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Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37, Quote: "It is often said that Hinduism is very ancient, and in a sense this is true (...). It was formed by adding the English suffix -ism, of Greek origin, to the word Hindu, of Persian origin; it was about the same time that the word Hindu, without the suffix -ism, came to be used mainly as a religious term. (...) The name Hindu was first a geographical name, not a religious one, and it originated in the languages of Iran, not of India. (...) They referred to the non-Muslim majority, together with their culture, as 'Hindu'. (...) Since the people called Hindu differed from Muslims most notably in religion, the word came to have religious implications, and to denote a group of people who were identifiable by their Hindu religion. (...) However, it is a religious term that the word Hindu is now used in English, and Hinduism is the name of a religion, although, as we have seen, we should beware of any false impression of uniformity that this might give us." Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent.
It is assumed that the term "Hindu" traces back to Avestan scripture Vendidad which refers to land of seven rivers as Hapta Hendu which itself is a cognate to Sanskrit term Sapta Sindhuḥ. (The term Sapta Sindhuḥ is mentioned in Rig Veda and refers to a North western Indian region of seven rivers and to India as a whole.) The Greek language cognates of the same terms are " Indus" (for the river) and " India" (for the land of the river). Likewise the Hebrew cognate hōd-dū refers to India mentioned in Hebrew Bible ( Esther 1:1). The term " Hindu" also implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the Indus River. By the 16th century CE, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not Turkic peoples or Muslims.
The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear. Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British Raj, or that it may have developed post-8th century CE after the Muslim invasions and medieval Hindu–Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in some texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and Bengali. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir, Tulsidas and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma (Hinduism) and contrasted it with Turaka dharma (Islam). The Christians friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term 'Hindu' in a religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for groups such as Turks, Mughal Empire and Arabs, who were adherents of Islam. By the mid-19th century, colonial orientalist texts further distinguished Hindus from Buddhism, Sikhs and Jainism, but the colonial laws continued to consider all of them to be within the scope of the term Hindu until about the mid-20th century. Scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon.
At approximately 1.2 billion, Hindu Population projections Pew Research (2015), Washington DC Hindus are the world's third-largest religious group after Christians and Muslims. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million (94.3% of the global Hindu population), live in India, according to the 2011 Indian census.Rukmini S Vijaita Singh Muslim population growth slows The Hindu, 25 August 2015; 79.8% of more than 121 crore Indians (as per 2011 census) are Hindus After India, the next nine countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order: Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the United States, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. 10 Countries With the Largest Hindu Populations, 2010 and 2050 Pew Research Center (2015), Washington DC These together accounted for 99% of the world's Hindu population, and the remaining nations of the world combined had about 6 million Hindus .
The earliest known records of 'Hindu' with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text Records on the Western Regions by the Buddhist scholar Xuanzang. Xuanzang uses the transliterated term In-tu whose "connotation overflows in the religious" according to Arvind Sharma. While Xuanzang suggested that the term refers to the country named after the moon, another Buddhist scholar I-tsing contradicted the conclusion saying that In-tu was not a common name for the country.
Al-Biruni's 11th-century text Tarikh Al-Hind, and the texts of the Delhi Sultanate period use the term 'Hindu', where it includes all non-Islamic people such as Buddhists, and retains the ambiguity of being "a region or a religion". The 'Hindu' community occurs as the amorphous 'Other' of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, according to the Indian historian Romila Thapar. The comparative religion scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith notes that the term 'Hindu' retained its geographical reference initially: 'Indian', 'indigenous, local', virtually 'native'. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves and their "traditional ways" from those of the invaders.
