The reception of Hinduism in the Western world began in the 19th century, at first at an academic level of religious studies and antiquarian interest in Sanskrit.
The reception of Hinduism in the Western world began in the 19th century, at first at an academic level of religious studies and antiquarian interest in Sanskrit.
During the British colonial period the British substantially influenced Indian society, but India also influenced the western world. An early champion of Indian-inspired thought in the West was Arthur Schopenhauer who in the 1850s advocated ethics based on an "Aryan-Vedic theme of spiritual self-conquest", as opposed to the ignorant drive toward earthly utopianism of the superficially this-worldly "Jewish" spirit. [6]
In the early 20th century, Western occultists influenced by Hinduism include Maximiani Portaz – an advocate of "Aryan Paganism" – who styled herself Savitri Devi and Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, founder of the German Faith Movement. It was in this period, and until the 1920s, that the swastika became a ubiquitous symbol of good luck in the West before its association with the Nazi Party became dominant in the 1930s. In 1920, Yogananda came to the United States as India's delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals convening in Boston; [7] the same year he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India's ancient practices and philosophy of Yoga and its tradition of meditation. [8]
During the 1960s to 1970s counter-culture, Sathya Sai Baba (Sathya Sai Organization), A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (ISKCON or "Hare Krishna"), Guru Maharaj Ji (Divine Light Mission) and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation movement) attracted a notable western following, founding religious or quasi-religious movements that remain active into the present time. This group of movements founded by charismatic persons with a corpus of esoteric writings, predominantly in English, is classed as founding, proselytizing religions, or "guru-ism" by Michaels (1998). [9]
Hatha Yoga was popularized from the 1960s by B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois and others. However, western practice of Yoga has mostly become detached from its religious or mystic context and is predominantly practiced as exercise or as alternative medicine. [10]
Substantial emigration from the (predominantly Hindu) Republic of India has taken place since the 1970s, with several million Hindus from Islamic Republic of Pakistan & People's Republic of Bangladesh moving to North America and Western Europe fleeing religious persecution. In 1913, A.K. Mozumdar became the first Indian-born person to earn U.S. citizenship. [11]
Jaggi Vasudev, otherwise known as Sadhguru has been influential in the revival of New Age Hinduism in the West.[ citation needed ] By diverging from traditional ways of teaching Hinduism, Sadhguru offers a New Age Hinduism which resonates with second-generation South-Asian Americans who are navigating the intersection of their Indian roots and Western identity. [12]
Growing out of the enthusiasm for Hinduism in 1960s counterculture, modern western popular culture has adopted certain elements ultimately based in Hinduism which are not now considered necessarily practiced in a religious or spiritual setting. It is estimated that around 30 million Americans and 5 million Europeans regularly practice some form of Hatha Yoga, mainly as exercise. [13] In Australia, the number of practitioners is about 300,000. [14] In New Zealand, the number is also around 300,000. [15]
Author Kathleen Hefferon comments that "In the West, a more modernized "New Age" version of Ayurveda has recently gained popularity as a unique form of complementary and alternative medicine". [16]
"Vegetarianism, nonviolent ethics, yoga, and meditation—all have enjoyed spates of Occidental popularity in the last 40 years, often influenced by ISKCON directly, if not indirectly." [17]
Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciousness untouched by the mind (Chitta) and mundane suffering (Duḥkha). There is a wide variety of schools of yoga, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and traditional and modern yoga is practiced worldwide.
Swami Vivekananda, born Narendranath Datta, was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world, and the father of modern Indian nationalism who is credited with raising interfaith awareness and bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion.
Kundalini yoga derives from kundalini, defined in tantra as energy that lies within the body, frequently at the navel or the base of the spine. In normative tantric systems, kundalini is considered to be dormant until it is activated and channeled upward through the central channel in a process of spiritual perfection. Other schools, such as Kashmir Shaivism, teach that there are multiple kundalini energies in different parts of the body which are active and do not require awakening. Kundalini is believed by adherents to be power associated with the divine feminine, Shakti. Kundalini yoga as a school of yoga is influenced by Shaktism and Tantra schools of Hinduism. It derives its name through a focus on awakening kundalini energy through regular practice of mantra, tantra, yantra, yoga, laya, haṭha, meditation, or even spontaneously (sahaja).
Hatha yoga is a branch of yoga that uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word हठ haṭha literally means "force", alluding to a system of physical techniques. Some hatha yoga style techniques can be traced back at least to the 1st-century CE, in texts such as the Hindu Sanskrit epics and Buddhism's Pali canon. The oldest dated text so far found to describe hatha yoga, the 11th-century Amṛtasiddhi, comes from a tantric Buddhist milieu. The oldest texts to use the terminology of hatha are also Vajrayana Buddhist. Hindu hatha yoga texts appear from the 11th century onward.
In Sanskrit texts, Rāja yoga was both the goal of yoga and a method to attain it. The term also became a modern name for the practice of yoga in the 19th-century when Swami Vivekananda gave his interpretation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali in his book Raja Yoga. Since then, Rāja yoga has variously been called aṣṭāṅga yoga, royal yoga, royal union, sahaja marg, and classical yoga.
