Comparison of religions and their philosophies and concepts.

This is WIP.

First lets start with hinduism and understand what it is. I already have a blog on this and this is just a continuation. Hinduims has many meanings.
1. hindu = hindustani, indian, barathiya vasi (the land beyond the sindhu from the west)

2. the religions of hindustan

3. sanathana dharma.

4. the indian way of life.

5. the news paper the hindu

and so on.

it is because of the meaning 1 that we say all indians are hindus including muslims, christians etc..

it is because of meaning 2. that we say that jainism, sikhism and all other indic religions as hinduism.

it is because of 3. that we see so many different forms of god. in the medeival or ancient times, the vedics attempted to convert and encompass all major, minor and pagan beliefs into a commonfold called the sanathana dharma as their belief was of a single god which man can perceive in different forms. this was done by adding such gods as characters in puranas to bring social acceptance and belief in people that they can worship any of the forms ans still they pray to the same one common god.

we'll see the reason for the forth one soon.

the fifth one has no relevance here.

inside hindusim there is every form of philospphy from various schools, so if you are trying to relate allah to hindu god it will surely fit in more than one of the philosophies but surely not with advaitha.

so many philosphhies due to the evolution of the concept of god in hinduism. the same happened with western philosophies which all derived from zoroastraism. except the difference is that due to sanatha dharma these were not called religions but just dharmas.
so in both western adn eastern religions it is the same original concept which has been distorted and misunderstood by each religion. hindusim had space for all these concepts to live together due to its flexibility while western ones pitched religiously against each other.


one morepoint to add is that zoroastraianism itself was a sister or offshoot of vedic philosophy. the difference was due to non acceptance of someideas. especially that of rituals sacrifice and recluse culture of vedics while zoroastrians concentrated on grahasta or family life. zoroastrianism alsodiverged into dualism of god and evil. otherwise ahura mazda is the equivalent of iswara/saguna brahman the spenta maniyus are equivalent of the deities like shiva,vishni, devas etc. though warly zoroaztrianism talks of ahura mazda or ashura medha in sanskrit as both nirguna and saguna, the concept of maya in advaitha or agnyana in other schools was replaced by evil arhiman. hence the dualism in it and later ahura mazda became purely saguna and became monotheistic. but if we consider the spenta manyus it was polytheistic too. but then the focus of zoroastrianism was on ahura mazda hence monotheistic. since it lost the concept of a nirguna ahura mazda it lost the next level concept of god as monistic.

also in actual life the zoroastrians split from vedics by warring against them. vedics who initially praised ashuras later praised devas and zoroastrians otherwise. when vedics did ritual sacrifice for devas the ashuras used to disturb the sacrifices as described in the itihasas and puranas.
however the contents and language of the gadhas and rig veda are very similar or even the same. infact the zend avesta written in pahalvi was equivalent to the upanidhads as commenteries of the gadhas which was not understood. modern lingusts interpreted using vedic sanskrit.

studying zarathustra-ism and zarathustra the first prophet of the world and his relationship with both vedic and western religious concepts is very important for understanding the unity of religions.

judaism was highly influenced by zorastrainism, islam came at a very later developed and much misinterpreted versions of both zorastrianism and judaism. hence god or allah in islam is just a later time interpretation of vedic god without having any links with hinduism then. hindusim too had gone into various misconceptions of this concept then absorbing similar concepts as judaism, christianity etc by forming various sub religions like shaivism, vaishnavism etc which are similarly monotheistic and has similar belief system as judaism or christianity.
though there were also other systems and schools developed liek jainism, buddhism, yoga and other schools.
it was later during the time of shankara that the old and original vedic school of advaitism was recovered however the effect of sanathana dharma it just became another school of it.


which means all gods are different interprations of the same concept of god, which was basically a form less characterless nirguna infinite thing which we gave life to as god our super power, creator etc. etc.

other than the philosophical and conceptual differences it is in the social, cultural and ritualistic aspects that religions majorly differ. this is the reason for religious differences. and hence is also the reason y hindusim in spities of its vagairies of philosophies is a single social system and many consider it so as a way of life.