Origin of the World’s Major religions

Buddhism originated in India, and after the Buddha’s death, the religion spread widely throughout the rest of Asia, even as it declined in the land of its origin. Hinduism also originated in India, although it had no single founder. As Hinduism developed more personal and therefore more popular forms, it too began to spread throughout the rest of Asia. Both religions were carried beyond India by merchants, missionaries, and monks and nuns.

Christianity originated in Palestine and spread steadily all through the Roman Empire in spite of initial efforts by Roman authorities to quell it. While Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity—plus a later arrival, Islam—dominated the religious scene in this era, many people continued to practice traditional religions and belief systems, while others turned to different sects within the major religions.

Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity were the major world religions during the first centuries of this era. Islam joined them as a major force beginning in the 600s. But not everyone was a follower of one of these religions, even in the areas where they were dominant. Many people continued to practice traditional religions and belief systems, such as animism, Shintoism, and Zoroastrianism. Others turned to different sects within the major religions. This religious diversity continues to the present day.

Hinduism

Hinduism developed in India over thousands of years. It had its roots in the Vedic religion of the Aryan people who moved into India around 1500 BCE. Hinduism had no single founder and no single set of original ideas. The religion got its name from its sacred writing, called Vedas. The Vedic religion waspolytheistic. That is, it had many deities. Vedic priests carried out ritual sacrifices to these gods on behalf of the people. A key aspect of Vedic religion wasreincarnation. This was a belief that after death a person’s spirit was reborn in another living body. This new body could be animal or human. The form depended on the person’s actions in the previous lives.

Connected with reincarnation was the Vedic concept of class andcaste. According to Vedic belief, the creating god had divided human beings into four classes:

  • Brahmans: priests, scholars
  • Kshatriya: warriors, rulers, officials
  • Vaisya: merchants, traders, land owners
  • Shudra: peasants, laborers
  • Untouchables: people outside of the class system

Within these classes were birth groups (castes). Each had its proper jobs and duties. Each person was born into a class and a caste. You lived your life only with other members of your class. Your goal was to fulfill all the duties of your existing class in this lifetime. Only then could you hope to progress to a higher class and caste-in the next lifetime.

Over the years, Hindus began to focus on two main gods, Vishnu and Shiva. People saw them as expressions of the universal soul. Focus on one or the other of these gods made Hinduism a more personal religion. In turn, this made Hinduism more popular among the common people. As with Buddhism, merchants and priests spread their Hindu faith beyond India to other parts of Asia. It remains the religion of many millions of Indians, as well as other south Asians. (In this, it shares a place with Islam, which came to India in the 700s CE.)

  • Hinduism spread northeast to Nepal.
  • It traveled southeast to Sri Lanka and to Burma, Southeast Asia, Java, and Borneo.

Buddhism

Buddhism, like Hinduism, developed as a reaction against the Brahman priests and rigid class structure of Vedic times. Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism stemmed from a single person. He was Siddhartha Gautama, who lived from 563 to 483 BCE. He became known as the Buddha, the “Enlightened One.” He was a wealthy young man who gave up his life of luxury at about age 30. He wandered for six years searching for spiritual insight. He wanted to find the cause and solution for human suffering. At last, one day while seated under a tree meditating, he had his revelation. He called what he saw the “Four Noble Truths”:

  • Truth One is that life is suffering; everyone suffers.
  • Truth Two is that human desires cause suffering.
  • Truth Three is that suffering ends when human beings stop desiring things, including individuality and happiness. This state in which all desires are erased is known as nirvana.
  • Truth Four consists of the guidelines to reach nirvana, called the “Eightfold Path.” Followers of this path would lead calm, peaceful, truthful, ethical lives on their journey toward nirvana.

Buddha then began preaching his message to the people. He and his followers practiced celibacy, poverty, and nonviolence. His disciples spread Buddhism throughout India and other parts of Asia.The Buddha taught that the cause of human suffering is desire for worldly things and pleasures. A person should live a moral life and meditate often, striving to achieve nirvana. In this state, a person is free from all desire and becomes one with the universe, ending the cycle of rebirth.He also rejected the caste system. This made Buddhism very attractive to common people. Soon, monks and nuns were spreading the Buddha’s teachings throughout India. Then missionaries and traders carried Buddhism beyond India along trade routes:

  • The religion spread southeast to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.
  • It also moved along Central Asian trade routes to China and Tibet, and then to Korea and Japan.
  • Buddhism thrived in the regions that it moved to, but it declined in India as Hinduism absorbed its ideas and took in Buddha as one of its gods.

Judaism

Judaism arose among the Hebrew (Jewish) people in very ancient times in the Middle East. The ancient Hebrew were nomadic herders. They worshipped Yahweh as the only god (monotheism). They believed they had a covenant, or pact, with Yahweh. They would worship Yahweh as the only god. In return, Yahweh would protect them as his “chosen people.”Over time, these nomadic herders became settled farmers and town dwellers. As their way of life changed, so did their concept of Yahweh. The Jewish belief in the importance of guiding principles for right living were described in the Ten Commandments, given to the prophet Moses by Yahweh. Between about 720 and 585 BCE, conquering kingdoms forced the Jews out of their homelands in Israel and Judah. During their years of dispersal, the Jews developed an intricate code of laws. It governed almost every aspect of their lives. This, and their belief in a single protective god, gave the Jews a strong sense of community. The Jewish concern with ethical conduct and their belief in one god (calledmonotheism) had a great influence on Western culture.

The monotheistic religious traditions originating in Southwest Asia also developed and spread. Jewish monotheism, law, and ritual gradually linked dispersed Jewish communities all the way from the western Mediterranean to Inner Eurasia. Judaism was not a missionary religion but restricted to people born of Jewish mothers. The example of Jewish monotheism, however, laid spiritual and moral foundations for both Christianity and Islam.

