imagine you're at a party not the craziest party of your life but a pleasant enough Affair decent music euphoric lighting plenty of people getting socially lubricated with tasty drinkies and tasty eties if you catch my drift anyway this party is going great but for some reason the smoking area is Rife with religious debates Christians are arguing with the atheists Jews are arguing with the Muslims come on guys give it a rest the Buddhist stayed at home because they're all so bloody and lightened and contented that they have absolutely no need for socializing and where are
the Hindus ah well they're all over there lighting up the Dance Floor what why do they get to dance while we all bicker well that's just the way they are it's The Groovy religion have they all got their figured out or something no man this probably the most divided religion on the planet really then what gives ah man I can't be bothered to explain it it's long complicated and trippy as hell we'll probably make a great YouTube video [Music] though let's get down to Hindu town or hu Town see cindu is the Sanskrit name for
the Indus River cindus to the Persians were those that lived in the land beyond the river but at a certain point somewhere betwix 800 and 600 BCE the Persians changed the way their mouths made noises from s's to H so Hindu is actually an exonym and what the is an exonym it's basically a name that did not natively originate kind of like how the Dutch like to be called netherlanders who we English just tend to call them so the origin of the word Hindu has little to do with religious identity it just meant River people
so what do Hindus believe ah yeah see that's a bit of a messy question really depends who you ask you see Hinduism can be simply referred to as a polytheistic pantheistic panentheistic pandis henotheistic monotheistic monistic agnostic atheistic or humanist religion it's a hard thing to pin down on paper technically to be a Hindu you don't even need to believe in God insert quote from Gandy the rules are about as Loose as they come and the reason for this is simple Hinduism is groovy Madness seriously though find me a Hindu any Hindu and I promise you
I can find one that is a completely different language moral Outlook and set of beliefs to the other not that we should be collecting Hindus we British have already kind of been there done that the reason Hinduism is so widely diverse is partly due to the sheer bloody age of the religion beginning around 500 BCE however Hinduism actually evolved from the ancient vidic religion which although not commonly practiced today served as the foundation upon which Hindu ISM grew the ancient vict texts are known as the Vaders and they feature many of the same gods and
sentiments commonly held in modern Hinduism they're kind of like the original novel upon which the big budget Hindu Matic Universe was based over time the stories changed or were exaggerated new writers came in with their own ideas and then some people like those ideas so much they no longer considered the original ideas to be Canon and then new Cruis of writers get hired reconing the previous Recons taking stuff in New Directions and this has led to a problem that there is now a metric ton of Hindu texts Brahma is the OG Hindu god closely linked
but completely different to Brahman which is the entirety of the universe itself or Supreme Being Brahma has four heads and rides a magic swan in addition to his heads he also has four arms why does Brahma have four arms to hold holy stuff including the Vaders which were granted to him through meditation to give him knowledge to create the universe the legend is that brahan the Supreme reality itself desired to create living beings so brah Man created Cosmic Waters into which it spilled its seed eventually a golden egg formed inside that golden egg was Brahma
who used the power of the Vaders to meditate so hard that he split the egg open and set about creating the universe not wanting to be wasteful Brahma turned the top part of the egg into the heavens or the bottom half became the Earth after creation Brahma then kindly passed the Vaders on to the vict who got the Hindu party started unfortunately Brahma has fallen out of popularity these days thrown out of the party and kicked to the curb in favor of an even cooler God [Music] Vishnu is probably the most important deity across Hinduism
today devotees of Vishnu are known as vnit and they make up the largest single proportion of Hinduism Vishnu is often depicted as a blue magic person also with forearms holding things like flowers to smell and Maes to smash Hindus believe that the Universe comes in cycles of birth destruction and rebirth reincarnation on the cosmic scale Vishnu is the preserving force that allows a new universe to Spring from the death of the old one after the great Cosmic Destruction the remnants of the universe become a Milky ocean in which Vishnu will permanently sleep alongside a Great
Serpent with a thousand heads don't worry mate I've slept with worse anyway for vishu to wake up from his milky nap time a Lotus must spring from his belly button upon that Lotus will be Brahma the Creator who will wake up Vishnu so they can make a new universe together and if you think the Lotus milk story contradicts the golden egg story welcome to Hinduism there is a certain awareness that everything is interpretation the exact facts of the stories are not so important as the sentiments they convey anywh who Vishnu flies a giant eagle and
has a tendency to manifest himself as demigods or avatars such as Krishna rahama and Ki all of which are so popular they have their own devoted fan bases they're not quite so popular [Music] as shiva's a nuclear bomb a cosmic storm a stargo supernova do not with Shiva Shiva is that guy man has the power to end the universe and one day he will Shiva holds a mighty trident and wears a tiger skin he has the magic blue skin like Vishnu but typically only has two arms unless he is in a dancing mood in which
