Notes on the Hindu God

Al Biruni was a good Muslim and was by no means always sympathetic to Hindu ideas or culture. He thought the Hindu's claim that the universe was billions of years old was ludicrous, and mocked their tendency to think in terms of incredibly, so that cosmic cycles. But he made a sincere effort to report Hindu beliefs objectively, so that Muslims interested in India could clearly understand the Hindu prespective.

In the Indika, Al Biruni described the Hindu view of God.

There is one God only Who is without beginning or end. He cannot be researched by thought but is sublime beyond our ability to conceive. He is infinitely vast, but not in the spatial sense since He exists outside of time and space.

How can we worship this one whom we cannot perceive? He lies beyond the grasp of the physical senses, but the soul feels His presence and the mind understands His divine qualities.

Mediating on Him one-pointedly is true worship. When meditation is practices for a long time without interruption, one attains the highest state of blissful.

Al Biruni Takes Notes

Al Biruni was born in Khwarizm (today's Khiva in Uzbekistan) in 973 C.E. He was a brilliant astrologer and scholar who published books on optics, mineralogy, chemistry, mechanics, astronomy, matematics, and the calendars and dating systems of many different cultures.

Khwarizm was raided by the Muslims despot Abu-Said Mahmud in 1017. Al Bruni was taken to India as one of the Mahmud's reluctant human prizes, and lived there for 13 years.

Al Biruni despised Mahud, who he complained wrecked northern India economically as well as killing Hindus" like specs of dust scattered every which way". He found a good use for his time, however, in purchasing all the Sanskrit manuscripts he could find and consulting endlessly with Indian pandits about Hindu science and spirituality.

The result was the Indika, Al Biruni's monumental study of Hindu culture and spirituality.

Chinese Pilgrims Check It out

Two other famous pilgrims to India whose accounts of their trips have survived were Chinese Buddhists. Faxian passed through India in the fourth century C.E. (keep in mind Indian dating at this point is speculative) . Xuanzang made the 10,000-mile round trip journey three centuries later, following along the Silk Road trade up through Kashmir and then down into north central India where Buddha had lived and thought.

Faxian marveled at the peace, prosperity, and high culture of the Hindus, though his primary focus was on the Buddhists sites he had come to see. Having grown up in China, war-torn through much of its history, Faxian was deeply impressed by a land whose leaders were more concerned with promoting commerce and religion than with slautering portions of the population.

Faxian noted that it was possible to travel from one end of India to other without fear of crime and even without a passport! The culture was safe, stable, and deeply spiritual. By the time Xuanzang showed up, however, the effects of the Kali Yuga were setting in more firmly. (Remember the Kali era from Chapter 1, " Time for God", in which human behavior degenerates to its worse possible point?) He was robbed twice and almost murdered on another occasion!

Xuanzang spent several extended periods studying at Nalanda Buddhist University in Bihar. Buddhism was in a serious decline in India by the mid-600s, but Xuanzang was still able to study Sanskrit, grammar, and logic as well as weighty Buddhist philosophical tones.

About three thousand Buddhist monks and 150 faculty lived in the University, but none-Buddhist students were welcome, too. Hindu fields of study the Vedas there in the curriculum.You could learn the Vedas there or study Vedic mathematics and astronomy as well as the Hindu medical arts and Indian literature.

Ironically, the concentration of Buddhist talent at large centers like the Nalanda was a major contributing reason to the fall of Buddhism in India. Hindu students usually studied in small groups in the homes of their teachers, While Buddhist students congreated at large centers like the Nalanda. Serious Buddhist practices were carried out at the monasteries. Hindus perform their spiritual practices in their homes or in the woods or mountains.

When the Muslims came to town around 1000 B.C.E., they simply burned down the Buddhist university-monasteries and killed all the monks. Poof!-Buddhism was gone. The only way the Muslims could have wiped out Hinduism was to burn down every Hindu home in the country. Not even the most fanatical Muslim invader was capable of that!