Christianity

Christianity arose in Palestine/Judaea (present-day Israel) around 30 CE. It was based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who preached a gospel of love. He taught about an all-powerful yet all-forgiving God. This God loved all people equally, and Jesus taught that people must mirror this godly love in their dealings with one another. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” is perhaps the best-known of Jesus’ sayings.Many of Jesus’ followers believed he was the Son of God, Jesus Christ. God had sent this Messiah, they said, to show people the way to eternal life in heaven.

Roman officials at first saw the new religion as a threat. They arrested and killed Christians. In spite of this persecution, the religion spread steadily through the Roman Empire. The Emperor Constantine made Christianity an approved religion in the empire in 313 CE. The medieval Christian church in Western Europe was headed by the Pope in Rome and linked under a hierarchy of bishops, priests, monks, and nuns. The Greek Patriarch in Constantinople presided over the branch of the Christian tradition known as Greek, or Eastern Orthodoxy. These two rival Christian churches split permanently in 1054 CE.

Islam

Islam was monotheistic, and it had a scripture (the Qur’an) and a Prophet (Muhammad). It preached the unity of God and the need to conform one’s behavior to God’s will, or risk eternal damnation. The practice of Islam is based on The Five Pillars: Like Christianity and Buddhism, but unlike Judaism, Islam was a missionary religion that by 1500 had spread outward from the Arabian Peninsula to India, Southeast Asia, China, Africa, and southern Europe. Under the early Muslim empires, especially the Abbasid dynasty (750–945) based in Baghdad, the caliphs, or rulers, drew heavily on the governing traditions of the Persian and Byzantine empires that preceded them. This included Greek thought as well as the cultural heritage of India and Persia.

It is significant that all the major religions of the era tended to thrive in and around cities and to spread along the major trade routes. In the tenth century, Turkic-speaking people converted to Islam. Turkic warriors invaded and founded governments in all the territories between Egypt and northern India. The conversion to Islam of Berbers in North Africa and the Sahara led to the founding of new Muslim states that stretched into Spain.

Sikhism

By the fifteenth century, many of the Muslims living in India were observing caste distinctions, visiting Hindu temples, and adapting many Hindu customs and conventions associated with marriage and other events. The stage was set for the emergence of a faith that merged the principles common to Islam and Hinduism.

Sikhism emerged basically as a protest against existing religious rules, ritual, and intolerance. The founder of the Sikh faith was Guru Nanak (1469–1539).Guru Nanak ignored religious and caste distinctions and took as his associates a Muslim musician and a low-caste Hindu. In fifty years of travel and teaching, Guru Nanak had attracted followers who primarily dissented from both Hinduism and Islam. It was left to his successors to mold this group into a community with its own language, literature, institutions, and traditions.

The tenth guru,Guru Gobind Singhcreated the concept ofKhalsa,which is the community of initiated Sikhs. Sikhs who have become part of the Khalsa wear thefive Ks. The five Ks are the Sikh articles of faith, and each of them starts with the letter K. The 5 Ks are (1)Kesh(uncut hair), which is kept covered bya distinctive turban; (2) theKirpan(religious sword); (3)Kara(metal bracelet); (4)Kanga(comb); and (5)Kachera(undershorts). They all have deep religious meanings for Sikhs, who wear them to honor the Sikh Gurus while being ambassadors for their faith.

Guru Gobind Singh also gave all initiated Sikh men one last name—Singh; and all initiated Sikh women another—Kaur. The word Singh means lion and the word Kaur means princess. The reason for doing so is strongly tied to the culture of South Asia. In South Asia, someone’s last name often signifies his or her social status and family background. Guru Gobind Singh wanted to remove these barriers between people and create a society where all are equal.

Other religious traditions

In East Asia, Confucianism stressed ethical righteousness, good government, and well-ordered society, while Daoism, and eventually Buddhism, emphasized the individual’s quest for spiritual enlightenment. The Daoist and Confucian belief systems remained deeply rooted in China but also developed influence in Korea and Vietnam. In China beginning with the Tang dynasty in the sixth century, the path to careers in scholarship and government was the imperial examination system, which rewarded those who demonstrated intricate knowledge of Confucian ethics and statecraft.

Confucianism is not a religion. Rather, it is anethical belief system. It is a body of beliefs that govern human conduct, much as religions do. It was developed in China by the philosopher Kong Fu Zi (Master Kong), who lived from 551 to 479 BCE. He is best known in the West by the Latin form of his name, Confucius. He lived during a period of great disorder in China. In response, his teachings outline the way of life to follow in order to maintain a humane social order. Confucius taught that people should be unselfish, courteous, loyal, nonviolent, kind, helpful, fair, and honest. They should behave always with politeness and deference toward others, especially their parents and other family members. These ideals became a deeply ingrained part of Chinese culture in the years after the death of Confucius. Government officials, especially, were expected to follow the Confucian code of ethics and conduct.

Daoism (or Taoism)was a philosophy that developed into a religion. It was based on the teachings of Lao Tzu in the third century BCE in China. Taoists sought to live in harmony with the eternal cycles and patterns of nature. This was not possible within the artificial bounds put on people by society. So Daoists turned away from the world, with its rules and rituals. They focused instead on individual thinking about dao, the way of nature. A humble, quiet, thoughtful, contented person was most likely to be in harmony with dao. Confucianism appealed to people who had some standing in higher society. Daoism, which scorned wealth and power, appealed to the common people. They added mystic beliefs about the spirit world to Daoism and turned it into a religion.