The text Prithviraj Raso, by Chand Bardai, about the 1192 CE defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan at the hands of Muhammad Ghori, is full of references to "Hindus" and "Turks", and at one stage, says "both the religions have drawn their curved swords;" however, the date of this text is unclear and considered by most scholars to be more recent. In Islamic literature, 'Abd al-Malik Isami's Persian work, Futuhu's-salatin, composed in the Deccan under Bahmani rule in 1350, uses the word to mean Indian in the ethno-geographical sense and the word to mean 'Hindu' in the sense of a follower of the Hindu religion". The poet Vidyapati's Kirtilata (1380) uses the term Hindu in the sense of a religion, it contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks (Muslims) in a city and concludes "The Hindus and the Turks live close together; Each makes fun of the other's religion ( dhamme)" albeit Naqshbandi Indian sufi inhabitations in Constantinople were often attributed as Hindular Tekkesi in Ottoman Turkish.
One of the earliest uses of the word 'Hindu' in a religious context, in a European language (Spanish language), was in a publication in 1649 by Sebastio Manrique. In Indian historian DN Jha's essay "Looking for a Hindu identity", he writes: "No Indians described themselves as Hindus before the fourteenth century" and that "The British borrowed the word 'Hindu' from India, gave it a new meaning and significance, and reimported it into India as a reified phenomenon called Hinduism." In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus even though in the 19th century, this term was used for Afghans-origin Muslim emperor Ibrahim Lodhi as Hindoo emperor in Encyclopædia Americana (Lieber) of 1829.
Other prominent mentions of 'Hindu' include the epigraphical inscriptions from kingdoms (in present-day Andhra Pradesh) which battled military expansion of Muslim rulers in the 14th century, where the word 'Hindu' partly implies a religious identity in contrast to 'Turks' or Islamic religious identity. The term Hindu was later used occasionally in some Sanskrit texts such as the later of Kashmir (Hinduka, ) and some 16th- to 18th-century Bengali language Gaudiya Vaishnava texts, including Chaitanya Charitamrita and Chaitanya Bhagavata. These texts used it to contrast Hindus from Muslims who are called Yavanas (foreigners) or Mlecchas (barbarians), with the 16th-century Chaitanya Charitamrita text and the 17th-century Bhakta Mala text using the phrase "Hindu dharma".
The term Hindu also appears in the texts from the Mughal Empire era. Jahangir, for example, called the Sikh Guru Arjan a Hindu:Pashaura Singh (2005), Understanding the Martyrdom of Guru Arjan , Journal of Punjab Studies, 12(1), pages 29–31
Sikh scholar Pashaura Singh states, "in Persian writings, were regarded as Hindu in the sense of non-Muslim Indians".Pashaura Singh (2005), Understanding the Martyrdom of Guru Arjan, Journal of Punjab Studies, 12(1), page 37 However, scholars like Robert Fraser and Mary Hammond opine that Sikhism began initially as a militant sect of Hinduism and it got formally separated from Hinduism only in the 20th century.
Beyond the stipulations of British colonial law, European Oriental studies and particularly the influential Asiatick Researches founded in the 18th century, later called The Asiatic Society, initially identified just two religions in India – Islam, and Hinduism. These orientalists included all Indian religions such as Buddhism as a subgroup of Hinduism in the 18th century. These texts termed followers of Islam as Mohamedans, and all others as Hindus. The text, by the early 19th century, began dividing Hindus into separate groups, for chronology studies of the various beliefs. Among the earliest terms to emerge were Seeks and their College (later spelled Sikhs by Charles Wilkins), Boudhism (later spelled Buddhism), and in the 9th volume of Asiatick Researches report on religions in India, the term Jainism received notice.
According to Pennington, the terms Hindu and Hinduism were thus constructed for colonial studies of India. The various sub-divisions and separation of subgroup terms were assumed to be result of "communal conflict", and Hindu was constructed by these orientalists to imply people who adhered to "ancient default oppressive religious substratum of India", states Pennington. Followers of other Indian religions so identified were later referred Buddhists, Sikhs or Jains and distinguished from Hindus, in an antagonistic two-dimensional manner, with Hindus and Hinduism stereotyped as irrational traditional and others as rational reform religions. However, these mid-19th-century reports offered no indication of doctrinal or ritual differences between Hindu and Buddhist, or other newly constructed religious identities. These colonial studies, states Pennigton, "puzzled endlessly about the Hindus and intensely scrutinized them, but did not interrogate and avoided reporting the practices and religion of Mughal and Arabs in South Asia", and often relied on Muslim scholars to characterise Hindus.
