Lesson video

Hello and welcome.

This is religious education and I'm Mr. Hutchinson, and we're going to be learning all about the religion of Hinduism in this sequence of lessons.

We've got 10 lessons, which is going to allow us to really get to grips with a fascinating religion, a complex, a diverse religion, one with a long, long history and tradition still followed and practised by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

And in today's lesson, we're going to look at how it all began.

So today's lesson is going to ask the question, how did Hinduism begin and develop as a religion? Hopefully by the end of this lesson, you'll be able to answer that question, so hold it in your head as we go along.

You'll need to make sure that you're ready and prepared for this lesson, because there are going to be a few times when I ask you just to stop and to write some things down, to help you to really get in your head all of the different things that we'll be learning.

So you need a notebook or an exercise book, or just some paper; you'll need something to write with, and you need to make sure that your brain is switched on, focused and ready to learn.

So if you've got anything that might distract you, pop that away right now, make sure you've got somewhere nice and quiet where you won't be disturbed so you can go through this whole lesson and really, really enjoy learning much more about this amazingly interesting religion.

Our lesson structure will look something like this: First of all, we're going to zoom out, look at the big picture, think about lots of different kinds of religions, where Hinduism sits within them chronologically and in terms of traditions as well.

We'll then look at the origins, so going right back to the start of Hinduism.

We'll see that that's perhaps a little bit controversial, but we'll get to that in a moment.

And then we'll look at the Vedas or the scripture associated with Hinduism.

So that's our lesson.

So to begin with different kinds of religions, let's start off by testing to see what you already know.

Let's try and slot Hinduism into your general schema of sort of religious understanding.

So there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of religions.

There are some major religions and there are some minor religions.

There are some symbols there that you can see that represent some of the more major religions.

You might recognise one or two of them.

And my first question for you is, how many religions can you name? And so I'm going to ask you to pause the video and just write down every, the name of every religion that you can think of, okay? So don't restart the video until you've written them all down.

It'll be really interesting to see how many you know.

So pause the video and see if you can write down every single religion that you know now.

Awesome work.

Great start! I wonder how many you got.

I love learning about all sorts of different religions.

I think it's really important to understand what faiths people have, where they came from, the sorts of beliefs that they hold, the similarities and differences between them, how they might prompt people to behave.

All of these sorts of things I think are really fascinating.

I think most people sort of like wonder about these, especially late at night when you're lying in bed and think, "Mmm, I wonder about a greater reality." That's what religion, religions are doing.

And so learning more about other people that have asked those questions, I think is really interesting.

Some of the major religions that you may have heard of, are sometimes, so there's one group of religions that's sometimes known as the Abrahamic religions.

And the big three Abrahamic religions, coming from the prophet Abraham, are Judaism, first of all, the religion often said to be established by Abraham; then Christianity, which still has Abraham as a major prophet, but sees other prophets as important, and then Christ coming as the son and incarnation of God; and then Islam, who, again, hold Jesus Christ and Abraham as major prophets, but believe that the prophet Mohammed was the final and greatest prophet, revealing God's word.

There aren't only the Abrahamic religions, though.

There are also a group of religions known as the Dharmic religions, which originated around the Indian subcontinent.

And the big three Dharmic religions are Hinduism, then later Buddhism, and finally Sikhism, a more recent religion.

There were some others as well, like Jainism, but they are sort of big three Dharmic religions.

And so you might have named those sorts of religions.

Maybe you've got some more as well; well done if you did.

So when about did these different religions sort of emerge? When when did they begin? Now, a little point here: that most people who adhere to these faiths believe of course that their religions are timeless.

They go back to the beginning of the universe when God created the universe.

If that's a religious belief that's held within the religion.

However, we often talk about how they originated in terms of when they first started to become talked about and preached about and written down.

So let's look at the order of when the religions originated.

Islam was about 622 CE, so that little "c" there, "c." means circa is a Latin word that means about.

So about 622 CE, common era.

You might've heard it as AD; means the same thing: after the year zero.

So about 622 CE that was Islam.

Judaism was much further back; about 1800 years before the common era, before the year zero.

Hinduism even further back.

Now, we will see that dates are quite a controversial thing within Hinduism.

People, lots and lots of debate and discussion among scholars about when there was and began.

Lots of people saying you can't even call Hinduism one thing.

It's a group of different beliefs.

Hinduism is just a name, a Western name, a name that Westerners have given to this huge sort of group of different diverse beliefs.

And they sort of put it all into one umbrella called Hinduism.

But usually said about 2000 BCE that those sorts of beliefs began, and began to sort be organised.

Sikhism was much later; 1500 CE.

So only about 500 years ago.

And Buddhism was about 530 BCE.

