Hinduism Family Tree
This is not meant to be historically or theologically precise. Its sole purpose is as a rough guide for modders who may wish to include a series of South Asian religions in their tech lines.
There is no religion named Hinduism. The closest parallel in Western society would be to consider the Abrahamic religions as one religion - lumping Baha'is, Shiites, Hassidim, Jewish Marxists, Freudian psychoanalysts, Greek Orthodox, Pentecostals, and Mormons, amongst others, into one undifferentiated block. There is however, a common thread of shared culture and geography, and historical development amongst the many spiritual paths usually labelled Hindu, as there is with the Abrahamic religions.
This very oversimplified family tree lays it out, roughly chronologically:
Originally there was what is now called the
Vedic Religion - orally transmitted within a semi-nomadic chariot-riding culture we call the Aryans. Their gods were cognate with the Greek, Roman, and other European pantheons. Their main ritual was a sacrificial fire.
At more or less the same time the
Harappan culture was creating the artifacts that leave us tantalizing glimpses of their religious life - seals with a male figure seated in a meditative posture, incense burning in front of a bull, etc. The relationship between these two strands is unclear; the Harappan language is untranslated, so we dont know the names of any of their deities, and no identifiable temples have been found which would put the images in context.
At some point a new set of gods (including Brahma, Vishnu, & Shiva) began to displace the Vedic pantheon. The Vedas also began to be written down, and the rituals became very formalized. This is where the
Brahminic religion comes in with a priestly caste in charge of all scriptural, philosophical, moral and ritual matters.
Later there were reactions to this conservatism and increasing ritualization that could be very broadly characterized as similar to the various Protestant reactions to Catholicism - dissatisfied individuals seeking their own distinct spiritual path, that they later shared with others. These individuals' search seems to have been enriched by contact with forest-dwelling practitioners of aboriginal religions, perhaps a remnant of Harappan practices. Under the heading of
Dharma Yoga (which might be very loosely translated as techniques of living rightly) Ive included such teachers as Mahavira (leader of the Jains) and Gautama Buddha.
A flowering within the orthodoxy spurred by these alternatives became expressed in the various
Aastikas - various organized systems of philosophy covering the spectrum from poly- heno- and monotheism to rationalist world systems and atheist approaches to morality.
Vedanta reintroduced the Vedas in a more modern interpretation, incorporating some insights from the Dharma Yogas and the Aastikas.
Bhakti movements came about a little later, centered in ecstatic worship of a particular deity, and not requiring the intellectual muscle of Vedanta.
In modern times what we call Hinduism might be expressed as a form of Vedanta (Hatha Yoga, Ayurvedic medicine, Vegetarianism, and meditative spiritual paths), Bhakti ( worship of Shiva, of various feminine deities as Shakti, or of one of the avatars of Vishnu - such as the Hare Krishnas practice in the West), or something closer to Brahminic rituals (as seen at the many temples in India). Within Hinduism there is no enforced exclusivity - although there
are fanatics and fundamentalists, most people would have no problem participating in the various kinds of practices appropriate to any given situation.