There are no prophets in Hinduism?

Islam has Mohammed. Christianity has Jesus.

All contemporary religions have one or another prophet. Islam has Mohammed. Christianity has Jesus. Judaism has Abraham and other prophets. Sikhs have the 10 gurus that can be considered as prophets. Buddhists have Buddha. Jains have Mahavira. The Chinese and Japanese have Tao and Confucius if I’m not wrong.

The prophets mentioned above spawned religions. You may say that Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism came from Hinduism, but the point is, the prophets of these religions, the originators of these religions, couldn’t remain what they became within the fold of Hinduism.

I wonder if there is a word for a prophet in traditional Hinduism. Is there a word for a prophet in Sanskrit?

For the clarity of this post, who do I consider a prophet? Initially, I had written (but deleted) that a prophet must be a person who starts a religion and then people pray to him. Like, people pray to Jesus. People pray to Buddha and Mahaveera. Sikhs pray to one of the 10 gurus or Granth Sahib that contains the wisdom of the gurus and other saints. In these religions, the prophets themselves have attained the stature of God. Despite being human (or at least until they had become prophets) they manifested/manifest divine powers. When Sikhs pray to Guru Nanak in order to solve a problem they actually believe that Guru Nanak is going to solve the problem.

But then I wondered, do Muslims pray to Muhammad? Muslims are always calling out to Allah. They say, “Ya Allah!” or “Allah Hu Akbar”, but do they also call out to prophet Mohammad to sort out their predicaments? They have the photographs of Mecca hanging in their homes and they sit facing where Mecca is while praying, but I don’t think it is because of Muhammad — I might be wrong.

Anyway, this is why I refrain from writing that a prophet does not just start a religion but he (I’m not using he or she because I don’t know of any woman prophet among major world religions) is also prayed to. I’m not aware if Muslims pray to Muhammad when they are in trouble.

Coming back to Hinduism, although there are renowned saints, religious scholars, holy men, and women, they are not prophets. In Hinduism there are saints who can help you be one with God, be spiritual or unravel the complexity of the divine, they are not gods themselves. They may also be known to have divine qualities, but they themselves are not treated as gods or sons of gods.

What about Avatars? Avatars are incarnations. There are many humans (I cannot immediately recall their names) who are known to be avatars of particular gods because they had traits of those gods, but they are not treated as gods. For example when Hindus say “Hey Bhagwan” they are thinking of an actual godlike Ram, Krishna, Hanuman or Shiv; they are not thinking of a saint or a sadhu unless they specifically mention it like “Hey Sai Baba” or Hey Guru Nanak”.

So according to the definition of the prophet that I can understand, he is a person who begins a religion and people of that religion pray to him. In Hinduism since nobody seems to have originated the religion, there is no prophet per se.

Another thing in Hinduism is that there is no fixed event when the religion started. You can pinpoint the beginning of Christianity to the arrival of Jesus, the beginning of Islam to the arrival of Mohammed and Sikhism to the arrival of the 10 gurus, but in Hinduism, you cannot say that this particular person or this particular line of people started the religion. It has just been there. During different stages of history, there might have been people who revived the basic idea of Hinduism, for example, Adi Shankara or Vivekananda, but these people propagated an idea and a religion that already existed. These people didn’t found new ideas; they just recognized the importance of existing ideas and then tried to make people realize their intrinsic strength.

Perhaps this is why the word “Sanatan” comes up again and again. It means eternal. If I’m not wrong, many people call Hinduism “Sanatan Dharma” — the eternal way of living. Sanatan Dharms exists from Anadi (there is no beginning) to Anant (there is no end). So if there is no beginning, how can someone start and since you don’t particularly need someone to start a particular chain of thought, there is no need for a prophet.

Before a prophet, there is supposed to be a stage of darkness. In Islam, it is called “Jahilia”. In Sikhism they say “Sat Guru Nanak pargat hoya, mitiya andhera channan hoya” — the real guru Nanak appeared, and all the darkness vanished. So there is darkness, and then a prophet comes and with him comes the awareness, the light, the new beginning, the new age, the new religion. If there is no darkness, where is the need of light?

3 arguments come to my mind regarding the absence of prophets in Hinduism:

1. There was no need for prophets because people never felt the need for them.
2. Extraordinarily prominent Hindu thought leaders decided to chart a different path, became prophets and initiated new religions like Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism (which means there was intellectual, social and cultural space for these religions to sprout and prosper, and hence there WAS the darkness that needed to be dispelled)
3. The religion is so old that even if there were prophets — people who started the religion — there is no written record of them

Who knows? Maybe there were prophets but there were no written records? The prophets of contemporary religions came after writing had been invented. People were writing by the time Buddha and Mahavira came. Writing was certainly there when Jesus, Muhammed, and the 10 Sikh gurus came. But writing wasn’t yet invented when people who started Hinduism came — this is one logic that comes to my mind. When did writing come to India? It must be much before the epics like Mahabharata and Mahabharata were written. Both these epics talk about gods and maharishis, but they don’t talk about prophets. Gita talks about dharma but not prophets. As far as I know (and I may be wrong) even our Vedas don’t talk about those early people who started Hinduism because again, Hinduism means Sanatan Dharma and Sanatan is from Anadi till Anant.