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Worship of one God, Monotheism in

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by Jayaram V (//www.hinduwebsite.com/featured04.asp)
This article is about the origin and development of the concept of God in Hinduism in the |
context of the Vedas in general and the Isa Upanishad in particular and whether the
Bhagavadgita Wisdom
elements of monotheism entered Hinduism indigenously through prevailing traditions or
through some external source such as Judaism or Christianity. The author believes that the (//www.hinduwebsite.com/gita/wisdom/ind
Vedic people were aware of a single supreme universal God from the earlier days, but they
Upanishad Wisdom
did not mention Him publicly nor made Him any offerings directly for valid reasons such as
His impersonal, transcendental and absolute nature. (//www.hinduwebsite.com/upanishads/wisd

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There is one translation of the Isa Upanishad in circulation
Hindu Rituals
the author of which, one Mr.Ninan, put forward a speculative
(//www.hinduwebsite.com/ritual-
theory that the Isa Upanishad was composed after its authors index.asp)
got the idea of a supreme and universal God from elsewhere
Prayers and Mantras
in the post Christian era. He goes on to argue that the (//www.hinduwebsite.com/prayers/index.as
ancient Indians had no concept of God or Parameswara prior Ashtavakra Samhita
to the Christian era and that they worshipped only different (//www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/ashtav
devas or gods. In his opinion the Indians got the idea of Editorial
Parameswara or a supreme God from El Elyon, meaning the (//www.hinduwebsite.com/editorial/index.a

most high, used by certain middle eastern ancient traditions Hinduism News
(//www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/hindu
to denote God. In his translation he refers to Isa as Jesus
and tries to wiggle around some important concepts of Listen Audio

Hinduism mentioned in the Upanishad by carefully avoiding (//www.hinduwebsite.com/audio/index.asp)

refrence to their original meaning and giving them a new and Buy Our Books
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rather distorted interpretation.
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Symbols of Hinduism
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Mr. Ninan has done a good job by translating the Upanishad of-hinduism.asp)

