What is the history on Hinduism?

Answer 1

Just as there has been a huge amount of migration in the last two centuries from all over the world to United States and other North American provinces, there was a time thousands of years ago, when huge and gigantic rivers like Saraswati were wetting Indian lands, India was the preferrred choice of destination for migration. Huge number of tribes used to frequently migrate onto the Indian subcontinent in large numbers. Each incoming deity had its own tribal deity and the environment became highly polythestic with every community of few hundred or thousand individuals having its own deity. Hinduism was the result of a well-formed organizational institution headed by Seven Sages, called Saptarshis, who aimed at arresting the excessive polytheism resulting from these migrations. These sages used certain scriptures called Vedas as a means to arrest polytheism and enfore monotheism.

If a new tribe entered into India and if they wanted their deity to be considered as a Hindu God recognized by the seven sages, they had to declare their deity as the visual manifestation of one of the gods mentioned in the Vedas - this was how the integration was done. Nobody would be forced to integrate their god or goddesses with the Vedic divinities, but once they settle in India, without such integration, their deity would at best be considered as pagan and would not be accorded the due respect by the devotional community. No person from any other tribe would ever bow before the nonintegrated divinity. And most importantly, the divinity is not considered to be recognized by the Saptarshis or seven sages, the elite sages who were considered as the god's manifestations on earth. And any Upanishads, Puranas, and all other cultural practices related to the Vedic deities would not be applicable to the nonintegrated divinity. Any festivals or celebrations as applicable to the Vedic deities would not be applicable to the nonintegrated divinity. Without all these benefits, the followers of the nonintegrated tribe would start getting a feeling of theirs being a pure pagan worship; they therefore would almost without fail consent to integrate their deity with the Vedic divinities. This was the way in which a large number of deities were integrated into the Vedic religion using the means of Vedas.

Hinduism is a religion that was founded to arrest the uncontrolled polytheism that arised out of excessive migration that used to frequently take place onto the Indian subcontinent.

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