Vedic religions (or Vedism) were polytheistic, sacrifical religions of the first two millennia B.C.E. that were the main precursors of Hinduism. Based on the fact that the language and concepts in its central texts, the Vedas (see below) show similarities to Indo-European religious beliefs of the same period, Vedic religions have long been thought to have been brought to the Indian subcontinent from Persia in 1500 B.C.E. Vedic deities were connected with the heavens and natural phenomena, and were the objects of yajna sacrifices by fire led by the priest/scholar heriditary class of Brahmins. Of these deities, Indra was perhaps the most central. A warrior god whose epic victories over demons were used to explain many historical or natural phenomena, Indra was in some ways the prototype for the Hindu god Vishnu, who also appeared as Rama and Krisna.

Sacrifice was at the core of Vedic religions. Agni, the fire god, had the ability to transform offerings into food for the other 32 deva (a term for deity actually related to the English word "divine"). In addition to animal sacrifice, Brahmins would press and drink a sacred alcoholic drink called Soma, also the name of the other major sacrificial god. The sacrifice was carried out by Brahmins on behalf of a person with high social standing, who paid for the sacrifice in the hope of receiving long life, male progeny, or material benefits.

Records of the detailed ritual universe of Vedic religions are found in the Vedas, the most ancient Hindu sacred literature. The Vedas were written in archaic Sanskrit between the 15th and the fifth centuries B.C.E. There are two senses in which people today use the label "Vedas". In the narrower sense, the Vedas are the four collections of hymns called the "Samhitas." Construed more broadly, the Vedas have four parts: the "Samhitas," the "Brahmanas" dealing with technicalities of sacrifice, the "Aranyakas" or forest treatises, and the "Upanisads" for renunciants.

In the later Vedic period, increasingly detailed rituals began to be understood symbolically, and more philosophical questions about the nature of reality begin to turn up in the Upanisads, which were written around the ninth century B.C.E. This shift, along with the sixth century B.C.E. spread of the idea that karma (the "balance sheet" of one's good and bad deeds, see "samsara" below) determined the manner of one's rebirth, meant that the Vedic idea of a post-mortem Heaven was no longer the ultimate human concern, and is often identified as the signs of a transition from Vedic religions to Hindu religions. Since "Hindu" is a dynamic category, however, it is also possible to consider Vedic religions as the first stage of Hindu religions.

The term "Hindu" has the same root as the "Indus" river and the term "India," because all were used to refer to the people who inhabited a certain geographical region. Because of this,"Hindu" has always had ethnic, cultural, and religious connotations, and these three aspects are inseparable. As a religious category, the lack of a fixed central dogma or founder figure meant that "Hindu" is especially flexible and porous.

While there are many changes in Hindu doctrines over time, the gods and their avatars have always been important to Hindu religiosity. Emerging from polytheistic Vedic religions, Hindu religions also have a well-populated pantheon, although at times it also tended toward monotheism. Some sects of Hinduism focus on particular deities, such as Vishnu in Vaishnavism (supported by the Gupta emperors, 4th-6th century C.E.) and Siva in Saivism (expanding in the post-Gupta period). A Hindu deity could be incarnated as a human, called avatara or "avatar", which was how Vishnu appeared on earth as Rama and Krisna, taking on the role of demon-slayer in the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, respectively. In the encyclopedic treatments of lore called the Puranas, the earliest of which was written in the 5th century C.E., Vishnu and Siva, along with Brahma the creator, appear in even more varied forms.

Hindu practice dampened the Vedic emphasis on sacrifice, and new forms of worship developed and took on more importance. From the 7th century C.E., Hindu temples became the center of the ritual of puja, where priests mediated the public worship of the temple deity. Alongside these public rituals, the concept of bhakti or devotion to a god on a personal level led to the development of a body of vernacular devotional poetry that was sung as part of a union with that deity. The bhakti movement, based on individual communication with their god, opposed the religious monopoly of the Brahmins.

The description of the process of transmigration and rebirth, known as samsara, is important to the Hindu worldview. Every social interaction results in either a positive or a negative effect on the condition of one's rebirth. However, by realizing the identity of the true self of atman and universal principle of brahman, one may attain moksha or escape from the cycle of samsara.

Hinduism was continually in contact with other religions, and both reacted against and incorporated the doctrines and practices of these religions. After Jainism and Buddhism in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.E. provided an alternative to Vedic authority, Buddha was absorbed into Hinduism as the ninth avatar of Vishnu. The rapid expansion of Islam altered Indian religious life, and Islamic rulers controlled much of India from the 11th through middle of the 18th century. The resulting lack of imperial support for temple worship during this period has been cited as a reason for the spread of popular bhakti devotions and esoteric tantra practices. The seclusion of women in upper castes (parda or purdah) has often been seen as a variation on Islamic social customs.

Hinduism in modern India became self-conscious as it was invoked as part of the early 20th century nationalist movements. Following independence from Britain in 1947, the influential Congress Movement attempted to dismantle many of the hierarchies associated with Hinduism as it promoted a secular state. In the 1980's, the rise of the Bharatiya Janata (Indian People's) Party (BJP), a predominantly Hindu political party, led the way for the rise of the current government.

Buddhism is a monastic religion that began in India, and spread south and east to become the most influential religion in Asia. It began around the period of the Upanisads in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.E. and its emphasis on renunciation, asceticism and meditation mirrors developments in Hinduism. At the same time, Buddhism was a reaction against Vedic authority, and contradicted some important assumptions of Hinduism. While the goal in Hinduism is to realize that atman and brahman are the same, in Buddhism one must realize that atman -- the true self -- does not exist. What this means is that a Buddhist must reconfigure her mind to unlearn the notion that subjects (like "me") make the world go around, since conventional ideas of the self and causation are false. By contrast, for a Hindu the life of ritual purity that is spelled out in the Vedas is simply true. Practically, both these views end up arguing against conventional views of the self, and for overcoming desires, but the reason for the arguments are very different.

