Religion: The Journey (I)
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga, Canada
We do not know much about the first sub-humans, who lived 500,000 years ago known as Pithecanthropus, as to what kind of religion they pursued. But being aware of the primeval instinct of worshipping the awe-producing spirits of nature we can safely assume that they too might have some sort of religion. However, in the case of the Neanderthals, who lived from 100,000 to 25,000 years ago, evidence of the presence of religion or belief in the Hereafter has been found. They placed food and flint instruments in the graves of the dead in the belief that they lived another life after death.
The next generation, that of Stone Age people, who were purely hunters and lived about 25,000 years ago developed a more sophisticated system of burial. They adorned the dead-bodies with ornaments and placed weapons of hunting and food in the graves. In addition, they painted the bodies red or poured red ochre thereon.
Red color had special significance; it represented blood or life, and they, in this way, probably believed in life’s continuation thereafter. They drew pictures, painted murals, and modeled clay figures, with remarkable realism and perspective. Since the Stone Age people were primarily hunters the subject of their painting and modeling was animals. By painting the images of hunt-animals, like deer, bison, and horses, they thought that those animals would come under their spiritual spell, and would thus become easy prey. (Even today in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent it is believed that black magic can harm a person. For that purpose, a doll is made with the belief that it is a representation of the person concerned. Needles are pierced all over the body of the doll which is left in that state thinking that in due course the subject would be tortured to death).
The man of the Neolithic Age (10,000 to 3,000 BC) was more civilized, hence his religious beliefs and rituals became more sophisticated. Now to meet the physical needs of the dead, wives and servants were sacrificed to accompany him in the other life. The funeral rites also became more ceremonial. Objects of nature worship like the sun and moon-shaped stones were placed in the graves. They also worshipped stones, pillars, stars, and trees. Painted pebbles, covered with such symbols, found in many places, point out to the veneration of those objects.
With the increase of intellect and physical prowess and man’s gaining control over things that had earlier been regarded as formidable, his perspective of the environs enlarged. From time to time civilized societies came into being, which saw the birth of various kinds of deities. They were invested with powers over natural forces and even emotions and human needs. The deities assumed the features of living humans, with all their feelings and failings. The man started weaving around the deities, stories of jealousy, conspiracy, treachery, love, war, sex, marriage, family, etc. He created myths of adventure and power with meaningful symbolism. The gods acquired the ability to make or mar the lives of the mortals. Later, because of the establishment of national states, the gods of tribes acquired national stature. They became gods of a vast region, of the area wherever a particular nation had its influence. Thus religions, which were generally based on systemized polytheism, developed on a national scale in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and India. We may now have a look at them.
Sumerians and Babylonian: Probably the earliest civilization, which was endowed with cities, governments, temples, and art of writing, developed in Mesopotamia. The culture of cities consolidated, and then the cities merged together to form the Sumerian kingdom. The gods of the fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates, forsaking their natural habitat of valleys, farms, and gardens took to the cities. Every city had now the privilege of owning its own god. The pantheon numbering about 4,000 represented all sorts of natural forces. Then a Council of six gods, representing the most important cities was established to govern the universe, whose chief god, Anu, the ruler of heaven, came from Erech. Later, a triad of most powerful gods was evolved. The first compilations of legal and social canons, the Code of Hammurabi, begins with the proclamation of trust that the chief god Anu, “King of the Anunaki and Bel, Lord of Heaven and Earth”, had imposed in Hammurabi as the king.
Egyptian: The gods of the ancient Egyptians were animals. The animals were worshipped because they believed that the animals had human qualities. They thought that a deity could manifest itself in both the forms, hence their gods assumed human bodies with animal heads. The power of intellect and decision making of the deity was concentrated in the head, but the physical prowess and kindness of the heart were contained in the human body. They believed that the soul along with the body would turn eventually into a star and would merge into the sun-god, but the soul loved the body so much that it visited the body regularly. To facilitate its passage a chimney or a duct was made in the tomb. For the life to continue on a regular basis in the next world it was thought appropriate that the bodies be preserved by embalming and provided with all the worldly requirements of daily use like food, drinks, and even boats and other games for pleasure and pastime. The animal gods were the earlier ones, but later they created numerous gods like the all-powerful Amon-Ra, the sun-god; Ptah, the creator who made the world from primordial mud; Geb, god of earth; Nut, goddess of the sky and the life-giving water of the Nile; Anubis, the jackal-guardian of the cemetery; Maat, the goddess of truth; Hu, the god of taste; Safekht, the goddess of writing, and Neit; the goddess of hunting. The deities lived their lives like human beings, loved, married, begot children, and plotted against each other
Greek: The mythological religions of the Greeks began to be formed around the twelfth century BC. The various regions of Greece, separated by mountains and valleys, had their separate gods. Wherever they farmed lands they had their spirit-gods. The high gods later absorbed local spirit-gods, numina. Greek gods thus became an amalgam of deities from various regions, and even from abroad. Zeus became the chief god, the lord of the sky and Demeter the goddess of the land. Aphrodite, the goddess of desire and daughter of Zeus, who was caught cheating her husband, had come from Cyprus. Homer weaved an intellectualized story of the Greek pantheon in the Iliad, which had an immense impact on their personal and political life. Whereas it spurred the imagination of the masses and raised their thoughts to a higher ground, it also brought about a sense of political and national unity, making their culture and religion all Hellenic.
Roman: The Romans believed first in the spirit-gods, which were called Numa. They were farmers and were deeply attached to the family and home, hence their gods were more functional. They were neither personalized as having wives or children nor had gender. Each spirit-god had its small function to perform, like sowing, flourishing of fields, harvesting, guarding the stored grains, keeping the pastures green, the flowering of the fields and trees, keeping the wasters running in the rivers, flowing of the streams, and so on. Since they were merely spirits, the religion of the early Romans was called ‘the religion of Numa’, which had not yet acquired the status of high gods.
Hinduism: The Aryans, semi-nomadic barbarians, living in the Eurasian steppe, were forced to leave their homeland around 2,000 BC due to some natural disaster. Moving in all directions, they spread over a greater part of Europe in the west, and Turkey, Iran, and India in the southeast. Their religion was obliterated in Europe, Iran, and Turkey, but it continues in India to this day because of the liberal and tolerant attitude of the Muslim rulers. “The oldest known religion of India, which the invading Aryans found among the Nagas, and which still survives in the ethnic nooks and crannies of the great peninsula, was apparently an animistic and totemic worship of multitudinous spirits dwelling in stones and animals, in trees and streams, in mountain and stars” (See Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Our Oriental Heritage, Volume 1). Subsequently, therefore, the religious worship became a mixture of Aryan and non-Aryan forms. Most of the thousands of gods and the doctrines derived from the beliefs held by the non-Aryans indigenous people were incorporated into it, which eventually became the hallmark of Hinduism. Hinduism’s chief god, or Parmeshwar, who created the Universe, has three manifestations: Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer. According to the popular belief, the number of Devas or gods in Hinduism is thirty- three kotis or 330 million.
Natives of North America: Yet another type of faith exists today with beliefs in spirits. The natives of North America have no formal creed, but religion permeates every aspect of their lives. They view the aspects of nature like the sun, moon, rivers, lightning, and disease, and even man-made objects like a totem and fishing net as animate. They invoke those forces through rituals and employ charms to bring luck in hunting, fishing, farming, and in curing diseases, as also to avert the wrath that might cause them harm.
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