Hindus subscribe to a diversity of ideas on spirituality and traditions, but have no ecclesiastical order, no unquestionable religious authorities, no governing body, nor a single founding prophet; Hindus can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, atheistic or humanist.Julius J. Lipner (2009), Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, 2nd Edition, Routledge, , page 8; Quote: "(...) one need not be religious in the minimal sense described to be accepted as a Hindu by Hindus, or describe oneself perfectly validly as Hindu. One may be polytheistic or monotheistic, monistic or pantheistic, even an agnostic, humanist or atheist, and still be considered a Hindu."Lester Kurtz (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, , Academic Press, 2008MK Gandhi, The Essence of Hinduism , Editor: VB Kher, Navajivan Publishing, see page 3; According to Gandhi, "a man may not believe in God and still call himself a Hindu." Because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, arriving at a comprehensive definition is difficult. The religion "defies our desire to define and categorize it". A Hindu may, by his or her choice, draw upon ideas of other Indian or non-Indian religious thought as a resource, follow or evolve his or her personal beliefs, and still identify as a Hindu.
In 1995, Chief Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar was quoted in an Indian Supreme Court ruling:Supreme Court of India, "Bramchari Sidheswar Shai and others Versus State of West Bengal", 1995, Archive2 Archived from the original .Supreme Court of India 1966 AIR 1119, Sastri Yagnapurushadji vs Muldas Brudardas Vaishya (pdf), page 15, 14 January 1966
Although Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, Hindus share philosophical concepts, such as but not limiting to dharma, karma, kama, artha, moksha and samsara, even if each subscribes to a diversity of views. Hindus also have shared texts such as the with embedded Mukhya Upanishad, and common ritual grammar (Sanskara (rite of passage)) such as rituals during a wedding or when a baby is born or cremation rituals.Carl Olson (2007), The Many Colors of Hinduism: A Thematic-historical Introduction, Rutgers University Press, , pages 93–94Rajbali Pandey (2013), Hindu Saṁskāras: Socio-religious Study of the Hindu Sacraments, 2nd Edition, Motilal Banarsidass, , pages 15–36 Some Hindus go on pilgrimage to shared sites they consider spiritually significant, practice one or more forms of bhakti or puja, celebrate mythology and epics, major festivals, love and respect for guru and family, and other cultural traditions. (2025). 9780826499660, Continuum. ISBN 9780826499660 A Hindu could:
The Republic of India is in the peculiar situation that the Supreme Court of India has repeatedly been called upon to define "Hinduism" because the Constitution of India, while it prohibits "discrimination of any citizen" on grounds of religion in article 15, article 30 foresees special rights for "All minorities, whether based on religion or language". As a consequence, religious groups have an interest in being recognised as distinct from the Hindu majority in order to qualify as a "religious minority". Thus, the Supreme Court was forced to consider the question whether Jainism is part of Hinduism in 2005 and 2006.
Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya has questioned the Pollock theory and presented textual and inscriptional evidence. According to Chattopadhyaya, the Hindu identity and religious response to Islamic invasion and wars developed in different kingdoms, such as wars between Islamic Sultanates and the Vijayanagara kingdom, and Islamic raids on the kingdoms in Tamil Nadu. These wars were described not just using the mythical story of Rama from Ramayana, states Chattopadhyaya, the medieval records used a wide range of religious symbolism and myths that are now considered as part of Hindu literature.Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (1998), Representing the other?: Sanskrit sources and the Muslims (eighth to fourteenth century), Manohar Publications, , pages 92–103, Chapter 1 and 2Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (2004), Other or the Others? in The World in the Year 1000 (Editors: James Heitzman, Wolfgang Schenkluhn), University Press of America, , pages 303–323 This emergence of religious with political terminology began with the first Muslim invasion of Sindh in the 8th century CE, and intensified 13th century onwards. The 14th-century Sanskrit text, Madhuravijayam, a memoir written by Gangadevi, the wife of Vijayanagara prince, for example describes the consequences of war using religious terms,
The historiographic writings in Telugu language from the 13th- and 14th-century Kakatiya dynasty period presents a similar "alien other (Turk)" and "self-identity (Hindu)" contrast.Cynthia Talbot (2000), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Editors: David Gilmartin, Bruce B. Lawrence), University Press of Florida, , pages 291–294 Chattopadhyaya, and other scholars, state that the military and political campaign during the medieval era wars in Deccan peninsula of India, and in the north India, were no longer a quest for sovereignty, they embodied a political and religious animosity against the "otherness of Islam", and this began the historical process of Hindu identity formation.
