Dharma is a key concept with multiple meanings in the Indian religions, among others. Although no single-word translation exists for dharma in English, the term is commonly understood as referring to behaviours that are in harmony with the "order and custom" that sustain life; "virtue", or "religious and moral duties".
Sanskrit is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.
Svaha, also referred to as Manyanti, is the Hindu goddess of sacrifices featured in the Vedas. She is the consort of Agni, and the daughter of either Daksha or Brihaspati, depending on the literary tradition. According to the Brahmavaivarta Purana, she is an aspect of Prakriti (nature), an element without which Agni cannot sustain.
Kalki, also called Kalkin, is the prophesied tenth and final incarnation of the god Vishnu. He is described to appear in order to end the Kali Yuga, one of the four periods in the endless cycle of existence (Krita) in Vaishnava cosmology. The end of the Kali Yuga states this will usher in the new epoch of Satya Yuga in the cycle of existence, until the Mahapralaya.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, born Vishvambhar Mishra, was a 15th-century Indian Hindu saint from Bengal who was the founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, which considers him to be an incarnation of Krishna.
Friedrich Max Müller was a British philologist and Orientalist of German origin. He was one of the founders of the Western academic disciplines of Indian studies and religious studies. Müller wrote both scholarly and popular works on the subject of Indology. The Sacred Books of the East, a 50-volume set of English translations, was prepared under his direction. He also promoted the idea of a Turanian family of languages.
Sir Monier Monier-Williams was a British scholar who was the second Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University, England. He studied, documented and taught Asian languages, especially Sanskrit, Persian and Hindustani.
The role of Greek Buddhist monks in the development of the Buddhist faith under the patronage of Emperor Ashoka around 260 BCE and subsequently during the reign of the Indo-Greek king Menander is described in the Mahavamsa, an important non-canonical Theravada Buddhist historical text compiled in Sri Lanka in the 6th century in the Pali language.
Deva means "shiny", "exalted", "heavenly being", "divine being", "anything of excellence", and is also one of the Sanskrit terms used to indicate a deity in Hinduism. Deva is a masculine term; the feminine equivalent is Devi. The word is a cognate with Latin deus ("god") and Greek Zeus.
Karatt Govinda Menon, better known as Brahmananda Swami Sivayogi, was an Indian sanyasi from present-day Kerala who founded the Ananda Maha Sabha in 1918. He proposed Anandadarsam or Anandamadham.
The Vedanga are six auxiliary disciplines of Hinduism that developed in ancient times and have been connected with the study of the Vedas:
Sanskritisation is a term in sociology which refers to the process by which castes or tribes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek upward mobility by emulating the rituals and practices of the dominant castes or upper castes. It is a process similar to 'passing' in sociological terms. This term was made popular by Indian sociologist M. N. Srinivas in the 1950s. Sanskritisation has in particular been observed among mid-ranked members of caste-based social hierarchies.
The following list consists of notable concepts that are derived from Hindu culture and associated cultures’ traditions, which are expressed as words in Sanskrit or other Indic languages and Dravidian languages. The main purpose of this list is to disambiguate multiple spellings, to make note of spellings no longer in use for these concepts, to define the concept in one or two lines, to make it easy for one to find and pin down specific concepts, and to provide a guide to unique concepts of Hinduism all in one place.
Jayanta Bhatta was a Kashmiri poet, teacher, logician, and an advisor to King Sankaravarman. He was a philosopher of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy. He authored three works on Nyāya philosophy: one of which is not known, an allegorical drama, and a commentary on Pāṇinian grammar.
Sanātana Dharma is an alternative name for Hinduism used in Sanskrit and other Indian languages alongside the more common Hindu Dharma.
Rama is a major deity in Hinduism. He is the seventh and one of the most popular avatars of Vishnu. In Rama-centric traditions of Hinduism, he is considered the Supreme Being.
Satya Dharma is a humanistic and monotheistic new religious movement in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, which developed from Hinduism.
A Jyotirlinga or Jyotirlingam, is a devotional representation of the Hindu god Shiva. The word is a Sanskrit compound of jyotis ('radiance') and linga ('sign'). The Śiva Mahāpurāṇam mentions 64 original jyotirlinga shrines in India.
The election in 1860 for the position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford was a competition between two candidates offering different approaches to Sanskrit scholarship. One was Monier Williams, an Oxford-educated Englishman who had spent 14 years teaching Sanskrit to those preparing to work in British India for the East India Company. The other, Max Müller, was a German-born lecturer at Oxford specialising in comparative philology, the science of language. He had spent many years working on an edition of the Rig Veda and had gained an international reputation for his scholarship. Williams, in contrast, worked on later material and had little time for the "continental" school of Sanskrit scholarship that Müller exemplified. Williams regarded the study of Sanskrit as a means to an end, namely the conversion of India to Christianity. In Müller's opinion, his own work, while it would assist missionaries, was also valuable as an end in itself.
