In
my previous blog article, "Dravidian Connections with the Rigveda and
the Harappan Civilization", I showed how:
1.
The Rigveda, the oldest Indo-European as well as the oldest Hindu text in the
world, had participation from some Dravidian speaking people from the South,
who contributed some very important rishis and words to the text of the Rigveda
(a prelude to a larger influx of Dravidian words into Sanskrit and later
Indo-Aryan languages in later Vedic and post-Vedic times).
2.
These Dravidian rishis and words are found in the New Rigveda before
2000 BCE, nearly two millenniums before the Tamil Sangam
Era! And also long before the first appearance of the Mitanni in Syria-Iraq and
the Indo-European Iranians (Persians, Parthians, Medians) in Iran!
3.
The Vedic-Dravidian relationship is an old and friendly one, and the reverence
for Vedic culture in the oldest Dravidian Sangam literature (of the late first
millennium BCE) has a long tradition behind it.
But
a question arises: was the religion and culture of the Dravidian speaking
people of the South in that era (pre-2000 BCE) also a part of, or
very similar to, the religion and culture of the Rigveda? Actually, no, it
wasn't: the religion and culture of the Rigveda was originally the religion and
culture of the Pūru people of Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. Then what was
the religion and culture of the Dravidian South, and what is its role in our
heritage? There is usually an extremely Veda-centric and Sanskrit-centric
attitude among Hindus in understanding our Hindu religion, culture and
identity, so we must understand the true state of affairs if we are to not fall
prey to divisive and fissiparous forces..
The
Hindu religion is an amalgam of the religious features of all the different
parts of India, not all of which are derived from the Vedas or
the Vedic religion (which was originally the religion of the Pūrus of Haryana
and westernmost Uttar Pradesh, and part of the northwestern Indian religious
sphere). To understand the place of all this, let us examine the situation
in two parts:
1.
The Ancient Indian People in the Harappan=Vedic period.
2.
Hinduism.
I. The Ancient Indian People in the
Harappan=Vedic period.
The
beginnings of Indian history, according to traditional information in the
Puranas, begins with a reference to the first king Manu Vaivasvata who ruled
over the whole of India, and he was succeeded by his ten sons, who subsequently
ruled over the different parts of India. The ten sons, according to the
Puranas, were Sudyumna, lkṣvāku, Prāṁṣu, Śaryāti, Dhṛṣṭa, Karuṣa, Nariṣyanta, Pṛṣadhra,
Nābhāga and Nabhagodiṣṭa, and these, as per the Puranic traditions, were the
ancestral figures for the inhabitants of the different parts of the whole of
India.
The
actual Puranic data concentrates on the history of the descendants of only two
of the reportedly ten sons of Manu: Ikṣvāku (whose descendants are
referred to as Aikṣvāku or Ikṣvāku) and Sudyumna (who, on the basis of a
mythical story in which, due to a curse, he becomes a woman and then is again
reconverted into a man, is also given the masculine name Iḷa and the feminine
name Iḷā , and his descendants are consequently referred to as Aiḷa or Iḷa).
The
history of the descendants of the other eight sons is not recorded or
discernible from the accounts.
The
Aiḷas are treated in myth and tradition as members of the Lunar race, and the
Ikṣvākus as members of the Solar race.
The
Ikṣvākus are located in the eastern half of the
northern area: in present-day terms, in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The
Aiḷas, who form the central focus of the Puranic
accounts, are located to the west
and south of the Ikṣvākus. However, even here, the Puranic accounts are
more-or-less ambiguous (or confused) about the history of the entire Aiḷa
lineage, and only concentrate on the history of descendants who are mythically
identified as descended from the five sons of an Aiḷa king named Yayāti: Yadu
and Turvasu/Turvaṣa, sons by his wife Devayānī , and Druhyu, Anu and Pūru, sons
by his wife Śarmiṣṭhā. These are located as follows:
a)
To begin with, the Pūrus are located in the Central areas around Kurukṣetra,
(Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh), the Anus to their north (Kashmir and the
areas to their immediate west in northernmost parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
province of Pakistan), the Druhyus to the west (present-day northern and
central Pakistan), the Yadus to their south (Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra) and the Turvasus
(to the east of the Yadus).
b)
A series of battles in the pre-Rigvedic period leads to a realignment in
the northwest: the Druhyus are pushed further out into Afghanistan, while a
major section of the Anus expands southwards and occupies the major part of the
former areas of the Druhyus.
c)
The dāśarājña battle in the period of the Old Rigveda leads to a further
realignment: the Pūrus expand westwards into the same (northern and
central Pakistan) areas and a major section of the Anus expands outwards into
Afganistan leading to a further northwards push to the Druhyus who spill out
into Central Asia.
