The Religion of the World

H.H. JAGADGURU SRI CHANDRASEKHARENDRA SARASWATI
Sankaracharya of Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham

THERE ARE EVER so many re­ligions in this world. Each has a separate name of its own to distin­guish it from the others. All these names are personal and are derived from the founders of the respective faiths. Thus Buddhism takes its name from its founder, Lord Buddha, Jain­ism from Jina, Muhammadanism from its prophet, Muhammad, Christi­anity from Jesus Christ, Zoroastrian­ism (the religion of the Parsees) from its founder Zoroaster, and the Chi­nese religion, Confucianism, from its propounder, Confucius. No doubt all these founders of new religions have been great men possessing the power to attract many men to their way of thinking. Thus every religion other than ours has a distinctive name of its own. But if you ask a youngster belonging to our religion what religion he professes, he would, if he happens to have received a little English edu­cation, at once reply that he belongs to the Hindu Religion. On the other hand if we ask our peasants about the name of our religion, they would be at a loss to give a common name to it. If we put the same query to those employed in writing negotiable documents in the South of India, they would describe themselves as they do at the top of these documents, as be­longing to the Saivite or the Vaish­navite cult. These are really subdivi­sions in our faith and cannot be taken as representing the whole of it; but even these names are not derived from those of any historic personages but merely follow the names of the respective divine forms selected for personal worship. If Hinduism is really the name of our religion, it should have been known and described as such even during the pe­riod of our remote forefathers. But it would appear that to our ancestors of even a few centuries , the name ‘Hinduism’ would have been a strange and meaningless term. It is so be­cause ours is a religion without a name.

No doubt the subdivisions in our faith go by certain specific names. These again take their names only after the various forms of the one Almighty selected for upasana and not after human beings. For the general faith however it would be difficult to find a common name. Of late a name has been much in use, viz., Sanatana Dharma, but even this can­not be said to be the strictly tradi­tional name of our religion, for in that case it should be known as such to the poor peasant and to the humble widow, as in the case of the followers of other man-made religions. But such is not the case.

The term Hinduism is really a name somebody has presented us with. We can find in History a clue as to how this term came to be coined. Our forefathers were once the inhabi­tants of the region watered by the river Sindhu (the modern Indus) which to some foreigners who came into contact with us, was known as Indus. From this they christened the land in which this river flowed as the Indu Desa or “the land of the Indus”. Naturally and in course of time they applied this name to the entire Bharatavarsha of which the part watered by Sindhu formed but a slice. Are we not familiar with the saying that beyond Hyde Park all is desert?

Again, every religion has some distinguishing symbol which at once marks it off from the others. The Cross of the Christians is one such example. The Hindus, on the other hand, have no apparent symbol to point to as being common to all of them. As we are without a name, even so are we without a common symbolising badge. Ours, therefore, appears to be a religion without a name and a distinguishing mark! For instance, some of us wear the sacred ash: while others wear the “Vish­nupad” on their foreheads. Some among us are “Vira Vaishnavas” and an equal number the “Lingayats” and similar others are “Vira Saivas”. All these, however, have the consciousness that they are the adherents of one common religion.

The real grandeur of our faith consists in its being nameless. The need for names for an article arises only when there are many of that type so that each could, in some way, be distinguished from the others. But if there is one and one only of that article, why need a name for it? To take a concrete instance, if there are, say, four Ramasvamis in a village we must give them different initials or personal names to tell the one from the other or otherwise distinguish between them by calling one of them, Ramasvami, the dark, another of them, Ramasvami, the fair, and so forth. If there be only one Ramasvami, there is hardly any fur­ther naming required.

Even so, with our religion. What is religion? It is that which shows us the way out of this miserable cycle of births and deaths or in other words sins and sorrows. It was pointed out at the outset that other religions are known by the names of their respec­tive founders. These religions there­fore did not exist before the rise of these great personages. Specific dates are assigned to every such religion. It naturally follows that ours is a relig­ion which existed before all these other faiths were born. Thus it should have existed at a time when it was the only religion in the world, admini­stering to the spiritual needs of hu­manity as a whole. This then explains our religion not having had a specific original mime, as there was no sec­ond religion from which this name should distinguish it. It was merely the Dharma – a word synonymous with Religion.

