Aanandha Yoga Chapter-2b

Understanding ‘Sanaathana Dharma’ or ‘Hinduism’

It is not appropriate to try to understand a particular religion by trying to observe the followers of that religion, because many a times they themselves may not be aware about the teachings of their religion.

There fore the best and appropriate method of trying to understand a religion is to try to understand the authentic scriptures of that religion.

According to Swami Vivekananda :
Three religions now stand in the world, which have come to us from times pre-historic, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism.

They have all received tremendous shocks and all of them prove by their survival their inner strength.

But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place by its all conquering daughter and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to tell the tale of their grand religion called Zoroastrianism.

Sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations. But like the waters of the seashore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all absorbing flood, a thousand times more vigorous and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed and assimilated, into the immense body of the mother faith. That is the present day Hinduism.

But the word Hinduism is a misnomer.

The word Hindu is a geographical difinition, which refers to the people living on the banks of river Sindhu, or people living in the land watered by the river Indus. According to the Historians, this word was first used by the Persians, when they first came to India through the North-west.

According the Encyclopedia of Religion & Ethics, the word Hindu is not found in any Literature or scripture before the coming of the Muslims to India.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in his book Discovery of India, says that the earliest occurance of the word ‘Hindu’ can be traced to a Tantrik of 8th Century. It was used to describe the people. It was never used to describe the followers of a particular religion.

Hinduism’s relationship to religion is of late occurance. The word Hinduism is derived from the word Hindu. It was first coined by the Englishmen to describe the beliefs and faiths of the people of India. According to the New Encyclopedia Britanica – the word Hindusim was first used by the British writers in the year 1830 to describe the religion and the beliefs of the people of India. Hence the word Hinduism is a misnomer.

The right word for Hinduism is ‘Sanaathana Dharma’ that is 'eternal religion', or the 'Vedic Dharma' or the 'Religion of the Vedas'.

According to Swamy Vivekananda, ‘the Hindus have received their religion through revelations, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different people in different times. Just as the law of gravition existed before its discovery and would exist if all humanity forgot it. So is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world.

The moral, ethical and spiritual relationship between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the father of all spirits, were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forget them. The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis and we honour them as perfected beings'.

Concept of Sanathana Dharma :
“From the high spiritual flights of Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seems like echoes, to the lowest ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnoticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have place in the Hindu’s religion.