...Religion has always worked as an important element in human history. One of the very first forms of religion, Totemism, traces back to the era in which most of the populations relied on traditional economies of hunting, gathering, or mixed farming. Along with Totemism, a system of belief that humans worshipped spiritual things such as animals, plants, or stones, Animism and Shamanism also became popular and well known among groups of people as those religions developed and accustomed their shapes in accordance with the society and various social aspects of the time. As the society changes, many religions, coming up with their unique aims of important religious values, sometimes similar and sometimes different from each other’s, have emerged. Many of them disappeared, some of them are kept within small groups of people, and very few of them became the mainstream religions. One of the mainstream religions is Hinduism. First emerged in South Asia, the idea of Hinduism is based on Veda, the oldest religion and literature of ancient India in existence. Hinduism does not deny the existence of many gods; thus is classified as polytheism. One might ask from where these sacred believes or religion first emerged. Mircea Eliade theorized that hierophany, a manifestation of the sacred, is the basis of the religion. In his book The Sacred & The Profane, Eliade analyzed this massive idea of religion with four categories—sacred space, sacred time, sacred nature, and sacred self—under the...
Words: 1532 - Pages: 7
