Either way, I don’t deny that all the gods are manifestations of one, great divine force, but what you’re saying is like saying that Latin (I’m now in Latin VI) is derived from Sanskrit because they have a few similar words. Obviously, Latin isn’t. It’s an Italic language derived Greek and Etruscan, which are themselves derived from the Proto-Indo-European language, which is also the family Sanskrit belongs in.

As for similarities, it’s because we come from the same place, humans have experienced the same experiences over and over; it makes total sense that all we’re all connected by a few similar thoughts through time and space. (like all the flood stories)

Either way, there’s no Set out to kill Vishnu; the Hindu gods make their own problems by granting boons like crazy to anyone (Bhrama granting Mahishasura his boon, and then everyone scrambling until Durga is created).

Athena is not Saraswati; Saraswati is not Athena. Ra isn’t Indra, and Indra isn’t Ra. And Helios is a sun god. Hari/Vishnu is not; that attribute is applied to Surya/Ravi, hence the Surya Namaskar…

We agree to disagree I guess. Obviously you believe that Hinduism has existed since the beginning of time even though humans haven’t come into existence until just about 30,000 years ago while the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old.

Also you are telling me that Hinduism has never evolved, no? Well, let’s look at the prime example of this: In the Vedas (The oldest and most supreme of Hindu texts), Indra is the king of the gods and all the other gods follow him. However, in modern Hinduism, it is extremely rare to even come across a mention of Indra since the Trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) rule Hindu culture.

Also, I’m sorry, but the fact that you sent me to a MYSPACE which is OBVIOUSLY your own does not count as a legitimate source. When you find something in the Vedas, Ramayana, or Mahabaratha…THEN please come to me about Hinduism being the greatest religion ever. And also, showing me an INSIDE source that says that Hinduism is the greatest religion ever is completely biased and unreliable. Please show me a GREEK or EGYPTIAN or even CHINESE or some other civilization saying that Hinduism is the greatest and I might consider the thought.

Until then, you are only basing your information on false information and false truths.

What I find hilarious is the fact that you tell me that I am saying untruths when your own article has very little factual basis in and of itself.

Though I do appreciate you at least attempting to be polite conversely to your pall Kunti who did not even try to.
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@Kunti:
So you do not believe in freedom of religion? So you are telling me that anyone who does not follow Hinduism is a sinner? You are telling me that anyone who does accepts the teachings of science is nothing more than a sinner? Well let me go through an infinite number of lifetimes and never reach salvation then! It is not worth it! Any god(s) that tell me that unless I follow their religion with no questions asked is not worth following. That religion is not worth my time or energy.

Thank you for pointing out the obvious! Of course I am ignorant! But what irks me is that you speak as though you are not. Socrates once said “Me? All I know is that I know nothing. And for that, I am considered wise.” So you have learned every single thing that makes this universe keep from collapsing upon itself just by studying your own religion.

*snort* And you tell ME that I should pray for wisdom… Wow… What you write makes me question my fellow Hindus.

And one more thing. You can pray to any wisdom god(dess) however much you want. But no matter what they will not spoon feed it. It will only come through your own personal experiences and surviving through the hardships that life throws at you. So “praying for wisdom” never works unless you seek it out through your own personal experiences.

Also, you Hinduism 101 class was unnecessary. Anyone who has gone through a high school world religions class would have known what you just told me. And yet I am a Hindu. So I would know more than the average high schooler. Believe it or not, I have actually read some of the sacred texts (translated) in their entirety. I have to ask…Have you read any of them in their entirety?

Also, your spelling errors make me laugh. How old are you that you can’t even spell SHIVA or THOUGH correctly? Even a fourth-grade Hindu would be able to spell those words correctly. So please tell me: How old are you?
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In general: A year or two ago, when I corrected another Hindu who had made a mistake about the Ancient Greek religion I was shunned very badly.

This has been repeated over and over again by other Hindus since. If my fellow Hindus are so arrogant that they believe they know all there is to know about everything, I can do nothing to temper that ego.

I have discovered that it is nothing more than a waste of my own time and energy.

