The Debate Club discussion

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Many religions have a specific found and because of this we are able to date back the age of which they began. However, Hinduism is one of the oldest religions(i believe the oldest) in the world, with no specific founder, therefore it is highly debated among Hindu theologians how old the religion is. The estimated timeline can be tens of thousands of years.

one of the things about hinduism is that unlike many other religions, it has no singular founder, and for a very long time it was an oral religion, and even before what we consider modern hinduism, we had vedism, and we can trace back the earliest signs of vedism (religious artwork) in the indus valley civilisation to ~ 3000 BCE i think

agreed. hinduism really has no singular founder, and i'm not sure when it came around but it has been here for very very long. just look at how long all the major temples have been around. hinduism is a really old religion lol

i might not be 100% accurate on this, there might be something older, but i think the oldest sign of hinduism is the bhimbetka cave paintings from 8000 BCE. i think bhimbetka comes from 'bhimbaithaka' translates to 'where bhima sat', bhima is a very important figure in the hindu epic 'mahabharata'. the only reason i'm not totally sure about this is because the mahabharata didn't happen till around 3000-2000 BCE so i need to do a bit more research on that

something i read did state that ancient Hindus preferred passing along traditions and things of the sort orally even after art and written word, which people believe to add to its age.
I believe we don't even know who exactly wrote the Vedas, which is one of the reasons it they are considered so divine, though they must be at the very least 7000 years old.

I think it's insane how we just aren't sure, and how the written Vedas seemed to have almost just appeared.

yeah hinduism is a very oral religion. priests (in my language we call them sadhus) even today memorize so many verses, it's an insane amount, and correct me if i'm wrong but i'm pretty sure almost all the texts are written in verses. the verses also have repetitive tunes to them, which makes it much easier to memorize. i've literally memorized some parts of the really common ones just because i've heard them so much lol

yes! the vedas were passed down through oral memorization, and the "authors" (various rishis/priests) who wrote them down were not the 'creators' of it. this tradition of memorizing texts continues to this day, and many rishis who have dedicated their life to religion do memorizes all 20,000+ verses of the vedas

yeah like sai said, they are written in verses and are often sung. i haven't memorized the vedas i fear, but things like the hanuman chalisa (43 verses) or shri ram stuti i have memorized. there are literal competitions where kids will memorize all 400 verses of the bhagvad gita and perform them in front of judges and stuff it's very impressive

my grandma on my dad's side literally memorized the whole ramayan lol

that's insane omg it's literally like almost as long as all the vedas combined. it really is a super oral religion

Okay this is less about the topic(sue me) and more my studying, but i think hinduism is genuinely on a different level. Its so complex so when simplified its genuinely hard to understand and doesn't make sense, but when you look into it, like i just read today that a lot of hindus believe that its not the only answer, that all religions are correct. Because there are many ways to find Brahman, in the way they phrased it 'many rivers connecting to the ocean'.

I think between that and how knowledgeable some of the word was so long ago kinda shows us that it is totally a new level of comprehension.

ash ³³ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ wrote: "yeah like sai said, they are written in verses and are often sung. i haven't memorized the vedas i fear, but things like the hanuman chalisa (43 verses) or shri ram stuti i have memorized. there ar..."

thats completely insane. I know people who can remember a LOT of Bible verses but thats a lot. I think how verbal it can be is a big helper in that.
Sanskrit is also an insane language, a lot of indian languages are imo because they are so complex.

I literally searched the biggest barnes and noble in my state for almost an hour looking for the Vedas and nothing. Very few books on hinduism as a whole, but considering there were two aisles of Bibles and one of Quarans, i would think there would be like something?

Tessie wrote: "Okay this is less about the topic(sue me) and more my studying, but i think hinduism is genuinely on a different level. Its so complex so when simplified its genuinely hard to understand and doesn'..."

well i don't know if many hindus believe that, that seems to be a weasel word. hindus definitely believe that their is no singular path to brahman or moksha, but that is not directly saying that all religions are correct. there is a reason that hindus are hindus and not christian or jewish or whatever.

wait why are their multiple aisles on bibles sorry 😭 it's a bible like i know there are minor differences between different factions or christianity but why do they need so much space for the same book

ash ³³ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ wrote: "Tessie wrote: "Okay this is less about the topic(sue me) and more my studying, but i think hinduism is genuinely on a different level. Its so complex so when simplified its genuinely hard to unders..."

I may have phrased that wrong, i mean like Christians believe if you aren't christian you're going to hell, from what i understand hindus don't necessarily condemn every other religion because like you said there are many ways to Brahman and moksha

Well there's the kjv, niv, amplified version, esv, new american standard bible, revised standard version, then you have the old testament, new testaments in all these versions, then some with both in all these versions, and then bible journals, bible kits, and then half the second and third aisle was translations, understanding, interpreting, converting, the different denominations, a LOT more conversion books, the book of mormons and well there are a lot of denominations and books of and about them.

oh 😭 i had like no clue there were so many. i guess as a hindu we have so many texts so i can understand if you have like an aisle bc you have the vedas, the epics, the puranas, can you imagine if we also had ten different translations and stuff how much space it would take

Tessie wrote: I may have phrased that wrong, i mean like Christians believe if you aren't christian you're going to hell, from what i understand hindus don't necessarily condemn every other religion because like you said there are many ways to Brahman and moksha"

This is pretty off topic, but I wanted to elaborate on what you said: to my knowledge, Hinduism doesn't just believe in multiple gods, but that all our gods are manifestations of one being. It's a way of helping us understand who he is, so we as humans can understand him, as well as to test us to see his true self, by giving God a tangible form that can be visualized. Whereas his true form is intangible, and has no physical form or qualities (nirgun, nirakar). So I think the reason Hindus don't believe other religions are inherently wrong is because it's believed that all other religions are eventually leading you to the same spiritual end, and many believe that other religion's Gods are forms of that being (usually referred to as Brahman).

I am Hindu and I personally like to believe all religions are interconnected and that maybe the gods we believe in are the same.

very old.