Finally, since one is confronted not just with the problem of identifying Islamic influence on Hinduism but also Hindu influences on Islam, it is clear that the process of interaction may be complicated by a double movement.
Original Hindu influences, for example, may have passed over into Islam; the movement or process that resulted from this may then in turn influence Hinduism, causing a rather different phenomenon.
Mysticism again provides a possible illustration. The most obvious result of the religious impact of Islam on Hinduism is, of course, the existence of a large Muslim population in India. The view that Islam propagated itself in India through the sword cannot be maintained; aside from other evidence, the very distribution of the Muslim population does not support it.
If the spread of Islam had been due to the might of the Muslim kings, one would expect the largest proportion of Muslims in those areas which were the centers of Muslim political power. This, however, is not the case. The percentage of Muslims is low around Delhi, Lucknow, Ahmadabad, Ahmadnagar, and Bijapur, the principal seats of Muslim political power.
Even in the case of Mysore, where Sultan Tipu is said to have forced conversion to Islam, the ineffectiveness of royal [[]] proselytism may be measured by the fact that Muslims are scarcely 5 percent of the total population of the state.
On the other hand, Islam was never a political power in Malabar, yet today Muslims form nearly 30 percent of its total population. In the two areas in which the concentration of Muslims is heaviest—modern East and West Pakistan—there is fairly clear evidence that conversion was the work of Sufis, mystics who migrated to India throughout the period of the sultanate. In the western area the process was facilitated in the thirteenth century by the thousands of Muslim theologians, saints, and missionaries who fled to India to escape the Mongol terror.
The names and careers of some of these are well known. The influence of such men, and of many others, can be traced through the families of their spiritual descendants. In Bengal, the Muslim missionaries found the greatest response to their message among the outcastes and the depressed classes, of which there were large numbers in Bengal. To them, the creed of Islam, with its emphasis on equality, must have come as a liberating force.
Then too, the acceptance of the religion of the conquerors would have been a powerful attraction, since it would undoubtedly carry with it possibilities of advancement they had never known before.
Another factor in the large number of conversions is the somewhat peculiar religious history of Bengal. From the eighth to the twelfth century the Pala dynasty had supported Buddhism. Then in the twelfth century the Sena dynasty, which had its roots in South India, began to encourage Hindu orthodoxy. The result was probably a good deal of religious unrest and uncertainty, which made it possible for Islam to find an opening for its work of proselytization. When the Islamic missionaries arrived they found in several instances that the conquering armies had destroyed both the temples of revived Hinduism and the monasteries of the older Buddhism; in their place—often on the same sites—they built new shrines.
Moreover, they very frequently transferred ancient Hindu and Buddhist stories of miracles to Muslim saints, fusing the old religion into the new on a level that could be accepted by the masses. The developments in the cultural sphere—development of regional languages, the rise of Hindustani, and the evolution of Indo-Muslim music and architecture—have been outlined in the preceding chapter; here an attempt will be made to examine those religious movements which seem to owe something to the interaction of Hinduism and Islam.
The process of interaction is undeniably obscure, and knowledge of many vital links is lacking, but what is certain is that the period was of great importance for the development of the religious and cultural traditions of modern India. The fifteenth century, it has been observed, "was marked by an extraordinary outburst of devotional poetry inspired by these religious movements, and this stands out as one of the great formative periods in the history of northern India, a period in which on the one hand the modern languages were firmly established as vehicles of literary expression, and on the other the faith of the people was permeated by new ideas.
The religious schools and movements which arose in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are generally characterized as variants of bhakti, or devotional religion, and the influence of Islam has been seen as a determining factor. This understanding of the movements is, however, an oversimplification of a very complex phenomenon. It is important to remember, first of all, that many of the elements associated with the religious movements at the end of the sultanate had already been dominant in Hinduism itself for many centuries.
This is especially true of those areas of South India where Muslim influence had not been strong. It is also quite possible that the Islamic mystics, the Sufis, had been directly or indirectly influenced by Hindu thought and institutions before the conquest of India. What is the Creation Story in Hinduism? Gil Ben-Herut. University of South Florida.
Where and When did Hinduism Originate? Who Founded Hinduism? Jimi Wilson. University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Will Sweetman.
University of Otago. Where Did the Concept of Caste Begin? Development Has Hinduism Changed Since its Creation? Are there Different Denominations Like Christianity? Vincent E Burgess.
