A BROAD OUTLINE OF HINDUISM

By a lover of Ancient Wisdom

Preliminary remarks

The ancient system of thought and a way of life, popularly designated as Hinduism, is so vast, diverse and complex that any attempt to set forth a comprehensive view of the whole of it in writing would run into hundreds of volumes. Even the best of the academic scholars would not be able to do justice to it. This is because of mainly two reasons :

firstly, what remains at the present time of the ancient so-called Hindu scriptures is only a fraction of what was there originally a few millenniums before. What the European scholars have obtained and translated into English and other European tongues pertain to the remnants which are extant. This is admitted by Orientalist scholars.

Secondly, the ancient scriptures of India, just as the scriptures of any of the ancient peoples, such as the Books of Moses, the Hebrew Bible, Zoroastrianism, the ancient Egyptian scrolls and papyri, etc., etc., have two aspects. One is the outer formal rendering in verse (metrical speech) and prose, or pictorial representation, like hieroglyphics, allegories, myths and symbols. To the academic scholar, however leaned, or, any uninitiated student, who reads them gets the literal meaning of it. They are invariably in mythological and symbolic language. But this in only the veil which conceals the inner meaning. The general public and the scholar has access only to the outer garment. This is Exoteric aspect of ancient religions.

The other is the hidden sense in the scriptures which escape the eye of intellect. The outer garment of the scriptures however have within them an altogether different sense and meaning which is hidden—as the soul which is invisible in the visible body. This inner, hidden knowledge is Esoteric aspect of world religions. It is called in India, Gupta Vidya, by the Hebrews as Mercavah (meaning, vehicle of higher knowledge). Only those who are initiated into the venerable sacred Mysteries have in them developed to perfection the faculties of unerring spiritual perception who can instantly grasp the hidden light behind or beneath the Exoteric veil, and apprehend the soul of things—the world of Reality.

World religions are much misunderstood, misjudged and misrepresented because the esoteric sense in them is missed and exoteric aspect is taken in their dead-letter sense. Institutionalized religions under the governance of uninitiated priests are all exoteric, liable to err, and, as a result, each one of them, in course of time, become, spilt into numerous mutually conflicting sects and sub-sects.

If the foregoing is kept in mind and, while reading the ancient scriptures of any people, or of studying their customs and practices, we will not pass judgment, or make uncharitable remarks, on them, because none of them, is perfect in their exoteric sense, but we must try to discern within them the light which is perfect but obscure.

This inner soul of the outer religion is universal which we must seek, and all the great Teachers and Guides of mankind spoke and taught a portion of this one universal Wisdom-religion to different peoples in different epochs, according the needs of each.

Sanatana Dharma

An attempt is made in this brief but necessarily imperfect outline of “Hinduism” to present chief features of it from an esoteric standpoint. It will, of course, be sorely wanting in scholarship, but it is not meant so much to the academic scholar as to the common man.

 What is called Hinduism is a misnomer. How did this nomenclature come into usage is to be inquired into.

In the Zend Avesta, the holy scriptures of ancient Persians, written in ancient script of Pahlavi language, the geographical name of India is written as hapta hendu. Max Muller shows that Sanskrit S is represented by the Z and H in the Avesta. Hapta Hendu transiletrated in Sanskrit is Sapta Sindhu, or the “Seven Rivers;” and that it is the old Vedic name for India itself. (Chips from the German Workshop, vol. 1, p. 81) Esoteric philosophy shows that “Avesta” of the Zoroastrian religion, is the spirit of the “Vedas”—the esoteric meaning made partially known. (Isis Unveiled, vol II, page 220, fn) The great scholar, Alexander Wilder, shows that Hapta is the Sanskrit Sapta (seven), and Hindu is Sindhaya. (Isis Unveiled, vol.I, p. 570, fn 2) The geographical name of India was known in Indo-Iranian tradition as the land of the seven rivers (sapta sindhaya, in Sanskrit). Hence the inhabitants of the Land of the Seven Rivers came to be called Hindus, and the religion of the people was named by Europeans as Hinduism.

 It is to be noted that nowhere in the whole of the scriptures of ancient India, either in the Vedic doctrine, or in the later development of it, or again in the ancient historical records of the people, the term Hinduism is used to designate its corpus nor are the people of the land are called Hindus. The present nomenclature is a European invention.

In fact no particular nomenclature was ever used to designate vast and diverse traditions of the people of the land of the seven rivers. However, the compound term Sanatana Dharma came to be used later to designate it. The literal meaning of Dharma is the sacred law. Is it man made law ? In its origin it is not man made law but law, or order, inherent in the universe. In the Esoteric sense it has its origin in the very spirit of the universe.

Dharma is not a person but an unconditioned and underived entity, combining in itself the spiritual and the material principles of the universe, whilst from Dharma proceeded, by emanation, Buddha [‘refelcted’ Bodhi rather], as the creative energy which produced, in conjunction with Dharma, the third factor of the trinity, viz., ‘Sangha’, which is the comprehensive sum total of all real life……..The real primitive significance of the word Samgha or ‘Sangha’ applies to the Arhats or Bhikshus, or the “initiates”, alone, that is to say to the real exponents of Dharma—the Divine Law and Wisdom, coming to them as a reflex light from the one “boundless light.” Such is the philosophical meaning. (Theosophical Glossary, Theosophy Company, Los Angeles, 1971, p. 342)

Such is the Esoteric sense of the compound term Santana Dharma. Hindus refer their religion to be Sanatana Dharma. It can in fact be said that the essence and the source of all religions in their primitive purity is Sanatana Dharma.