Who is the founder for hunduism?

Answer 1

Hinduism is the oldest religion of all world religions. For hundreds of years, it has been searched for some evidence about its founderwas arians even authors couldn't point a finger at a specific founder or its date of origin. Even the authors of its sacred texts are largely unknown. The system exists from time immemorial and there is no exact beginning of this religion. It has no particular fonder but has many Rishis, Saints, Gurus, and leaders who reformed and revived the existing culture and traditions. It has developed out of Brahmanism.

Ancient Hindu works talk about things that happened between periods of time more than the period well known to history scholars of current time. Even scientific excavations show the existence of ceremonious worship, at the early periods.

In other words, there is no single founder of Hinduism and it existed from time unexplored, as a religion. Hinduism, is open to interpretation, and is a collection of a path to wisdom, which is based on reasoning more than a divine authority and does not have any specific founder.

The temples that have been found in the Indus valley civilization have no indication of a deity. But there were many 'gods' and 'goddesses' as symbols of nature. People of the Indus valley civilization worshiped forces of nature. Each village had its own unique statue to worship. The aspect of politics was also mixed with the religion models in ancient culture where the ruler was considered the 'son' of the mother-goddess.

Thus, Hinduism was subject to new philosophies that changed it over time. It consists of a wide range of beliefs, which are not interrelated sometimes. There is no known founder as such for Hinduism, no creed, or single source of authority. All the Hindu philosophies share just a thin connection with each other.

Another view:

Hinduism was founded by an institution of Seven Sages called Saptarishis. Just as we have Pope for Christianity today, Hinduism, from the beginning, had an institution of seven sages who were the patriarchs of the Vedic religion. They very strictly guarded the Vedic body of knowledge, and the copy of the Vedas available to them was considered to be the final copy. They were considered as God's manifestation on earth, and their word was the final authority in religious matters.

Any changes to the Vedas were needed to be approved by this elite group of sages. If the reasons were justified, they approved the changes and incorporated them into the Vedas. Otherwise, they rejected it and kept the Vedas intact without any contamination. From what appears, they were extremely strict about changes to the Vedas. Even to this day of Hinduism, a word in Veda is normally considered as the final authority to the literal T. And this faith in Vedas was built upon a tradition where the Vedas were very strictly and jealously guarded from any changes whatsoever, unless the change really justified it. Some super human justification was required to have them changed. Any changes, to the extent possible, were always added as appendages rather than their being incorporated into the Vedas. So we have Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads as appendages to the Vedas. As more and more philosophy developed, all of them got incorporated into this body as appendages.

It is this institution of seven sages that expended large amount of effort over thousands of years in unifying a large number of traditions from across continents and civilizations into one universal religion of Hinduism that we see today. The Hindu trinity, the Hindu divine hierarchy, the Hindu festivals, and everything else that we see today was formulated by them. It is they who declared Ram and Krishna to be the incarnations of Vishnu. It is they who inserted Purusha Sukta, Narayana Sukta, and Sri Sukta into the Vedas.

The names of the SaptaRishis carried over from one generation to the next. For example, if Kasyap dies, his son would take on the name of Kasyap and get inducted into the SaptaRishis. Once in a while, for some reason, like one of the seven rishis dying without having any children, the names of the one or more of the rishis changed, giving us a different set of SaptaRishis.

The religion got so excessively dependent on these sages that they started being considered as the representatives of the creator on earth. This slowly led to their deification and they started being mythicized. They were declared as the mind born sons of Brahma. Subsequently, they were equated with the most evolved light beings in the creation and the guardians of divine laws. Further deification of their attributes lead to the addition of more and more myths and halo around them. This sort of excessive mythicization finally lead to the relegation of this institution from the purview of the real world into the realm of mythology.

This institution got destroyed at the time of the three hundred year severe drought of 2200 BC. At that time, most of the Indians, devastated by the drought, left India for foreign shores, especially to European lands. Because of the severe suffering that people underwent because of the drought, people lost faith in a useless God who did not answer their prayers, leading to the rise of atheistic cults on the subcontinent. The institution of seven sages got destroyed in this religious upheaval, as a result of which, the origins of Hinduism have once and for all become lost in the dungeons of time.

Saptarshis are the founders of Hinduism.