Andrew Nicholson, in his review of scholarship on Hindu identity history, states that the vernacular literature of Bhakti movement sants from 15th to 17th century, such as Kabir, Anantadas, Eknath, Vidyapati, suggests that distinct religious identities, between Hindus and Turks (Muslims), had formed during these centuries. The poetry of this period contrasts Hindu and Islamic identities, states Nicholson, and the literature vilifies the Muslims coupled with a "distinct sense of a Hindu religious identity".Andrew Nicholson (2013), Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, Columbia University Press, , pages 198–199
Overlaps in Jain-Hindu identities have included Jains worshipping Hindu deities, intermarriages between Jains and Hindus, and medieval era Jain temples featuring Hindu religious icons and sculpture.Paul Dundas (2002), The Jains, 2nd Edition, Routledge, , pages 6–10K Reddy (2011), Indian History, Tata McGraw Hill, , page 93Margaret Allen (1992), Ornament in Indian Architecture, University of Delaware Press, , page 211 Beyond India, on Java island of Indonesia, historical records attest to marriages between Hindus and Buddhists, medieval era temple architecture and sculptures that simultaneously incorporate Hindu and Buddhist themes,Trudy King et al. (1996), Historic Places: Asia and Oceania, Routledge, , page 692 where Hinduism and Buddhism merged and functioned as "two separate paths within one overall system", according to Ann Kenney and other scholars.Ann Kenney et al (2003), Worshiping Siva and Buddha: The Temple Art of East Java, University of Hawaii Press, , pages 24–25 Similarly, there is an organic relation of Sikhs to Hindus, states Zaehner, both in religious thought and their communities, and virtually all Sikhs' ancestors were Hindus. Marriages between Sikhs and Hindus, particularly among Khatris, were frequent. Some Hindu families brought up a son as a Sikh, and some Hindus view Sikhism as a tradition within Hinduism, even though the Sikh faith is a distinct religion.Robert Zaehner (1997), Encyclopedia of the World's Religions, Barnes & Noble Publishing, , page 409
Julius Lipner states that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs is a modern phenomena, but one that is a convenient abstraction.Julius J. Lipner (2009), Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, 2nd Edition, Routledge, , pages 17–18 Distinguishing Indian traditions is a fairly recent practice, states Lipner, and is the result of "not only Western preconceptions about the nature of religion in general and of religion in India in particular, but also with the political awareness that has arisen in India" in its people and a result of Western influence during its colonial history.
The idea of twelve sacred sites in Shiva Hindu tradition spread across the Indian subcontinent appears not only in the medieval era temples but also in copper plate inscriptions and temple seals discovered in different sites. According to Bhardwaj, non-Hindu texts such as the memoirs of Chinese Buddhist and Persian Muslim travellers attest to the existence and significance of the pilgrimage to sacred geography among Hindus by later 1st millennium CE.
