Hinduism

Hinduism is a religion that encompasses an astonishing variety of paths to the divine. A Hindu might be a dutiful, righteous family man or a wild ascetic living in a cremation ground; a master meditator detached from all emotion or someone intoxicated with divine love and heedlessly singing and dancing in the street; a strict vegetarian or a sacrificer of animals to a bloodthirsty goddess; someone whose life is dedicated to charity for others or a hermit in the mountains. Yet all of these people and countless others are united by a shared tradition and set of beliefs that we today call “Hinduism.”

The word “Hinduism” and the name of the country India both come from the same ancient Sanskrit word: Sindh, which was the name of a mighty river (today known as the “Indus River”) that flows through the western part of the Indian subcontinent that is now the country of Pakistan. For millennia, foreign peoples such as the Persians and Greeks called the region “India” and its people “Hindus” after the river. Over time, the meaning of the word “Hindu” shifted. Other religions besides the one that we today call “Hinduism” became established in India. So the term “Hindu” came to refer to only those inhabitants of India who followed the region’s predominant religious tradition.^[1][2] Today, Hinduism has spread all over the world, but it remains by far the majority religion of the countries of India and Nepal.^[3]

Some followers of this sacred set of beliefs and practices prefer to call it the Sanatana Dharma, which can be roughly translated as “Eternal Religion.”^[4] They point out that “Hinduism” is a term that originated among foreigners, whereas Sanatana Dharma is a term and concept that’s indigenous to their own culture.^[5] Nevertheless, adherents of the Sanatana Dharma themselves often use the word “Hinduism,” especially when speaking to foreigners, due to how widespread and recognizable the term is.^[6] Because of that widespread recognition, the articles about India’s predominant religion on this site use the term “Hinduism,” too.

Despite the vast array of spiritual paths that are contained within Hinduism, Hinduism has always had a clear, consistent standard for determining who is a Hindu and who isn’t: a Hindu is someone who accepts the authority of the religion’s central collection of sacred scriptures, the Vedas, and strives to bring his or her beliefs and actions into harmony with their teachings.^[7] The word Veda comes from the Sanskrit root vid-, “to know,”^[8] and the Vedas are seen as containing the highest knowledge that can be communicated in human speech. Hindus believe the Vedas are apaurusheya, which means “not man-made, but eternally present.”^[9] The Vedas themselves teach that they are the “breath” of the divine, and are thus as much a part of the divine as our own breath is a part of our bodies.^[10] The rishis or seers who recorded these texts didn’t compose them, but rather discovered them by getting particularly close to the divine.^[11]

Modern scholars believe that the oldest parts of the Vedas are staggeringly old: they were first recited roughly six thousand years ago.^[12] Thus, Hinduism can credibly claim to be the world’s oldest religion (among the ones that are still practiced today).^[13]

As you’d expect of any six-thousand-year-old religion, Hinduism has changed in all kinds of ways, both large and small, over the millennia. But all of these developments amount to the sprouting and flourishing of seeds that were already contained in the Vedas, waiting for their appropriate time and place to germinate. Hindus themselves emphasize that which is continuous and essential in their religion, the inner core that transcends mere historical fluctuations.^[14]

And so, in the interest of presenting Hinduism or the Sanatana Dharma on its own terms, with as little Western gloss as possible, the articles on Hinduism on this site follow suit. The purpose of these articles is therefore first and foremost to present the timeless worldview or quest at the heart of Hinduism, and only secondarily to present the history of how that worldview or quest has taken on somewhat different forms over time to fit changing circumstances.

This article serves as an introduction to all the other articles on Hinduism on this site. All the links in this article point to the more detailed articles on more specific topics within Hinduism.

The Basic Beliefs of Hinduism

So, then, what is that timeless worldview or quest at the heart of Hinduism? The most basic beliefs of Hinduism, the ones that really define the religion, come from the parts of the Vedas that are called the “Upanishads.” The Upanishads are ecstatic poems that reveal the underlying meaning of everything else in the Vedas, and thereby also reveal the underlying meaning of life and nature of reality as a whole.^[15]

According to the Upanishads, the divine – which is called Brahman – is the absolute reality that underlies the world, yet also transcends the world. All of the countless things in the world are manifestations of Brahman, but Brahman itself is One.^[16] As the Chandogya Upanishad says, “This universe comes forth from Brahman, exists in Brahman, and will return to Brahman. Verily, all is Brahman.”^[17]