So about 500 years before the year zero.

Finally Christianity, when Jesus Christ died, about the year 30 CE.

So we can plot those on a sort of a timeline from earliest religions to most recent religions.

Have a go at that, take each of those religions and take a ruler, draw a timeline from earliest to most recent and plot all of those religions on a timeline.

Great work, well done.

So you probably, well, you should have had something that looks like this: Hinduism as the earliest, then Judaism, then Buddhism, then Christianity, then Islam, and finally Sikhism.

So that's the sort of order of the major Abrahamic and Dharmic religions in terms of when they are said to have originated.

So let's look at the origins now of Hinduism.

One of the earliest religions that we have.

So it originated in this area in what's now Pakistan, along the Indus river.

And this region was called the Indus Valley.

So you can actually sort of see here this valley, which the river cuts through, and that you might, hearing the name, "the Indus Valley", sounds a little bit like India, and Hindu is also the same root.

So India, Indus and Hindu, they all have the same root word.

And so that's the name that gives this sort of civilization to the country now of India, and the groups of beliefs around that area in modern day Pakistan, but it spread quickly into India and then into Southeast Asia.

When did it appear? Well, this is a timeline of the last 5,000 years.

So each of these chunks represents about 500 years.

So if we put today here and count back in 500 years, then the year zero CE would be here and then this is all BCE, before the common era.

And this period here, from about 1200 to 200 BCE, this is when the Vedas, or the scripts, the scripture of Hinduism, were collected and written down, first written down and collected.

It's thought that they were first written by those Aryans who migrated into India from the North.

So there's this group of people known as the Aryans; not to be confused with the Aryan race that Hitler and the Nazi party later said were sort of like pure, although Aryan means noble, and so Hitler was borrowing this language.

So this group of people, called the Aryans, from around the sort of Middle East, the Northern Indian sort of area.

They came and sort of migrated into the Indus Valley and recorded a lot of this sort of oral tradition that was being passed down by people with this big group of beliefs that we now call Hinduism.

And Hinduism spread quickly, it spread around the whole.

So beginning sort of around the Indus Valley and spreading around the whole of the Indian subcontinent, round here, then spreading into Southeast Asia through land and by sea into Malaysia and Indonesia.

So we talked about these Vedas and these Vedas that were sort of written down, how we have a lot of our knowledge of the Hindu religion and how many Hindus, but not all, today understand the faith and the religious beliefs.

So these are some of the oldest religious texts that we have, the Vedas.

And Veda literally means knowledge, so a knowledge of existence, of understanding of all existence.

We use the word scripture really for any type of sort of sacred writing or religious writing.

And a sage is often said to be a sort of very, very wise person.

Now this is where Hinduism differs from some of the Abrahamic religions, for example, because within the Abrahamic religions, there's a belief that there's a prophet.

So a person, usually a man, who somehow has religion revealed by God; it's divinely inspired.

Or perhaps God even directly talking to that prophet.

And that prophet then writes down what God has told them.

And that forms the scripture, and that scripture then hold this great authority because it is the word of God for many of those believers.

Hinduism doesn't quite work like that.

Within Hinduism, there are lots and lots of people who, through various different ways, including things like meditation, come to understand, some come to gain knowledge of the universe, and God or gods and how the universe works.

That was then later written down.

That Veda, that knowledge was then written down in a huge number of scripts, which we now call the Vedas.

But these are our sort of key words that you need to know: Veda, a knowledge of existence; scripture, any kinds of sacred writing; and a sage, just like there are lots of Hindu sages, wise people who came to gain this knowledge.

So let's see if we can practise that.

Those are the four different, those are the three, sorry, different key terms that you need to know.

So one of them means a sacred writing of religion, one means a wise person and one means the knowledge of existence.

Can you write out the key terms, like Veda, and then right next to it, just write down what the definition of that term is.

So pause the video and do that now.

Awesome work.

Let's see if you were correct getting that new key terminology to do with Hinduism down.

So it should look like this.

The Veda was the knowledge of existence.

Scripture is the sacred writings of a religion, and Sage is a wise person.

How'd you do? Get them right? Awesome work.

You've got some new language to use.

So let's zoom in just to that 3000 year period before the year zero CE.

We can see that the Vedic period, which is, which is the period that the scholars call the length of time that these different sorts of like sages started to write down what it was that they understood about the universe.

And so that's known as the Vedic period, and we still have those Vedas today, those religious writings, that scripture that forms the basis of much Hindu belief.

So let's see if you were paying close attention.

I've got a little question for you: Between which dates is the Vedic period thought to have occurred? 3000 to 200 BCE, 3000 to 1200 BCE, 1200 to 200 BCE or 2000 to 200 BCE? Choose your answer.