It would appear then that its having no specific name is itself a distinctive symbol. Although the relig­ion has no distinguishing name of its own there is in it a common basis – ­viz., the faith in the final authority of the Vedas, i.e. Veda Pramanyam, in spiritual matters. This is also implied in the saying current in some of our mother-tongues that makes the Vedas a simile for authoritativeness!

The question then arises that, if ours was the only religion prevalent at the time, were our religious prin­ciples observed by all the inhabitants of the world? We can now give plenty of instances to show that the reply to this question is in the affirmative.

For instance, one of the charges against Jesus which made the Jews crucify him was that Jesus drank water from a well intended for the lower classes. Does this not imply the existence of a ‘caste system before Jesus’ time?

Again an inscription unearthed in Egypt, dated 1280 B.C., contains the terms of a treaty between Ra­meses II and the Hittites. In this treaty the Vedic deity, “Maitravaruna”, has curiously enough been cited as the witness! (See H.R. Hall’s “Ancient History of the Near East” – pp: 364 et seq.)Besides, in the ancient Egyptian Chronology, we find a series of kings bearing the name of Rama as for ex­ample, Rameses I, Rameses II, Ra­meses III, etc.

In the island of Madagasgar off the Eastem coast of South Africa, as many as seventy-five per cent of the names of places happen to be San­skrit names. Most of them are akin to the name of the hero of the Ramayana, Rama.

We are all aware of the great Sahara Desert in Northern Africa. There is a theory that all deserts once formed Sanskrit, Sagaras. Is the sug­gestion far-fetched, that the modern name, Sahara, is a corruption of the Samskrit “Sagara”? It is said that while the Sahara was under water there was a thick population around its banks and that the names of those people were mostly Sanskrit and were even related to the name of Rama. (See Encyclopaedia Brittan­nica, Vol. XXIII, Title – Sahara.)

Evidences such as these are not wanting in the opposite part of the globe. In distant Mexico a festival is being celebrated at about the same time as the Indian “Navaratri” or “Dusserah” and it is known as “Ramasita”. (See p. 56 of the Text and Plate 24 in the T.W.F. Gann’s The maya Indians of Southern Yucaton, North and British Honduras.) Further, the excavations made in that country have resulted in an abundance of the idols of Lord Ganesa being unearthed (Baron Humboldt quoted in Har Bilas Sarda’s Hindu Superiority, p. 151).The ancient inhabitants of those parts were “Astikas” (i.e., those who be­lieved in Veda Pramanyam or the authoritativeness of the Vedas) a term which still lingers in the modern name “Aztecs” which is now given to this group!

In Peru, a country in the West of South America, the inhabitants were sun worshippers. Their princi­pal festivals of the year fell on the solstices. (See Asiatic Researchers, Vol. I, p.426) They were known as the “Incas”, a name derived from one of the names of the Sun. “Ina”.

While speculating in this strain, it is tempting to make another obser­vation on the remarkable similarity between a series of names of places in California and several puranic names. We have all heard of the well-­known story of the sixty thousand sons of King Sagara being burnt to ashes by the sage Kapila, to save whose souls their descendant Bhagi­ratha is said to have brought down the Ganga to the earth. The story goes that the horse sought for by the sons of Sagara was found in the netherlands (Patala Loka). America being roughly India’s antipodes on the globe, is this description of that land in the Puranas as the netherland to be laughed at? Is it not very sugges­tive that California might be a corrup­tion for “Kapila Aranya” (Kapila’s for­est) and that the two islands nearby, viz.. “The Horse Island” and “The Ash Island” might represent the places where the horse of King Sagara was kept and where King Sagara’s sixty thousand sons were burnt to ashes?