By
the time of the period of the New Rigveda or the Mature Harappan
period, we find the following very complex situation over the whole of India:
1.
The Mature Harappan civilization is spread out over the whole area of the
Rigveda (from westernmost Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to southern and eastern
Afghanistan), and its components are
sections of three tribes with possibly the last remnants of a fourth
one:
a)
the central Pūrus in the eastern parts (mainly Haryana and
eastern Punjab),
b)
the eastern Anus and western Pūrus in the western parts
(most of northern Pakistan), and
c)
the western Yadus in the southern parts (Gujarat, Sind) along
with
d)
the last remnants of the Druhyus in the westernmost border areas.
They
had all developed together as a composite more-or-less Pūru-ized
"Indo-Iranian" civilization.
To
their north, in the original Puranic area of the Anus, we still find the northern
Anus, the ancestors of the Nuristani and Dardic people.
2.
To the west of the Mature Harappan = New Rigvedic areas, we have:
a)
the central Anus in the major part of Afghanistan (with remnants of
Druhyus still in their midst) who had developed into the proto-Iranian, or
pre-Avestan and Avestan, civilization.
b)
other sections of western Anus further west expanding westwards
into Iran: the ancestors of the proto-Armenian, proto-Greek and proto-Albanian
speakers later to migrate westwards towards southeastern Europe. They
were followed by other sections of the central Anus (proto-Iranian
tribes, who spread westwards and northwestwards), and also a section of western
Pūrus (the proto-Mitanni Indo-Aryans).
3.
To the north in Central Asia, we have the Druhyu people, including:
a)
the Uttara-Madras in the west (the proto-Hittites, with sections of them
migrating westwards towards the Caspian Sea in their historical movement
towards Anatolia),
b)
the Uttara-Kurus in the east (the
proto-Tocharians, who remained in the region till they became extinct a
thousand or so years ago), and, between the two,
c)
remnants of the other Druhyus (ancestral speakers of the proto-Italic,
proto-Celtic, proto-Germanic, proto-Baltic and proto-Slavic languages), the
main body of whom were already migrating westwards through northern
Eurasia on their way towards eastern Europe.
The
migrating Druhyus were also accompanied or followed by small sections of Anus
and Pūrus who carried Iranian and Indo-Aryan linguistic elements into the
Uralic areas (leaving traces of their ancient presence in the present-day
Finno-Ugric languages).
4.
To the east of the "Indo-Iranian" Harappans within India, were
the eastern Pūrus in the major part of western and central Uttar
Pradesh. They extended eastwards in the southern parts of Uttar
Pradesh perhaps as far as Kashi in the latest parts of the New Rigvedic period.
But their culture had evolved differently from the Harappan culture, and was
more akin to the culture of the Ikṣvāku culture to their north and east:
in northeastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
5.
To the south of these northern areas were the areas of the Yadus and, to
their east, of the Turvasus: in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh-Madhya Pradesh,
Gujarat and northern Maharashtra.
6.
To the east of these areas, in Jharkhand, Orissa and Bengal and further
east (greater Assam) were the areas of the speakers of the Austric languages.
7.
To the south, in southern Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana-Andhra
Pradesh, Tamilnadu and Kerala, were the speakers of the Dravidian languages.
8.
In the border-areas of India - the Land of the Descendants of Manu - there were
three more linguistic groups: the Andamanese people in the Andaman Islands, the
Burushaski people in the areas of the northern Anus (in Gilgit in POK),
and the Sino-Tibetan speakers in Ladakh, Tibet and the Himalayas.
9.
Far out in the west outside the Indian sphere, the Mesopotamians
(Sumerians, Akkadians) were having trade relations with the people of the
Mature Harappan civilization, and Indus seals have been found at Akkadian sites
from 2600 BCE onwards.