You can write it down if you'd like to, or you can just point at the correct answer on the screen.

Three.

Two.

One.

Okay, here's the answer: 1200 to 200 BCE.

Well done if you've got that.

So the Aryans migrated thousands of years earlier, there was already a thriving civilization in the Indus Valley that had all of these different beliefs and sages had come to understand and pass on orally their tradition, but it was during this period that most of the writing was thought to have occurred.

So, as I mentioned, these Vedas were oral rather than.

They were spoken and passed down rather than written.

And that sort of oral tradition was really important within Hinduism.

And so masters, teachers, would sort of sit down with different people and tell them what it is that they understood, the knowledge that they gained about the universe.

And they made these, these learners, remember it forwards and backwards, off by heart.

It was often put to music and put into a song form to make it easier to sort of remember and chant together so that each generation, each new set of learners knew precisely what the master had taught them and the meaning, the exact meaning, the exact words were preserved, they were kept.

So let's see if we can put that sort of an idea into a written answer or a few sentences.

When masters were passing on this knowledge, this Veda, the exact pronunciation, the exact word was so important.

Why is that? And some of the key words that you might like to include there are students, intact, so kept the same and preserved; kept the same, kept throughout time.

See if you can use those words to write a couple of sentences or a paragraph discussing how Hinduism was an oral tradition.

Pause the video and do that now.

Great work.

I'm going to show you an answer that I wrote, and you can correct yours.

If you perhaps went a little bit off track, you can tick it.

If you got some of the similar ideas, and you may have actually put some additional ideas that I didn't, in which case, give yourself a tick for those as well.

I'm sure you've got some amazing ideas of your own.

I wrote exact pronunciation was important to early Hindu masters because they wanted to ensure that students kept what was originally heard intact and preserved the teachings through speech.

So in doing this, they would ensure that it would be passed on from generation to generation.

So the Vedas give us this sort of understanding of the universe, understanding of the entire world.

And Vedas are usually sort of split into four parts.

There are lots of different Vedas, lots of different sorts of religious texts.

Some are seen as more important generally by many people and some are more important within sort of local regions.

But there are four sorts of parts to a Veda.

One is the Samhita, which is usually the most ancient parts and it will contain those songs, those hymns praising God, and we'll get to the Hindu understanding of God or gods later.

There's also a section called the Brahmanas, which means the rituals or the prayers that helped to guide the priests, or the Hindu masters in their duties, in their religious duties.

There's the Aranyakas, which concern worship, and also meditation, which is a very important part of Hinduism.

Later, Buddhism, which sort of developed from Hinduism, also took meditation to be very important.

And so the Aranyakas sort of give guidance of how meditation and worship should take place.

And then lastly, there's a sort of later development called the Upanishads, which sort of help to give meaning to those earlier texts and those earlier parts, and they'll have sort of mystical and philosophical teachings of Hinduism.

Upanishads literally means sit down and listen to somebody.

So, the four Vedas: One contains worship and meditation, one contains the mystical and philosophical teachings of Hinduism, one contains the rituals and prayers to guide the priests in their duty, and one is the most ancient part containing the hymns of praise to God.

Could you put them in the correct order? Pause the video and write out the name of the part of the Veda and then what is included within that part.

Let's see how you did.

So I'm going to put the correct answers up now, get ready.

You can tick them or you can correct them if you made a little mistake, no problem.

So the Samhitas, the most ancient parts; the Brahmanas, the rituals and prayers; the Aranyakas the worship and meditation; and the Upanishads, the mystical and philosophical teachings.

Well done! If you've got all of those right give yourself a tick, if you didn't, quickly pause the video and make sure you correct it now, so you do have the correct parts in your head.

You're getting to know Hinduism really well already and all of the different sorts of intricacies and complexities.

That is the end of today's lesson.

If you want to share anything that you did, then you can do that by asking your parent or carer to take a photo of your work and pop it onto Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

They just need to make sure that they include @OakNational, #LearnwithOak and then I'll be able to see it.

And everybody else will be able to see it because you worked hard, you have thought about an ancient religion and how it's developed over time, how it started to sort of originate and be written down despite being an oral tradition.

I'm really impressed with you and how knowledgeable you are about a really interesting and ancient belief system.

And we're going to continue learning much, much more about Hinduism in our next nine lessons.

And by the end of it, you're going to be a master of this religion.

And I can't wait to learn along with you.

So there's a quick quiz at the end of this lesson, so you need to make sure that you click next on the website and complete that quiz that will make sure that you lock in the most important facts in today's learning.

Well done for working so hard.

Really, really impressed with you.

And I'll see you in our next lesson.