The Upanishads often characterize Brahman as infinite, eternal, perfect, and self-sufficient.^[18] But they hold that, when it really comes down to it, Brahman can’t be described at all. The human mind and human language simply can’t grasp Brahman. Therefore, the Upanishads prefer to say what Brahman isn’t rather than what it is. In the words of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, for example, “Now there is the teaching, ‘It is not this. It is not that.’ There is no better expression than ‘not this.’ This is the designation of the truth about reality.”^[19]

But if nothing at all were ever said about Brahman, religion and spirituality would be impossible, because they’d have nothing to talk about in the first place. So, in order for Brahman to be worshiped and pursued by humans, it graciously reveals itself to us in the provisional form of a personal god or goddess with qualities that can be expressed in words. This personal mode of Brahman is called Ishvara, “Supreme Lord.”^[20] As the Shvetashvatara Upanishad puts it,

Brahman, attributeless Reality,
Becomes the Lord of Love who casts his net
Of appearance over the cosmos and rules
It from within through his divine power.
He was before creation; he will be
After dissolution. He alone is.^[21]

To be clear, Ishvara isn’t a specific god or goddess, but rather the concept of the personal deity as such; all of the many gods and goddesses of Hinduism are Ishvara, because each of them present Brahman to the Hindu worshiper in a personal form with articulable attributes.^[22]

The Upanishads also identify Brahman with another key concept in the Hindu belief system: the Atman, the “Self,” which is our inner soul or essence that transcends the mind and body we mistakenly identify with in everyday life.^[23] Since everything is a manifestation of Brahman, Brahman is the deepest Self of everything. For a Hindu, to “find yourself” means to discover your ultimate identity with everything and with the divine. As the sage Uddalaka says to his son Shvetaketu in the Chandogya Upanishad,

In the beginning was only Being,
One without a second.
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos
And entered into everything in it.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.^[24]

So, according to Hindu beliefs, Brahman, Ishvara, and the soul are all one. They’re just different modes or expressions of the same underlying Thing.

But then why is our everyday experience of the world so starkly different from the picture those beliefs paint of what the world is really like?

Hinduism teaches that Ishvara, the creator, is like a master sorcerer who creates the world through his or her magical power. This is a way of praising the creator for his or her wondrous abilities, but it also inevitably raises the question: to what degree is the world a magic trick? Since the world manifests Brahman, it’s real in that sense. But the particular form the world appears to have in our everyday lives – our seeming to be finite, separate beings ruled by the blind cravings of our egos – is superficial and fanciful. It obscures Brahman, the underlying reality. Hinduism uses the word maya to refer to both this magical power and the beguiling spell that it casts.^[25] As the Shvetashvatara Upanishad says,

From [Ishvara’s] divine power comes forth all this
Magical show of name and form, of you
And me, which casts the spell of pain and pleasure.
Only when we pierce through this magic veil
Do we see the One who appears as many.^[26]

This world of maya is also referred to as samsara. The word samsara literally means “to wander.”^[27] In the realm of samsara, the soul is doomed to “wander” from one reincarnation to another for as long as it fails to “pierce through this magic veil” of maya and realize that it’s one with Brahman. As long as it perceives itself to be a separate being, it remains trapped in this realm of separation, limitation, and general suffering.^[28] To quote the Katha Upanishad,

Who sees multiplicity
But not the one indivisible Self
Must wander on and on from death to death.^[29]

Some of these reincarnations are more favorable than others. Hinduism teaches that the form in which you’re reborn, and the circumstances of your life, are determined by your karma. The belief in karma is the belief that when you perform morally and spiritually good actions, you generate favorable results for yourself in this life and later lives, and when you perform morally and spiritually evil actions, you generate unfavorable results for yourself in this life and later ones. In other words, everything good in your life is a consequence of your past good actions, and everything bad in your life is a consequence of your past bad actions.^[30]

What determines which actions are good and which ones are bad? Hinduism answers that good actions are those that are in accordance with dharma. Dharma refers to the order or nature of the cosmos, which includes the traditional Indian social order and the Hindu religion. That social order and religion are therefore part of nature itself rather than human inventions, and they’re filled with inherent spiritual significance. This also means that while Hinduism does have a set of general moral precepts for all Hindus to follow, Hindus are also obliged to follow the rules that pertain to their specific social roles, because all of that is part of dharma.^[31][32]