Cornell University. Vincent E. Burgess is a Ph. His research is currently focused on discourses of renunciation and environmentalism with regard to modern, North Indian religious traditions. What are the Regional Differences in Hinduism across India? Bhakti Mamtora. Wooster College. How does Someone Become a Guru? Antoinette DeNapoli. Texas Christian University. Does Hinduism have More Extreme Groups? Richard S.
Victoria University of Wellington. How has the Internet Changed Hinduism Today? Texts and Stories What are the Vedas? What are the Most Important Stories in Hinduism? Jennifer B. The Buddhist canon is known in Pali as the Tipitaka Tripitaka in Sanskrit , meaning "Three Baskets," because it consists of three collections of writings: the Sutta Pitaka Sutra Pitaka in Sanskrit , a collection of discourses; the Vinaya Pitaka, the code of monastic discipline; and the Abhidharma Pitaka, which contains philosophical, psychological, and doctrinal discussions and classifications.
The Sutta Pitaka is primarily composed of dialogues between the Buddha and other people. In the fifth group, the Jatakas, comprising stories of former lives of the Buddha, and the Dhammapada Religious Sentences , a summary of the Buddha's teachings on mental discipline and morality, are especially popular.
The Vinaya Pitaka consists of more than rules governing the conduct of Buddhist monks and nuns. Each is accompanied by a story explaining the original reason for the rule. The rules are arranged according to the seriousness of the offense resulting from their violation. The Abhidharma Pitaka consists of seven separate works.
They include detailed classifications of psychological phenomena, metaphysical analysis, and a thesaurus of technical vocabulary. Although technically authoritative, the texts in this collection have little influence on the lay Buddhist. The complete canon, much expanded, also exists in Tibetan and Chinese versions. The Milindapanha dates from about the 2nd century AD.
It is in the form of a dialogue dealing with a series of fundamental problems in Buddhist thought. The Visuddhimagga is the masterpiece of the most famous of Buddhist commentators, Buddhaghosa flourished early 5th century AD. It is a large compendium summarizing Buddhist thought and meditative practice. Theravada Buddhists have traditionally considered the Tipitaka to be the remembered words of Siddhartha Gautama.
Mahayana Buddhists have not limited their scriptures to the teachings of this historical figure, however, nor has Mahayana ever bound itself to a closed canon of sacred writings.
Various scriptures have thus been authoritative for different branches of Mahayana at various periods of history. Conflict and New Groupings As Buddhism developed in its early years, conflicting interpretations of the master's teachings appeared, resulting in the traditional 18 schools of Buddhist thought. As a group, these schools eventually came to be considered too conservative and literal minded in their attachment to the master's message. Among them, Theravada was charged with being too individualistic and insufficiently concerned with the needs of the laity.
Such dissatisfaction led a liberal wing of the sangha to begin to break away from the rest of the monks at the second council in BC. While the more conservative monks continued to honor the Buddha as a perfectly enlightened human teacher, the liberal Mahasanghikas developed a new concept.
They considered the Buddha an eternal, omnipresent, transcendental being. They speculated that the human Buddha was but an apparition of the transcendental Buddha that was created for the benefit of humankind. In this understanding of the Buddha nature, Mahasanghika thought is something of a prototype of Mahayana. Mahayana The origins of Mahayana are particularly obscure.
Even the names of its founders are unknown, and scholars disagree about whether it originated in southern or in northwestern India. Its formative years were between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD.
Speculation about the eternal Buddha continued well after the beginning of the Christian era and culminated in the Mahayana doctrine of his threefold nature, or triple "body" trikaya. These aspects are the body of essence, the body of communal bliss, and the body of transformation. The body of essence represents the ultimate nature of the Buddha. Beyond form, it is the unchanging absolute and is spoken of as consciousness or the void.
This essential Buddha nature manifests itself, taking on heavenly form as the body of communal bliss. In this form the Buddha sits in godlike splendor, preaching in the heavens. Lastly, the Buddha nature appears on earth in human form to convert humankind.
Such an appearance is known as a body of transformation. The Buddha has taken on such an appearance countless times. Mahayana considers the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, only one example of the body of transformation. The new Mahayana concept of the Buddha made possible concepts of divine grace and ongoing revelation that are lacking in Theravada. Belief in the Buddha's heavenly manifestations led to the development of a significant devotional strand in Mahayana.