This
is the picture of ancient India, which, during the Mature Harappan period (=
the New Rigvedic period) already had a tradition (long before latter-day
Persians and Greeks called them "Hindus") of a unique composite identity
as the descendants of a common ancestor to whom the Puranas at least give the
name "Manu".
II. Hinduism.
The
Hindu religion is an amalgam of the religious features of all the different
parts of India, not all of which are derived from the Vedas or
the Vedic religion (which was originally only a part of the religion of the
first three northwestern areas named above):
1.
This northwestern religion is represented in the religion of the Anus (as in
Iranian Zoroastrianism), the Druhyus (as in the Druidic religion of the Celts,
and the Romuvan religion of the Lithuanians) and the Vedic texts of the
Pūrus; and consisted of (a) worship of
the elements, (b) the performance of fire-sacrifices, and (c) the composition
and recitation of hymns.
This
religion was taken out from India by the emigrating Anus and Druhyus along with
the eleven other (than Indo-Aryan) branches of Indo-European languages. The Vedic
religion of the Pūrus, being more systematically organized, and having
developed a unique and unparalleled technique of recording its sacred hymns by
a mnemonic system known as the ghaṇa-pāṭha, spread all over the
rest of India in the next few millennia, absorbing, and in fact losing
itself in, the diverse religions of the other "descendants of Manu",
leading to the formation of modern-day Hinduism: the Parliament of all the
religions of all the Descendants of Manu.
2.
The religion of the Yadus to their south in particular was more naturalistic,
and consisted of the worship of mountains
(e.g. govardhan parvata), forests and groves, trees and animals,
etc. This was probably a basic feature of the kind of religion which prevailed
over most of the rest of India, especially the areas of the eastern
Pūrus.
3.
The religion of the Ikṣvākus to the east was more deep or spiritual, based on
intuition, thought, logic and debate, and it is in their regions that we
find the seeds of most of the philosophical and spiritual aspects of
present-day Hinduism, including the Upaniṣads, Buddhism, Jainism, and even
materialistic philosophies like the Cārvāka.
4.
The areas of the Austric speaking people to the east contributed much of
present-day Tantric rites and beliefs, and perhaps even the concept of
reincarnation.
5.
The areas of the Dravidian speaking people to the south (with
perhaps some inputs from the Austric speakers of the east) contributed what
is today the most central aspect of Hinduism: idol-worship, with all its
accompanying features.
To
understand the centrality of idol-worship in Hinduism, note that this includes
all the following features:
1.
The worship of consecrated idols, whether of:
a)
The lingam,
b)
"Rude blocks of stone" with eyes painted on them, or
c)
Roughly, or finely, carved, or cast, images of stone, metal or some other
material.
2.
The most popular Hindu deities in every single part of India, including Ayyappa
of Kerala, Murugan of Tamilnadu, Balaji of Andhra, Vitthala (originally) of
Karnataka (=Vithoba of Maharashtra), Khandoba of Maharashtra, Jagannatha of
Orissa, etc., or the myriad forms of the Mother Goddess, with thousands of
names, in every nook and corner of India. Also every single local (originally
tribal) God and Goddess in every remote corner of India, in the form of the
kuladevatās, the gṛhadevatās or the grāmadevatās of local tribes and
communities.
[In
time, of course, myths were formed nominally associating many of these deities
with one or the other of the main Gods and Goddesses of Puranic Hinduism as
their manifestations, these Puranic Gods themselves being additions from
different parts of India to the Hindu pantheon (or originally Vedic Gods like
Vishnu and Rudra with basic characteristics adopted from the other local and
tribal deities). But these associations were not an imposition “from above”,
they were the result of popular local myth-making and part of the consolidation
of the national popularization of the local deities: the deities mostly
retained their local names, forms, myths, and special rituals and customs, and
became all-India deities, objects of pilgrimages from distant areas].
3.The
entire process of idol-worship:
a)
Treating the idols as living beings: bathing, dressing and feeding them,
putting them to sleep, etc.
b)
Performing pūjā by offering flowers (the word, which first appears indirectly
in a very late interpolated verse in the Rigveda, is alleged to be derived from
the Dravidian pū or "flower"), water, milk, bananas and other fruits,
coconuts, clothes and ornaments to the idols.
c)
Performing āratī by waving lights in
front of the idols, and ringing bells;
d)
Singing with cymbals, and performing music and dance before the idols;
e)
Partaking of prasāda, of food offered to the idols.