But while Hinduism acknowledges the pursuit of better karmic fruits to be a desirable goal in its own right, the religion also points out that any and all karmic fruits, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant, ultimately keep you trapped in samsara and maya. The highest goal of all is to achieve moksha or “liberation” from samsara and maya altogether. You’re “liberated” or enlightened when you realize – not just as a matter of intellectual belief, but through firsthand experience – that you’re one with the divine and with all things.^[33] The Katha Upanishad exclaims,

The wise, realizing through meditation
The timeless Self, beyond all perception,
Hidden in the cave of the heart,
Leave pain and pleasure far behind.
Those who know they are neither body nor mind
But the immemorial Self, the divine
Principle of existence, find the source
Of all joy and live in joy abiding.^[34]

When you reach that realization of the ultimate truth, your actions no longer produce karmic fruits and you’re no longer reincarnated, because you’ve seen the world of separate souls with separate karmic destinies to be the provisional mirage that it is. As the Shvetashvatara Upanishad discloses,

On this ever-revolving wheel of life
The individual self goes round and round
Through life after life, believing itself
To be a separate creature, until
It sees its identity with the Lord of Love
And attains immortality in the indivisible whole.
He is the eternal reality, sing
The scriptures, and the ground of existence.
Those who perceive him in every creature
Merge in him and are released from the wheel
Of birth and death.^[35]

Hinduism teaches that everyone will reach moksha eventually, no matter how many rebirths it takes.^[36] The story of life may be full of pain and sadness along the way, but it has a happy ending.

Those, in a nutshell, are the basic beliefs of Hinduism.

Hindu Gods and Goddesses

In a famous scene in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, a young student named Shakalya asks the venerable sage Yajnavalkya how many deities there are. Yajnavalkya ponders the question and initially answers that there are three hundred and three gods and goddesses. But then he seems to change his mind and says that there are three thousand and three. Shakalya is confused and asks for clarification. Yajnavalkya gives another answer: thirty-three. Shakalya keeps asking, and each time receives a different number, until finally Yajnavalkya settles on a single answer: “One. That is Brahman.”^[37]

This scene illustrates one of the great paradoxes of the Hindu belief system, one that confuses many non-Hindus just as it confused Shakalya. On the one hand, anyone who has ever visited a Hindu temple or read a book about Hinduism knows that Hindus worship lots of different gods and goddesses. Yet on the other hand, Hindus also believe that all of these varied deities are really one at bottom. As scholar of Hinduism Klaus Klostermaier reports from his extensive fieldwork in India:

But if questioned about the many gods, even illiterate villagers answered: “bhagavan ek hai” – the Lord is One. They may not be able to figure out in theological terms how the many gods and the one god hang together and they may not be sure about the hierarchy obtaining among the many manifestations, but they know that ultimately there is only One and that the many figures somehow merge into the One.^[38]

We’ve already seen how the Vedas proclaim that the ineffable Brahman, the divine as such, is beyond any notions of the “personal” or the “impersonal,” yet appears to its human worshipers in the guise of a personal deity so that humans can have something identifiable to direct their worship toward. But Brahman doesn’t just appear in a single such guise – it appears in countless ones with all kinds of different personalities, social roles, and mythic stories. Thus the Rig Veda declares in another famous passage, “They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni and he is heavenly-winged Garutman. To what is One, sages give many a title.”^[39]

Why would Brahman appear as an innumerable variety of gods and goddesses who are all wildly different from each other, rather than as just one god or goddess? Another scholar of Hinduism, David Kinsley, gives us an insightful answer that echoes a widespread view among Hindus: “The Hindu religious tradition presents us with one of the richest and most diverse assemblies of divine beings to be found anywhere in man’s religious heritage…. The very diversity and size of the Hindu pantheon testify eloquently to the fact that for the Hindu the divine cannot be circumscribed.”^[40]

In other words, the astonishing variety of forms in which Hindus worship the divine is a testament to how resoundingly the divine transcends the human imagination and understanding. No form can contain it, and a bewildering array of different forms is needed to even hint at it.