Anyway, I’ll leave with a bit of irony here: “In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.” -Buddha

Sri Krishna Himself explains this in the Bhagavad-Gita:
“Although I am unborn and My transcendental body never deteriorates, and although I am the Lord of all sentient beings, I still appear in every millennium in My original transcendental form. Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practices, O son of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion–at that time I descend Myself. In order to deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of Dharma , I advent Myself millennium after millennium. One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna.”
(Bg. 4.4-9)

You must be a Hindu in name only because you clearly have no knowledge

So…. Hinduism 101

The divine couple
Radha & Krsna

expanding form them is Lakshmi & Vishnu

Then comes Saraswati & Brahma
(Saraswati is the goddess of wisdom learning arts music and much more)
for the benefit of your ignorant friend vikram he should pray to her for wisdom and knowledge.

Saraswati & Brahma are flowed by Shive and Parvati

All the expansions have a working purpose in the management of creation.

I hope this helps you understand Hinduism a little, thou it will takes many years of study to fully understand.

First of all, dating of artifacts from the Mohenjo-Daro and Harrappa dig sites date the Ancient Indus civilizations not appreciably older than approximately 3500 years old. That would be around 1800-1600 B.C.E. As we all know, the Ancient Indus Civilization was, as far as can be traceable and proven, the first and oldest “Indian” civilization. Now, let’s look at the dating from the Ancient Sumerian sites. The most early dating of the Ancient Sumerian civilizations dates back to the sixth Century B.C.E. Almost 4500 years previous to the Ancient Indus Civilization. The fact that the author of this article implied in this composition that Ancient Indus civilization is the oldest disconcerts me beyond belief and shocks me. Even if we look at the oldest existing civilization, it is not India. The credit for that goes to China, with the Huang He Valley civilization beginning around 600 years previous to the Indus Valley Civilization.

Next, let’s look at how the author presents religion. The way the author presents Hinduism, he says that Hinduism has always been a henotheistic religion. However, this is not the case. When the Hindu religion was first brought to the Indus Valley Civilization by the Ancient Aryan race from present-day Turkmenistan, that religion was truly polytheistic. All the gods were completely separate entities that reflected different aspects of nature. Over time, with European and Islamic contact, Hinduism gradually developed into a religion that accepted Brahman as the supreme being and that all the other gods were simply different manifestations of him. This change did not occur until at least, if not a few centuries later, in the Mauyra period of India. By saying that Hinduism has always been polytheistic, not only is the author lying and going against fact, he is discrediting himself and forcing the general population to be deluded.

Now let’s look at the Ancient Greek religion. The Ancient Greek religion has always been polytheistic, it never was henotheistic. Of course there were a few monotheists in Greece at the time, the most prominent examples being the philosophers Anaxagoras and Aristotle, but the actual religion of Ancient Greek religion was always polytheistic, just as Hinduism was during its roots.

Next, let’s look at how Homer represents the Ancient Greek gods. In Greece, the gods were supposed to be like humans. That is part of the “Greek Miracle” as many scholars call it. Up until this time, every pre-existing religion had feared their gods. They believed in sacrifice, blood, death, etc. But then came along the Greeks. With the Greeks, man became the center of the universe. The Greeks created their gods, or the gods created man depending on what you believe, in their own image i.e. man’s image. That is why the Greek gods are so flawed. The Greek gods are meant to possesses all the flaws of humanity. But at the same time the Greeks loved their gods. Why? Because they could relate to them. They were on a more intimate level with them than a supernatural being who always was wise and correct. Personally, I would prefer the religion where I can love gods that are like me rather than the religion where I always have to assume that whatever the gods do is correct no matter what.

Also, the author of this article implies that the Iliad is dumb because it’s a war story meant to teach Greek ideals. If so, I would like to say the same thing about the Mahabharatha. the Mahabharatha not only teaches a war story, but it shows a story of cousins killing each other! Please prove to me that this is justified and then I might discredit the Ancient Greek religion.

Plato indeed discredited Homer, yes. But he was the only one and many, many Greeks resented him for that fact. Why? Well for the same reason that I would go around telling my fellow Hindus that the Mahabharatha and Ramayana are nothing more than long, tedious epic poems that were written to entertain rather than to teach morals. Throughout the Iliad, the main hero, Achilles, goes through many metamorphoses. The Iliad is actually about a man learning what is correct and what is unacceptable to do. The Iliad is not some story that the Greeks came up with just to kill some time. It was composed by Homer because he wanted to tell his fellow Greeks how to live a good and correct life. Much like the Mahabharatha and Ramayana were composed for the same reason. Throughout the Iliad there are hundreds of lessons that one can learn about how to live a correct life, just like the Bagavad Gita.

