destructive power of fire, his figure acquired new names, attributes, aspects, and often contradictory features as a result of the imperfect fusion of the constituent elements of his complex personality. God of fertility, like Priapō, and therefore represented by the phallus, he sits upon a corpse and wears a necklace of human skulls when he personifies Mahākāla, time that destroys all things. He also represents the destructive element in the triad. He is Śaṅkara, “the beneficent one,” who, urged by his consort Umā, daughter of the Imalaia, restores to life the dead son of a brahman, and he is also Bhairava, “the terrible one,” husband of the inaccessible Kālī, the goddess who delights in blood sacrifices. He is called Multiform (bahurūpa) in the Mahābhārata, and polymorphism is one of his characteristics.
In continental India, the devotees of Śiva are not the majority, although they predominate among the non-Muslim Kaśmīris and the non-Buddhists of Nepal; in the Dekkan, viṣṇuities and śivaites are evenly balanced. Both of these religions welcome a large number of ascetics who, through devotion to Viṣṇu or Śiva and through their own spiritual and moral discipline, aspire to mystical union with the preferred deity. The mendicant ascetics, included under the generic designation yogin, or “followers of Yoga,” are divided into many sects, among which the śivaita sect of the Lingayāt, or “bearers of the phallus,” is notable for its importance; they wear its emblem suspended around their necks. Better known by the name Jangama, “wanderers,” they pass from one temple to another to beg on the occasion of religious festivals, and they also have monasteries where the so-called Dispassionate (virakta) devote themselves to the contemplative life and are honored by their fellow believers.
The limited space permits only a mention of the two principal philosophical-religious systems of Śivaism. The more ancient, founded by Lakulin (ca. second century B.C.), is that of the Pāśupata, or “devotees of Pāśupati,” that is, Śiva in his capacity as “lord of animals.” The animal (paśu) which, held captive, longs to be reunited with Śiva, its lord (pati), symbolizes in the system the individual soul, which, bound to matter, becomes stained by sin and is subject to expiation. In order that this may take place, Śiva creates the world, where the retribution of harman occurs. Śiva’s body is pure energy; it has nothing in common with the perishable body of individual souls, which, once liberated, acquire unlimited knowledge and powers. According to the śaiva system, the liberated soul becomes identical with Śiva, but without the faculty of creating. The principles of this second system differ little from those of the Pāśupata, but whereas the devotees of Pāśupati abandon themselves to absurd practices, such as smearing their bodies with ashes three times a day, feigning madness with laughter, songs, and dances, and imitating the bellowing of the bull (which is Śiva’s mount), the śaiva pay homage to the deity in the customary forms: morning and evening worship, sacrificial offerings, and the recitation of prayers while using the crown of 84 beads, which is the rosary of Śivaism. Practices of Yoga, differing only in method, are common to both systems.
IV. ŚAKTISM. — Śiva is also represented in union with his consort Durgā (v.) in the form of Ardhanārīśvara, “the lord half woman,” that is,
androgynous. Durgā occupies the left side, in accordance with the precept of the Śatapathabrahmana, VIII, 4, 4, 11: “woman has her place to the left of man.” In this combination the goddess also personifies the creative power (śakti) of the god, which is the object of veneration on the part of the śakta, or “devotees of the śakti,” an important śivaita sect. The śakta are divided into dakṣināśāriṇa, or “of the right hand,” and vāmātarin, or “of the left hand.” The former offer the śakti a worship consisting of the customary honors; the latter, however, secretly practice orgiastic rites which, among the śivaites of eastern Bengal and Assam, degenerate into debauchery.
The sacred books of Śaktism are the Tantra, or “books” par excellence, perhaps no older than A.D. 700, although they refer to older forms of worship, dating approximately from the fifth century. In the form of dialogues between Śiva and his divine consort, the Tantra set forth esoteric doctrines connected with the worship of Durgā and her various forms, each of which receives particular honors. Mystical meditations alternate with descriptions of magical rites and instructions for carrying them out. Mysterious powers are also attributed to ritual formulas (mantra) and mystical syllables, which accompany invocations to Durgā.