According to Fleming, those who question whether the term Hindu and Hinduism are a modern construction in a religious context present their arguments based on some texts that have survived into the modern era, either of Islamic courts or of literature published by Western missionaries or colonial-era Indologists aiming for a reasonable construction of history. However, the existence of non-textual evidence such as cave temples separated by thousands of kilometers, as well as lists of medieval era pilgrimage sites, is evidence of a shared sacred geography and existence of a community that was self-aware of shared religious premises and landscape. Further, it is a norm in evolving cultures that there is a gap between the "lived and historical realities" of a religious tradition and the emergence of related "textual authorities". The tradition and temples likely existed well before the medieval era Hindu manuscripts appeared that describe them and the sacred geography. This, states Fleming, is apparent given the sophistication of the architecture and the sacred sites along with the variance in the versions of the Puranic literature. According to Diana L. Eck and other Indologists such as André Wink, Muslim invaders were aware of Hindu sacred geography such as Mathura, Ujjain, and Varanasi by the 11th century. These sites became a target of their serial attacks in the centuries that followed.
Other recorded persecution of Hindus include those under the reign of 18th century Tipu Sultan in south India, and during the colonial era. In the modern era, religious persecution of Hindus have been reported outside India in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar., Quote: "Hindus are fatally persecuted in Bangladesh and elsewhere."
Chris Bayly traces the roots of Hindu nationalism to the Hindu identity and political independence achieved by the Maratha confederacy, that overthrew the Islamic Mughal empire in large parts of India, allowing Hindus the freedom to pursue any of their diverse religious beliefs and restored Hindu holy places such as Varanasi.CA Bayly (1985), The pre-history of communialism? Religious conflict in India 1700–1860, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, pages 186–187, 177–203 A few scholars view Hindu mobilisation and consequent nationalism to have emerged in the 19th century as a response to British colonialism by Indian nationalists and neo-Hinduism gurus.Christophe Jaffrelot (2007), Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, Princeton University Press, , pages 6–7Antony Copley (2000), Gurus and their followers: New religious reform movements in Colonial India, Oxford University Press, , pages 4–5, 24–27, 163–164Hardy, F. "A radical assessment of the Vedic heritage" in Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious and National Identity, Sage Publ., Delhi, 1995. Jaffrelot states that the efforts of Christian missionaries and Islamic proselytizers, during the British colonial era, each of whom tried to gain new converts to their own religion, by stereotyping and stigmatising Hindus to an identity of being inferior and superstitious, contributed to Hindus re-asserting their spiritual heritage and counter cross examining Islam and Christianity, forming organisations such as the Hindu Sabhas (Hindu associations), and ultimately a Hindu-identity driven nationalism in the 1920s.Christophe Jaffrelot (2007), Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, Princeton University Press, , pages 13
The colonial era Hindu revivalism and mobilisation, along with Hindu nationalism, states Peter van der Veer, was primarily a reaction to and competition with Muslim separatism and Muslim nationalism. The successes of each side fed the fears of the other, leading to the growth of Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism in the Indian subcontinent.Peter van der Veer (1994), Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, University of California Press, , pages 11–14, 1–24 In the 20th century, the sense of religious nationalism grew in India, states van der Veer, but only Muslim nationalism succeeded with the formation of the West and East Pakistan (later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh), as "an Islamic state" upon independence.Peter van der Veer (1994), Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, University of California Press, , pages 31, 99, 102 Religious riots and social trauma followed as millions of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs moved out of the newly created Islamic states and resettled into the Hindu-majority post-British India.Peter van der Veer (1994), Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, University of California Press, , pages 26–32, 53–54 After the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947, the Hindu nationalism movement developed the concept of Hindutva in second half of the 20th century.Ram-Prasad, C. "Contemporary political Hinduism" in Blackwell companion to Hinduism, Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