The Hindu word for a god or goddess is deva, which literally means “sky-being.”^[41] The English words “divine” and “deity” come from the same ancient Indo-European root,^[42] as does the Greek word theos and the Latin word deus.^[43] Here are just a few of the most important and widely-revered devas in Hinduism:

• Shiva: an intriguingly complex and nuanced god whose character unites wild extremes of creation and destruction, asceticism and family life, love and fear, and much more.

• Vishnu: a benevolent savior god who becomes incarnated in a new form whenever the cosmos needs to be rescued from the forces of evil.

• Krishna: a playful cowherd youth who is seen as the supreme divine lover and the most beloved incarnation of Vishnu.

• Shakti/Devi: the Great Goddess who unites all the other Hindu goddesses into a single entity.

• Kali: a frightening goddess of death and destruction whose character reminds Hindus that even the most painful parts of life are filled with divine presence.

• Parvati: the patient, dutiful, loving wife of Shiva and mother of Ganesha and Skanda.

• Lakshmi: the queenly wife of Vishnu and a goddess of royalty and prosperity.

• Radha: a cowherd girl who is the favorite lover of Krishna and an exemplar of the ideal Hindu devotee.

• Ganesha: an elephant-headed god of wisdom and protection.

• Skanda/Karttikeya: a heroic warrior god who achieves victory for the gods over the demons.

• Brahma: a creator god who isn’t worshiped much anymore but who still features prominently in certain Hindu theological conceptions.

• Sarasvati: the wife of Brahma and a goddess of water and the arts.

Whereas some religions forbid the use of statues or other visual representations in the worship of the divine, Hinduism enthusiastically embraces it. Images of the Hindu gods and goddesses are called murtis and are a central feature of Hindu spirituality. This is no crude “idolatry,” but rather a means of connecting with transcendent divinity through particularly intense earthly manifestations of it. Hindus believe that the murti is one with the divine, which makes it an example of the state of being that Hindus strive to embody in their own lives.^[44]

The Four Yogas

Yoga is one of the most widely-known terms from Hinduism – and also one of the least understood by non-Hindus.^[45] Most non-Hindus associate the word “yoga” with physical exercises that people practice for the sake of improving their physical and mental health. While such physical exercises do sometimes feature in traditional Hindu yoga, they’re only a peripheral part of it in most cases. In Hinduism, “yoga” (and the synonym marga) refers to any rigorous spiritual path that points toward moksha (spiritual enlightenment).^[46] A male practitioner of yoga is called a yogi or yogin, and a female practitioner of yoga is called a yogini.^[47]

The word “yoga” comes from the same Indo-European root as the English words “join” and “yoke,” and means to figuratively “yoke” the wayward horses of the mind to the chariot of spiritual exercises so that they can be disciplined and pointed in a particular direction.^[48] As the Shvetashvatara Upanishad says, “The wise person should control the mind diligently, as if it were a vehicle yoked to wild horses.”^[49]

Traditionally, Hinduism has presented its followers with three or four main types of yoga, all of which are believed to be of equal value – just suited to different people with different temperaments. All of them overlap somewhat in practice, but have very different central emphases.^[50] Here, we’ll use the fourfold schema:

• Jnana Yoga: the path of intuitive understanding, which uses mental processes to transcend mental processes. The Upanishads are particularly closely tied to this approach to yoga.

• Bhakti Yoga: the path of loving devotion, which uses emotion to transcend emotion. Bhakti is by far the most popular of the four yogas.

• Karma Yoga: the path of works of charity and piety, which trains you to act without attachment to results and thereby turns you into a vessel for the divine. Gandhi is an example of a saintly karma yogi.

• Raja Yoga: a set of meditation techniques systematized in the sage Patanjali’s classic Yoga Sutra from around 200 AD.

The Six Orthodox Darshanas

For thousands of years, India has been a hotbed of philosophy. Just like in the West, Indian philosophers have developed their own schools of thought, offered rational arguments for them, and debated them with other philosophers. These schools of thought are called darshanas, which means “viewpoints” or “perspectives.”^[51]

From the sixth century BC onwards, the Hindu tradition has formally accepted some of these philosophical belief systems as orthodox (astika) and rejected others as heretical (nastika).^[52] However, Hinduism has been very generous with which philosophies it includes in the orthodox category. Any darshana that accepts the authority of the Vedas^[53] and asserts the existence of some kind of immaterial, immortal spiritual essence in things^[54] has been accepted as at least nominally orthodox, even if the rest of the darshana contradicts the teachings of the Vedas on various points.^[55] If it meets those basic criteria, it’s seen as at least pointing in the right direction from the starting point of everyday life. The aspects of these philosophies that Hinduism takes to be errors are reminders that all philosophies, even the orthodox ones, are still the creations of fallible human beings rather than part of the revealed tradition of Hinduism itself.^[56]