with a pro-Christian slant and acknowledging a scripture Health Articles

(//www.hinduwebsite.com/health/index.asp
outside the pale of Christianity as sacred and venerable,
whatever may be his motivation. From a Hindu perspective, Online Shopping
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there is nothing wrong with calling Jesus as Isa. One can call
God by any name. Name is just a form, where as God is
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beyond all names and words. But the attitude with which the (//www.hinduwebsite.com/products/i
author has attempted to justify his theory shows his lack of Special Offers
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familiarity with Hindu scriptures and his inability to
comprehend the philosophy contained in them. Before
attempting to translate the scripture, he should have followed
the advice of Mr.R.Gordon1 who urged the Christians about
200 years ago in the following words to make use of the
Hindu scriptures, as a part of their old Testament, for their
value in expressing some important aspects of Christianity.
He wrote:
"Christianity in India needs the Vedanta. We missionaries
have not realized this with half the clearness that we should.
We cannot move freely and joyfully in our own religion;
because we have not sufficient terms and modes of
expression wherewith to express the more immanental
aspects of Christianity. A very useful step would be the
recognition of certain books and passages in the literature of
the Vedanta as constituting what might be called an Ethnic
Old Testament. The permission of ecclesiastical authorities
would then be asked for reading passages found in such a
canon of Ethnic Old Testament as divine service along with
passages from New Testament as alternatives to the Old
Testament lessons"
Yes, if the church can accept the old testament of Judaism
wholeheartedly without reservations, why not the Upanishads
of Hinduism, a religion that has done no harm or disservice to
Christ or his teachings and the scriptures that bear allegiance
to no particular religion or prophet? It is important to note
here that Hinduism is not a religion, but a repository of
sacred knowledge that can be used to reach God through
any religion or dogma or as a glue to cement one's faith. It
can fill in the gaps of any religious creed and remove its
weaknesses. If one can ignore the outer and ritual aspects of
Hinduism as well as the individual divinities and their outer
forms, one can easily incorporate into any religion the deeper
philosophical and symbolic aspects of Hinduism, such as the
truths reflected in the Upanishads, and its methods and
techniques to transcend ourselves.
We have already seen how yoga can improve the lives of
people, independent of their religious and spiritual beliefs.
Hindu philosophy can do the same or perhaps even better.
One does not have to believe in Hindu divinities to follow its
theosophical truths or practice its methods. Hinduism offers a
wide variety of choices to people to practice their individual
faith. This is the beauty and the charm of Hinduism.
Followers of other faiths should not have any quarrel with
Hinduism because Hinduism believes in the divinity of all
beings and the possibility of man ascending to the heights of
God through various means according to his or her faith. In
this endeavor religion is just a package, actually an illusion or
delusion, because what is true and permanent is neither
religion nor our single-minded attachment to it but the
transcendental Self that is in all.
Mr.Ninan's contention that Indians got the idea of
Parameswara from the Semitic expression of El Elyon and
then used that concept in the composition of the Isa
Upanishad is not tenable on many grounds. In a manner, it is
a sacrilege because the Vedas, including the Upanishads,
are divine revelations, not composed by man or human
intellect. They contain profound symbolism which is not
comprehensible even to the most knowledgeable among the
students and scholars of Hinduism, speaking about which Sri
Aurobindo2 said, "Dayananda has given the clue to the
linguistic secret of the Rishis and reemphasized one central
idea of the Vedic religion, the idea of the One Being with the
Devas expressing in numerous names and forms the many-
sidedness of His unity."
Hinduism is a tradition that evolved out of many streams of
thoughts, all of which originated and developed in the Indian
subcontinent. Around the time the composition of the Vedas
was completed, India was the spiritual center of the world,
where freedom of thought flourished by the side of
Brahmanical puritanism and caste rigidities. Around 600
BCE, Indian society was a medley of conflicting thoughts and
ideas of glorious visionary idealism, passive anarchism,
agnostic skepticism and down to earth philosophies of
materialism such as that of the Carvakas or the Lokayatas. If
there was an attempt on the part of some to fathom the depth
of their inner selves through ascetic means and rigorous
austerities, there was also the case of some, who gave
themselves up, with nihilistic resignation, to the vagaries of
fatalism that advocated an effortless and passive submission
to the elements of life and predetermined progression of
events. Elsewhere, in pastoral communities, if ordinary minds
remained content with the mechanical ritualism of their
ancestors as a way of life, extraordinary minds such as
Yajnavalkya, Janaka, Buddha and Mahavira trod new paths,
breaking away from tradition, in search of solutions to
salvation and the problem of suffering. It was a freedom of
thought that sprung neither from the assurances of
constitutional guarantees nor from the enlightened self-
interest of truth seekers, but from an enquiry that rested upon
the idealism and curiosity of selfless souls who had passion
for truth and attempted to enquire into the enigma of life,
beyond the limits of human intelligence and sensory
knowledge and translate their experiences into meaningful
human language.
Following are some of the points put forward by this author in
support of the argument that the concept of an absolute and
eternal Being as the source of all is an indigenous
development in which neither Christianity nor Judaism played
any role either directly or indirectly at any point of time in the
history of Hinduism. The ancient Indians were aware of the
existence of an eternal and supreme God whom they revered
secretly for a very long time, before they began mentioning
Him publicly in sacrificial chants and daily utterances. In
proving this contention, we are not even going into the details
of Indus valley civilization and its supposed connection with
the Saraswathi civilization, believed to have flourished
around 5000 BC. We are content to confine our discussion
with the classical descriptions of the Vedic religion as
mentioned in many standard books of Indian history with its
starting point as 2500 BC or so.
1. The concept of a single universal God as the ruler of the
world or the worlds was known to the people of Egypt, Persia
and India long before Christ was born and also before
Abraham of the old Testament. We find traces of monotheism
in some of the earliest Rigvedic hymns. Dyaus the shining
god of heaven and Prithvi the earth goddess are "among the
oldest of the vedic deities."3 Varuna, who is also mentioned
in Zoroastrianism and bears the epithet asura (ahura), was
the "sovereign of the universe and guardian of the moral
law," or rta. Some of the earliest Rigvedic hymns, such as the
following, clearly reflect the elements of monotheism
developing in early Vedic religion.4.
"They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna and Agni;
He is the heavenly bird Garutmat.
To what is One, the poets give many a name. They call it
Agni, Yama, Matariswan."
In the hymn addressed to Hiranyagarbha (the cosmic golden
germ), we find the following expression:
"Who is our Father, our Creator, Maker,
Who every place doth know and every creature;
By whom alone the gods were given their names,
To Him all creatures go, to ask Him."