V. SÈTTE DEISTICHE
Vaishnavism, the religion of love, nourished benevolent feelings toward all things, even the most despised, but respected caste privileges, including that which promised the first three castes liberation from rebirth within the brief span of a single existence, whereas the śādra, as a reward for a virtuous life, obtained only rebirth in a higher form of existence, from which it was possible to attain mokṣa. Rāmānanda, a Brahman of Prayāga (Allahabad), who professed the worship of Rāma, proclaimed the religious and social equality of the castes and introduced other innovations into the sect, such as the use of dialects to disseminate his reform and the substitution of the worship of Rāma and Sita for the sensual worship of Kṛṣṇa and Radhā. Reliable information concerning the life of Rāmānanda is lacking; he is said to have lived 115 years! (d. in 1411). His followers came from all social classes; one of them, Kabīr, a Muslim weaver, in turn became the founder of a new sect, called the kabīrpanthi, or “followers of Kabīr.”The uncertainty of the chronological data does not permit us to assert that Kabīr (d. in 1518) was a personal disciple of Rāmānanda. Perhaps the tradition concerning his discipleship should be understood to mean that he belonged to Rāmānanda’s sect before carrying out his own reform. Kabīr did not set out to reconcile the religious principles of Islām with those of Vaishnavism. The substance of his reform was the overthrow of all the ritual and dogmatic barriers that divided the followers of the two religions, all brothers in God, even when invoked under different names. Kabīr condemned idolatry and every kind of external worship, extending to the two religions the equality that Rāmānanda had established among the castes. He said that both the Purāṇa and the Qurʾān contained “empty words,” and taught that only those attain immortality who observe the moral precepts, do not become attached to the goods of the world, and love all living beings as themselves. The Kabīrpanthi today number no more than nine or ten thousand among Indians and Muslims, scattered throughout northern and central India; their most important headquarters are at Benares. Following in Kabīr’s footsteps, Nānak (1469–1538) worked to consolidate the union between Indians and Muslims, and faith in the one God, Hari-Allah (v. SIKH and SIKHISMO).
Other attempts at religious syncretism, this time between Hinduism and Christianity, were made in the modern age by Rām Mohan Ray and his successors (v. BRĀHMA SAMĀJ). The Christian orientation prevailed when Keshab Chandra Sen reformed, in 1881, the “Brāhma Samāj of India,” which had been abandoned by most of its members, and instituted the “new rule” (naba bidhan), disseminated by twelve missionaries, in imitation of the twelve Apostles. Keshab acknowledged the superiority of Christianity and affirmed the divinity of Christ, but as regards ceremonies, he took from the two religions whatever he believed best suited to excite the imagination of the people. Congregationalism, however, failed to take hold among the people; it remained confined to the educated classes and was little diffused in India itself outside its homeland, Bengal. It would not be far from the truth to estimate that at present slightly more than ten thousand members and adherents belong to the various Samaj (v. also ARVA SAMAJ).
BIBLI: E. W. Hopkins, The religions of India, Nuova York 1895; A. Barth, The religions of India, 4ª ed., Londra 1906; W. Crooke, Hinduism, in Enc. of Rel. and Eth., VI, pp. 686-715; R. G. Bhandarkar, Vajagavism, Sutivism and minor religious systems, Strasburgo 1913; R. Garbe, Indien and the Christentum, Tübingen 1914; R. Tagore, One hundred poems of Kabir, Londra 1915; J. W. Hauer, Brahmanismus u. Hinduismus, in Das Licht des Ostens, Stoccarda-Berlino-Lipsia 1923; H. C. E. Zacharias, I movimenti riformatori nell'i. moderno, in Pensiero missionario, 3 (1931), pp. 136-69; A. Ballini, L. in P. Tacchi-Venturi, Storia delle religioni, I, 3ª ed., Torino 1949, pp. 371-374. Ferdinando Belloni Filippi