Some scholars have therefore described the early development of Mahayana in terms of the "Hinduization" of Buddhism. Another important new concept in Mahayana is that of the bodhisattva or enlightenment being, as the ideal toward which the good Buddhist should aspire.
A bodhisattva is an individual who has attained perfect enlightenment but delays entry into final nirvana in order to make possible the salvation of all other sentient beings. The bodhisattva transfers merit built up over many lifetimes to less fortunate creatures. The key attributes of this social saint are compassion and loving-kindness. For this reason Mahayana considers the bodhisattva superior to the arhats who represent the ideal of Theravada.
Certain bodhisattvas, such as Maitreya, who represents the Buddha's loving-kindness, and Avalokitesvara or Guanyin, who represents his compassion, have become the focus of popular devotional worship in Mahayana. Tantrism By the 7th century AD a new form of Buddhism known as Tantrism see Tantra had developed through the blend of Mahayana with popular folk belief and magic in northern India.
Similar to Hindu Tantrism, which arose about the same time, Buddhist Tantrism differs from Mahayana in its strong emphasis on sacramental action. Also known as Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle, Tantrism is an esoteric tradition. Its initiation ceremonies involve entry into a mandala, a mystic circle or symbolic map of the spiritual universe.
Also important in Tantrism is the use of mudras, or ritual gestures, and mantras, or sacred syllables, which are repeatedly chanted and used as a focus for meditation. Vajrayana became the dominant form of Buddhism in Tibet and was also transmitted through China to Japan, where it continues to be practiced by the Shingon sect. From India Outward Buddhism spread rapidly throughout the land of its birth.
Missionaries dispatched by King Ashoka introduced the religion to southern India and to the northwest part of the subcontinent. According to inscriptions from the Ashokan period, missionaries were sent to countries along the Mediterranean, although without success. From the beginning of its history there, Theravada was the state religion of Sri Lanka. According to tradition, Theravada was carried to Myanmar from Sri Lanka during the reign of Ashoka, but no firm evidence of its presence there appears until the 5th century AD.
From Myanmar, Theravada spread to the area of modern Thailand in the 6th century. It was adopted by the Thai people when they finally entered the region from southwestern China between the 12th and 14th centuries. With the rise of the Thai Kingdom, it was adopted as the state religion.
Theravada was adopted by the royal house in Laos during the 14th century. After the 14th century, however, under Thai influence, Theravada gradually replaced the older establishment as the primary religion in Cambodia. About the beginning of the Christian era, Buddhism was carried to Central Asia. From there it entered China along the trade routes by the early 1st century AD. Although opposed by the Confucian orthodoxy and subject to periods of persecution in , , and , Buddhism was able to take root, influencing Chinese culture and, in turn, adapting itself to Chinese ways.
The major influence of Chinese Buddhism ended with the great persecution of , although the meditative Zen, or Ch'an from Sanskrit dhyana, "meditation" , sect and the devotional Pure Land sect continued to be important. From China, Buddhism continued its spread. Confucian authorities discouraged its expansion into Vietnam, but Mahayana's influence there was beginning to be felt as early as AD From this date Korea was gradually converted through Chinese influence over a period of centuries.
Buddhism was carried into Japan from Korea. It was known to the Japanese earlier, but the official date for its introduction is usually given as AD It was proclaimed the state religion of Japan in by Prince Shotoku. Buddhism was first introduced into Tibet through the influence of foreign wives of the king, beginning in the 7th century AD. By the middle of the next century, it had become a significant force in Tibetan culture.
A key figure in the development of Tibetan Buddhism was the Indian monk Padmasambhava, who arrived in Tibet in His main interest was the spread of Tantric Buddhism, which became the primary form of Buddhism in Tibet. Indian and Chinese Buddhists vied for influence, and the Chinese were finally defeated and expelled from Tibet near the end of the 8th century.
When it comes to medication, Hindu patients may not be given medicine that has been derived from cows, pigs or other animals. At your organization, it is recommended to provide education and training to your staff regarding the religious and cultural beliefs of the Hindu faith. That training can explain and aid in developing cultural competency in different ideologies that you, or your employees, may not have engaged with before.
CulturaLink can help you and the Hindu community by providing consulting, education and training. Not only will CulturaLink give an organization access to top-of-the-line instruction, but they also are equipped the knowledge on those of Hindu faith and what steps must be taken to provide a competent workplace, quality care in healthcare and how to generally be understanding and empathetic of someone who is a believer of Hinduism.
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