2. In the ancient world, Jesus was not the only person who
was recognized as the son of God. It was a common tradition
in India, Egypt and Persia to regard a king as God himself in
human form or a direct descendent of God and submission to
him and his rule as a mark of surrender to God. The son of a
divine ruler was regarded as the son of God and treated with
utmost fear and respect by virtue of his birth. This ensured
smooth succession and continuity of the political institutions
upon earth. This practice should not be confused with the
Vedic beliefs. These were political ramification of religious
beliefs, the clever manipulation of human sentiment to bind
people to their states and monarchs in the absence of regular
means of communication such as radio. TV or newspapers of
today.
3. Closely related with the concept of God in Vedic religion
was the concept of rta or natural order of things and events.
Ancient Indians believed that the regularity of events
experienced in life, in the form of recurring days and nights,
months and seasons, aging and death, movement of stars
and planets, suggested the existence of an invisible and
intelligent controller or regulator who, with his unassailable
power, ensured their continuity and predictability (niyati) of
the world. They referred that power as the will of God and
believed that things moved out of fear and respect for Him.
3. As far back as 1500 BCE, the ancient Indians had the
concept of a single universal God whom they referred as
Brahman, Iswara, Hiranyagarbha, Hiranmayi-prajapati or
simply as "That". In the words of George Feuerstein5 "The
nuclei of the oldest Upanishads - Brahad-Aranyaka,
Chandogya, Kaushitaki, Aitareya and Kena Upanishad -
appear to date back over three thousand years ago." The
emergence of Brahman as the single supreme God and Lord
of manifest creation happened with the internalization of
Vedic rituals and externalization of human form into cosmic
form, as is evident in some passages of the Upanishads like
the Katha and the Kaushataki Upanishad. Mr. Feuerstein
further adds, "The idea that behind the reality of multiple
forms - our ever changing universe - there abides an
eternally unchanging single Being was communicated
already in the Rigvedic times. What was new was that the
grand discovery transcended the legacy of sacrificial
ritualism."
Brahman was a mystery even to the gods. Then what of
men! The Kena Upanishad explains how the gods
themselves were unaware of the supreme Brahman till they
came to know about Him from Uma Haimavati, after a brief
encounter with Him, in which they were utterly and totally
outsmarted by a mysterious Being. A miniscule knowledge of
Him made Indra leader of the heavens and Vayu and Agni as
prominent deities. This Upanishad supports the speculation
that elements of monotheism entered Hinduism through
ascetic traditions such as Savisim.
4. Of the two hundred plus Upanishads known, about 12 or
14 are considered the oldest and the most important. Of
them Isa Upanishad is one. If we have to go by the
interpretation of Mr.Ninan that Isa Upanishad was composed
after the Christian era, then all the oldest Upanishads, which
speak about Brahman or an Universal Being, and and most
of the Samhitas and Brahmanas associated with them,
should have also been composed in the same time frame,
which is nearly 600 years after the Buddha and Mahavira and
300 years after Kautilya, the author of Arthashastra and the
coronoation of Chandragupta Maurya, a contemporary of
Alexander. This is an absurd claim because it is not tenable
on any grounds. The principal Upanishads were composed
long before the Christian era, at least by 700-800 BCE. The
age ascribed to them by most historians, usually falls
between 1500 BCE and 800 BCE. Some Indian scholars
stretch the date back to 2000 BC or earlier.
5. Brahman is frequently referred in Upanishads in neutral
gender as "That", a concept that is alien to the Semitic
religions, which address God always as masculine. The
oldest of the Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad,
contains the famous saying (mahavakya), "Aham
Brahmasmi," meaning I am Brahman. Another important
statement in reference to Brahman is "tattvamasi," meaning
you are That. One of the verses in the Isa Upanishad
contains the poignant expression, "so'ham asmi, " meaning
whatever is That, That also I am . These are pure Indian
expressions, found nowhere else. In the old testament when
Moses encounters God and asks Him who He is, He replies,
"I am I am." In both the testaments, we do not find any
humans expressing unity with God in such exalted words,
where as in the Upanishads we find them frequently and use
them as great truths (mahavakyas) for meditation.
6. The idea of a supreme universal Being as the Creator and
Witness, as immanent and transcendent, hidden in every
aspect of creation as the subject as well as object, in them
and enveloping them, developed in the Indian subcontinent
indigenously. Through the spiritual and ascetic paths of
knowledge, the vision of such grandeur dawned upon the
consciousness of seers and sages, as they contemplated
