The immense Indian subcontinent is home to some of the world’s oldest, fascinating and diverse religions to ever come out of the ancient world. This subcontinent is as diverse as the cultures – the rugged Himalayan region lies to the north, around the river Ganges there are the vast agricultural plains. In addition to this, there are vast desert regions, low-laying coastal areas, rainforests and high plateaux.
The climate of these regions go from one extreme to the other; the people experience scorching heat, drenching monsoons and at times, freezing temperatures. The varied, and many times, unpredictable, climate has inspired and affected the rich mythology and religious belief systems that have emerged from this region.
The two major religions that have emerged are Hinduism and Buddhism. Each of these religions shares certain similarities and values. One of the key features is to reach nirvana, spiritual truth. To gain this, one must transcend the chaos and unpredictability of the world and only after this can one find enlightenment.
From reliable and archaeological sources, mediation has been one of the ways in which one may reach this state of being. For example, archaeological excavations in the Indus Valley region, which reached its highest peak during the middle of the third millennium BCE in modern day Pakistan, unearthed evidence that the ancient people of this region venerated a deity that was linked with mediation.
Sometime around the second millennium BCE, the Indus Valley region collapsed due to the incursion of the Aryans, a group of Bronze Age tribes known as the ‘Noble Folk’. With the coming of the Aryan people, came their deities; there were many gods and goddesses. The most important of these was the warrior and weather god, Indra, as well as Yama (the king of the underworld), Agni (a fire god), Varuna (the god who maintained order and morality) and Surya (a sun god).
These were some of the deities that would be part of what was later known as the Hindu pantheon and are still worshipped today in India and many other countries in the world. Indeed, the Hindu religion is the oldest organised religion in the world. However, some of these gods were modelled on the earlier deities worshipped before the Aryan invaders. For example, the god Shiva has been suggested to be modelled on an earlier Indus Valley god who is sometimes known as ‘proto-Shiva’.
Buddhism is the second and just as famous religion that emerged from the Indian subcontinent. This new faith arose sometime around the sixth century BCE and was centred on the teachings of a prince called Siddhartha Gautama who later became known as ‘the Buddha’. His teachings were dedicated to the use of mediation to aid the individual to release themselves from the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth to reach enlightenment.
One of the most interesting facts the history of Buddhism is the rich mythology it has; although Buddhism, like Jainism, denies the existence of a creator god, Buddhism has many different deities incorporated from the Hindu, Chinese and other native Asian pantheons.
At the time that Buddhism travelled from India to Tibet and then onwards throughout Asia via the Silk Road, the new faith was not always welcomed with open arms. The adoption and then adaption of native deities helped pave the way for Buddhism, whose new followers were used to worshipping deities and objects to symbolise their deities. In addition to incorporating the native gods, Buddhism also promoted the worship of bodhisattvas (buddhas-to-be) which great helped it flourish. Because of this, Buddhism created somewhat of a confusing, although extremely interesting, pantheon of gods and goddesses.
There were several other ancient religions that emerged from the great Indian subcontinent; Jainism and Sheikism were two that still hold great numbers of believers even today, but it is the Hindu and Buddhist faiths that have had the most impact on this part of the world.
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