The Buddha ("enlightened one") refers to Siddhartha (in Sanskrit, Siddhartha; in Pali, Siddhattha), who lived in the sixth century B.C.E., in an area now on the border of Nepal and India. Born a prince, Siddhartha renounced his title and family to become a wandering ascetic and learn different spiritual disciplines. Eventually he attained enlightenment and became an arhat (in Pali, arahant) or "perfected one." He realized that his existence as Siddhartha was only one in a long line of incarnations in which merit had been progressively attained. Because Buddhists believe that through the accumulation of merit, anyone can become a Buddha, the distinction between "the Buddha" (Siddhartha) and "a Buddha" (a person who has attained enlightenment) is important.

The teaching of the Buddha is dharma, which is both the order of the universe, and the moral law. The dharma has many features, but central to it is the role that karma plays in the cycle of reincarnation. Karma is the balance of one's accumulated deeds. It both affects one's current behavior (since good acts create a propensity for more good acts) and how one is reborn. While deities constitute a pantheon of sorts in Buddhism, their individual existences are not nearly as important as the cosmological model in which all modes of existence are connected through the cycle of rebirth. The spiritual goal is not being reborn as a god, but escaping the cycle of rebirth, attaining the state of nirvana (in Pali, nibbana), and becoming a buddha. In Mahayana Buddhism, it is possible to attain enlightenment but return to the world as a bodhisattva in order to assist other living creatures.

Following his enlightenment, the Buddha organized a sangha or "community" of disciples that preached his message and began disseminating his Sutras (religious classics). Over time, the term sangha came to denote the community of renunciants -- monks and nuns who had modified the robes of the Buddhist bhikkhu (begging ascetic), intent on eliminating desires and accumulating good actions.

One of the cardinal figures in the development of Buddhist thought was Nagarjuna (circa 150-250 C.E.), originator of the Madhyamika (Doctrine of Middle Way) school of Buddhist philosophy. The dialectic of Madhyamika attempts to negate every theory about the nature of reality in order to show that all such theories are false, and thereby supports the doctrine of sunyata or "cosmic emptiness." At the start of the eighth century, Santideva wrote the Bodhicaryavatara (Bodhisattva Way of Life), representing the Prasangika school of Madhyamika. Another school that ended up having even greater influence when developed in other areas of Asia was Yogacara, founded in India in the 5th century C.E.

Buddhism spread from India to other lands at different times, which accounts for the different types of Buddhism found in Asia. Under the patronage of King Asoka (reigned 270-230 B.C.E.) what is now generally called Theravada (Way of the Elders) Buddhism spread south and southeast, and so now is found in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. During the Gupta dynasty (circa 320-600 C.E.), a newer and more universalistic form of Buddhism known as Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) became increasingly important in monastic centers like Nalanda. These centers were visited by Chinese monks (such as Faxian in 399 C.E.) who brought Mahayana sutras east to China. Another period of patronage was by the norteastern Pala kings (8th through 12th century C.E.) who embraced Tantra, an esoteric form of Buddhism that spread into Tibet. So Mahayana, Theravada, and Tantra may be arranged historically as different phases of Buddhism in India, or divided geographically as they came to be dominant in different areas of Asia.

While Buddhism continued to thrive in areas outside of India, following the fall of the Pala dynasty and the encroachment of Islam in the 12th century, Buddhism all but disappeared in India until the 20th century. Its modest revival in modern India is largely due to three factors: a reaction against the cultural conservatism of Hinduism, the influx of Tibetan refugees following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, and the incorporation of the mountain kingdom of Sikkim into India in 1975.

First exposed to Buddhism in the 7th century C.E., since the 17th century Tibet has been ruled by the Dalai Lama, thought to be the incarnation of the Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokitesvara. It was during the 11th and 12th centuries that esoteric Tantric Buddhism and large portions of the Buddhist Canon were translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan. Tibetan Buddhism centers on a set of practices such as visualization, mantras, and mandalas, which enable adepts to transform their bodies so as to attain liberation. At the same time, an ethics based on karma determines the one of the six realms into which one will be reborn: a god, demigod, human, animal, ghost, or hell-being.

Founded at roughly the same time as Buddhism, Jainism is also best seen as reaction against Vedic authority. Its founder, Mahavira (circa 599-527 B.C.E.) promoted an ascetic life, which both strives for individual enlightenment and for ahimsa, reverence for life. The latter idea was the basis for the Jain rejection of Vedic animal sacrifice. Today, Jainas are mostly located in western India.

Beginning in the seventh century C.E., when the prophet Muhammad received his revelations in Mecca, Islam quickly spread, by evangelism and military conquest, throughout many areas of Asia. The monotheistic Islamic religion derives chiefly from Christianity, and requires faith, prayer, and pilgrimage of its followers. It was made orthodox in northern India by the Sultan of Delhi from the 11th through the 16th centuries, and then by the Mughal empire from the 16th through the 18th centuries. After being pressured to end their colonial rule (1858-1947), in the British divided India into an Islamic Pakistan and a Hindu India. In 1971, East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

Beginning in the 16th century, Sikhism was founded by Guru Na-nak (1469-1539 C.E.) who combined elements of Islam and Vaishnava bhakti Hinduism, while rejecting many of the ritual elements of each. Instead, devotion consisted of remembering and repeating the divine name and singing hymns of praise. Today, Sikhs are mostly located in the Punjab state of India.

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