upon the mysteries of human existence, looking inwardly for
the truth that was hidden within themselves. In deeper states
of meditation, they saw an image of themselves projected
outwardly and universally upon the visible and invisible reality
of the gross and subtle worlds. They saw the universal and
infinite form of God as an extension of their own form
(tattvamasi), the space outside as a continuation of the space
within themselves (aham Brahmasmi) and the divinities
whom they worshipped in the rituals actually as residing in
their own bodies in subtle form, nourishing themselves
through the good deeds and sacrificial acts of humans.
They acknowledged His sacred and silent presence, calling
Him by different names and honoring His sanctity. But they
were in no hurry to reveal the profound secret to everyone
indiscriminately as their emphasis was not on preaching
empty dogma but on duplicating the experience in
themselves and others through sustained spiritual practice
and arriving at Truth through personal experience. So they
kept the secret to themselves, revealing it only to a few
deserving aspirants. Since the Upanishads were taught in
private, in whispering tones, as the master and the disciples
sat together in a secluded palce, they were called the
Upanishads, meaning sitting nearby. Speaking of the singular
manner in which the concept of Supreme Being developed in
India, Deussen 6 writes,
"Monotheism was attained in Egypt by a mechanical
identification of the various local gods, in Palestine by
proscription of other gods and violent persecution of their
worshippers for the benefit of their nation god Jehovah. In
India they reached monism, though not monotheism, on a
more philosophical path seeing through the veil of the
manifold the unity which underlies it."
7. The concept of God found in the Upanishads is much
grander, more complex and essentially different than the
descriptions of God found in other religions. The Vedic
religion was neither polytheistic nor monotheistic but had
elements of both. It is referred to as henotheism or
kathenotheism, characterized by belief in multiple gods and
each god standing out as the highest. The Brahman of
Upanishads is an impersonal God, who does not take sides,
nor responds to the calls of individuals because there is
nothing outside of Him and there is nothing other than Him.
He is complete, fulfilled, self-absorbed and immersed in
Himself. He does not communicate with anyone, because for
communication you need an object and there is no object
that exists outside of Him. But He can be reached and
experienced personally as oneself. That job is left to His
other manifestations, the lesser divinities and personal Gods
such as Vishnu and Siva who are worshipped in their highest
aspect as Brahman Himself. In Hinduism, the rule of God
extends far beyond the earth and heaven to innumerable
worlds of light and darkness and in multiple planes of
granularity, from the subtlest to the grossest. The
descriptions of Brahman or Universal Self in Hinduism is no
different from those of the universe found in the text books of
quantum physics and modern astronomy, except that one is
spiritual and the other purely material. Speaking of the Vedic
vision of God, Max Mueller7 wrote,
"In fact, the Vedic poets had arrived at a conception of the
godhead which was reached once more by some of the
Christian philosophers at Alexandria, but which even at
present is beyond the reach of many who call themselves
Christians."
8. Isa Upanishad is one of the oldest of the Upanishads
composed prior to the Christian era. The Upanishad speaks
of a universal Lord "Isa" and reflects the growing influence of
Vaishnavisim, Saivism and the Bhakti (devotional)
movement. Ancient Indians were familiar with the word "isa"
long before the Christian era. The Upanishad does not
recognize son of God but God Himself as the omniscient and
omnipresent ruler and dweller of not just one world but of
many moving worlds within the moving universe (jagatyam
jagat). Some of the concepts mentioned in it are antithetical
to the main teachings of Christianity, such as the concept of
karma, surrender to God, performance of obligatory duties,
impermanence of the life and things, detachment, departure
of soul, right knowledge and right actions, sunlit worlds (not
just one heaven) and sunless worlds (not just one hell) and
cremation. Most importantly, some of its verse are chanted
during cremation ceremonies as the body is consigned to
flames. It advocates neither the blind worship of God nor
relentless preoccupation with the material rewards, but a
balanced approach in life towards God and personal duty,
towards the existential reality and the transcendental reality
and towards knowledge of God and the knowledge of life. It
cautions people not to choose knowledge (spiritual practice)
at the expense of ignorance (mundane life) or vice versa to
avoid entering the sunless worlds of utter darkness.
9. One of the verses (15) in the Upanishad is a prayer for the
departed soul's journey to the world of sun (surya or savitr),
where he is beseeched to grant the soul a passage to the
