Hinduism - 1

Hinduism is one of the major religions of the world. It's followers, numbering nearly seven hundred millions, dwell in India and they are known as Hindus. India has been the motherland of Hinduism for a long, long time.How long no one can say with precision. Some say that it must be twenty thousand years, some others hold that it cannot be more than three thousand years. However, there is no doubt in the fact that Hinduism is several thousand years old, and it is older than any other religion of the world.

In very ancient days, Hindusim was known as the 'Arya Dharma' and its followers the Aryas. Their earliest home in India was in the Punjab. Nobody has yet been able to say finally where the Aryas of the Punjab had come from. Different schools have made different guesses about the original home of the Aryas, such as the Artic region, the great tableland of Central Asia, the Mediterranean coast etc. Swami Vivekananda was firm in his belief that the Aryas had not come from any place outside India.

However, from the Punjab, the Aryas gradually spread all over Northern India, which tract then came to be known as AryaVarta. In course of time, they crossed the Vindhya range and spread their religion in Southern India. An Arya sage, Agastya by name, is said to have led this march of the Aryas to the south.

One may like to know how the Aryas came to be called the Hindus. The origin of the name Hindu is rather funny. The river Sindhu (Indus) marked the western frontier of the ancient Aryan settlement in the Punjab. On the other side of river lived the ancient Iranians (Persians). It was by the name of this river that the Iranians called the Aryas. But they could not pronounce the word Sindhu correctly; they would pronounce it as Hindu. So, Hindu came to be the name by which Iranians called tthe Aryas. In course of time the Arryas themselves picked up this name from the Iranians.