Now, let’s move on to how the author presents the Greek god Helios. First of all, he said that Helios was the same as Hari. I assume that he means Vishnu when he says Hari. First of all this comparison is completely frivolous. Helios was a sun god. Vishnu was a protector god. A better comparison would be Helios to Surya. At least now they have the same realms. And then let us look at your “connection” to Egyptian mythology.

In the Ancient Egyptian religion, Ra was the god of the sun, not Aten. Aten was the god of the sun’s rays. The same way we call the sun “Surya” and the sun’s rays “Vijay” in Hinduism. Another major point that I would like to present: all of the names of Ancient Egypt that we know of are actually Greek. My friend pointed this out in her post but I would like to reiterate it. Scholars are not actually guessing about how to pronounce the Egyptian names because the Egyptians didn’t write down their vowels. Instead, scholars are looking at the Greek version of the Egyptian names.

Kouros…I have studied Greek Mythology nearly to its fullest. I am yet to come across a name that even sounds close to this. There is an Ancient Cretan god that existed by this name but there is no Greek god as far as I know. And I have never heard of Rodha. However, I think that you misspelled RHEA who was the wife and sister of the Titan King Kronos (sometimes spelled CHRONOS/CHRONUS/CRONUS/etc.) As far as I know Rhea was just another nature goddess. She had no realm that was specific for her other than being “Mother of the Olympians.” Again, please check your facts before you post near blasphemy on the internet.

Next, towards the very beginning of the article, the author said that Hindu priests were in Alexandria. First of all, this defies every fact that we know about Greek attitude towards outsiders. Anyone who was not Greek was automatically barbaric and often sentenced to the death penalty if they entered Greek lands without the correct papers, much like visas function today. So you are telling me that the Greeks would have accepted some of the most devoted people of another religion to the ceremony that opened a new city? Please! The Greeks probably allowed the Indian ambassador in Athens to visit, but that would have been it. The Greeks were very strict about outsiders and followers of foreign religions. In fact, they persecuted the Romans even though they basically copied the Greek ideas! One more time, please get your facts straight before you try to use them to support your opinions.

Throughout the article, the author calls the Greek gods are merely the Hindu gods with different names. Please tell me that the author was lying and just joking! As far as I know, there is no goddess in Hindu mythology whose realms are wisdom, warfare, battle strategy, handicrafts, and patron of the city-state. Or how about god of archery, medicine, arts, literature, music, and prophecy? The list goes on and on and on. I really do not feel the need to continue this. The only similarity that I can think of is that the King of the Gods in both religions, Indra and Zeus in Hindu and Greek Mythology respectively, share a weapon: the lightning bolt. However past that, there are none that I can think of. Even the realms of these two gods are nearly completely different! Zeus was the god of all, king of gods and mankind, and ruler of the skies. But Indra was the god of war and bad weather. In Greek mythology, the god of storms was Poseidon, not Zeus.

With all of that said, I reiterate one more time: Please do not post blasphemy unless you get your facts straight.

Before I leave however, I would like to point out two statements the author made in this article: “Ancient India and ancient Greece share many incredible commonalities so much so that it is as if India, with its languages, customs, religion, politics, science and culture had been transplanted to Greece”

The stereotype goes to say that Indians are a whole are known for three qualities and three qualities only: their algebra skills, their tolerance of others, and their arrogance.

These two sentences are the epitome of the last quality: arrogance. By sayig that India is the oldest and most important of civilizations, the author is discrediting himself and completely losing his own credibility. Everyone should know the foremost part of writing a research or persuasive paper: remain as unbiased as possible without losing sight of the opinion that you are trying to present. The fact that the author posted this in the second paragraph of this article makes me embarrassed to call myself an Indian. That arrogance is uncalled for and completely unnecessary.

For now I sign off. I will read the second part of this series soon and reply to that as well.

good work !!