Hindu Gods Abroad

The Worship of Magna Mater in Turkey leads to an important point. For the most part, we think of Hinduism as being confined to Greater India. However, That's because the north Indian's as I explained in Chapter 2 , " Hindus in History", are related to many of the European peoples. When you understand this, it becomes less surprising Turkey in the first millennium B.C.E.

In fact, a thousand years earlier, the Mitanni people of Turkey are known to have propitiated Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and the Ashvins-gods staright out of the Veda. Mitra, whose worship was already ancient in India in 4000 B.C.E., reincarnated as Mithras, one of the Persian's most important deities, and eventually found work as the patron deity of the Roman Army!

The Great Mother

But who was Magna Mater? Her religion at one time extended all the way from Turkey to India. Three hundred feet up the north face of Mount Sipylus in Turkey travelers today can still find an ancient thirty-foot-high image of the goddess carved into solid rock. But in India, portraits of this same goddess riding her lion into battle are present everywhere. You'll find Durga posters hanging in people's homes. You'll even see her painted on truck boxes and lunch boxes.

Magna Mater, her Latin name means "Great Mother", which is surprisingly reminiscent of her age-old titles in India: Sri Mata ("Great Mother") and Maha Devi ("Great Goddess"). In ancient Turkey, she was called Turqas, which some scholars believe is related to her Indian name, Durga.

In ancient Turkey, number of her more male devotees would castrate themselves in her honor, a practice which shocked the Roamns-who didn't shock easily. Amazingly this unique way of propitiating the Great survived in Some areas of India quite recently.(I'll have more to say about Durga in Chapter 13. " Meet the Hindu Goddessess"!)

A Hindu Goddess in Rome

There is another surprising connection between the Hindu tradition and ancient Rome.

When the Romans fighting the Carthaginian Empire for control of the Mediteranean (and in the beginning, pretty much losing), they appealed for help from an oracle. It advised them to seek the aid of Magna Mater, a forecious goddess who had been whorshipped in Turkey since at least the eighth century B.C.E. So in 204 B.C.E., a Roman delgation was sent to Phrygia in Asia Minor to beg, borrow, or steal a sacred image of the goddess. After a considerable amount of wheeling and dealing, the image was finally brought back to Rome.

Now, Magna Mater knew the Romans didin't really have much confidence in her abailities, so just before the boat carrying her image was about to enter the city, she grounded it in the Tiber River. It was completely stuck-it absolutely wouldn't budge. It wasn't a good omen that the Goddess of Victory refused to enter Rome!

A priests of the goddess, whose name was Claudia, was summoned to the scene. Tying her belt around the ship's prow, Claudia respectfully requested Magna Mater to enter Rome. The boat lurched forward instantly.

Shortly afterward, the Romans finally got the better of Hannibal and gleefully sacked the city of Carthage. Until Rome's conversion to Christianity, Magna Mater remained the presiding deity of Rome, divine protectress of the cradle of Western civilization.

A Tribute to India's Sages

Apollonious was on the road much of his life, traveling virtually the Whole of the civilized Western world as well as Egypt and Persia. Yet he insisted that he never found such great wisdom anywhere else as he had experienced in India. He went so far as to claim that many of the mystery schools of the West had originated in India in the distant past. He called the yogis"good-men" both because of their miraculous powers and because of their profound spiritually and extraordinary compassion.

Apollonious wrote a four-volume book about the teachings of the Hindu spiritual masters which unfortunely has been lost. But we know that for the first several centuries of the Common Era, Apollonious of Tyana was one of the most celebrated and respected spiritual teachers of the Western world. During his lifetime, the Roman emeperors Nerva and Titus counted themselves among his devotees.

Emperor Severus Alexander, who regained from 222 to 235, considered Apollonius one of the greatest men in world history. And in 271 when Emperor Lucius Aurelian set out with an army to destroy the City of Tyana, Apollonius appeared to him in a vision and commanded him to show mercy.

Aurelian stopped the war.