Figs. 128 and 129 in page 621 of the Native Tribes of Ceniral Austra­lia, by Spencer and Gillen (Macmillan. 1899) depict a kind of dance said to be current among the wild native tribes of Australia. This dance is de­scribed in the book as The Siva Dance. On closer examination, the dancers appear to have painted on their forehead a third eye, a fact suggestive of the possibility that the people of even such distant lands as Australia were once well-versed in Vedic lore.

Nearer home in the Eastern Archipelago evidences of the prevalence of the Hindu Faith are abundant. Java bristles with relics of Hindu cult and worship. In Borneo there is a forest which the Westerners were for a long time describing as a virgin forest. i.e., not having been penetrated by man (Wallace -The Malay Archipelago. pp. 44-45). A party of explorers, after they had gone a few hundreds of miles, discovered a stone which contained an inscription commemorating in detail the perform­ance of some specified Yagas and Yajnas (Vedic sacrifices) by a certain king (Yupa inscriptions of Mulavar­man of Koeti. Borneo)’.

All these evidences only go to prove that our religion which was the only religion the world possessed for a long time, had spread all over the world.

It will not be out of place to examine here some conceptions of Hinduism about the Universe. The common Hindu belief about our terrestrial globe is that it is composed of seven Dvipas or land masses. Adi Sankara Bhagavadpadacharya refers to this in the following sentence in one of his books: Sapta dvipa cha medinee.

Each one of these Dvipas consists of several Varshas each of which in turn consists of several Khandas. Our country India has been described in our scriptures as Bharata Khanda said to be a part of Bharata Varsha, which in turn is supposed to be situated in Jumbu­dvipa. Mount Meru is supposed to be to the north of all the seven Dvipas. There is an ocean belt between every two Dvipas. The sun and the moon are said to move round Meru.

Let us now examine in detail the real import of these conceptions. The Westerners teach us in our geo­graphy books tha1 the earth is round and we think that this truth was first revealed to us by them. The Samskrit term for “geography” is “Bhugola” which itself means “the round earth”. Is not the very existence of this word proof of the fact that our ancients were aware of this fundamental geo­graphical truth about the spherical nature of the earth? In the ancient Indian mathematical science, words such as “Khagola” and “Bhugola” oc­cur which are further evidences in support of the above. In our Sankalpa Mantras we use the word “Brah­manda” while referring to the earth. The term anda in this word really means an egg. i.e., an oval-shaped body!

Let us now imagine the whole earth as a lime fruit with that part of it containing “Meru” (Himalayas) di­rected towards the north as its apex. Then “Meru” becomes the north pole and, hence, the northernmost point on the earth. This position, then, will sufficiently explain the saying: Sar­veshamapi Varshanam Meruruttaratah Sihitah. The rest of the sphere is all to the south of it. To the eye of a man standing on the apex of it, the sun and the moon would appear to go round it, i.e., the sun would not be exactly overhead at any part of the year, but would always be to a side of it. This is what is meant by the statement in our Sastras that the sun goes round “Meru”. There is thus nothing in these conceptions which could be considered as being contra­dicted by modem geographical discov­eries.

All the modern discoveries about the geography of our earth seem, therefore, to have already dawned on our ancient seers. Refer­ences to these truths are also found in the works of Aryabhatta, Vara­hamihira, and Appayya Dikshita.

Thus we come to the truth which we established at the outset, viz., ours was the only religion extant on the face of the earth for a long time. All the other religions of the world have only taken up and devel­oped some phases of our bigger faith which contains all the aspects of the different religions.

With a little propaganda charac­terized more by kindness and love than by conceit and arrogance, it might yet be possible for us to con­vince others of this truth.

–From a discourse in 1931

“Among the common virtues to be practised by all human beings, Ahimsa is the foremost. So says the Manu Dharma Sastra. Not hurting others by our limbs alone is not Ahimsa. We must not speak such words as will hurt the feelings of others. We must not even think ill of others. The main fruit of practising Ahimsa is controlling the mind. There is a secon­dary side-benefit also. If one does not do harm to others by his body, mind or tongue, those beings that near him with the idea of doing harm to him, will forget that idea and become nonviolent”.

Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati