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Hindu Religious Traditions, Hinduism is a broad loabel and is difficuolt to define with any exactness, but is used by shcolars today to refer to the traditional religiou beliefs of the people in India, both past and presnet. The term "Hindu" itself means the inhabitants of the "land beyond the Indus River," and used by the invaliding Muslin armies of the 8th and 9th centuries who entered India from the northwest.

Again, it is difficult to list all the sacred elements that makes up the Hindu religious traditions because of the vfastness and depth of the Hindu culture and traditions that have evolved through thousands ofyears. Hinduism stresses the importance of the absolute truth. According to their philosophy, God is the absolute reality and the universie is the manifestation of the single Supreme Being alternatively called as the supreme consciousness. Many Hindu philosophers equate the Indu Brahman (the Supreme Being) to pure consciousness, which according to Hindu traditions have nobeginning or end. The ultimate reality is blocked from the perceptiion of the mundance man by Maya; or delusion that makes him thin that the ephemeral world is real. The objective of each man and woman is therefore, to go beyond this Maya and find his true nature. In fact, Hinduis relies on the fact that every living organism is a manifestation of the ultimate truth and so in essence, every being is the Lord himself. It is because Hinduism has developed over the course of 3000 years that it is difficult to define, but scholars are able to distinguish several forms and stages. Among some of the categories are : Vedic, Brahamnic, Philosophical, Devotional and Reformed Hinduism. Most people regard Hinduism as polytheistic, an idea which is both true and false. It is true that Hinduism has polytheistic elements, but it also as monotheistic and atheistic elements as well. It is difficult to describe, buth polytheism is simply one way for a person to look at Hinduism. The Hindu Religion is strongly dependent on the Indu Philosphy and in addition, has inculated numerous rituals and practices. The Hindu religion has 333 million gods; perhaps the largest number of Gods in any religion. This acceptance of the multiplicity of the Supreme Being in many forms is the hall mark of the Hindu religion. The Hindu religion also allows religious freedom and does not enforce the edicts of the religion on anyone. In fact, Hinduism teaches that a person in order to attain liberation from the worldly bondate, must select the religion which he is comfortable in variety of deities provides people with a variety of ways to fulfill their spiritual needs. Some go further and regard all of the deities as merely

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