a) You might go online and try to research what Hinduism means. Then come to find vague results such as it’s a major religious or cultural tradition of South Asia, that’s very broad and has no particular practice. But, where does the word come from and how much do you know about it? You hear the word “Hinduism” thrown around everywhere, surprisingly, the term is roughly only two centuries old, which was constructed by the British during India’s colonial period. Hinduism stems from term “Hindu,” gained from the “Indus” River, formerly named the “Sindhu” river. Arabic speakers miscomprehended the word “Sindhu” as “Hindu,” and it’s true the word “Hindu” was a geographical reference to the people who lived along the Indus river. This river was
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Lipner constructed the “Banyan Model” where he relates Hinduism to a massive banyan tree on the outskirts of Kolkata. The basis of the tree’s structure is what intrigues Lipner, "This is a promising model for the view of Hinduism that I propose: an interconnected, polycentric phenomenon in the flux of growth, change, and decay” (Lipner 24). Lipner mentions that the tree is ancient, roughly around two hundred years old, which is how Hinduism is viewed as an old religion, one of the first. The configuration of the banyan tree and Hinduism, have quite a few resemblances, such as there seems to be no center or starting point of the tree, “For some reason there appears to be no central axis, so that the Kolkata banyan looks like a grove of interconnected trees” (Lipner 24). Just like Hinduism there is no central axis, there is not one founder of the religion, not one specific mandatory practice and the date ranges from, 1500 BCE to 500BCE, no one knows what particular year the religion was founded, just an estimate. However, the comparisons don’t just stop there, just like Hinduism, the banyan springs out to multiple branches, Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, beliefs, rituals and practices. With this Banyan model, Lipner created his own unique approach to the phenomena of …show more content…
The Qur’an was a treasured work of Arabic literature. Muslims wanted to preserve the Qur’an’s worth by keeping it in the heart of Muslim communities and not let any other outsider decipher their precious text. Muslims were so strict with the Qur’an that they, “prohibited the Qur’an from being translated and required that rituals like formal prayers be performed only in Arabic” (Eaton 3). This tradition was sought out to effectively unit the Islamic religion with Arab culture. However, South Asia, a non-speaking Arabic region, found multiple ways to make a general understanding of the Qur’an. You might wonder how, though. How can a non-speaking Arabic region compromise one-third of the world’s Muslim population? It’s clear that India had to have some minuscule translation of the Qur’an to accumulate so many Muslims, even if the “translation” was only a general understanding. One method that was used to translate the Qur’an was through the use of vernaculars. These vernaculars accomplished adapting Arabic script, which “already happened on the Iranian Plateau, where modern Persian emerged from the adaptation of the Arabic script to the base language of pre-Islamic Iran” (Eaton 3). These regional languages then began to incorporate Persian and Arabic terminology to translate ideas of the
Lipner constructed the “Banyan Model” where he relates Hinduism to a massive banyan tree on the outskirts of Kolkata. The basis of the tree’s structure is what intrigues Lipner, "This is a promising model for the view of Hinduism that I propose: an interconnected, polycentric phenomenon in the flux of growth, change, and decay” (Lipner 24). Lipner mentions that the tree is ancient, roughly around two hundred years old, which is how Hinduism is viewed as an old religion, one of the first. The configuration of the banyan tree and Hinduism, have quite a few resemblances, such as there seems to be no center or starting point of the tree, “For some reason there appears to be no central axis, so that the Kolkata banyan looks like a grove of interconnected trees” (Lipner 24). Just like Hinduism there is no central axis, there is not one founder of the religion, not one specific mandatory practice and the date ranges from, 1500 BCE to 500BCE, no one knows what particular year the religion was founded, just an estimate. However, the comparisons don’t just stop there, just like Hinduism, the banyan springs out to multiple branches, Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, beliefs, rituals and practices. With this Banyan model, Lipner created his own unique approach to the phenomena of …show more content…
The Qur’an was a treasured work of Arabic literature. Muslims wanted to preserve the Qur’an’s worth by keeping it in the heart of Muslim communities and not let any other outsider decipher their precious text. Muslims were so strict with the Qur’an that they, “prohibited the Qur’an from being translated and required that rituals like formal prayers be performed only in Arabic” (Eaton 3). This tradition was sought out to effectively unit the Islamic religion with Arab culture. However, South Asia, a non-speaking Arabic region, found multiple ways to make a general understanding of the Qur’an. You might wonder how, though. How can a non-speaking Arabic region compromise one-third of the world’s Muslim population? It’s clear that India had to have some minuscule translation of the Qur’an to accumulate so many Muslims, even if the “translation” was only a general understanding. One method that was used to translate the Qur’an was through the use of vernaculars. These vernaculars accomplished adapting Arabic script, which “already happened on the Iranian Plateau, where modern Persian emerged from the adaptation of the Arabic script to the base language of pre-Islamic Iran” (Eaton 3). These regional languages then began to incorporate Persian and Arabic terminology to translate ideas of the