Sacred texts1/28/2024 Thus Hinduism signifies the Aryans’ culture and religious traditions as they developed over time, incorporating elements from other cultures encountered along the way. They called the Indus river “Sindhu,” and it is from this term that “Hindu” derives. Ārya means “respectable” as this was the term the Aryans used to describe themselves, it was meant to assert their cultural and linguistic superiority. “Sanskrit” is the anglicized form of saṃskṛta, which means “refined” or “polished” in time it became highly developed and rich in expression and became the language of the elite. The language the Aryans used and expressed their religion in was Sanskrit. The Indus civilization is so named because it seems to have spread out from urban settlements on the Indus river. We do know that they began to assert their presence in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent at about the beginning of the second millennium B.C.E., culturally displacing, but also interacting with, the Indus civilization that already existed there. Disputes surround where they originated from some say they were already present in western India, others that they came from Central Asia, or further west. Hinduism developed with a group of tribes who referred to themselves as Aryans. Most of the sacred texts mentioned in this article started life in oral form well before being committed to writing, and as such “sacred text” is not only the written word, but also the “heard” word as well as the visual text of image and icon ( mūrti, pratimā, arcā). Hinduism has a large component of oral tradition and visual imagery in its origins and development. This article explores some of the varied sacred texts of this religion. This also explains how, while other faiths and civilizations have come and gone, Hinduism continues to thrive and put out new shoots and roots, even when old ones have died away. It has many seemingly independent centers, often with distinctive sacred texts, deities, myths, rituals, saintly figures, codes of conduct, festivals and so on, but on closer scrutiny, like a great banyan, these different centers can be seen to link up more or less directly. Hinduism similarly has many centers of life and growth that are nevertheless organically related, some more, some less distantly, to one another.
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