The Philosophy of Hinduism
“Karma”, “Samsara” and why Hinduism is more than just religion!
Hinduism is considered the oldest religion on earth. But if you ask some of the followers, don’t be surprised to hear “Hinduism is not a religion”. So, to understand the statement, let’s delve first into the word Hindu.
The followers of Hinduism are generally known as Hindu. But for a long period in history, the word Hindu meant a geographical region around and beyond the east of the Indus river. So, the word “Hindu” originated from the Sanskrit word for the Indus River, known as Sindhu. Sindhu mispronounced became Hindu in Persian and Indus in Greek. Later, when the followers of Islam invaded the subcontinent, they called the inhabitants of the land Hindus, to basically distinguish themselves. Hence, the term Hindu has geographical, cultural, and religious meanings attached to it.
The religion followed by the majority of the inhabitants became known as Hinduism or Hindu “Dharma”. The word Dharma means “living in the right way” in Sanskrit. So, for major inhabitants of the Subcontinent, Hinduism was (and is) just their way of living that had gone on forever. Remember the mythological aspect attached with the origin of Vedas that we talked about earlier, about Vedas being eternal and ever-present right from the beginning. Well, the same is believed about “the right way of living” by…