case he needs a couple more to hold his magic drum and his sacred fire Shiva is often depicted riding a white bull with a cobra around his neck because why the not he is a God after all oh yeah and the river Ganges flows from the top of his head often from the mouth of a Lotus or the goddess ganger he basically caught the river in his Hao to prevent it destroying the entire world no biggie Shiva completes the holy Hindu Trinity or triti with Brahma and Vishnu his devotees known as shites and they make
up around 25% of the Hindu populace so why is Shiva the coolest God ever well Shiva with his destructive potential is also the most enlightened of the Gods possessing a literal third eye in the middle of his forehead The Story Goes that shiva's wife pavati was feeling kinky one day and snuck up on Shiva to put her hands over his eyes the world plummeted immediately into a great Darkness people feared that the great Shiva had abandoned Humanity to solve the issue instead of you know moving his wife's hands and maybe giving her a spank for
being so reckless Shiva just us his inner powers to fling open a third eye in a blaze of celestial fire that restored light to the world and enlightened Humanity do not with Shiva lastly Shiva is also represented by a Shiva lingam which quite literally translates into Divine phus magic penis it's actually those magic stone statues in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom not that I'm getting all my knowledge of Hinduism from an Indian Jones movie that would be silly however that does nicely bring us to the next most important God K actually more commonly
known as shaki the mother goddess shaki is essentially the female symbol of energy in which the Supreme reality creates preserves and destroys the world wait I thought that was Brahma Vishnu and shiva's jobs well yes yes it is but Shakti also does that stuff at least according to her followers the shakas Shakti also comes in a variety of forms and names mostly relating to Shiva there's pavati shiva's main girl Uma or Sati shiva's first girlfriend who got a bit embarrassed once so she incinerated herself in the Holy Fire more on that later deie or Durer
who rides a lion has eight weaponized arms and had to kill the demon mahisha shur because Brahma had cast a spell that made a demon Invincible to male Gods way to go Brahma last of all Khali who is the god of time a forearmed goddess with dark blue skin who dances on the ash of the cremated and drinks blood girl you wild all of these goddesses are considered to be forms of Shakti or even forms of shiva's feminine aspects really depends who you ask how about a less complicated God ganes sh sh Ganesha ganes is
super cool he's one of the most important Gods but also way less intense than the others ganes is the god of chilling at home learning stuff going to weddings and partying at festivals basically all good things in life you might have noticed that Ganesh has an elephant head this is because Ganesh is the adopted son of Shiva why did Shiva adopt an elephant well it's just a tad more complicated than that basically shiva's main girl pavati was all like ooh Shiva let's make some babies but Shiva was all like basically a man's not about that
life pass me your BTY girl so Shiva got his batty and bounced but pavati was brooding bad so she went to the lake and scrubbed the dirt off her skin from the mud and skin cells she collected pavarti carved the body of a young boy she used her God breath to breathe life into him naming him V yaka some time after Patti was bathing in a cave so she told Vina yaka to stand guard but Shiva returned clearly in the mood to get into the cave to get into pavati but he found V yaka blocking
his way oh L me little man man's trying to get in the buff tub you get me n no way man my mom's baffing and that you can't go in are you mad broad you know who I am Blood Man Shiva the Destroyer that let me in before I Chef you up Shiva I heard you me Father what' you say you Dusty you man's not your dad and with that Shiva did the only reasonable thing and severed the boy's head from his shoulders do not with Shiva Patti heard the commotion and was naturally dismayed when
she found her little dirt monster had been beheaded so as an apology Shiva went and killed a baby elephant and sewed its head to the boy's neck breathing new life into him as the god Ganesh you would think that because Ganesha is an elephant human hybrid he would ride an elephant itself no quite the opposite he rides a mouse why a mouse because it's funny lighten up if you want misery go be atheist perhaps this is the point we can make things really complicated and explain that all these Gods though distinctly different are just the
absolute Supreme's fun way of expressing itself like when you play a video game with several different main characters Hindus also believe in the concept of the Eternal Soul known as Atman every living being has an Atman a bodyless genderless life force that is singular and Immortal the aim of every Hindu is to live a perfect life to attain MOA where the Atman becomes one with Brahman what about reincarnation well most Hindus believe in reincarnation but some do not following the older Concepts in the Vaders which is more akin to the classical Heaven Theory Dharma and
Karma dictate how your rebirth will go whether you'll achieve mocker or have to suffer another lifetime of existing in some form of another there is a rough hierarchy to reincarnation that Hindus believe in worst case scenario you get reincarnated to the underworld as some nightmarish creature but this is not permanent if you live a good life as a fire monster then you can escape and become reborn again next up inanimate objects this one I really don't understand like how are you supposed to follow Dharma and gain Good Karma if you're a literal Boulder was was
