Hinduism

印度教

Hinduism refers to a wide range of related religious practices originating in what is now India. As a diverse religious tradition, it combines three main theological and scriptural strands. The first (ca. 1500 BCE to 400 CE) linked social and ethical norms (dharma) to the natural and eternal order of the cosmos. A second strand of scripture and reflection (starting in the middle of the first millennium BCE) developed a new insight: that underlying the multiplicity of sensory experience is a deep unity, an essential Being (Brahman), and that it was possible to shed one’s sense of individuality and attain unity with this ultimate reality. A third tradition, joining the ethical and existential concerns of the first two, emerged in the groundbreaking text of the Bhagavad Gītā (2nd century BCE), which acknowledged the value of both social duties and spiritual liberation (moksha) and set up a mediating path between them, the path of discipline (yoga).