Hinduism

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Peace,

"with mind absorbed and heart melted with love"

In the Indian subcontinent there has developed a complex variety of religious paths. Some of these are relatively unified religious systems, such as Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Most of the other Indian religious ways have been categorized together as if they were a single tradition named "Hinduism". This term does not appear in the old texts. It is derived from a name applied by foreigners to the people living in the region of the Indus River.

An alternative label preferred today is Sanatana Dharma("eternal religion") Sanatana, eternal or "ageless", reflects the belief that these ways have always existed.Dharma is often translated as "religion" but its meaning encompasses matters of duty, natural law, social welfare , ethics, health and transcendental realization.

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Peace,

The spiritual expressions of Sanatana Dharma range from the extreme asceticism to extreme sensuality , from the heights of personal devotion to a deity to the heights of abstract philosophy, from the metaphysical proclamations of the oneness behind the material world to worship of images representing a multiplicity of deities. according to tradition , there are actually 333 million deities in India. The feeling is that the divine has countless faces.

The truth is One; sages call it by various names --Rig Veda

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Peace,

The Harappan Civilization

Many of the threads of Sanatana Dharma may have existed in the religion practiced by the aboriginal Dravidian peoples from India. There were also advanced urban centers in the Indus Valley from about 2500 BCE or even earlier, until 1500 BCE. Major fortified cities have been found by archaeologists at Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, and Dholavira; the culture they represent is labeled "Harappan".
Archaeologists have found little conclusive evidence of temples in the Harappan cities, but the people clearly lavished great care on their plumbing and irrigation systems.
The major structure at Mohenjo-Daro, called the Great Bath, is a very large , lined tank with steps leading down into it, surrounded by an open courtyard; an adjoining structure has what appear to be private bathing rooms.

Historians speculate from this evidence that early Indus people placed a religious sort of emphasis on hygiene and or ritual purification. There were many stone lingams , natural elongated oval stones or sculptures up to two feet tall. Both the seals and the lingams suggest that early Indus people knew about meditation practices and were worshipers of a deity who bore the attributes of the later god Siva who is still one of the major forms worshiped today.

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Peace,

Vedic Religion

Western historians developed the Aryan Invasion Theory that the highly organized cultures of the Indus Valley and the villages in other parts of the subcontinent were gradually over run by nomadic invaders from outside India.

The theory argues that the Vedas , the sublime religious texts often referred to as the foundations of Sanatana Dharma , were the product of the invaders, and not the Indians. These invaders were identified as Aryans, who were the Indo-European tribes thought to have migrated out ward from the steppes of southern Russia during the Second Millennium BCE.

The Vedas sing the praises of the Indian Subcontinent, and do not refer to any other homeland.

Today the Aryan Invasion Theory is contested among scholars and by Hindu nationalists. There may have been considerable mixing between indigenous Dravidian people and those who composed the Vedas in Sanskrit .
The Vedas themselves are the foundation of the upper caste Brahmanic Hinduism, nut not necessarily of all forms of Sanatana Dharma .

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The Vedas themselves, although their origins and antiquity are still unknown, the Vedas themselves can be examined. They are a revered collection of ancient sacred hymns compromising four parts, which appear to have developed over time.
The earliest are the Samhitas, hymns of praise in worship of deities.
Then appeared the Brahmanas , direction about ritual sacrifices to the deities.
The Brahmanas explain the symbolic correspondences between microcosm of the ritual process and the "real world" in which rituals are performed.
Some people went to the forests to meditate as recluses; their writings form the third part of the " Vedas" --the Aranyakas , or "forest treatises". The last of the Vedas are the Upanishads , consisting of teaching from highly realized spiritual masters. They explain the personal transformation that results from psychic participation in the ritual process.