4.
The entire system of idol-temples and pilgrim-centres, with sacred tanks and
bathing-ghats, and of temples, and temple-festivals with palanquins and
chariot-processions.
Other
vital aspects of Hinduism which are missing in the Vedic religion,
but were adopted from the other Descendants of Manu, are:
1.
The use of ash, kumkuma, sandalpaste, turmeric, etc. for smearing or anointing
on the idols, and/or on the foreheads of worshipper. From this follow two very
fundamental outward symbols of Hinduism today:
a)
The tilak marks (of whatever material) on the forehead.
b)
The sacred saffron colour, and, by implication, also the saffron flag.
2.
The idea of soul, and the concept of transmigration of souls, and rebirth.
[This concept forms a very fundamental aspect of Hindu philosophy, and is the
one concept accepted by all the schools of Hindu philosophy including the Buddhist and the Jain (and excepting only the cārvāka
and other nāstika schools of thought)].
3.
The enumeration of the days by the phases of the moon, the tithis. [The
importance of the pañcāṅga (the annual calendar based on the tithis) in
ritualistic Hinduism can never be underestimated].
4.
Zoomorphic aspects of Hinduism:
a)
The worship of certain animals, birds and reptiles.
b)
The concept of God coming down to earth in the form of zoomorphic avatāras
(Narasiṁha, Kūrma, Matsya, Varāha); and, incidentally, even the very concept of
God coming down to earth in the form of avatāras.
c)
The concept of every God and Goddess having a "vehicle" or some
special animal or bird (Viṣṇu's Garūḍa, Gaṇeśa's mouse, Kārtikeya's peacock,
Śiva's bull, Durgā's lion, etc).
5.
A host of concepts, and socio-religious rituals, rites, superstitions and
taboos (for example, the concept of the "evil eye" and rituals for
its removal, or taboos against cutting nails at night, or beliefs in different
types of spirits and demons) and important ethical concepts (vegetarianism,
adopted from the Jain traditions of a section of the eastern Ikṣvākus).
6.
Several sacred cities, rivers, mountains, lakes and tanks, located all over
India outside the Vedic area, and ancient myths and legends associated with
them (often adapted to Puranic mythology).
7.
A very wide range of materia botanica (coconuts, bananas, rice, sandalwood,
turmeric, etc.) used in Hindu worship, native to the non-Vedic parts of the
country and not referred to in Rigvedic rituals.
NOTE:
This spread of the Vedic religion from Haryana to the rest of India was no
different from the spread in later times of Buddhism and Jainism from Bihar to
the rest of India, and had no elements of "invasion" or
"imposition" in it: all these three are component members of
modern-day Hinduism. If anything, there was a very much higher degree of acceptance
and absorption of religious rituals, concepts, Gods and philosophies in
the spread of the Vedic religion. We must keep in mind that except for the
Vedic hymns and yajñas, and the Vedic/Sanskrit language, there is
little of the Pūru Vedic religion in present-day Hinduism, except as an
invisible umbrella layer covering all the different aspects of Hinduism
Category One. And even the Vedic rituals are performed in originally non-Pūru
religious contexts: in temples and in the worship of idols, all
of which were acquired from the Dravidian speakers of the South, and
which, as we saw, have today a much more central and dominant role in
Hinduism than the original Vedic religious contexts.
Appendix: A Short note on the Three
Categories of Hinduism.
What
do I mean, above, by Hinduism Category One? I will simply quote here the
put it at the very start of my article
on "Are Indian Tribals Hindus?":
"According to the
Constitution of India, laws framed for Hindus apply to the following three
categories of people:
(a) to any person who is a Hindu by
religion in any of its forms and developments, including a Virashaiva, a
Lingayat or a follower of the Brahmo, Prarthana or Arya Samaj,
(b) to any person who is a Buddhist,
Jain or Sikh by religion, and
(c)
to any other person domiciled in the territories to which this Act extends who
is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion.
