The history of Hinduism

Followers of Hinduism may worship multiple different gods, although it's not a polytheistic religion because all these gods are believed to be manifestations of the one Brahman.

Agni, Indra, Shiva, Vishnu, and Ganesha are just a few examples of Hindu gods that different sects have regarded as the most important gods at various times. Shiva is sometimes associated with the destruction process, and Vishnu is seen as a creator who uses the remains of Shiva’s destruction to regenerate what has been destroyed.

One notable difference between Hinduism and other major religions is that it doesn’t have a clear founder or starting point; rather, it grew and spread—possibly as early as 5500 BCE—in the Indian subcontinent and changed over time based on Indian culture and economics.

In the Indian empires from 600 BCE to 600 CE, emperors maintained and further developed social systems that had been in place for a long time. The Aryans, nomadic herders from Central Asia who had migrated into the Indian subcontinent by 1500 BCE, had already established a caste system with four main groups of people: brahmins, or priests; kshatriyas, or warriors and aristocrats; vaishyas, or peasants and merchants; and shudras, or serfs.

This separation of people by class and job gained an even bigger foothold within Hinduism: according to Hindu myth, the god Purusha was assembled from the four castes, with the Brahmins at the head and the Shudras at the feet. It was believed that shudras had been born into their caste because they committed bad deeds in a previous life, or incarnation. The Hindu ideal of karma suggested that people who behaved well could be born into a higher caste.

Hinduism originally started as a tradition from within the brahmin class, making it difficult for people of lower castes to access, but it gradually grew more popular. Sometime around 1500 to 500 BCE, two epic poems called the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were created and eventually written down in the early centuries of the Common Era. These poems laid out information about Hindu values and gods—Vishnu, for example—through dramatic stories of love and war. When these stories were written down, they spread more quickly and easily throughout India. Another text, the Bhagavad Gita, was a poem that highlighted Hindu values and the possibility of salvation for people who lived those values. The Bhagavad Gita helped popularize Hinduism among lower castes because it asserted that people could achieve salvation by performing their caste duties.

During the Gupta empire—from about 320 to 550 CE—emperors used Hinduism as a unifying religion and helped popularize it by promoting educational systems that included Hindu teachings; they also gave land to brahmins. The Gupta emperors helped make Hinduism the most popular religion on the Indian subcontinent.