sunlit world, addressing him with different names, such as
Pusan, meaning nourisher, and prajapatya, meaning son of
Prajapathi Brahma (Prajapati is the father of Adityas, the
solar deities of which the sun is one). Aditi, the universal
Mother and the mother of the devas, is also their mother.
According to Vedic beliefs, a departed soul travels either to
the world of Sun or the world of moon depending upon in
which part of the year the death occurred. Those who died
during the first half of the year (summer solastice) went along
the northern route to the sun and those who died in the
second half of the year (winter solastice) went along the
southern route to the moon. They were either consumed
there by gods or returned to the earth, after exhausting their
karmas, to be reborn again. The Isa Upanishad reflects the
ancient beliefs of Vedic religion, before the concept karma
and rebirth took firm roots and the concept of souls travelling
to the ancestral world gave way to the more complex forms
of after life, cosmology and reward and retribution for the
souls for their actions upon earth. In no way this Upanishad
refers either to Jesus or the Biblical God of genesis.
10. The word Isa is a Sanskrit word, neither Semitic nor
Aramic nor Hittite nor Phoenician nor Persian. It is frequently
used in various religious expressions and rooted in Hindu
tradition to denote the power and status of divinities as well
as men of position. Isa means master or lord. It is used in
such expressions as vagisa, suresa and mahesa to denote
royalty or lordship. Isa is an epithet of Lord Siva.
Etymologically, the "ī" in the "isa" (pronounced as eesa)
means desire or the cupid god Manmadha. "Sa" means the
destroyer or the weapon that destroys. In this sense Isa
means Lord Siva, who destroyed the cupid Manmadha when
he tried to tempt the meditating Siva to fall in love with
Parvathi. There are many derivative and associative words of
Isa used frequently in Hindu literature, mostly in a religious
sense. Isana, a derivative word, is an epithet of Lord Siva,
Surya (the sun god) and also Lord Vishnu. Isanya is the north
eastern direction, which is ruled by Isana or God Himself. It
has special significance in Vastu sastra and the construction
of buildings and temples. Isita, meaning superiority or
greatness, is one of the eight siddhis or perfections of Lord
Siva. Isvara, another derivative word, means powerful,
capable, lord, ruler, husband, king and Siva. In classical
yoga, Isvara means individual soul and personal god.
Goddess Durga is known as Isvari. Isa-sakha is an epithet of
Kubera. The sacred city of Varanasi is known as Isanagari or
the city of Lord Siva.
11. For the Hindus the Vedas are sacred and inviolable. They
constitute the sruti literature because they are only heard and
not manmade (apaurusheya), in contrast to the smriti
literature, which is believed to be a product of human
intellect. Isa Upanishad is an inseparable part of the
Yajurveda. According to Hindu beliefs the Vedas are
inviolable because they constitute the standard truth or the
final authority (sabda pramana) in ascertaining correct
knowledge. Each word in the Veda is indisputable because it
emanated from God Himself directly. One can only chant it or
use it but cannot argue about its divinity or authority. To make
an assumption that the Isa Upanishad was composed with
the help of borrowed concepts from an unknown religion,
amounts to doubting the sanctity of the Vedas and their
divine origin.
12. For more than 4000 years, the priestly families of the
Hindu socieity maintained the purity of the Vedas with utmost
devotion and dedication. It was not done under the fear of
temporal authority or the lure of money. It was done as a
sacred responsibility, an obligatory duty, for the preservation
of dharma and as a service to God, not by a few, but
thousands of families, for generations. As trustees of sacred
knowledge, they assumed moral, personal, family and
religious responsibility to preserve them for the posterity,
often under testing circumstances and fear of death in the
hands of intolerant rulers. They did not allow any tampering
of the scripture for fear of polluting the rituals and attracting
the displeasure of the divinities. The Bible is a holy book. It is
about God but not from God. In contrast, the Vedas are
divine revelations about God and His creation. They are
manifested at the beginning of each time cycle (mahayuga)
and withdrawn at the end of it. They are meant for the
welfare of men and to keep the worlds of beings and gods in
their respective spheres and let the dharma (divine law) and
rta or regularity follow its own course.
13. That the purity of the Vedas and other religious scriptures
were maintained in India since the earliest times has been
confirmed by the European scholars who studied them in the
past. According to A.L.Basham 8, the European historians
who collected the Vedas from different places in India during
1780 were amazed to see that "the text as transmitted in
Kashmir was scarcely different from that transmitted in
Tamilnadu." This was over 4000 years after the early Vedic
hymns of the Rig-Veda were composed.

