Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

116 Hinduism
Because their written records were apparently
composed on perishable materials, we know very
little about them or about their religious beliefs.
Scholars have, however, surmised that some of the
basic beliefs of classical Hinduism, such as the
doctrines of reincarnation and karma, are probably
Harappan in origin.
One of the reasons we know so little about the
Harappans is that around 1,500 B.C.E. (some
Indian scholars say much earlier) a group of
aggressive pastoral peoples from central Asia
invaded India through the northern mountain
passes, conquered the Harappans, and destroyed
whatever records might have remained from the
original civilization. These peoples, who called
themselves Aryans (“Nobles”), originated from
around the Caspian Sea. For unknown reasons,
during the several millennia before the common
era groups of Aryans took off in every direction,
subjugating indigenous peoples in every area of
the world from India to Ireland (the words Iran,
Ireland, and Aryan all derive from the same root).
The Indo-European family of languages is one of
the legacies of this expansion.
Depiction of Krishna dancing on the head of his defeated
enemy, Kalya (Fortean Picture Library)
The worldview of the Aryan invaders of India
was partially preserved in the Vedas. By the time
of the Indian classical period (at least a millennium
after the initial invasion), the leading gods
of the Vedas (e.g., Indra and Varuna) had been
demoted to demigods, and their status as chief
divinities supplanted by non-Vedic deities such as
Vishnu and Shiva. It has been hypothesized that
this mythological transformation was one phase
of the victory of the religious ideology of the
indigenous peoples over the religious sensitivity
of the Aryan invaders.
Another aspect of this influence may be
reflected in the otherworldly orientation of later
Hinduism. The religious vision of the Vedas, in
sharp contrast to classical Hinduism, had focused
very much on this world. The gods were ritually
invoked to improve one’s situation in this life, so
that priests became something approaching magicians.
After settling down in the Indian subcontinent,
the Aryans became more introspective,
started asking questions about the ultimate
meaning of life, and developed an ideology
centered around release or liberation (moksha)
from the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara). The
various disciplines that are collectively referred to
as yoga developed out of this introspective turn.
Because some of the artifacts that survive from the
Harappan period appear to be human beings in
yogic meditation poses, it seems likely that the
Aryans picked up these practices from the indigenous
peoples.
To understand the worldview of classical
Hinduism it is necessary to understand that the
process of reincarnation was viewed negatively, as a
cycle that kept the individual soul bound to an
endless cycle of suffering. Unlike many Western
treatments of reincarnation, which make the idea of
coming back into body after body seem exotic,
desirable, and even romantic, Hinduism,
Buddhism, and other South Asian religions portray
the samsaric process as unhappy: Life in this world
is suffering. Hence liberation from this process
represents the supreme goal of human strivings.
The notion of reincarnation even colors Hindu
notions of hell, which, unlike Western hells, are
temporary abodes in which the soul spends a set
period of time rather than an eternity. This does