As that implies, the darshanas that Hinduism has accepted as orthodox aren’t seen as being equally orthodox. Those that base their beliefs directly on the teachings of the Vedas and succeed in reflecting them the most faithfully are regarded as more orthodox than those that merely check the box of accepting the authority of the Vedas. Only two darshanas, which go by the names “Vedanta” and “Mimamsa,” even attempt to systematically reflect the teachings of the Vedas,^[57] so Hinduism treats them as the most orthodox of all of the darshanas.^[58]

By the early medieval period, Hinduism had more or less finalized its list of officially orthodox philosophies, and that list remains in place today.^[59] Six darshanas have made the cut:^[60]

• Vedanta: a group of philosophies that seek to interpret and systematize the teachings of the Upanishads. Different varieties of Vedanta are at least as different from each other as some of the other darshanas are from each other, so it makes sense to treat each of them separately. There are three Vedanta philosophies that have historically gained significant followings among Hindus. The first is Advaita Vedanta, which utterly collapses the differences between seemingly different beings and between beings and the divine, asserting that oneness is the only absolutely true reality. The second is Vishishtadvaita Vedanta, which advances the belief that while all beings are fundamentally one with each other and with the divine, there are real differences that must be taken into account as well. And the third is Dvaita Vedanta, a sectarian philosophy that asserts that all beings are completely and irreconcilably separate from each other and from the divine, and which is thus something like Vedanta turned against itself.

• Mimamsa: a philosophy that attempts to clarify the exact details of the Vedas’ rules for proper personal conduct and ritual performance.

• Sankhya: a school of thought that believes that matter and spirit are utterly distinct from each other, and that the goal of life is to disentangle one’s spiritual essence from the material world.

• Yoga: a system of meditation practices that provides instructions for how to actualize the Sankhya darshana in practice. This is the same thing that we saw under the name of “Raja Yoga” above.

• Nyaya: a philosophy that seeks to provide a set of clear rules for how to use logic properly.

• Vaisheshika: a perspective that attempts to precisely classify and account for the phenomena of everyday experience.

Out of all of these darshanas, Vedanta has long enjoyed the highest status and the greatest influence on Hindu thought.^[61] This is fitting, because Vedanta strives to articulate the meaning of the Upanishads, which, as we’ve seen, are the parts of the Vedas that are the most concerned with spiritual meaning rather than ritual or moral practice. The Vedanta darshana thus consists of a set of attempts to philosophically interpret and systematize Hinduism’s own worldview.

In my own estimation, Advaita Vedanta is the crown jewel of Hindu philosophy. It’s the philosophy that has done the best job of articulating the worldview of the Upanishads on its own terms, as well as developing a perspective that’s just intrinsically true-to-life as seen through the lens of the mystical experience to which the Upanishads point as their ultimate goal. Many, perhaps most, philosophically-minded Hindus share this assessment; Advaita Vedanta has been the most historically influential of all the Vedanta philosophies.^[62]

However, in the interest of fairness, it should be pointed out that some Hindus disagree, including some brilliant thinkers and spiritual masters. And one way or another, the other orthodox philosophies have to be given their due as well. Here, too, though, I would assert that Advaita Vedanta is uniquely well-positioned to give them that due.

Advaita Vedanta makes a nuanced distinction between absolute reality and relative reality, where absolute reality is the ineffable Brahman, and the world we perceive on an everyday basis is only relatively real to the degree that Brahman shines forth from it.^[63] This belief implies that anything that can be put into words can only be relatively true – true to the degree that it reflects something of the divine. Since words are part of the finite, everyday world, they’re incapable of reflecting the divine fully or absolutely. They can only do so relatively. All philosophies, and even all religions, therefore express relative truth rather than absolute truth. (I offer my own argument for this position in the article Why All Religions Are True.)