I a good Boulder um no remember the time you squished a baby but that wasn't my fault that was Penelope the psycho clown I had no choice in that well too bad you're an accomplice enjoy being reborn as a pebble anyway after inanimate objects plants and animals are on the list just follow your nature and you should be fine after that if you're reincarnated as a human lucky you this being gets to make actual choices and therefore has the most potential for success but also the most potential for evil use your time wisely last of
all you can become a Celestial being yep before your apman reaches Brahman you might get some time as a literal god seriously though pretty cool stuff Hinduism is one of those topics you could easily devote your entire life to studying and still learn something new about it every day but it's not all rainbows and sunshines some of the stuff is really not [Music] cool yeah for such a peaceful and groovy religion these Hindus sure are racist towards each other the problem began innocently enough in the Vaders where four vanas or classes of people were identified
Brahman were the priests and Scholars katas were the Warriors and rulers vishas the merchants and agriculture IST and the shris which were the laborers and service providers these classes were to do with one's vocation which was determined by one's Dharma it was never intended to be a birth based hierarchy however somewhere along the line around 200 BCE there came a popular text called The Manor smti which formalized rules for cast based duties Purity and hierarchy reinforcing a more rigid and stratified social order your cast was determined by your birth your role in life was determined
by your cast and you could not outside of your cast at least when the British showed up we saw such barbarism for what it was and put a stop to it immediately Psy the British actually heavily reinforced cast distinctions by institutionalizing them in censuses and enshrining them into law often cooperating with the controlling upper cast to give them roles within the British Raj to help keep the lowers in their place yeah we kind of suck and the cast system thrived all the way up until its legal dissolution in 1950 after Britain finally left India alone
any anyway the cast system is definitely the most up thing on the Hindu tradition list no competition child marriage yeah yeah this one's really bad during the good old vict days only adult marriages took place the vas recommend that a woman should be around the age of 20 and a man should be 25 to make a good healthy couple sounds fairly reasonable many scholars blame the tradition of child marriage in India on various invasions the Greeks cians bans and Muslims however even if it wasn't the Hindus that started the child marriage idea my god did
they run with it child marriage in Hindu culture flourished like a wildfire to the extent that child marriage soon became more common than adult marriage we are talking hundreds of millions of child marriages historically again this was predominantly because the man of Smur came in and gave new rules on marriage stating women were to be married as young as possible to ensure that their virginity was intact yay yay this went rampant for thousands of years but thankfully in 1929 the legal age for women to marry was raised to 14 India why bro they didn't fix
it until 2006 bro illegal child marriage is still happen in rural India to this day but at least it's now officially a crime progress but other than child marriage and the cast system everything in Hinduism is truly all rainbows and sunshines uh yeah remember um the Goddess from IIA the one who burned herself to death well she was the daughter of daaka a son of Brahma for some reason daaka was unhappy that his daughter married Shiva literally the coolest and most powerful Chad that ever existed I don't know maybe daxa thought she could do better
so daxa threw a big party and invited did everyone except for Shiva whom he shunned at the party daxer insulted Uma so badly that she became ashamed to the point that she used her Divine powers to burn herself into a crispy she was henceforth called Sati by all the gods Shiva got so enraged that he started performing the tandav dance a crazy Bop with mov so fire that the Universe gets destroyed at its climax again Shiva is just that guy bro do not with Shiva fortunately Vishnu and his all preserving chill thought hm shiva's pretty
mad this time one I used my frisbee to cut his dead wife into 51 pieces and Scattered them around India's holy places will that do the trick Shiva it actually did Shiva calmed down and stopped busting out his world-ending moves cool story huh yeah well a lot of Hindus got the wrong idea and interpreted this as a message to burned widows alive after the husbands died yeah guys that can't be worthwhile In fairness sometimes it was a consensual burning if by consensual you mean the village Patriarchs getting together and saying you're your husband is dead
you must join him on the P what oh oh no I don't want to you must it is expected of you but we were only married 10 years how old are you now 15 old enough to burn onto the fire yeah that's pretty much how I imagine that situation playing out anyway that was Hinduism bit of a cluster but hey what religion isn't okay yes Buddhism is fantastic the only religion in the world that never hurt anyone but Hinduism is a close second it's a religion without any singular right answer and that's perhaps why I
really love it I'm not a Hindu at all but I just can't help think that Hinduism is cool as from the stories to the philosophy to the art I just adore the vibe before I love you and leave you I have one more mind I would like to share whatever could it be drum roll garan Hindus garan Hindus don't get me wrong anyone could be a Hindu that's kind of the point but how the did this even happen it's like seeing an Irish samurai or a Filipino Lumberjack no hate intended I love these dudes and
I also love you and I bid you goodbye [Music]