Hinduism has been spread in Russia primarily due to the work of scholars from the religious organization International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) and by itinerant Swamis from India and small communities of Indian immigrants. While ISKCON appear to have a relatively strong following in Russia, the other organizations in the list have a marginal presence in this country. There is an active Tantra Sangha operating in Russia. According to the 2012 official census, there are 140,000 Hindus in Russia, which accounts for 0.1% population of Russia. A majority of Russian Hindus were Vaishnavites.
Hinduism is currently practiced by a minority of residents of China. The religion itself has a very limited presence in modern mainland China, but archaeological evidence suggests a significant presence of Hinduism in different provinces of medieval China. Hindu influences were also absorbed in to Buddhism and got mixed with Chinese mythology over its history. Practices originating in the Vedic tradition of ancient India such as yoga and meditation are also popular in China.
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.
Hinduism in Mongolia is a minority religion; it has few followers and only began to appear in Mongolia in the late twentieth century. According to the 2010 and 2011 Mongolian census, the majority of people that identify as religious follow Buddhism (86%), Shamanism (4.7), Islam (4.9%) or Christianity (3.5). Only 0.5% of the population follow other religions.
There is relatively little history of active practice of Hinduism in Romania, although many prominent Romanian thinkers have had an interest in Hindu thought, and since the Romanian Revolution of 1989 there have been some converts through the work of International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Hare Krishna devotee provide free food for life program and other cultural festivals around the country. Every year Hare Krishna devotee organise Rath Yatra of Lord Jagganath and thousands of people participate in the Rath Yatra.
Hinduism in Greece has a small following. On March 1, 2006, the Greek government passed a law allowing cremation. This law was welcomed by the Indian community in Athens. In 2012, there were about 20,000 Hindus in Greece.
Hindu denominations, sampradayas, traditions, movements, and sects are traditions and sub-traditions within Hinduism centered on one or more gods or goddesses, such as Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti and so on. The term sampradaya is used for branches with a particular founder-guru with a particular philosophy.
Swami Vivekananda was a Hindu monk from India. His teachings and philosophy are a reinterpretation and synthesis of various strands of Hindu thought, most notably classical yoga and (Advaita) Vedanta, with western esotericism and Universalism. He blended religion with nationalism, and applied this reinterpretation to various aspect's of education, faith, character building as well as social issues pertaining to India. His influence extended also to the west, and he was instrumental in introducing Yoga to the west.
Neo-Vedanta, also called Hindu modernism, neo-Hinduism, Global Hinduism and Hindu Universalism, are terms to characterize interpretations of Hinduism that developed in the 19th century. The term "Neo-Vedanta" was coined by German Indologist Paul Hacker, in a pejorative way, to distinguish modern developments from "traditional" Advaita Vedanta.
Modern yoga is a wide range of yoga practices with differing purposes, encompassing in its various forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas, physical postures derived from Hatha yoga, devotional and tantra-based practices, and Hindu nation-building approaches.
Early modern yoga was the form of yoga created and presented to the Western world by Madame Blavatsky, Swami Vivekananda and others in the late 19th century. It embodied the period's distaste for yoga postures (asanas) as practised by Nath yogins by not mentioning them. As such it differed markedly from the prevailing yoga as exercise developed in the 20th century by Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, and Krishnamacharya, which was predominantly physical, consisting mainly or entirely of asanas.
The history of yoga in the United States begins in the 19th century, with the philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; Emerson's poem "Brahma" states the Hindu philosophy behind yoga. More widespread interest in yoga can be dated to the Hindu leader Vivekananda's visit from India in 1893; he presented yoga as a spiritual path without postures (asanas), very different from modern yoga as exercise. Two other early figures, however, the women's rights advocate Ida C. Craddock and the businessman and occultist Pierre Bernard, created their own interpretations of yoga, based on tantra and oriented to physical pleasure.
Postural yoga began in India as a variant of traditional yoga, which was a mainly meditational practice; it has spread across the world and returned to the Indian subcontinent in different forms. The ancient Yoga Sutras of Patanjali mention yoga postures, asanas, only briefly, as meditation seats. Medieval Haṭha yoga made use of a small number of asanas alongside other techniques such as pranayama, shatkarmas, and mudras, but it was despised and almost extinct by the start of the 20th century. At that time, the revival of postural yoga was at first driven by Indian nationalism. Advocates such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda made yoga acceptable in the 1920s, treating it as a medical subject. From the 1930s, the "father of modern yoga" Krishnamacharya developed a vigorous postural yoga, influenced by gymnastics, with transitions (vinyasas) that allowed one pose to flow into the next.
Modern yoga gurus are people widely acknowledged to be gurus of modern yoga in any of its forms, whether religious or not. The role implies being well-known and having a large following; in contrast to the old guru-shishya tradition, the modern guru-follower relationship is not secretive, not exclusive, and does not necessarily involve a tradition. Many such gurus, but not all, teach a form of yoga as exercise; others teach forms which are more devotional or meditational; many teach a combination. Some have been affected by scandals of various kinds.
