The worldview:

1. What is a worldview in your own words?

* A shared conceptualization * A person’s perspective on reality * Your view / Perception of the unquestionable * Essentially your view on the world, and how you interpret it, how you make sense of the world, the nature, the beginning, the end, the morals and values, and actions. * Theory of the world used to live in it, include questions of God, cosmology etc.

2. Features that some worldviews possess?

* They all segment the reality logically and practically. * For all religions there are 3 horizons (Co-Present Horizon where you and everyone else exists, time horizon the past and the future, The axis that has the Zenith on the top and Nadir on the bottom), Zenith (eternal values, the absolute) and Nadir (Worst possible consequences if you don’t follow the Zenith). * The idea of a man’s horizon what a man can know, what he may know, what he ought to know. * Description of the pre-given framework in which the believer finds himself. * Basic premise to find / ask questions and trying to find answers to them.

3. What are some methods that may be used to access the Hindu worldview?

* Empathetically trying to give a description of the pre-given frame * This frame consists of the language (Sanskrit), ideas (eg how everything came to be), values (eg laws of manu) , and actions (the good v/s the bad). * The epithetical approach where we put ourselves in the insider’s shoes.

4. What are the features of Sanskrit language that are reflected in the Hindu worldview?

* There is the way they say things is very abstract and plural, so it gives a sense of absoluteness. The idea that everyone should do that. (eg, one should do that) * They favor the negative, for instance death and non-death. * The suppression of evils is like the primary goal of the religion and that is reflected in Sanskrit. * Samskrita means perfectly constructed speech, there is a sense that the way things are done, written or pronounced can only be done through Sanskrit. * The language itself is very important to Hinduism and that it represents that its something given from the gods. * There is a universality of personhood (One should be calm), atman soul is both absolute and I are regarded as same.

The History:

5. Introduction and Pre-Vedic and Vedic (Period 1):

* The origins of Hinduism lie in two cultural complexes. * The Indus Valley Civilization that flourished Between 2500 BCE and 1500 BCE * The Aryan Culture, which developed during the Second Millennium BCE. * There is dispute as to whether the Aryan culture developed form the Indus valley culture or that the Aryans migrated from somewhere else but it is widely agreed that Hinduism is a religion that has developed over a period of time. * The religion has grown via commentaries over time. These religious texts are very important to the Hindu culture because they have (along with other objects) survived over time. * While dealing with Hinduism, the most challenging tasks for archeologists and anthropologists are that they don’t really have any concrete evidence therefore they can only make assertions and develop hypotheses. (All conjecture and inference). * They don’t have any scriptures from that period. * We only have Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa to make inferences.

Pre-Vedic:

The Basics * The Indus valley civilization was centered on a river, and located in the Basin of Indus River in Pakistan. There were 40000 inhabitants in the cities of M and H. Sophisticated systems, good infrastructure. There was rampant farming. A lot of Pottery, Architecture and writing. This writing, not yet deciphered.

The Religion * Closer to Shamanic practices in M and H because there are horn gods, animals, tribal religions, and visionary revelations. * There is goddess worship, the