Advaita Vedanta can thereby accommodate the other orthodox philosophies as lower but still legitimate levels of relative truth, even when they contradict its own beliefs, rather than simply rejecting them. Indeed, this attitude of generous tolerance can be found in the works of many adherents of Advaita Vedanta, such as those of the famous nineteenth-century scholar-saint Swami Vivekananda.^[64] Historically, Advaita Vedanta has also displayed a penchant for reinterpreting the concepts of the other systems in its own light so as to more directly accommodate them within its own system.^[65] This philosophy therefore exemplifies the same careful balance between principle and openness that has always characterized Hinduism as a whole.

References:

^[1] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 5.

^[2] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 17.

^[3] Flood, Gavin. 1996. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press. p. 1.

^[4] Sastry, Trilochan. 2022. The Essentials of Hinduism: An Introduction to All the Sacred Texts. Penguin/Viking Press. p. vii.

^[5] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 5.

^[6] Sastry, Trilochan. 2022. The Essentials of Hinduism: An Introduction to All the Sacred Texts. Penguin/Viking Press. p. vii.

^[7] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 327-328.

^[8] Ibid. p. 466.

^[9] Ibid. p. 328.

^[10] Sastry, Trilochan. 2022. The Essentials of Hinduism: An Introduction to All the Sacred Texts. Penguin/Viking Press. p. 9-10.

^[11] Ibid. p. 1.

^[12] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 55.

^[13] Ibid. p. 1.

^[14] Biardeau, Madeleine. 2002. Hinduism: The Anthropology of a Civilization. Transl. Richard Nice. Oxford University Press. p. 1-15.

^[15] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 156-157.

^[16] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 37-39.

^[17] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “The Chandogya Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 126.

^[18] Bartley, Christopher. 2015. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy: Hindu and Buddhist Ideas from Original Sources. Bloomsbury. p. 11-12.

^[19] Ibid. p. 210.

^[20] Sastry, Trilochan. 2022. The Essentials of Hinduism: An Introduction to All the Sacred Texts. Penguin/Viking Press. p. 58.

^[21] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “The Shvetashvatara Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 165.

^[22] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 167.

^[23] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 38-39.

^[24] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “The Chandogya Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 133.

^[25] Kinsley, David R. 1975. The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krishna, Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology. University of California Press. p. 133-134.

^[26] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “The Shvetashvatara Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 169-170.

^[27] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 63-65.

^[28] Ibid.

^[29] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “The Katha Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 85.

^[30] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 63-65.

^[31] Ibid. p. 5, 69-71.

^[32] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 32.

^[33] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 65-66.

^[34] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “The Katha Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 77-78.

^[35] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “The Shvetashvatara Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 160.

^[36] Sastry, Trilochan. 2022. The Essentials of Hinduism: An Introduction to All the Sacred Texts. Penguin/Viking Press. p. 252.

^[37] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 229.

^[38] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 116-117.

^[39] Ibid. p. 103.

^[40] Kinsley, David R. 1975. The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krishna, Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology. University of California Press. p. 2.

^[41] Davis, Richard H. 2024. Religions of Early India: A Cultural History. Princeton University Press. p. 77.

^[42] Ibid.

^[43] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 29.

^[44] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 263-267.

^[45] Ibid. p. 342.

^[46] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 171.

^[47] Ibid. p. 137.

^[48] Davis, Richard H. 2024. Religions of Early India: A Cultural History. Princeton University Press. p. 134.

^[49] Ibid. p. 135.

^[50] Michaels, Axel. 2004. Hinduism: Past and Present. Transl. Barbara Harshav. Princeton University Press. p. 23-25.

^[51] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 128.

^[52] Ibid.

^[53] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 327-328.

^[54] Sastry, Trilochan. 2022. The Essentials of Hinduism: An Introduction to All the Sacred Texts. Penguin/Viking Press. p. 80.

^[55] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 128.

^[56] Sastry, Trilochan. 2022. The Essentials of Hinduism: An Introduction to All the Sacred Texts. Penguin/Viking Press. p. 78.

^[57] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 80.

^[58] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 351.

^[59] Flood, Gavin. 1996. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press. p. 231.

^[60] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 128.

^[61] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 367.

^[62] Chatterjee, Satischandra, and Dhirendramohan Datta. 1960. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy. University of Calcutta Press. p. 48.

^[63] Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press. p. 357.

^[64] Vivekananda. 1987. Vedanta: Voice of Freedom. Advaita Ashrama. p. 67.

^[65] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 133.