Thus, according to the constitution,
every citizen of India, except a Muslim, a Christian, a Parsi or a Jew, is
legally a Hindu. The constitution draws a distinction between three categories
of legal Hindus:
(a) Hindus Category One
(consisting of all those who can still be categorised as full-fledged Hindus
within the Hindu religious fold, including members of sects having antecedents
traceable to mainline Hindu religious texts or individuals),
(b) Hindus Category Two
(consisting of members of the three sects, namely Buddhism, Jainism and
Sikhism, founded by Hindu individuals, which originated as sects within the
Hindu religious fold, but, in the course of history, came to acquire a more
distinctive religious identity), and
(c) Hindus Category Three
(consisting of members of indigenous religious groups native to India, not
founded by any particular individual, following ancestral forms of belief or
worship not specifically having antecedents traceable to mainline Hindu
religious texts or sects).
[Hinduism is a Parliament of all the three categories]
The people who are outside this
purview themselves belong to two categories:
(a) ex-Hindus, i.e. Muslims
and Christians, who, by and large, are converts from the Hindu fold, and
(b) non-Hindus, i.e. Jews and
Parsis, who, in spite of different degrees of intermingling with local people,
are by and large historical descendants of non-Hindu refugees or migrants from
outside India"].
To put matters in perspective about
the three categories of Hinduism, let me quote a larger later section of the
same article, "Are Indian Tribals Hindus?":
"Keeping in mind that by tribal religions, we
are referring only to the Hindu Category Three religions (Sarna, Donyi
Polo, Khasi, Meitei, Garo, and possibly others practiced by more microscopic
sections of other isolated tribes), since the other tribals are themselves
fully conscious that their religious practices are 'Hindu' (which is why they
clearly declare their religion to be 'Hindu' in the census, as accepted even by
the Joshua Project), can we say that these Hindu Category Three tribal
religions are neutral between Christianity and Hinduism?
The first and most fundamental factor which places
Hinduism and these tribal religions in one fundamental category completely
distinct from Christianity is the geographical factor. Hinduism
Category One, Hinduism Category Two and Hinduism Category Three religions
are all Indian religions, as distinct from Christianity which is a foreign
import.
This has further automatic implications. It means that
the sacred places, the sacred rivers, mountains and groves, the sacred plants,
animals and birds, the materials used in religious rituals, etc. of all
the three Categories of religions are Indian. India is the stage
of activity of the acts and events involving all the historical and
mythological characters in the narratives of all these religions. The
languages in which the original religious lore, poetry and traditions of all
these religions are couched are Indian languages. The traditional
religious music, the traditional religious food, the traditional religious
costumes, etc. of all these religions are representative of the traditional
culture of some part or the other of India. The traditional religious
beliefs and rituals of all these religions are derived from their Indian
ancestors.
This geographical factor alone and in itself is
so important that Dr Ambedkar placed emphasis not only on the necessity
of placing in one legal class the followers of all religions other than those
of foreign origin (Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Judaism), but put
the matter in even more categorical terms with specific reference to the
question of conversion itself: 'If the depressed classes join Islam or
Christianity, they not only go out of the Hindu religion, but they also go out
of the Hindu culture…What the consequences of conversion will do to the country
as a whole is well worth bearing in mind. Conversion to Islam or Christianity
will denationalize the depressed classes' (Dhanajay Keer: 'Dr
Ambedkar: Life and Mission', p.279). That conversion to Christianity (or
Islam) would 'denationalize' the converted Indians, with adverse 'consequences'
for 'the country as a whole' was very clearly a matter of deep concern
to him.
But the geographical factor is only the beginning.
Quite apart from the fact that there is no form of religious belief or
philosophy (from atheism, through agnosticism, to all forms of 'theism', and
from the most 'ahimsak' philosophy to the most violent bloody rituals) which is
not found in some part or the other of Hinduism, and which therefore, basically
makes it almost impossible to point out fundamental opposition between Hinduism
and any particular tribal religious system, the fact is that all the tribal
religions have features which fit into the most basic accepted definitions
of standard Hinduism: idol-worship, totemism, polytheism, pantheism, animism,
worship of the elements and of nature, belief in reincarnation, ancestor
worship, etc., every single one of which is pure anathema to Christianity.
Note that in the Wikipedia entry on the Karbi tribe, quoted earlier, we are
told with a straight face that the 'practitioners of traditional worship
believe in reincarnation and honour the ancestors'. In fact, almost all
these elements, and even most of the local deities in every village and town of
India, which are now the core of Hinduism, entered standard Hindu religion from
these very local tribal religions in the course of millenniums of mutual
interaction and influence; even as every local tribe and community
preserved its own religious traditions without interference, a circumstance
which would have been impossible in a Christian dominated country.