The Hindu nationalism movement has sought to reform Indian laws, that critics say attempts to impose Hindu values on India's Islamic minority. Gerald Larson states, for example, that Hindu nationalists have sought a uniform civil code, where all citizens are subject to the same laws, everyone has equal civil rights, and individual rights do not depend on the individual's religion.GJ Larson (2002), Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call to Judgment, Indiana University Press, , pages 55–56 In contrast, opponents of Hindu nationalists remark that eliminating religious law from India poses a threat to the cultural identity and religious rights of Muslims, and people of Islamic faith have a constitutional right to Islamic -based personal laws.John Mansfield (2005), The Personal Laws or a Uniform Civil Code?, in Religion and Law in Independent India (Editor: Robert Baird), Manohar, , page 121-127, 135–136, 151–156 A specific law, contentious between Hindu nationalists and their opponents in India, relates to the legal age of marriage for girls. Hindu nationalists seek that the legal age for marriage be eighteen that is universally applied to all girls regardless of their religion and that marriages be registered with local government to verify the age of marriage. Muslim clerics consider this proposal as unacceptable because under the shariah-derived personal law, a Muslim girl can be married at any age after she reaches puberty.Sylvia Vatuk (2013), Adjudicating Family Law in Muslim Courts (Editor: Elisa Giunchi), Routledge, , pages 52–53
Hindu nationalism in India, states Katharine Adeney, is a controversial political subject, with no consensus about what it means or implies in terms of the form of government and religious rights of the minorities.Katharine Adeney and Lawrence Saez (2005), Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism, Routledge, , pages 98–114
Most Hindus are found in Asian countries. The top twenty-five countries with the most Hindu residents and citizens (in decreasing order) are India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, Myanmar, United Kingdom, Mauritius, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, Singapore, Fiji, Qatar, Kuwait, Guyana, Bhutan, Oman and Yemen. Hindu population totals in 2010 by Country Pew Research, Washington DC (2012)
The top fifteen countries with the highest percentage of Hindus (in decreasing order) are Nepal, India, Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana, Bhutan, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Réunion, Malaysia, and Singapore.
The fertility rate, that is children per woman, for Hindus is 2.4, which is less than the world average of 2.5. Total Fertility Rates of Hindus by Region, 2010–2050 Pew Research Center (2015), Washington DC Pew Research projects that there will be 1.4 billion Hindus by 2050. Projected Global Hindu Population, 2010–2050 Pew Research Center (2015), Washington DC
| +Hinduism by continents (2017–18) !Continents ! scope="col" | Hindus population ! scope="col" | % of the Hindu ! scope="col" | % of the continent ! scope="col" | Follower dynamics ! scope="col" | World dynamics |
| Asia | 1,074,728,901 | 99.3 | 26.0 | Growing | Growing |
| Europe | 2,030,904 | 0.2 | 0.3 | Growing | Growing |
| Americas | 2,806,344 | 0.3 | 0.3 | Growing | Growing |
| Africa | 2,013,705 | 0.2 | 0.2 | Growing | Growing |
| Oceania | 791,615 | 0.1 | 2.1 | Growing | Growing |
Over 3 million Hindus are found in Bali Indonesia, a culture whose origins trace back to ideas brought by Hindu traders to Indonesian islands in the 1st millennium CE. Their sacred texts are also the Vedas and the .Martin Ramstedt (2003), Hinduism in Modern Indonesia, Routledge, , pp. 2–23 The and the Itihasa (mainly Ramayana and the Mahabharata) are enduring traditions among Indonesian Hindus, expressed in community dances and shadow puppet ( wayang) performances. As in India, Indonesian Hindus recognise four paths of spirituality, calling it Catur Marga.Murdana, I. Ketut (2008), BALINESE ARTS AND CULTURE: A flash understanding of Concept and Behavior, Mudra – JURNAL SENI BUDAYA, Indonesia; Volume 22, pp. 5–11 Similarly, like Hindus in India, Balinese Hindus believe that there are four proper goals of human life, calling it Catur Purusartha – dharma (pursuit of moral and ethical living), artha (pursuit of wealth and creative activity), kama (pursuit of joy and love) and moksha (pursuit of self-knowledge and liberation).Ida Bagus Sudirga (2009), Widya Dharma – Agama Hindu, Ganeca Indonesia, IGP Sugandhi (2005), Seni (Rupa) Bali Hindu Dalam Perspektif Epistemologi Brahma Widya, Ornamen, Vol 2, Number 1, pp. 58–69
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