Is ‘Hindu’ the Right Word?
The word 'Hindu' is often objected to by many different shades of political ideologies. It is claimed that the word is foreign origin. Based on this premise it is also claimed that India is a British creation. This article delves into these questions of names and identities.
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Nothing is Everything: How Buddhism and Hinduism are Two Sides of the Same Coin – 3
This is an excerpt from the book "Why Buddhism is True" by Robert Wright. It talks about Buddhism's focus on 'Nothing' and Hinduism's focus on 'Everything'. In Hindu thought, specifically within a Hindu school of thought known as Advaita Vedanta, there is the idea that the individual self or soul is actually just a part of what you might call a universal soul. To put the proposition in Hindu terminology: atman (the self or soul) is Brahman (the universal soul). Now, to say that atman is anything at all – Brahman, whatever – is to say that atman exists in the first place. And the very birth of Buddhism, its distinct emergence within an otherwise Hindu milieu, is thought to lie largely in the denial that atman exists.
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The Islamic Conquest of India
The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
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Dharma vs. Religion – Part I
In European languages, there was no one word which could completely express the essential nature of dharma. So the European scholars had to make use of different words relative to the context in which the word had been used in Indian literature. In the English language, dharma was translated as religion, righteousness, law, tradition, moral code, etc., according to the context. But the modern scholars in India did not have to experience any such difficulty in the context of translation. They heard the word 'religion' of the English language and decided instantly and unanimously that this word should be translated as 'dharma' in all Indian languages.
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Eternal Words of the Vedas
In this excerpt, from Veda Mimansa, Volume I, Shri Anirvan discusses the notion of the eternality of the words of the Vedas. He discusses the age old debate between the Mimansakas and the rationalists, in which the Mimansakas claim that the very words of the Vedas are eternal and not just the meaning, and the rationalists consider only the meaning is eternal. In this brief excerpt, Shri Anirvan navigates through this debate and in the process interprets the origin of language and the importance of the Vedas.
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Apaurusheya and the Origin of Language
In this excerpt, Shri Anirvan talks about Apaurusheya and how the origin of language is related to it. Sanatana Dharma, its scriptures, its philosophy and its institutions are famous for not crediting the individual for certain achievement, or failure, for that matter. Indian arts, famously remain nameless. Shri Anirvan, in this very deep piece analyzes the basic idea of Apaurusheya behind this tradition.
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Ritual and Meaning in the Vedas
This is an excerpt from the Prologue of ‘Veda Mimansa – I’ by Shri Anirvan. This article talks about one of the most fundamental misconceptions about the Vedas; that the Vedic mantras have no meaning and are completely divorced from the Upanishadic philosophy. In this brief piece, Shri Anirvan clears all misconceptions about the problem.
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