And by this is not meant only some mediaeval
Inquisition-instituting and Crusades-mongering Christian country: see what has
been the fate of other Pagan religions which have fallen prey to the
Proselytising Armies in the very citadel of the Proselytisers, the U.S.A.,
which, along with its other white colleague nations (in Europe, Australia and
the Americas), is always first and foremost in condemning any curbs on
“religious freedom” (read curbs on missionaries) in India, and which prides
itself on being the beacon of internal Democracy and Freedom:
From the 1600s European Catholic and Protestant denominations
sent missionaries to convert the tribes to Christianity. These efforts
intensified during the mid 19th century through mid-20'th as US Government and
Christian churches' joint efforts forcibly registered Native Americans as
Christians, which caused contemporaneous official government records (and
sources that reference these government records) to show 'Christianity' as the
majority religion of Native Americans for the past 100 years. These forcible
conversions often occurred through US government and Christian church
cooperative efforts that forcibly removed Native American children from their
families, and forcibly moved those Native children into a Christian-US
government operated system of American Indian boarding schools (aka
The Residential Schools) where Native children were indoctrinated in European
Christian beliefs, mainstream American culture and the English language. This forcible
conversion and suppression of Indigenous languages and cultures continued
through the 1970s.[1][2][3]
As part of the US government's suppression of
traditional Indigenous religions, most ceremonial ways were banned for over 80
years by a series of US Federal laws that banned traditional sweat lodge and sun dance ceremonies,
among others.[4] This
government persecution and prosecution continued until 1978 with the passage of
the American Indian Religious
Freedom Act (AIRFA).[5]'
(Wikipedia entry on 'Native American Religion')
All this, please note, was being done blatantly and on
a war footing in the U.S.A. till 1978. Must we assume there was a sudden
magical about turn in that year which miraculously brought about an
overwhelming love for the indigenous religions of the native American Indians
in the hearts of those who had been carrying on the above mentioned activities
so blatantly till then, and that the suppression and persecution completely
ceased thereafter?
When those same ruthless forces of Christian
Evangelization, who thought nothing of indulging in the above barbarism to
destroy the native religions of the U.S.A., send their Proselytizing Armies
into India to do the same to the native religions of India (whether Hindu
Category One, Two or Three), clearly it is the duty of all the
native religions to unite against the common enemy. And clearly it is not only
the right of Hindus to protect the tribals (whether Hindu Category
One, Two or Three) from the depredations of Christian missionaries, it is
their sacred duty to protect their fellow-Indians and fellow-Hindus from
these wolves. Anyone who has read beyond the leftist and missionary sponsored
articles in the media blaming Hindu organisations, every time there is conflict
over conversions in tribal areas, will see that the conflicts are basically
between the converted tribals and the non-converted tribals,
the latter literally fighting a last-ditch battle for the preservation of their
ancestral religions from the Proselytising Armies with their multi-pronged
military divisions.
Note:
(1)
Hinduism Category One itself is basically a Parliament of (Indian)
Religions.
(2)
If there are some religions born out of mainstream Hinduism (Buddhism, Jainism,
Sikhism) which have acquired distinctive identities over the centuries, they
have still remained part of the Hindu cultural stream (having a common history,
a common viewpoint towards life, common religious symbols like Om,
respect for Sanskrit as a Sacred language and for the saffron colour
as a Sacred colour, vegetarianism as an ideal ethic, similar
religious-philosophical terms and institutions, etc., and, as Dr. Ambedkar
pointed out: 'The application of the Hindu Code to Sikhs, Buddhists and
Jains was a historical development, and it would be too late, sociologically,
to object to it. When the Buddha differed from the Vedic Brahmins, he did so
only in matters of creed, but left the Hindu legal framework intact. He did not
propound a separate law for his followers. The same was the case with Mahavir
and the ten Sikh Gurus' (Keer, p.427).)
(3) if some tribal
religions have retained or acquired identities with a distinctive name, all
these are included within the different Categories of Hinduism (One, Two and
Three), which together form a Full Parliament of Indian Religions.
In fact, all these Categories of Hinduism fall within a larger Parliament
of World Religions, namely Paganism (which includes all the
native religions which existed in the world before the rise of the
proselytizing Abrahamic Religions:
Christianity and Islam)".