14. Anyone who is familiar with Indian religions knows that

Hinduism is the oldest living religion10 of the world. All the
religions and religious traditions that thrived in ancient India,
including some atheistic and agnostic schools, originated
from India indigenously and shared some basic concepts.
Even the atheistic schools like the Carvakas had something
in common with the theistic schools in matters such as the
standards of objectivity (pramanas), nature of substances
(padarthas) and nomenclature of elements (bhutadi). There
was no widespread influence or knowledge of the Judeo-
Christian religions in the Indian subcontinent till the end of
the Mughal period. They had some knowledge of the Indo-
Iranian religions such as Zoroastrianism, but the relationship
between the two was hardly cordial. Even if we assume that
some Christian missionaries travelled to India in the early
Christian era, their contribution and influence on Indian
society and their religious beliefs remained isolated and local.
15. Finally, one can imagine the difficulties and obstacles
involved in the ancient world in accepting ideas that were
alien to a native people. through alterations to a religious
scripture that was believed to be inviolable, in a religion that
had no centralized authority. It is difficult to foresee it
happening on a uniform scale, across the length and breadth
of the country, spanning thousands of miles, involving
countless individual priestly families of different hues and
languages, at a time when communication was not easy to
establish, and in a manner that would have allowed the
alterations go unnoticed, legitimate and permanent. For over
3000 years, India has an going tradition of scholars writing
commentaries on the prevailing texts and debating the finer
nuances of religious dogmas to settle differences or clarify
doubts. The religious groups of ancient India competed for
attention and membership through devotional and personal
means rather than wars and aggression. If they were familiar
with the concepts of Christianity they would have said so
somewhere in their commentaries.

