hinduism doesn’t have a religious objection to alcohol? it’s a social objection - it makes you behave like an ass. there are some philosophical points like how it makes you less human and more animal because it clouds the mind and brings out your baser nature. there’s no religious prohibition that I’m aware of. some sects of Brahmins might treat it as a religious prohibition but there’s no shot this is any kind of blanket ban by the religion as a whole. it’s not very prevalent because there was a religious prohibition by the Mogul empire for a very long time.
people try to treat Hinduism like it’s one religion with a completely unified and consistent belief system when it’s more like christianity - there are quite literally countless different religious doctrines made at different times and that are accepted or rejected by various groups at various points of history. there isn’t anything quite like a central church, at least since the collapse of the Indian empire, so it’s more about which line of scholars and sages/saints you adhere to. hell, one of the major schools of Hinduism historically is literally atheist - following the Buddhist tradition, they deny the material world as real and seek truth in philosophy and spirituality. while this school isn’t strictly alive today, it forms much of the backbone of Hindu philosophy in the present.
even not eating meat isn’t a universal. it’s a relatively common prohibition but one mainly kept by particular social classes (Vaishnavite brahmins in particular, though many others as well). for example, a lot of Shaivite families do eat meat - especially fish. it’s beef that’s totally unacceptable in pretty much all contexts and that’s because people drink cow’s milk. milk comes from mothers so to eat a cow is like eating your own mother.
it’s very weird to me to consider any of these religious prohibitions, to be honest. the reasons are all framed philosophically and they’re accepted or rejected by various scholars contemporaneously with each other. and it misses weirder stuff like certain religious groups prohibiting garlic and onion because they make you more physical and lead you away from a path towards yoga (union with the divine soul of all things). but again, this is only done by very particular groups and at very particular times. my grandparents adhered to this and the rest of my family did not.
I think a lot of what gets confused here is that Hinduism incorporates so many different belief systems - I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any other religion that absorbed quite so many, not by treating other religions as heresy and wiping them out (though that obviously happened too) but more often just because some sage decided to study the other belief system and came back and said “I tried this and I was able to achieve union by following their path - their beliefs are Hindu”.
as a contemporary example, there are sects of Catholics in India that the Catholic church refuses to recognize because they’re convertees who invented their own fusion of Catholicism and Hinduism that has Jesus as a previously unrecognized avatar of Vishnu, or names Krishna to be an avatar of Jesus, while adding a bunch of saints because, like Mormons, they believe Jesus came to live among them and converted some saints during his travels. this kind of local incorporation and reinvention is utterly commonplace.
(this is actually one of the more infuriating parts of the religious strife between Hindus and Muslims - Islam was decreed Hindu during the Mogul empire, just as Christianity was during the British empire. the British stoked the flames of religious war to serve their own ends - but the whole reason there are so many Muslim Indians is because the Hindu institutions welcomed conversions as entirely consistent with a path towards divine union.)
setting aside the
for a sec…
hinduism doesn’t have a religious objection to alcohol? it’s a social objection - it makes you behave like an ass. there are some philosophical points like how it makes you less human and more animal because it clouds the mind and brings out your baser nature. there’s no religious prohibition that I’m aware of. some sects of Brahmins might treat it as a religious prohibition but there’s no shot this is any kind of blanket ban by the religion as a whole. it’s not very prevalent because there was a religious prohibition by the Mogul empire for a very long time.
people try to treat Hinduism like it’s one religion with a completely unified and consistent belief system when it’s more like christianity - there are quite literally countless different religious doctrines made at different times and that are accepted or rejected by various groups at various points of history. there isn’t anything quite like a central church, at least since the collapse of the Indian empire, so it’s more about which line of scholars and sages/saints you adhere to. hell, one of the major schools of Hinduism historically is literally atheist - following the Buddhist tradition, they deny the material world as real and seek truth in philosophy and spirituality. while this school isn’t strictly alive today, it forms much of the backbone of Hindu philosophy in the present.
even not eating meat isn’t a universal. it’s a relatively common prohibition but one mainly kept by particular social classes (Vaishnavite brahmins in particular, though many others as well). for example, a lot of Shaivite families do eat meat - especially fish. it’s beef that’s totally unacceptable in pretty much all contexts and that’s because people drink cow’s milk. milk comes from mothers so to eat a cow is like eating your own mother.
it’s very weird to me to consider any of these religious prohibitions, to be honest. the reasons are all framed philosophically and they’re accepted or rejected by various scholars contemporaneously with each other. and it misses weirder stuff like certain religious groups prohibiting garlic and onion because they make you more physical and lead you away from a path towards yoga (union with the divine soul of all things). but again, this is only done by very particular groups and at very particular times. my grandparents adhered to this and the rest of my family did not.
I think a lot of what gets confused here is that Hinduism incorporates so many different belief systems - I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any other religion that absorbed quite so many, not by treating other religions as heresy and wiping them out (though that obviously happened too) but more often just because some sage decided to study the other belief system and came back and said “I tried this and I was able to achieve union by following their path - their beliefs are Hindu”.
as a contemporary example, there are sects of Catholics in India that the Catholic church refuses to recognize because they’re convertees who invented their own fusion of Catholicism and Hinduism that has Jesus as a previously unrecognized avatar of Vishnu, or names Krishna to be an avatar of Jesus, while adding a bunch of saints because, like Mormons, they believe Jesus came to live among them and converted some saints during his travels. this kind of local incorporation and reinvention is utterly commonplace.
(this is actually one of the more infuriating parts of the religious strife between Hindus and Muslims - Islam was decreed Hindu during the Mogul empire, just as Christianity was during the British empire. the British stoked the flames of religious war to serve their own ends - but the whole reason there are so many Muslim Indians is because the Hindu institutions welcomed conversions as entirely consistent with a path towards divine union.)
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