Concept of God in Hinduism

Concept of God in Hinusim
There are many branhces of Hinduism across the world. They do not agree on their descriptions of God. There is no surprise in this. Hinduism is a very old religion though the word "Hindu" itself is comparatively recent. It is quite natural that the belief systems of its followers will go modification over the years. Different brances underwent different modifications. That is why we have so many branches of Hinduism today.
When there are disagreements over various branches, why do we club them into Hinduism? The very fact that all these belief systems are put under a single group called "Hinduism" proves that there are essential agreements among them.

This series of posts attempts to explain the concept of God on which majority of the branches of Hinduism are in agreement. In cases, where different beliefs regarding God are more or less equally powerful, all of them will be explained. The explanations are based on the popular scriptures of Hinduism. These scriptures are Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayan, Mahabharat, Puranas. (Note:- Various upanishads are based on a veda and these upanishads together contain the essence of that veda.)

One of the most debated topics regarding Hinduism is that it has so many gods. How many gods are there in Hinduism? More than 300 million! So, is Hinduism monotheistic or pantheistic? Before answering that let us define what we mean by monotheistic and pantheistic. Monotheistic means belief in one Supreme and pantheistic means belief in many Supremes. If we go by this definition, then Hinduism is monotheistic. But how can it be? How can a religion, which talks of millions of gods, be monotheistic? There are two ways to explain this paradox.

Different aspects of the same Supreme: - The scriptures of Hinduism refer to the same supreme in various names. Therefore, so many gods are different aspects of the same One Supreme. As an analogy, a person can be husband to one, father to another, teacher to still another and so on, even though it is the same person. Likewise, God can be referred to by various nouns. According to this explanation, Hinduism believes in one Supreme and is, therefore, monotheistic.

These are not all supreme: - According to Hinduism, there are many higher dimensions and gods live there. Please note that when the word 'gods' here includes both gods and goddesses. Since we do not perceive these higher dimensions, we do not see them. Even if gods visit our dimensions, we do not see them because they keep themselves invisible using their spiritual powers. These gods are as different from each other as there are so many different people on Earth. So, there are really many gods. But, these are not supreme. They are far more powerful than we human beings, but still they are not supreme. According to this explanation also, Hinduism is monotheistic. One may ask as to why we worship these gods if they are not supreme? We worship them because, as per the scriptures of Hinduism, they provide us many things. Our parents also give us many things. We are thankful to them and we respect them. It does not mean that we consider our parents as supreme. Likewise, the worshipping of so many gods is being thankful to them and giving respect to them. It is not like worshipping Supreme.

Two explanations are given above. Some groups of Hinduism believe in one of these explanations and other believe in the other explanation. Whichever explanation we take, as per the scriptures of Hinduism, there is only one Supreme.

Origin of the word Hindu
The previous post says that the word "Hindu" itself is recent but the scriptures are is much older. Then, how did the word "Hindu" originate? This is explained below:-

The most commonly accepted theory is that this word was given by those who came to India from foreign countries centuries ago. There was a huge river named Sindhu. Greek invaders to India changed Sindhu to Indu dropping the beginning 'S' sound. They called the land east of this river as India. Some say that it was Alexander who called Sindhu as Indu.

Later, when Muslim invaders came from Persia to India, they called Sindhu as Hindu. This is because the Sanskrit sound of S converts to H in Parsee language. The people of this country were called as hindus even though the people of this area did not use this word themselves. Later on, the word Hindi became so common that even the inhabitants of this country started calling themselves as hindus. From hindu, the name of this country was given as Hindustan.

But why did people change Sindhu to Hindu? Some say that it was done simply because of the accent of the people who gave this new name. Some others say that it was done on purpose in order to make fun of this country. In Persian, the word 'hindu' means slave/thief/dacoit. Whatever be the real reson - for the sake of convenience of speech or as deliberate attempt to denigrate this land, the scholars of the Hinduism religion almost unanimously agree that this term is not there in scriptures.

Since it is not there in the scriptures these scholars do not like calling this religion as hinduism. Rather they like the word sanatana dharma, which means 'eternal religion'.

There are some scholars who have opposing views. They claim that this word was not given by outsiders and was in use even before the outsiders invaded India. But they are in minority.

wow thx avi for the info
^some of that is very new to me 😳

Originally posted by: **Shona**

wow thx avi for the info
^some of that is very new to me 😳

Wow........u mention my name...........and i wasn't even in this post...........THANKS SHONA.....lol....

Your name?😕
Hey, Avi is my name. Actually it is Avinash - in short Avi.

well.........my name is just Avi........not Avinash.....

On my birth certificate, Avi is my first name....

^^^i meant to thank avinash there for the info
and i used avi for short i didnt know there are two avis on the forum....sorry my bad 😳

Wowww so interesting..Thanks for this wonderful INFO 👏

Thanx for sharing these thought. we should open aforum discusion about this and we must get inputs or views from other member about the whole thing.

I was explaining my kids about VISHNUPUPURAN and then compare all the Avtars of lord Vishnu ith Darwin theory of life. According to Darwin theory life strated from water and lord vishnu's 1st Avatar was Matsya hich can only survive in water. So keep going on his avtars he did follow Darwin's theory.

What u think? if u all r interested then we can discuss about next avtars.

Choose any avatar you wish. I am ready for the discussion.