Conclusion

Although the early Vedic people worshipped various

divinities, they knew that hidden behind all the divinities and
encompassing all the reality was a single universal Principle
that controlled the order and rhythm of the worlds and
ensured their continuity. They called it variously as That (tat),
the One (akam), the ancient (adi), the eternal (nityam) and
Brahman. They did not mention Him directly in the early
hymns nor offered Him oblations directly for valid reasons.
Firstly Brahman was a secret. Even the gods could not
fathom Him nor Knew Him. So He was unmentionable in the
public. Secondly, He was an impersonal and absolute God
who favored none, desired nothing and was forever stable
and detached. So the Vedic priests who aimed to seek
personal favors from the divinities through rituals, saw no
point in seeking His help. Thirdly, He was incommunicable
through the senses and the mind. The duality of the knower
and the known, the subject and the object, or the process of
knowing did not exist in Him. A gulf separated one aspect of
Him for the other, while He remained immersed in Himself,
watching the movements (jagat) He created within Himself
(jagatyam) with dispassion. He was the two birds in One; one
watched, while the other enjoyed. The gulf between the two
sides of His reality could not be bridged except through
transcendental means. The Vedic priests therefore choose
not to offer Him any prayers directly, while they knew that all
the prayers reached Him ultimately through the divinities in
whom He existed. They confined their prayers to the lesser
divinities and left the task of seeking Brahman to those who
were willing to make the necessary sacrifices and reach out
to Him spiritually through austerities and penances.
It was only when the impersonal Brahman became personal
in the form of personal God, as the Vedic religion was now
reaching out to a wider audience in the Gangetic plains of
northern India, we see a definite shift in emphasis from the
early Vedic deities such as Indra, Agni and Varuna to newer
gods with greater charm and personal appeal such as Siva
and Vishnu. It coincided with the development of devotional
theism (bhakti movement) and the emergence of strong
theistic movements such as Saivism, Vaishnavism and
Shaktism. In the Bhagavadgita we see this shift clearly and
hear about it directly from Lord Krishna who declares that
although He is the unmanifest, supreme and highest
universal God who exists everywhere and in everything, it is
not difficult to communicate with Him and that He would
respond to the calls of His devotees promptly through His
manifest form. He also explains the difficulties in worshipping
invisible and formless Brahman in the following manner 9.
Difficult and full of suffering indeed is the path
Of those whose minds are fixed on the Unmanifest
For indeed most painful is the path of those
Whose goal is to reach the Unmanifest.
But those who are fully devoted to Me
Who surrender all actions to me,
Worship Me and meditate on Me
With unflinching devotion
I speedily rescue them from
the samsara that is bound by death
The Vedic scholars not only envisaged the universal supreme
God but speculated upon the origin of life and the
manifestation of the worlds. The creation hymn of the
Rigveda is a supreme example of the extent of maturity of
thought prevailed in those times. Even by the liberal and
biased estimates of European historians, such as Basham,
the creation hymn was composed "no later than 900 BCE." It
shows an "incredible sophistication" of the "development of
thought," presenting an "imaginative picture of a universe
evolving out of a primal condition that was neither being nor
nonbeing, neither the cosmos nor the chaos." The long hymn
which contains many fundamental concepts of Hinduism,
concludes in the following manner.
But, after all, who knows, and who can say
whence all it came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are latter than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?
Whence all the creation had its origin
He, whether He fashioned it or whether He did not,
He who surveys it all from highest heaven
He knows - or may be He does not know.
Contrast this with the creation theory proposed in the
Genesis and you will see the extent of difference between
the two religions in their disposition and approach to the
concept of God.

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Footnotes
1. Mr.R.Gordon Milburn, the Indian Interpreter 1913. As quoted in the Principal Upanishads by
S. Radhakrishnan.

2.The Secret Of the Veda, Chapter III, Modern Theories by Sri Aurobindo.

3. An Advanced History of India, R.C.Majumdar, H.C.Raychaudhuri and Kalikinkar Datta,

Chapter III, The Early Vedic Age.

4. Ekam vipra bahudha vadanti, agnim, yamam, matariswanam ahuh - Rigveda 1.164.46.

5. The Yoga Tradition, Its History, Literature Philosophy and Practice by George Feuerstein,
PH.D.

6. Outlines of Indian Philosophy, Deussen.

7. The Six Systems Of Indian Philsophy by Max Mueller.

8. The Origins and Development Of Classical Hinduism, by A. L. Basham.

9. The Bhagavadgita, Chapter 12 verses 5 to 7.

10. The word religion is used here and elsewhere for lack of proper expression. Hinduism is
not a religion in the western sense of the word. This fact is well known to all who are familiar
with it.
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